be brave...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been called cynical. Cynical, negative and pessimistic. For a time, I was called it so often that I almost believed it myself and began to build my sense of self around it. 

The cynic. 

To be honest, I’m not sure that this has ever really been the case. It certainly is true that, as a younger man, I would throw stones and would criticise without feeling the need to offer up anything constructive. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in going through that phase. It’s also true that, when feeling frustrated or powerless at work (annoyingly often), I would sometimes deliberately seek to tear people down in a way that was ultimately self-destructive…. But I was young and stupid and I don’t work there anymore (which is probably just as well: some people choose never to forget the person you were fifteen years ago, even if you’ve long since changed). 

I think it probably boils down to this: I like to ask questions. These days, it’s usually to genuinely try to understand something because I’m curious. The problem is that lots of people don’t like to be asked questions; they don’t like to be challenged by someone because, if you don’t know the answers or you aren’t very secure in your opinion, it can feel as though you’re being criticised. No one likes to be criticised, right? I try not to be threatening about it, but nobody’s perfect and I’m probably not the finished article even now. 

I think my MS has changed me, actually. Or maybe it’s just revealed another side to my personality. Nobody knows what causes MS, nobody knows if it will progress for me or what my outcome will be. There’s very little that I can do to change any of these things. I’m not really one for serenity prayers, but I do think that this has taught me acceptance. To paraphrase Kipling, to meet with Triumph and Disaster and to treat those two imposters just the same. I’m calmer, more relaxed and better able to approach life on an even-keel (whilst also remaining perfectly capable of frothing in indignation watching the news. Nobody is perfect. My wife is doubtless scoffing as she reads this). 

What’s the point in being pessimistic? I’m well aware what MS might do to me and I know all too well what it’s already done. I simply don’t see how dwelling on either of those things does me any good at all. MS pages on Facebook seem full of people wrapped up in their own invisible pain and suffering. I don’t doubt that they suffer, but I simply don’t understand the attitude because I try never to allow myself to think like that. Perhaps that’s easy for me to say, but I hope it’s a philosophy that will stay with me, whatever happens. “The Road not Taken” by Robert Frost is one of my favourite poems; my interpretation of it is that you should never waste time regretting the path you didn’t take. 

They say that a pessimist is never disappointed. I think they’re always disappointed. Besides, I’m a runner, and as Kipling also said:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, 
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son! 

Well, I can definitely do that. Maybe not as fast as I use to be able to do it… but I can still do it.

we've come too far to give up who we are....

There's a documentary series - Hospital - on at the moment that was filmed at the beginning of this year at the Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham. It follows the staff and patients of my local hospital as they struggle to cope with the demand of a particularly brutal winter. Watching it is an emotional experience: I get a surge of pride when I see what a wonderful institution the NHS is and how these dedicated staff are able to give the best possible care they can to every patient, but I also get very angry when I see the impact that decades of cuts are having on this service and how they compromise that care at every turn. They say that the more direct experience you have with the NHS, the more you appreciate it.... but it's heart-breaking to see the impossible decisions that doctors are forced to make when we simply don't have the resources to provide the right level of care.

This week followed a surgeon who specialised in head and neck cancers. He loves his job and had extended a six month posting to cover eighteen months, but he was working in a ridiculous short-staffed department of two surgeons (when there should have been four). With his wife already working as a plastic surgeon in the USA, he took the decision to give the department five months' notice that he was going to leave the UK and follow her. Although the NHS is a wonderful and precious thing, he said, in the USA he would have the time and resources to provide a better quality of care to a smaller number of patients. What he didn't say was that this care would only be provided to those with the insurance to be able to pay for that care... which, for all of its failings, is not true of the NHS, even if it's what some of our politicians seem hell-bent on delivering for us.

During the course of this week's programme, we watched this same consultant being asked by the camera team if a delay to surgery to one lady had played a role in her cancer becoming inoperable. Conscious that he was being filmed, he picked his words carefully: well, it's difficult to say for sure and absolutely impossible to prove... but if someone had told me that this is how my mother had been treated, I would be very angry. Enough said, I think. The lady herself was heartbreakingly phlegmatic: "I'm old, I've had a good life, done everything I wanted to do and been to every part of the world I've ever wanted to visit...". I was in pieces watching this on my sofa.

As chance would have it, I was in QMC myself this morning. I stopped injecting Avonex after the possible allergic reaction that I had in January, so this was an appointment to check in with the MS Nurses and the consultant neurologist to decide what we do next. A trip to the MS Clinic is sobering: as I walk into the clinic, I look around the waiting room and see people with walking sticks and wheelchairs. This morning, one lady arrived in an electric wheelchair, accompanied by her carer. She had a big head support that held her head in place, and when she tried to speak to the nurse, she was only able to communicate with moans and grunts rather than actual words. I try not to think about it very hard, but this is what the future might look like for anyone with multiple sclerosis. Meanwhile, I was warmly greeted by the consultant with a cheery "Ah, it's the patient who runs marathons!" I'm a fairly unexceptional runner, but I certainly stand out here.  (My wife would also probably like me to point out at this point that the consultant then apologised to her for not remembering this, but she looked athletic, so was she a runner too? She was thrilled. If an eminent medical professional thinks you look athletic, then.... well, you must be.. right?)

As we left, C. asked me how I felt. I've got a few decisions to make about whether I want to resume my injections, or if I want to continue taking nothing and six monthly MRI scans to check that my disease is continuing to progress as slowly as it has seemed to for the last ten years. Do I want to go back onto the treatment I've been using for the last ten years, or do I want to roll the dice?  It's a tough one.

But how do I feel? Honestly? Well I don't know if I know the answer, or if there are any right answers here, but how do I feel?  Lucky.

I feel lucky.

I'm running the London marathon in a couple of weeks; I'll also be running the Liverpool marathon in May too. We're raising money for the MS Trust. At my appointment today, the nurse who saw me was trained and partially funded by the MS Trust; the leaflets that we were given to take away to help with our decisions are written and produced by the MS Trust. This small charity provides a crucial support to the medical teams that support patients with MS, and they provide support and information to the families of people affected by the disease. I'm so proud that I'm able to do something to help them continue their work and to continue to support the NHS and people with MS.

You can sponsor us here!  The money that you good people have donated so far will make a massive difference to the lives of people with MS and their families.  No one should have to go through this alone.

https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/Team/TCK

just a girl...

Like many people, I've been genuinely shocked by the number of female friends in my Facebook timeline using the #MeToo hashtag to show that they have been the victims of some form of sexual assault or abuse.

In spite of my best attempts to check my privilege in at the door, I've still been somewhat shocked too by some of the articles and commentary that have followed in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal that kicked all of this off in the first place.  I just struggle with some of the generalisation: I'm a man, so perhaps it's inherently harder for me to understand, but it's difficult not to feel at least a little bit got-at when it seems like my whole gender is under suspicion.

Look at this article: Want to Treat Women Better? Here's a List to Start With.

There's a lot of common sense here (although, maybe a big part of the problem is that these things aren't commonly understood).  I realise that it's my privilege talking, but it feels as though a lot of the stuff here isn't only about gender, but is really about basic human decency:

 - Don't talk over people
 - Don't get defensive when you get called out
 - Don't make assumptions about someone's intelligence based on the way they dress
 - Be aware of your inherent power in any given situation
 - Don't send unsolicited dick pics

etc.

These are basic principles for not being an arsehole, right? (I nearly said dickhead, but the words you choose are important and it's easy to avoid the gender-specific insult and just go for a body part that we all possess instead).

Also, the last point in that list..."Don’t read a list like this and think that most of these don’t apply to you".... doesn't that read to you as just a little self-satisfied; as though the person writing this has just dropped the mic, fixed you with a glare and folded their arms?

Look.  I get it.  I really do.  I try hard not to be part of the problem.  I'm a big guy, and although you and I know that I'd get blown over in a stiff-breeze and wouldn't say boo to a goose, I noticed very early on that my physical presence sometimes intimidated.  If I was walking behind a woman at night, I quickly learned that they sometimes felt uneasy and threatened by my presence.  I knew that I had no ill-intent, but I also realised that they had no way of knowing that and the simple act of crossing the road helped to signal that I wasn't a threat.  It's only a small thing to do and I was happy to do it.  Frankly, not sending unsolicited dick pics is even easier.

I don't pretend to be a feminist, but I'm certainly not one of those guys who gets inarticulately and irrationally angry at ridiculous things like the all-girl Ghostbusters or the new prominence of female roles in the Star Wars films (the First Order is a much more equal opportunities employer than the Empire used to be, so they're not all bad).  Although I grew up without strong female influences on my life - mostly single sex schooling and no sisters - I've spent much of my adult life surrounded by the most amazing, intelligent, high-achieving women.  The idea that women are in any way inferior is just laughable.  My wife will doubtless tell you that I fall too easily into traditional gender roles at home and don't pull my weight enough with domestic chores, and she's probably right (although, I think that's essentially down to me having much lower standards than it is assuming that they're primarily a woman's jobs... but I could definitely do more).

It's just not helpful to label large, diverse groups of people with one big stereotype, is it?

That doesn't mean we don't have a problem, mind.  My Facebook friends have shown me that clearly enough over the course of this week.

don't stop moving...

There was a time when thought I was essentially immune to the common cold.  Well, perhaps not exactly immune, but I just never seemed to catch the infections that clobbered everybody else around me.  I might wake up one morning with a slightly scratchy throat, but it never seemed to develop into anything more substantial.

Rather smugly, I always put this down to the fact that I was reasonably fit and healthy and ate quite a lot more fruit and vegetables than average. Then I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and began to inject myself regularly with a drug designed to suppress my immune system.  The colds quickly followed.

It turns out that I wasn't immune to the common cold after all and that, actually, I was just being protected by a hyperactive immune system that was spoiling for a fight with almost anything.  The immune-suppressants soon put paid to that.

Dammit.

Worse still, when I go down with a cold now, I seem to find it almost impossible to shake.  Where most people are more or less back to normal after a week or so, I find that the symptoms drag out for months longer than that. For each of the last few years, I've had that a cold develops into something else in my lungs and, although it doubtless started out as a viral infection, I've ultimately needed an inhaler and some antibiotics to finally shake it off.

As a runner, of course, this is doubly frustrating as anything in your lungs makes running a very dubious prospect indeed. I lost six weeks of running at the back end of last year with a particularly persistent cough and every single day not running really eats away at my own personal sense of wellbeing.  I had to watch the Turkey Trot half marathon instead of running it. Imagine!

This year's cold, I'm told, is a particularly nasty strain.  Naturally, I caught it almost immediately.

Because I'm stupid and I'm stubborn, although my cold really developed over the course of the last week, I still dragged myself out on Sunday to run around the Royal Parks Half Marathon with my wife.  It was a lovely, sunny autumn morning and the course takes you through Hyde Park, St James Park, around Horse Guards and past the Palace.  It's well-supported and quite delightful.... but I predictably found it more of a struggle than either of my full marathons.  For (almost: mile 15-16 in our first marathon) the first time time running together, C found herself gently trying to pace me around the course. Not in the least bit surprising, right?

I look a bit like death in that second photo, eh?  Nice medal though.

I hate colds.  For someone with an incurable chronic illness, I have a surprisingly low tolerance for being ill.  Well, I've still got a couple of days before my next half marathon on Sunday, so.....

all bound for Mu Mu Land...

So, we ran the Milton Keynes Half Marathon on Monday.

I actually grew up around here, so it was sort of like a home fixture and we were able to stay at my mum and dad's house the night before rather than have to drive all the way down from Nottingham in one go (they weren't actually there, so we did rather use their house as somewhere to sleep, but a 10 mile journey in the morning rather than 65 miles was most welcome).  Although I do a fair bit of running, I don't actually get much of a thrill entering formal events and collecting medals, but this was a sort of start to training for the 2018 London Marathon and so I put on the MS Trust vest and blue tutu and committed to running the whole thing with my wife.

It was nice.  When you think of Milton Keynes, I'm sure you think about roundabouts... and the first five or six miles was on the wide boulevards of the city centre, taking in a few roundabouts before dipping off into one of the older parts of the city and taking us past some lovely cottages and onto paths through parkland.  It was really pretty nice.  We kept to the right as the marathon and half marathon courses diverged, but the route of the full goes out past Willen Lake and into some nice looking parks before heading back into the city to the stadium finish.  13.1 miles was plenty for me, but if you're looking for a nice spring marathon, I reckon you could do worse.  It was well-organised, reasonably well supported and, because of the stadium start, you could stay indoors and warm until just before you started running... at lots of races, even in summer, you end up doing quite a lot of standing around in the early morning getting cold.

If we're going to run London together again, we're clearly going to have to get used to each other's little foibles again: I don't like to stop/start or to change my pace very much, and my wife likes to stop to eat/drink and then slows down uphill and speed up downhill.  Running together, like many other aspects of a marriage, is about compromise and understanding.

Yeah.  We've got some work to do.  Check out this video of our finish... I was slightly head as we entered the stadium and slowed down, looking over my shoulder to wait for my wife to catch up so we could finish together.  As you can see, she sprinted past me.... so she says to catch that woman running next to her.  Fairly rude, I would say.  As it happens, our chip times are exactly the same.  This is because the wise man has learned to cross the starting line a step behind his wife for pretty much exactly this reason.

There was a pretty nice medal and t-shirt in the finisher's pack too.  The cow represents Milton Keynes' famous concrete cows, of course... but those sunglasses?  They're from a mural inside Milton Keynes Central Library that pastiches Seurat.  You see, local knowledge.

I've got a couple more half marathons in my diary for the rest of the year, together with the 24 hour relay race at Thunder Run in July.  My plan for training for the marathon next year is to try and keep my mileage up to about the 15 mile mark to the end of the year, and then to not change my training programme too much in 2018, apart from to ramp up that long run every Sunday.  Body depending, obviously.  I've run a marathon on my own now, and time really isn't the most important thing to me now.  I've been approached by the PR team of the Royal Parks half marathon, and they're going to feature me in a press release for their event, so watch this space for more exciting running and sponsorship news.

Well, only eleven-and-a-half months to go now!

in the desert you can remember your name...

My wife left home on Friday to work the weekend before her big conference this week.  Since she's been away, as well as work as normal on Friday, I've guided my friend Terry around parkrun and then took him to catch up with friends in the cafe for a bacon cob and a cup of tear. I've attended a three hour rehearsal for this week's end of season concert with Choir and had a quick pint with a friend before coming home to fix a(nother) puncture on my bike - that's three in four days now.  I've also completed a few domestic errands, topped up my wife's supply of artisanal fruit beer (she's very particular) and done the weekly shop.  I've even been out running twice and managed not to fall over.

I've also watched thirteen straight episodes of Breaking Bad season 5.

That's perfectly normal, right?

What's probably not normal is that I'm not going to watch the remaining three episodes in the season before going to bed tonight.  Given the way the episode I've just watched finished, that's pretty remarkable.

You've seen this already, right?  You know this is good and that I should have watched it years ago.... well, better late than never.

just aim for my heart if you feel like it....

My wife is a fan of classical music in general, but she has a particular soft-spot for Mozart.  I like all sorts of music, but for some reason, I've never really been able to wrap my head around classical.  Over the years, my wife has tried to rectify this with the judicious gifting of things like Mozart's Requiem or Shostakovich, but nothing has really taken root.  I'm afraid I'd much rather listen to some banging rock music.

The other day, she was listening to the Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute.  It's a lovely piece of music, but I thought it would be amusing to reference the famous scene in the film "Amadeus", where the audience at the premiere of the opera are horrified by what is one of the most famous pieces of music ever written.

"It's just scales"

Or... as Salieri says in the film:

"There she was.  Onstage for all to see, showing off like the greedy songbird she was. Ten minutes of ghastly scales. Arpeggios. Whizzing up and down like fireworks at a fairground."

Sadly, she didn't catch the reference and turned on me in a fury as the ignoramus I clearly am.

In an attempt to lighten the mood, I followed up with this:

"It's just like 'Moves Like Jagger' by Maroon 5.... scales!"

Apparently, one does not simply compare the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to that of Maroon 5.  Who knew?

After 18 years, it seems like I still have a lot to learn about my wife.

And music.

Moo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooves like Jagger.....

living for the weekend...

At a little after 4pm this afternoon. my phone rang.

It had been a pretty busy week, peaking with a big meeting yesterday, and I was winding down towards the weekend when my phone played "The Imperial March" -- my wife's ringtone for most of the last 15 years, and boy did she love this scene in Ted.

"Hello"
"Hello.  Are you nearly done?" She was working at home today after the normal busy week.
"Well, I've a couple of things to finish off, but I was thinking of heading off pretty soon"
"Good, because we need to go to the vet to pick up the cat's flea and worm drops, and I thought we could pop across to Morrisons whilst we're there to pick up some dishwasher tabs"

As I hung up, I turned round to see the only member of my team still in the office looking at me and shaking his head sadly.

"The vet and then dishwasher tabs?  On a Friday night? You are literally living the dream right now"

It's hard to argue.

He went on to suggest that "to be honest, it doesn't sound like a two person job"... but I haven't lasted 17 years in this relationship by entertaining thoughts like that.

lay ee odl lay ee odl lay hee hoo...

Rather than go on at great length about our recent trip to Switzerland, Germany and Austria, I'm just going to leave you with some photos.

OK, and maybe a bit of aimless waffle too.  My gaff, my rules.

Here's the view from the mountain hut in the middle of the Swiss mountains where we spent the night celebrating the wedding of our friends Sina and Patryk. We slept in bunk beds and swam in a mountain lake fed by snowmelt from the snow-capped peaks.  Yes... it was bloody cold. The night sky (including the Perseids - at least the one that I saw) was absolutely stunning.  Switzerland is a beautiful country... absurdly expensive, but beautiful.  I also bought this t-shirt.  Look at that pipe!

My wife with a Maß of beer in Munich.  My beer (she likes the froth), but I love this photo. I also love the fact that they only serve beer in portions this size after 5pm.  Nevermind the Picassos, Durers, Gaugins, Monets, Rembrants, Rafaels and Leonardos we saw at the Pinakothek galleries in the 24 hours we were there... THAT'S culture!

We saw these in the 7th District of Vienna.  They also have one's with boy/boy and boy/girl.  Apparently they were very controversial when they were first put up, but I think it speaks volumes for how far a Catholic country like Austria has come in recent times.  It's such a simple gesture of inclusion, isn't it?  We travelled between Munich and Vienna on the train. Over the course of the 4 hour journey, we chatted with the nice German ladies heading to Vienna for a long weekend. They were asking what we would recommend they visit, and my wife turned and asked what I thought.  I was genuinely stumped.  I've been many times over the last 15 years - we got married there, for goodness sake - but, although I've been to many of the galleries and palaces and museums, a trip to Vienna will always be about seeing our friends and enjoying spending time with them.  This time was no different.  I do need to go back to the Kunsthistorisches museum, but given a choice between that and a trip in the Punto to the Wachau to drink apricot juice and wander up to the castle where Richard Lionheart was kept prisoner... then I'll take the Wachau everytime.

It was a lovely break.

....and every day I've got to fight the Plague

My wife woke up on Thursday morning with a horrible sore throat.  This has developed over the last few days and has been making her feel thoroughly rotten.  She was even forced to take the drastic step - for her - of taking a sick day on Friday... although, even then, I can't help but notice that she was working from her sickbed.  But even so, she's not been feeling very well.

Is it bad that I've enforced a six foot exclusion zone between us?

I don't want to sound unsympathetic, and I hate to play this card, but I'm immune-compromised.  I inject myself with immuno-suppressants every week.   I've had two colds already this spring, and I'm still on a steroid inhaler in an attempt to shake-off a cough that has lasted about two months so far. Once I get an infection, it just seems to drag on.  The irony is that, before I was diagnosed with MS and started injecting myself with this stuff, I almost never got colds.  I thought this was because I was fit and ate a lot of fruit.  It turns out that it was probably because of my hyperactive immune system.  So hyperactive, in fact, that it needs to be dampened down to stop it eating bits of my brain and spinal cord.

In twelve days time, I'm also running a marathon (as is my poor, sick wife).  In a somewhat desperate attempt to stave off contagion, I've spent the last few days frantically drinking Berocca and shoving cold and flu defence up my nose.

Of course, none of this has worked and I can now feel my throat starting to swell up.  It probably serves me right.

I probably have no right to expect sympathetic cuddles either.

Not from my wife, anyway.

golden, fallen heart...

I had my hair cut at the weekend.

This is not a remarkable or unusual occurrence. It happens every three or four weeks. I like to keep my hair short, and this means pretty regular trips to the barber. I do own a pair of clippers, but the only time I ever tried to do it myself, I made a mess of it and haven't really be inclined to do it again since. C. used to do it for me, but although it saved me £8 a time, the cost was high in other ways (mostly that my hair is incredibly spiky and gets bloody everywhere when cut) .... and anyway, I don't mind a little natter with the barber once in a while.

Normally, I go on my own. But this week, C finished her coffee in town early and was waiting for me whilst I was still in the chair. An old colleague of mine was there too, and as we went to his wedding, my wife was happily making conversation with him as the final touches were put to my new 'do'.

When I joined them, C. cast a glance across my head and made some remark about how I now seemed to have a secondary bald patch developing, and that the two would surely meet before too much longer.

Charming, right?

She's right, of course.  There's not much point denying it.  I haven't had a fringe since about 1994.

The thing is though, I just don't care.  I realise that running a weblog with lots of pictures of myself might lead you to think otherwise, but I don't think I'm an especially vain man, and hairloss doesn't really bother me at all.  I actually started having my hair clippered before I realised that I was going bald (which wasn't until I was about 22 anyway), and it's been getting shorter and shorter ever since.  It's only this long now because of the beard.  When I'm clean-shaven and my hair is properly short, my wife likes to call my overall appearance my "chemotherapy look"... no hair and sunken cheeks.  Charming again, no?  She's a keeper for sure.

Thinking about it, it's remarkable that only two people in the last couple of years since I've had the beard have amusingly suggested that my head is on upside-down.  But as the bumper slogan on a Wicked Camper we saw in Australia put it, hair is a waste of testosterone anyway.  Have you seen what young people do with their hair?

ring ring

Yesterday evening, my wife came into the house from the car clutching a ring. “What’s this?”
It was a woman’s ring. Metal with a decorative stone. Not really expensive, but not a cheap piece of crap either.
“Where did you find that?”
“In the cup holder in the car. Any ideas where it came from?”

I racked my brain and came up with nothing. Why on earth would there be a woman’s ring in my car that didn’t belong to my wife? I looked at my wife, and began to understand why she might have been asking the question.

Um.

I barely use the car. I cycle to work, and between the two of us, over the last three years, we have covered a grand total not much more than 12,000 miles. As a result, I don’t really keep all that much in the car… a spare pair of sunglasses, an atlas (once your satnav has tried to route you up the most ridiculous road in the world on Dartmoor, you soon remember the merits of an honest-to-goodness atlas), the service log book and a cable for connecting my iPhone to the stereo. Apart from various discarded tickets from various car parks, that’s about it. And if I don’t use the car very often, then you can imagine how rare it is to have a passenger who might then perhaps have left something behind. Never mind a *female* passenger.

At least I could explain why the ring had turned up now. We had the car cleaned last weekend, inside and out. They must have found the ring on the floor somewhere as they vacuumed and popped it into the cup holder for safe keeping. That was pretty honest of them, to be honest. We never would have known the difference if they’d just decided to pocket it. Good for them.

Meanwhile, my wife loomed over me for an answer.

Then I had a very distant memory of one of my colleagues losing a ring that she loved. I sent her a photo straightaway to see if was hers, and she confirmed that it was, indeed, her long lost and much cherished ring. Now all that remained was to try and remember why this ring might have ended up in my car. Why on earth would she have been in my car? To be honest, I’m not sure that my wife was all that reassured to hear that the ring belonged to my 26 year-old colleague. In fact, this fact probably raised at least as many questions as it answered.

We eventually worked it out: apparently I gave my colleague a lift to Birmingham airport for a day-trip we took to Dublin for work. She was running late when we met up at silly o’clock in the morning, so she had all her jewellery in her bag. By the time she realised the ring was missing, we were on the motorway and she just assumed she’d lost the it in the car park.

The date of that trip to Dublin? May 2014.

Well, I guess that shows how often I clean the car, anyway.

warm wind carried on the sea...

It’s not very often that you go away for a holiday and come back to work feeling as though you’ve had a much longer break than you actually have… so as this is exactly what’s just happened to me, I’m trying to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

Our break consisted of six days in Gozo, and then back home to spend a few days with a good friend of ours from New York who was passing through on her way back from Africa. In Malta we dived and looked at beautiful churches and some somewhat underwhelming Neolithic dolmen.

"Can I raise a practical question at this point? Are we going to do 'Stonehenge' tomorrow?"

They like cats here too, and you can see them everywhere.  This one quickly identified us as suckers and claimed possession of a prime slot near our breakfast table every morning.

And angels.

"Don't blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast. Faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back. Don't look away. And don't blink.  Good luck."

Great views everywhere though.  Beautiful skies, magnificent cliffs and clear, blue seas.  Nice to spend some quality time with my wife for a change, too!  She's alright.

Back in Nottingham, we visited the Major Oak in Sherwood Forest (named after an actual major, would you believe?), stopped by the disappointing castle and visited the Trippe to Jerusalem (the last time we were in New York, our friend took us to McSorleys, the oldest bar in the city, established 1854. The Trippe was founded in 1196 and they started a crusade there, which must have seemed like a great idea in the bar the night before. Marissa was suitably impressed and then we quickly moved on to a better bar with fewer tourists for a drink).

It was fun and great to see her and spend some proper time together.

Although I was only off work for 7 days in total, breaking it into two like that really seemed to make it last. It’s been good news/bad news since then though: the good news was that I didn’t come into work until lunchtime today and that it’s a bank holiday weekend coming up. The bad news was that the reason I was late coming into the office was because I was attending a clinic at the hospital.

Swings and roundabouts. Ups and downs.  Still, good holibobs.

repeat...

We’ve been invited to a reception at the House of Lords in October. It’s an event that’s been organised by the MS Trust as a thank you to their fundraisers, and we’ve been invited along because of all that money we raised -- thanks in large part to you guys -- in running the London Marathon (around £7,000, once you factor in Gift Aid). It’s on a Wednesday night during a normal working week, but how do you turn down something like that?

Much to my wife’s amusement and slight irritation, the invitation was addressed to “Mr and Mrs swisslet”. It’s become something of a running joke in our house that, for all that she did brilliantly well to raise all that money and to run a marathon, it will apparently always be me that’s the inspiration in this particular area of our lives. She’s in Paris at the moment and was delighted that her visit coincided with a trip by some of our Viennese friends. Over dinner, apparently, one of the recurring topics of conversation, so my bemused wife told me over the phone later on, was how much of an inspiration I was, and how much adversity I overcame, and how determined I was, etc. etc. etc.

#inspiration.

It’s funny. If I thought of myself that way, then at the very least I’d need a good talking to, and probably a good slap…. But instead I find it amusing and ridiculous and baffling and humbling all at the same time.

Coincidentally (or not), the MS Trust have been emailing me this week, dropping hints about how they are now accepting applications for their team to run the 2016 London Marathon. One email thanked me for asking to be kept updated with the latest news from their running club and telling me where to find the application form for a place in their marathon team…. Information that I hadn’t actually requested, but thanks for the hint, guys.

When I crossed the finish line on the Mall in April this year, I was fairly sure that I didn’t want to run another marathon. I was worried about how my body would withstand the training, and although I got through it alright, it totally dominates your life for the best part of six months. Did I really want to go through that again? But before we had even got to the post-race reception, my brain was already beginning to wonder how fast I could do one if I ran on my own. I tried to kill the thought, but it has kept coming back to me, creeping into my head even as I’m slogging my way around a 10 mile run on a Sunday morning and feeling like I'm wading through treacle. Why on earth would I think about running 26.2 miles when I’m struggling to get my pace up over less than half that distance, goodness only knows… but there it is.

In the run-up to the marathon, I had a few sessions of sports massage.  After the marathon, I had one last  one to loosen out my poor, aching muscles. My massage therapist, on the basis of those four or five sessions, told me that he reckoned that I wasn’t the kind of person who would be happy with just one marathon.

Damn him, but he was right.  I knew, deep down, that he was right then... but it's taken me a few months to accept that to myself.

So, here it is: I’m in for 2016 and I’ve formally put in my bid for a gold bond place with the charity.

I feel tired just thinking about it.

badhead....

My wife isn’t a big drinker. It’s not that she doesn’t drink, it’s just that she’s quite happy not to drink. When we’re out of an evening, more often than not, she’s more than comfortable to order a cup of tea as everyone else around her sinks deeper into their cups. Our very best friends have long since worked her out: she might not drink much, but she does like to drink champagne. If they want to get her tipsy, all they have to do is to dangle the temptation and leave the rest to her.

We were down in Oxford this weekend, catching up with some friends of ours who are over with their kids for a visit from Adelaide. It was a special occasion, so a bottle of champagne was purchased, and later, some prosecco. It was a splendid evening, but the next morning, my wife had a hangover. As she doesn’t drink much, this sort of thing doesn’t happen to her very often. From the way she was talking about it, you’d think it had never happened to anyone else before either. It was quite sweet, in a way.

She insisted on coming out with me on a five mile run that morning, but was keen to ensure that I knew about all of her various ailments (although, to be fair, she did run all the way around, including up the notorious hill into Headington without stopping, so she wasn’t doing badly, given her parlous condition).

After some careful consideration, she was fairly sure that the hangover was caused by the switch from champagne to prosecco.

“Pope killed by inferior wine”, she said, displaying an even greater ambition than normal.

I suggested that it might have been that cup of tea she had in that last pub. You can’t be too careful, mixing your drinks like that.

(and we could both have done without the 90 minute journey home taking 5 hours, too....)

horse and carriage...

Eight years ago today.

Still the best thing I ever did.

eye to eye and face to face....

I was in the changing rooms at work this evening, just changing into my cycling gear for the ride home when an old colleague came in.  Robert is one of those old-school guys in his mid-50s who has cycled to work as long as I can remember, but his only concession to cycling clothing is a pair of bicycle clips, which he uses to carefully secure his smart trousers before serenely cycling home on a bike that must weigh about a tonne and basically has a basket on the front.

He's a lovely guy and I've known him for some years, so we had a bit of polite chit-chat about the weather. Him as he arranged his briefcase and secured it with elasticated straps to make sure it was safe for his ride home, me as I got changed.  As I peeled off my shirt, I noticed that Robert's attention was drawn away to my left arm, and from that point onwards until I put on my t-shirt, he was unable to look me in the eye without being distracted by the tattoo on my arm (this one).

I've had it for a while now, so I don't really think anything of it, but I suppose if you've not seen it before, you're bound to want to have a look.  Some people ask me about it, but Robert clearly decided that not mentioning it at all was probably be the best policy.  He did seem surprised though.

We were talking about tattoos the other day as we waited for the last person to arrive before we kicked off a meeting.  The youngest member of our team, our graduate who is about 23, has quite a few tattoos and was off that day getting a new one and also getting an older one touched up.  The guys I was meeting with seemed fascinated by this, and were basically astonished when I mentioned that I also had a tattoo... well, four tattoos actually.

I don't look the type, apparently.

The Guardian made me laugh today: they published an article yesterday afternoon saying that tea was a national disgrace and that the British should let it go as an unwelcome colonial hangover.  For this blatant piece of trolling, they have so far received 38 pages of comments and are presumably delighted at the number of page impressions they've generated.  That's more comments than I've ever seen on an article on their website before.  Usually, their go-to subject when they want to stimulate debate is tattoos: it doesn't matter if it's a thoughtful piece, a silly piece or just a set of pictures from a convention, sure as eggs is eggs, there will be thousands of comments by people expressing their shock and astonishment about someone else's choices about their own body and saying how, if they had the money, they'd be investing in laser tattoo removal, because mark their words... etc. etc.  These are then followed by lots of other (presumably tattooed) people telling them to mind their own damn business.  Cue much hilarious informed discussion as the Guardian gleefully rubs it's hands and watches the page impressions take off.

It's all very predictable, but it just serves to highlight how, even though they are relatively commonplace, tattoos are still quite divisive and people hold strong pre-conceptions about the kind of people who get them.

But that's okay, because I don't seem like one of those types of people.  So that's okay, yeah?

(Last time we spoke about this, Artog shared his theory about tattoos: "In my view these others fall into the following categories: soldiers, sailors (especially pirates) and Hells Angels. You I'd place in the sailor category, on account of all your travelling."  I'd rather be a Hells Angel, I think... but you can't go far wrong with pirate, eh?  Or Argggh, I should probably say.)

look into the eyes.  Not around the eyes....

Speaking of people not making eye contact, my wife was telling me today about a senior manager who came to speak to her today and couldn't stop staring at her chest.  He was subtle about it, she told me.
"How subtle can he be, if you're still noticing?
"Well, he only looked at them when I looked away"
"How do you know that?"
"Because I started looking away deliberately and turning back quickly to catch him. I did it a few times during our conversation."

He might be a very senior manager, but I know who bossed that particular conversation. Always with the power games......

the lucky and the strong...

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you think, ‘Man, this hurts, I can’t take it anymore’. The ‘hurt’ part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand anymore is up to the runner himself”
Haruki Murakami

And so it was that, at around 15:20 on Sunday afternoon, I crossed the finish line of the 2015 London Marathon hand-in-hand with my wife. It took us some 4 hours 59 minutes and 23 seconds to cover the famous 26.2 miles, starting on Blackheath Common and finishing on the Mall. I was pleased to break five hours, but the time was essentially irrelevant: for us this was always going to be about the journey. It’s a journey that I suppose officially started with day#1 of the training programme in January this year, but really started about a year ago, when I made the decision that I was going to try to run a marathon and my wife decided that she wasn’t going to let me do it alone.  She says it was because she didn't want me to hurt myself in training, but I think that secretly she didn't like the thought of me doing a marathon without her (which is the same reason she came skydiving with me in Namibia).  Whatever, I suppose the whys don't really matter all that much now.

Since that moment, we’ve been on a real voyage into unchartered territory, both in terms of the miles we ran and in coming to terms with doing them all together. It was quite an adjustment for both of us, as we both normally run on our own.

 I’m naturally the faster runner, so I had to learn to run more slowly; I’m also apparently something of a stealth runner, moving along almost silently where C. needs to work hard to control her breathing; I almost always run to music too, and I’ve had to put the headphones away. My wife is a very determined woman, and once she got the bit between her teeth and a target in her sights, nothing was going to stop her achieving this. I think it’s been hard for someone as single-minded as that to put herself into my hands as chief pacemaker and route-planner. In addition, to run with me is to enter into my world… and I am merciless on myself, never allowing myself a respite, whatever the weather and however I’m feeling. If you run with me, I will be merciless on you too. But we survived, marriage intact.  Perhaps even stronger.

One of our earliest runs together was at Colwick parkrun, and we fell out after about 2 miles over C. stopping for a walk. Luckily for me and for our running partnership (and our relationship), I resisted the temptation to take off on my own, and we finished together. If we couldn’t agree over two miles, then twenty-six miles has never felt further. But we survived.  More than that, actually I have learned to really enjoy the amount of quality time that we have been spending together when normally we would be apart doing our own things. I also worried that the training might be too much for my body to withstand, but actually it’s been kind of fun once time was taken off the table.... fun in a masochistic sort of a way, anyway.  We’ve shared so much of this experience together.

After all those hours and hours of training, I suppose there’s always the danger that the marathon itself would be something of an anti-climax… and to be perfectly honest, in some ways it was. It was so exciting lining up in the starting pens and to cross the starting line with tens of thousands of other runners in front of a grandstand. It was great too to meet up at our designated meeting point (we were in different start zones) and to settle down into the rhythm of the run. The crowds were mostly amazing, and there were some real high points where we went through some incredible landmarks – the Cutty Sark, Tower Bridge – cheered to the rafters by a packed out crowd. We saw family and friends at key strategic moments and were cheered on by name by complete strangers almost all of the way.

It was great.

 But at the same time, it was a slog. I nearly fell over on Tower Bridge and only stayed upright by nearly yanking my wife’s arm off. By about mile 15, my hips were grinding and my thighs were beginning to burn and I had to look inside for the inspiration to face up to the ten miles that remained. I nearly fell again in Canary Wharf and I started to fall slightly behind C, who looked back anxiously to see how I was doing. I kept going, of course, buoyed by the crowds willing us on and by my wife's strength and determination  By the time we reached the 20 mile marker, I was back in the game. Everything hurt, but a couple of paracetamol had taken the edge off and I was now able to tick down the distances in manageable distances. Six miles: I can do that. Four miles: a normal weekday run. Three miles: a parkrun....  The crowds were thickening too, and you could feel the goodwill and energy pushing you on.

Looking very composed at mile 22

C. was struggling by this point, her asthma starting to make it hard to catch her breath, and we were forced to slow down and occasionally to walk (although I would estimate that we walked for less than 100m of the whole 26.2 miles).  The crowd here was truly amazing, and it was around here that I began to feel slightly overwhelmed by emotion at the way people were shouting out my name and pushing me onwards over the last few miles.

C. was in a world of pain at this point and barely able to think about anything except putting one foot in front of another (she tells me that she barely remembers running past Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament at all). I was loving it: sucking up the energy from the crowd and giving them a huge, goofy smile back. POWER! YOU’VE GOT THIS, TIM!

Runners all around me were in all sorts of condition, many pulling themselves along on broken bodies, powered only by bloody-mindedness and the energy from the crowds.  We ran towards Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament, turning right to run down along the Embankment, past Buckingham Palace and finally turning onto the Mall….. 385 yards to go and then… finally…

DONE.
Over.  Four months and hundreds of miles of training. Finished.  We crossed the line hand-in-hand.

We’ve raised (if you include Gift Aid) nearly £6,400 for the MS Trust. This is more than double our target and an amazing, humbling amount of money that will make a massive difference to a small charity.

Thank you. Thank you everyone for your generosity and your encouragement.

Never again?

Well. Never say never.  Someone asked me that question last night and my moment of hesitation before answering told them everything they needed to know.

It’s a long old way though.

run run run run run run run away....

I'll just leave this here, shall I?

This is C's Christmas present.  It took a little while to get everything organised, but we eventually had the photo-shoot on Easter Sunday afternoon, an hour or so after we had completed a 22-mile run (which I hope might explain why my leap might look slightly arthritic, if not why my growl looks slightly apologetic, certainly in comparison with my wife's mighty battle cry....)

Nottingham artist, Video Mat AKA White Dolemite has done an absolutely bang-up job with this, I'm sure you'll agree.  The Leftlion kickstarter was worth investing in anyway to help a great magazine go monthly, but I think that this perk was a real winner - it's completely unique.  When we get the print, it will certainly be getting properly framed and then taking pride of place in our living room.  Possibly scaring away prospective burglars.   She does, after all, now have swords in the house.

Just look at that face....would you take the chance?  Would you?  I wouldn't.  In fact, you'll notice how I'm right behind her.  Very dangerous.  You go first.

crème-bouffant...

In the old days, before I was stupid enough to decide that I wanted to run a marathon, going on holiday usually meant leaving my running shoes at home.  These days, six weeks out from the big day, my training programme doesn't really allow such luxuries.  Perhaps I wasn't going to be able to run forty miles in a week as I have for the last couple of weeks, but I couldn't justify doing nothing.

Well, not that five days of fairly hard skiing is exactly "nothing", but you know what I mean.

So I took my trainers and managed to go out for three runs whilst we were there.  The thing about running in a ski resort, I have to tell you, is that at least half of your run is going to be up the side of a mountain.  To compound the problem, you're also at altitude.  These two simple truths made these three fairly short runs difficult.  You wouldn't think it possible, but sometimes a little three miler can be more painful than the fifteen miles you ran at the weekend.

Not surprisingly, before the week was out, Runkeeper had some news for me:

Running up a mountain three times is apparently more altitude gain than my usual runs around the rivers and canals of Nottingham.  You think?

Mind you, look how steady I kept my pace in that bottom chart.  Not exactly the fastest run I have ever managed, but not disgraceful under the circumstances and after a full day's skiing.

After running the first time on my own, for the next two runs, I dragged my wife out with me.  As you can see, she was delighted by the whole experience.

And when we got home, we went out on Sunday morning for a sixteen mile run.  I can confirm that skiing seems to be pretty good cross-training for running: it gives the thighs a good workout, but gave my poor weary hips and knees a break from the pounding.  Five days on the piste actually left my legs feeling pretty good.  Tired, but differently tired to running alone.

Also, skiing fashions.  What's not to like?