Tuesday 26 April 2011

26th April 2011

        Less than nine weeks to go.

       Or 62 days, or does it sound better if you say just over two months? Still lots of time, unless you're one of the few who have been putting off starting your Parish training, then it's probably time to get a wiggle on.
       I hope everyone had a good Easter, remember, if you've been training regularly then the indulgence in food alcohol and chocolate will have been a minor inconvenience as your metabolism will have adapted to burn the extra calories, and will probably have benefited from the excess as the body will think it will be a regular thing and so will go into overdrive to burn calories well into the next few days. Your metabolism can be fooled like this, if you are constantly sticking to a rigid diet just below the required necessary daily amount, then your body cuts back and burns less, as it thinks there is a drought in your nutrition. Its a primordial thing, cavemen didn't know when their next mammoth steak was coming from.

      Not such a good Easter for me. My wife's father is not very well so she's had to go back to Hull when we had a couple of weeks planned for here in the Lakes. I covered the other two pilots for Easter and ended up working every tide, which over the weekend was around 3am and 3pm, not great times. Easter Sunday was our 27th wedding anniversary and at 2 o clock in the morning I was boarding a jack up wind turbine construction rig. At 12.30am I stepped out of the flat to go to work and ended up stepping over the semi comatose bodies of revellers drinking to excess outside the full to overflowing pubs. So, no alcohol, no Easter eggs (yet, I'm going home at the weekend so fingers crossed my wonderful teenage daughters have spared a though for their old dad and spent some of their pocket money on something for me instead of spending every penny they earn on make up and clothes.... haha!) and no massive dinner.
      To cap it all off, the extra large bunch of flowers I ordered to be delivered to Denise didn't turn up, so even though she sympathises with me over the inefficiency of interflora, deep down I'm worried she thinks I forgot our anniversary. When I phoned this morning they said "sorry, we'll refund your money." with a tone in the voice which said "what are you gonna do about it?" and that was it. Not really sufficient in my opinion for an organization on which the outcome of their actions is so important but I was past arguing as anything they suggested would have been insufficient. To make up, I'm having to organize something for next weekend. I have a race in Chigwell on Sunday, the National 20k's, so why not a romantic weekend in London? Sounds good, but apparently there's a wedding going on somewhere that quite a few people are interested in, as well as being a bank holiday weekend, (didn't we just have one?) so, I'm sat here with a cuppa wondering who I've upset who is powerful enough to put a voodoo curse on me...

     No, really though, I can't complain. Well, I can, but I know there are people out there a lot worse off than me and so I've learnt to count my blessings. My work with Macmillan Cancer Support brings me into occasional contact with people who put up with unbelievable hardships, yet still have a smile on their faces. This years Humber Bridge walk is coming up, one of Yorkshire and Humberside's major fundraising efforts, and we are hoping this year to beat our record of volunteers, fundraisers and members of the public dressed in green and making their way across the bridge. I think back to the first one we did a few years ago. Walking across the bridge doesn't seem much to me, so at the back of my mind I was wondering what was so bad about it. I was North side team leader and head of First aid, (An insurance thing)  and so we set off on the 4 mile round trip. There we're so many people there holding photo's of loved ones lost, people who were ill with cancer themselves, some in wheelchairs and on crutches, people who were scared of heights and were combating their fears (it's a scary high bridge!) and, even though we started at 11am, when the heavens opened at 3pm and almost everyone had finished, one woman, on crutches, was still only halfway back. I walked slowly with her. any offers to help were kindly rejected, and it came out she had been crippled with a childhood illness, couldn't normally walk a couple of hundred yards, but had decided, as she had lost so many family and friends to cancer, to complete this task. No umbrella, a borrowed crash helmet to keep her head dry in the torrential rain, it took her nearly five hours but she eventually made it back to the staging area. It's efforts like this that keep me going, not just in the Parish but in most walks of life. Mental fortitude which can overcome the most severe hardships and even make you finish with a smile, and with pride.
        Whatever your goal this year, and whatever your chosen charity you're walking for, I wish you every success.
Courage.     

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