Challenge 3 completed

I can cross another of the challenges off the list! Last week I went to Croatia for a research/appraisal meeting and as I’ve never visited before this counts as completeing challenge no? visit a new country. I kept a diary while I was there which ran to 10 pages of A5, probably a bit much to include here so I’ll summarise………

Day 1 – Tuesday 2nd of July (annoyingly 2 days after Croatia joined the EU so no stamp on passport!)
The flight out of Newcastle was at 6:15am so had an early start to get to the airport on time (4am) but thanks to an upgrade was let into the BA Business Lounge, a little early to take advantage of the free booze but the coffee was very welcome and bumped into Robson Green (on his way to Wimbledon apparently). First flight was a bit of a blur due to still being half asleep – the second one was a bit more of a raucous affair thanks to half a plane load of boozed up young London boys and girls on their way to a music festival – I think they’d already had a skinfull at the airport but they kept drinking on the journey and got loader and louder much to the irritation of the rest of the passengers and crew.

In one of those perfect bits of timing both of the loos at the back of the plane packed up leading to a large queue of party goers forming along the isle – made more amusing when we were held up for landing by the Croatian airforce doing some sort of exercise on the main runway. The festivelers continued to cause mayhem at the airport and did the reputation of brits abroad no good at all when one of them fell over and bashed his head on the baggage carousel – luckily for him he was so drunk he didn’t seem to feel a thing!

The journey from Zagreb to Reijka was pretty uncomfortable but we made it in 3 hours and I got the feeling back in my legs after about 30 minutes. Hotel was very nice but accidentally completed challenge number 1 again when the deputy manager decided to let herself into my room just I was I was getting out of the shower – much embarrassment all round!


Wednesday 3rd
The meeting/review lasted from 8 till 6 and I was last up to give a presentation so had the full time to fuss over my slides. My presentation went well though and was given the provisional thumbs up by the Commission representatives. Was hoping to have a little time off in the evening to see the town but we were whisked straight off to go for diner – as it turned out this was on a boat – the food was a little basic but the chef spent much of the time out on deck playing an accordion with the captain singing an accompaniment from the bridge – the drinks provided were, well……. Lets just say they had a lot of flavour!

We had some wonderful views as we cruised down the coast and were let off for 30 minutes while something (not sure what) was being done to the boat used this opportunity to pop into a local bar and find something a little more palatable. The cruise back to the hotel took a while so it was 1am when we made back – a little tipsy.

 

our chef/musician

 

 

Professor Rich Dawson "enjoying" the local wine



Thursday 4th
Was woken up by the maid letting herself into my room – this happened to others at the meeting also. It was off to more meetings until 3:30 but we got the afternoon to have a bit of a look at our surroundings – the town was very nice and felt a bit Italian (understandable given how close we were to the border) it was very hot and many people weren’t wearing very much – there’s a time and a place for speedos – its in Olympic swimming competitions – not major shopping streets!!

 

a bit later on - when everyone had put theur clothes back on

The organisers had invited those that were flying back the following day for another meal out this time in a restaurant overlooking the town – with instructions to meet in a nearby castle. Had a lovely meal and got to know some of the EU people a bit better. Lots of national stereotypes came out and were being made fun of – this included me and Rich being criticised for trying to change the funding rules but my personal favourite was when the greek representative phoned up the French organiser (Theirry) to say he was at the entrance but he couldn’t pay for his taxi as he didn’t have any of the local currency, at which point Thierry asked a chap called Ernst to go to the entrance and pay for the cab – then picked the phone up and said “don’t worry, I’m sending the Germans to bail you out”

view from the terrace in the first bar

Friday 5th
Another early start and a near sense of humour failure in Zagreb airport (nice staff but bit of a shambles). The journey home took about 10 hours and was knackered when I got home. To be fair I didn’t see a lot of Croatia but I got a bit of a taste of it and it was my first trip to the region – wouldn’t be the sort of place I’d go on holiday (not really a coast/sunbathing sort of person) but enjoyed having a few days there.

A much delayed update

The last entry was the 14^th of April, so much for my plan to blog about once a week! Let’s get the excuses out of the way.

i)                    I was abducted by aliens

ii)                   I forgot how to type

iii)                 I broke the internet

iv)                 I got abducted by aliens again

v)                  I poisoned myself with my own baking

vi)                 I’ve just been a bit crap at sitting down at the computer and doing a bit of typing

You’ll have to decide for yourself which of the above statements are true

I have been making (some) progress on the challenges in the mean time (in between the alien abductions) so it seems fitting that this blog is review of progress against them all, so here goes…………..

1)      Public Nudity

Done – see blog entry “excuse me mate but you’ve nicked my towel” 10^th of Feb. May be revisited in future though.

2)      Pull in a strange place

Going to be careful what I put here – There have been a couple of near misses on this (see entries on 27^th of Feb and 7^th April). There have been other developments but I don’t really want to blog about them just yet as I need to see how things go - plus not sure if the girl in question would be too thrilled to have the whole thing reported on here!

3)      Visit a new country

I’ll be doing this twice (country not continent). I’m visiting Croatia in July and Romania in October – I may also try to get to Slovenia over the summer.

4)      Get a motorcycle or skydiving licence

I did quite a bit of research into this and it’s looking like it will be tricky one to achieve – either of these two options is going to cost in excess of £2k for the training! – I’ve just spent quite a lot of money on my flat and whilst this is affordable I am looking to move in about 12 months, I’m going to need all the savings I can muster at that point.

I’ve therefore had to ask the adjudicating panel (comprising Nick, Laura, and Kate) for some leniency and they have kindly offered a fall back of “learn a craft” (i.e. pottery or basket making). If its possible to do the original challenge as planned then I will try to do so (as it is a bit more exciting than basket weaving!)

5)      Participate in a team sport

Zero progress on this, though I may be joining a netball team.

6)      Set up and update a blog about the challenges

Despite the odd gap I have managed to keep the blog going so should be able to make it to the end of the year.

7)      Learn a musical instrument

I’ve had a number of offers of assistance on this – from the loan of a guitar to joining a chorus line (joining a choir was allowed under the rules). Am working on a plan with one of the chaps at work but will keep a lid on things till the plan come to fruition and there’s something to report.

8)      Get a poem published in the Evening Chronicle

I’ve had a few goes at writing poems now – but have not managed more than a verse and they are frankly just too awful/embarrassing to post here! Nevertheless I’m confident I can write something that approximates poetry.

The hard part will be getting it published as as far as I can see the Evening Chronicle doesn’t publish poems!!!! I’m going to have to trick the editor somehow!

9)      Join and participate in an amateur dramatics society

Done absolutely nothing on this

10)   Host a tea party where you have baked all the food

Learning how to bake has involved quite a few failure (some of which I am yet to report) but am making steady progress. I can now confidently bake 2 different types of cake, scones, multiple breads (I’ve really bread making – and deeply grateful to whoever suggested this one – sorry I can’t remember as I was little drunk by the time we got to double figures on the challenges). My cookie making however is an area of concern and my flapjacks have been an utter disaster!

Despite the setbacks I think I can do this one quite soon. All that remains is to set the date for this but am confident of completion.

11)   Ride a horse

Hopefully going to be doing this with Beccy sometime over the summer as it’s one of her challenges to. The preferred location is Coniston in the lakedistrict.

12)   Become an ordained minister of a religious group or cult

I have found a suitable religion that is prepared to ordain me. I have also been asked to perform a marriage – though this will take place next year. All that remains is to choose my title (reverend, padre, rabi, llama) – suggestions welcomed in the comments box.

Ok, looking through all that it does appear that 6 months in I can only claim that one challenge is complete but this is a marathon not a sprint and, well, I am a marathon runner! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2TRUUu2uHo&noredirect=1)

Kitchen disasters

A very quick update on challenge 10. I've been trying to expand my range a bit over the last month or so and have been having a go at cookies and flapjacks. These are supposed to be easy and as I've now been loaned a copy of "The Great British Book of Baking" endorsed by Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood of BBC fame I was pretty confident of making some quite nice things.

Unfortunatley even the King and Queen of TV baking can't stop me from making a bit of a hash of things the first time around (to be fair, the cookie recipies I tried weren't theirs, just the flapjack one).

Anyway the results can be seen below...........

Cookie attempt 1: chocolate chip cookies a little dry and doughy but ok (and a loaf of bread

on the right, which worked much better)

 

 

Cookie attempt 2: Crispy chocolate chip cookies - a bit too much sugar and they all merged into one big sheet - still got scoffed by the guys at work though.

 

 

Cookie attempt 3: crispy cookies take 2 - still spread out quite a lot but atleast they didn't all merge, still far too sugary for my liking.

 

 

Flapjack attempt 1: what a bloody mess! probably shouldn't have tried to make two different types in the same tray but was expecting it all to fall apart so easily - will see what's salvagable and take to work tomorrow.

 

Poetry

"The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese"
G K Chesterton

About a week ago I promised a blog post about poetry - I had big plans for reading a book of Poems cover to cover over the course of this week and then writing up the experience at the weekend. Fate has interveened and thanks to catching a bug on Monday I've had rather more time on my hands than I planned but also a lot less inclination to read a book of prose than I had thought I would.

I think it will help if I describe my first introduction to poetry when I was at school. I'm pretty sure we did read the odd poem when i was at primary and middle school but we only really started analysing them when I got to high school. My first impressions were " what a complete pile of crap!" though to be honest thanks to the efforts of the staff at Prudhoe County High I was turned off  all forms of english literature for years. When it came to choosing poems and novels for us to study the faculty had clearly got their heads together and thought "what is the most misserable and depressing collection we can assemble?" They clearly worked hard on this as my main memories of the texts we studied were..........

• Two books about missfit kids growing up in grim industrial towns - in each case novel ended with child having dreams shattered.
• A Seamus Heany poem about a hot summer/frogs and another one about drowning kittens (i'm really not joking here!).
• The Crucible - a play by Arthur Millar, dramatising the Salem Witch trials - where, suprise suprise, there was a miserable plot/ending (Laura has since told me that the play was wrtten as an allagory of McCarthyism - an important detail our english teachers neglegted to mention when we were studying it).

We did at least get to study one Shakespeare play (Romeo and Julliet) which made up for things a little bit but the whole GCSE experience turned me off any form of classic literature for the next decade. I have recovered from this a bit but my knowledge of poetry remains patchy at best.

Anyway, I've now started dipping into two books of poetry.... a Penguin anthology of Victorian Poetry and Rapture by Carol Anne Duffy (the poet laureate) both picked out by Laura at Tynemouth market a few weeks ago. So far so good, I've enjoyed some of the Victorian ones more than others, this makes sense with them being by a range of authors but the Carol Anne Duffy book is very easy to read and have enjoyed nearly all of it, this despite it being a collection of romantic poems - not something i thought i would have liked much.

Writting my own poem is still a long way off, and getting it published will be more difficult than i imagined (the evening chronicle does not have a poetry column!) but I'll report progress on this as it occurs.

 

my current reading list

A truth universally acknowledged.........

I've been working away on a few of the challenges (motorbike licence, new country to visit, poetry) in the last week, all research rather than action so have been drafting a post with my musings on poetry - to appear later i hope. However, this afternoon there was an incident which could/maybe have led to progress against challenge 2.

I'd just been to a bit of shopping and on my way home decided to drop into Blockbusters just to browse for 10 minutes. I bimbled round the place for a little while and was just looking at the TV box sets when one of the staff working there, probably wondering at my aimless perusal, came over to ask if I was looking for anything particular " i was just looking to see if you had the ITV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice" I replied. This was actually true - i recently completed reading the book (it only took me four years - long story), and had been chatting to Laura about adaptations on the big and small screen to be informed that the recent hollywood version is rubbish (i actualy quite enjoyed it) and that i should really try watching the TV one  (the one where darcy goes for a dip). "that was made in 1995" she replied, " it's fantastic but it is a little old and we're only a small shop so we don't stock it, i could order it if you like?". She was very excited to tell me about it - it's one of her favourite dvds and she's watched it loads of times, so we ended up chatting for quite a while about all things P&P - i also found out her name was Emma, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of actors, Jennifer Ehle is brilliant as Elizabeth Bennet, and she is sick of people asking her if Emma was her favourite Jane Austin novel (i hadn't asked this). As we were chatting i had a quick thought about challenge 2, the video store could be considered a strange place i suppose? and if this all goes wrong I can alway just join the 21st centuary and sign up to Netflicks!?

apparently you have to include a picture of Colin Firth in a wet shirt in any piece

about P&P, it's the law

So all was going swimmingly until the subject of Mr Darcy came up. Great, i thought, thanks to Laura's insistance on my finishing the book I can actual give and informed opinion on this! (big mistake). "Well, i think Mathew Macfadyen was excellent as Darcy in the movie - he did the shyness / arrogance thing really well!" From all smiles her expression suddenly hardened - "No - Colin Firth was the best Darcy and no-one else has ever come close!" . That seemed to finish the conversation - so i completed the order for mr firth's opus and left. Oh well, back to the drawing board on this one...............

much cooler- surely!?





p.s. please note - at no point in the conversation did i offer any sort of opinion about Keira Knightley! I have long ago learned that's always a bad move in situations like this!

Hardmoors 55

This blog is supposed to be about my attempts to complete the challenges listed in the first post over the course of 2013. I’m cheating a bit with this one as it’s all about the doing Hardmoors 55 run which was definitely not on the original list (and as am sure Laura, Nick, Kate, Al and Anne would point out – these challenges were not supposed to be running/outdoory type things). However, it did turn out to be very much out of the comfort zone and there’s been another large gap since the last post so hopefully I’m allowed a little leeway here………….

The Hardmoors 55 is an ultra-marathon starting at Guisborough following the Cleveland Way through to Helmsley. I’ve done a few marathons and a couple of ultras in the past and had been looking for an event to do early in the year after a bit of a break from running distance running since last November. A friend, (Flip Owen of Fetch and Elvet Striders) has always spoken highly of the Hardmoors series and it’s just down the road and so I thought I’d give it a go this year. If you want to check it out have a look at the website (http://www.hardmoors110.org.uk/cms/?q=node/48)

There’s 2700m of accent/decent on the course, 300 less than the L50 (the ultra I’ve done previously) and it’s generally regarded to be more “runable” – so I thought it would be a good challenge but not too extreme. How wrong I was!

I didn’t make things easy for myself by not really doing sufficient training in the build-up, the weather has been rubbish and my knee has been playing up so I only did 4 runs of 15 miles or more since Christmas, I then compounded this not getting my kit sorted out until the night before the race and then remembering that I’d broken my water carrier in Morroco and had never got round to replacing it – thankfully Penny was on hand to lend me hers. [for non-runners – this paragraph is what is termed as “feeble runners excuses” – it is traditional for me to get these in as early as possible before describing any race in detail]

The next challenge was getting to the start. The organisers put on a coach to get you from the finish, where you can park your car, to the start at Guisborough. This means that when you finish, assuming you are still capable of using your legs you can drive home with the minimum of fuss. The coach leaves at 6am so it was up 3:30 am for a 4am start. Thanks to the snow I got the car stuck on Sutton bank 3 times and it was only thanks to a fellow runner giving me a push that I made it on time. There was time for a bit of a snooze on the coach before we got to the start for registration and a kit check (a rucksack with full windproof/waterproofs, extra layers, map, hat/gloves, electrolyte drinks, gels, survival bag is mandatory for all competitors).

I couldn’t find an easy to copy map of the route, so this one is of the HM110, but we followed the route from the 5 marker (Guisborough) down to the blue flag (Helmsley) in the south west corner – you can find a better map on the weblink above.

135 runners/lunatics had made it through the snow for the start and in the race briefing we were warned of the risks of hypothermia by the race marshals. I should note at this point that it was fantastic that the organisers had decided to keep the race on, the weather reports were pretty bad and in a safety obsessed culture it was wonderful that these guys were essentially saying it’s going to be very cold and windy but you’re all grown-ups, and if you want to race it’s up to you, rather than taking the easy option and just cancelling.

The conditions at the start were cold, but with tracksters, a good base layer and windproof top quite manageable. The race started bang on time and we steadily worked our way up the first ridge and along to Roseberry Topping, it was a little windy but not too bad. I bumped into Flip Owen (a friend from Elvet Striders and the source of the photos below) and we had a quick chat about the conditions but we were both too cold to stick around for two long. It needs noting here that while ultras are running races, unless you are supremely fit then running the full distance is nigh on impossible. Most of us walk up the steeper hills and then run on the flat bits and the downhill sections (or just stop and pose for photos as below).

Coming back up the hill from Roseberry Topping (photo courtesy of Flip)

From there on to Kildale going stayed good with nice tracks and thanks to the cold weather all the mud was frozen. I was having great fun, I’ve always preferred running in the cold to the heat of summer, the countryside looked great and there were lots of nice fellow runners to natter to along the way. Just as was thinking about how great everything was it all got quite nasty, the climb up to the moor from Kildale is just about runable but once on the top there was a 25 mph headwind and as the path got higher there was more and more snow until it became ankle deep after about 2 miles.

Track along to Blowarth Crossing (before it got really bad)

This is what it should look like!

The remaining 4 miles to Blowarth crossing and the next CP were the nastiest I’ve ever run, the wind chill (-12) left me unable to feel my hands and snow drifts (up to waist high in places) made the track unrunable. There was nowhere to get out of the wind and put extra layers on so the only option was to keep ploughing forwards to try and keep warm – an attempt to have a drink at this point revealed energy drink I was carrying had frozen. It was around about this point that the demons started to visit – it’s pretty common thing for runners, you’re running along and starting to get tired and suddenly you start to question whether you can finish the race, blame yourself for not having trained enough, beat yourself up for not having the willpower to go quicker, question your own sanity for putting yourself through this yet again – a mate at Claremont Road Runners summed it up perfectly once at a cross country race “I was running along nicely till the second lap and then suddenly I just hated the world!” . The best cure for this is running with others who take you mind off it but on Blowarth there was no one within 100meters of me for most of the time and even if there had of been we couldn’t have heard each other over the wind. I also remembered at this point telling Nick and Kate not to mind the bad weather too much when we did the Lakeland 50 last year and that “bad situations make good anecdotes”, Nick pointed out that this statement would come back to haunt me and it most definitely was doing.

There was a self-checkpoint on top of the moor and thanks to my numb hands it took several attempts to punch my course card but then thankfully the track turned sharply and started to drop back out of the wind a little. The section over the next few crags was not as quite as exposed with the wind going across us rather than being a headwind and there were people to run with and natter to, my mood lifted and I started to feel good again. There was a lot of snow and ice on the downhill stretches so we were all being extra careful but there were more nice encouraging marshals at the checkpoints and even some hardy spectators/supporters along the way.

Another brave marshal (with a tent full of sandwiches and flapjack)

At 32 miles the course goes into Osmotherly and there was a checkpoint in the village hall, a welcome chance to warm up, grab some food and a mug of tea provided by the excellent marshals. Anna from Elvet striders was there and it was nice to see a familiar friendly face. It had taken around 6 hours to reach this far and I was a bit surprised at the time, I had expected to be going much slower but getting out of the cold was quite a motivator.

The second half of the run has a lot less hills than the first so there was a chance to speed up a bit, though there were again sections with large snow drifts and high winds. By this point a few of us teamed up to help get each other to the finish and make sure we didn’t get lost along the way. This really helped me out as with about 5 miles to go I started to feel a bit rough so decided to walk for a bit, when I got running again gravity had been tilted by 45 degrees, I lurched sideways across the track, overcorrected and then lurched the other way into a steep verge. The chap I had been running with (Doug) was suddenly quite concerned and saying something about gels, it didn’t really make much sense to me and I remember waving some shortbread at him before he told me quite sternly that I needed to take a gel right now! This cut through the fog and I found a gel in my pocket to consume. It tasted fabulous (this is a very worrying sign, energy gels taste repulsive!) and the fog cleared completely. My blood sugar levels had dropped badly and had Doug not been about to help me things could have gone bad quite fast. I took another couple of gels just to make sure I’d be ok and we started jogging again.

One of the excellent marshals near the top of Roseberry Topping

The last 5 miles were run in the dark but the route was well marked so we didn’t get lost. Annoyingly I somehow started to think about an Abba song and for the last 3 miles had to suffer Benny, Bjorn, Annafrid and Agnetha belting out Take a Chance on Me in my head for 30 mins, my head was definitely starting to go a bit. Finally at 8pm we jogged into Helmsley and staggered into the cricket ground (the finishing line) in a fraction over 11 hours (mercifully Abba shut up at this point). Of the 135 runners who started all but 10 finished, the winner completed the course in 8 and a half hours, incredibly not too far off the course record and he’d had to batter his way through the snow drifts first, making life easier for all of us that followed.

Its fair to say I was a total wreck at the end, I was absolutely delighted/gobsmacked by my time, I had thought that on a good day I might just have been able to squeeze under 12 hours but to get close to 11 was fantastic and it was really all down to the guys I ran with keeping me going. It took about an hour to warm up and recover my faculties – I think I may have been gibbering quite a lot - and I could drag myself to the car for the short drive to York where my mate Scott fed me, gave me some beer, listened to be gibbering on for a bit and put me up for the night.

Anyway, not on the list but definitely out of the comfort zone. I plan to get back on with the regular challenges and post some more updates soon. Particularly efforts to understand poetry a bit better…………

Normal place, strange girl?

Just a quick post this time with an update about challenge no2 (I had considered adding a post about my latest baking exploits but have put quite a bit on here about bread and cakes – and I think we all need a break from that – lest they become even less popular than the references to Hercules).

This weekend 3 of the 6 people who helped set the original challenges were up in Newcastle for a couple of days (Laura, Nick and Kate). Thanks to the chaotic way we always seem to do these things everyone arrived at different times. Nick was the first to turn up having spent the day on the bus coming up from London and we had a while to wait before Kate arrived on the train – the pub and a curry house seemed a sensible place to while away the 5 intervening hours J

We had a nice couple of beers in the Bacchus, then proceeded to Akbars for a slightly disappointing curry (Rabbit Tandoori definitely didn’t work). Eventually we made our way down to the Town Wall for a last couple of drinks before Kate’s train arrived. After dodging the drunk couple at the bar who were trying in vain to hold one another up we managed to find a seat on a long table with a bunch of girls having a leaving do. There were some mild protests about it being their reserved table but eventually Gemma, the girl who’s leaving do it was, kindly said it was ok for us to perch ourselves at the end. They then proceeded to leave us be and get on with their drinking. This situation would have remained had Nick not decided to bomb their group photo by doing his best Fonzy impression at the back of the shot.

Not Nick – but we never got a copy of the actual photo bomb

They didn’t notice for a while but eventually when they checked back through they saw him – they were impressed by his pose and we had a bit of chat then one of the party. Came and sat next to me and started talking…………. and talking……… and talking. I struggle to remember any of what she was saying but we could barely get a word in edgeways (I think she may have been a bit dismissive about me and Nick being scientists at one point – she was a legal secretary)– what I do remember is over the course of this decidedly one way conversation her hand moved onto my knee then worked its way up my leg over the course of about 20 minutes. Technically there was clear potential to pull – however the pub could not really be considered a strange place, though the girl herself through did prove herself to be quite strange with some of the stuff she was saying including randomly starting an argument with someone at another table for no other discernible reason than he was from Cumbria. By this time Kate’s train was in so we decided it was time to leave.

So challenge two not completed – but writing it down has helped me continue with challenge 6. When recounting this story to a friend (who has asked to remain anonymous) I was asked why we decided to leave when there was such a clear possibility? Because she was crackers - I replied. His response, REDACTED.