A month or so ago, after being inspired by a choir member who plays, I bought a tenor ukulele – a lovely mahogony Kala with a beautiful mellow and sweet sound. I have never been able, or sufficiently motivated, to learn to play guitar, although I have always liked the idea of being able to accompany yourself on an instrument while singing. But whenever I tried to play guitar, I found most of the chords too difficult and never persevered long enough to strengthen my hands.

The ukulele, happily, is much easier than a guitar to learn to play. Not only is it smaller, both in width and the distance between the frets, but it only has four strings and its tuning means that there are many simple chords, several with only one or two fingers. I have found it very easy and tremendously enjoyable to pick up and play. In fact, the hardest part about the ukulele for me (apart from most of the four fingered chords which I still find difficult – E! Bm!) is learning to strum and finger pick, which are all new to me. I have played violin, and a little flute and piano when I was younger, but nothing strummable. It’s particularly hard to keep up a strumming pattern and sing at the same time (something which I haven’t mastered, yet continue to inflict on all within earshot).

I’m getting nice rough finger pads on my left hand, and hopefully soon the side of my index finger will toughen up a bit so I can do bar chords, where you press the entire length of your finger against the neck of the instrument. I find them incredibly difficult for some reason, despite the small size of the ukulele, but presumably one day my fingers will learn to stretch that far.

I am so tempted to head up to Cairns in July for the Ukulele Festival (if I combine a parental visit with the festival it doesn’t sound quite so frivolous). Check out James Hill, who’s attending and doing some workshops – not your stereotypical ukulele.

“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.