“Where are you off to?” asked the husband, as I sat in front of the TV lacing up my sneakers. “Out for a run,” I said. And in response to his query regarding available lighting outside, “The moon’s full, it’ll be fine.”

One aspect of this plan that I hadn’t fully considered was the fact that the moon had not actually risen yet, and was present as a very faint glow on the horizon. My 5k loop from the front gate of our property includes one street light at about the mid-point, and otherwise goes along completely unlit roads. There are also various unimpressed horses, barking dogs, and the odd flock of ducks. This is rural running, yo. Which is fine at dusk, or when the moon is actually above the horizon, but that particular night was quite dark indeed.

My eyes adjusted a little, but everytime a car drove past not bothering to lower its high beams (thanks neighours), I would lose my night vision completely. At one point I nearly ran into a wheelie bin. I also spent some time glaring suspiciously at a pale patch on the other side of the road, which I suspected might be the bald guy who’s always running at night. I’m sure he’s perfectly pleasant but I wasn’t anxious to run into him on a deserted road in the dark. It turned out to be an innocent bit of paper, stuck to a post.

There’s a property on our street that gears up every December to win a prize in the Christmas lights competition – it’s a big property with two houses on it and a long street frontage, and at the moment it looks as if a giant elf has been overcome by Christmas cheer and exploded all over it. People come by of an evening, park on the street and hang around the fence, partaking in the blinding jolliness of it all.

By the time I came back on my run, the onlookers had mostly dispersed, and the house was blinking away in the dark, really faint Christmas music playing from somewhere, and glowing inflatable Santas and elves bobbing in the breeze and watching me. It was quite creepy. I was inspired to spend the last few minutes of the run mentally drafting the outline of a little horror flick about inflatable figures come to life, with KNIVES (come to think of it, a rather danger-fraught method of killing people if one is inflatable). I have now forgotten the major plot points, unfortunately – a tragedy for the movie-going public.