A very funny man…

Rachel and I recently enjoyed a terrific evening being entertained (and more than occasionally challenged) by the terrific stand-up comedy of Marcus Brigstocke. During more than two hours on stage, he makes a point of encouraging interaction with the audience; he coaxes and even goads us into getting involved.  During the show, I responded aloud to three of his questions with the following answers…

“Michael Gove”

“Release the hounds”

“Is it Tuesday?”

You can find out what the questions were later…

I’ve liked Marcus Brigstocke for several years; his all-round righteous anger during guest appearances on The Now Show, his more eclectic turns on the CBBC sketch show “Sorry I’ve Got No Head”, and his hapless character Giles Wemmbley-Hogg. He’s definitely posh, a similar age to me, probably less bleeding-heart but definitely liberal.

His show The Brig Society takes on David Cameron’s supposed ‘project’ that supposedly aims to roll-back the role of Government in our day-to-day lives, replacing it (somehow) with individuals and volunteers spontaneously coming together to fill that void.

Brigstocke is clearly sceptical about both the actual progress made by the government on this, but also about the UK population’s willingness to get involved in performing tasks previously undertaken by the State. So the central thread of the show is his attempt to engage his audience in towns all around the country into actually doing something, or at least having ideas as to what they might do. In between this, he relates jovial anecdotes from Leeds or Nottingham or Chorley or Scotland to reassure his audience that they can’t be as insane as a previous town. He also intersperses the present-day discussion with tales from his childhood and everyday observations about our society today.

He clearly understood Cirencester and its middle-class conservative heartland, full of quiet reserve. But just as he lulled us into a deceptively comfortable place, chuckling along with his stories from Boarding School, he erupted with proper rage, getting very sweary and seriously challenging as he repeatedly decried George Osborne’s comparison of the murderous Mick Philpott with all Benefits Claimants as “F***ING UNACCEPTABLE”. The audience didn’t know whether they should laugh, applaud or just take a long hard look at themselves…

Throughout the evening he asked for volunteers to serve as Cabinet Ministers in his Brig Society, asking them for their policies. We had

• Chancellor: John, a teacher from North Swindon, who wanted to hunt down personal and corporate tax evaders
• Health:  Mary, a health visitor, who wanted to recruit more front-line staff for the NHS to improve standards of care
• Education: Amy & George, both teachers, wanted to hire more teachers to help keep class sizes down
• Transport: Rob, a train driver, who wanted to simplify the ticketing process for travelling around the country, and longer trains to improve the customer experience at peak times
• The Elderly: er, that was me. Eventually my loudly vocal interjections got noticed, and he picked on me for putting my head above the parapet…

However, having made such an impression that he called me “a very funny man” (among my proudest moments!), I then seemed to freeze. I had no idea what policies I might employ for The Elderly, whether funny or serious. I wish I might have said something along the lines of free toffees or designated ‘slow-lanes’ in supermarkets or on pavements. In the end I tried to be serious and claim that young people are in more need of help than the elderly.  Luckily he realised quickly that he should move on, but thankfully he chose not to mock my dullness.

What that embarrassing 90 seconds brought home to me is that while I might be capable of a solid one-liner retort, I’m much less good at being spontaneously funny…

What was also clear from the policies on offer was that his audience, even in the compact-but-bijoux Sundial Theatre in Cirencester, seem not to share the world-view of the Tories. We seemed to want the government to take the lead in running the country and providing public services.

Perhaps the highlight sequence in the show was when he brought the Banking Crisis to life, walking among the audience, taking money from their hands and pretending to lend it to others, paying off credit agencies for giving AAA ratings, taking insurance both for and against the borrowers defaulting, then demanding the money back from them at a second’s notice. Most compelling and hard-hitting was the conclusion in which (acting the role of the bankers) he blamed his customer’s greed for wanting a home loan, all the while pocketing the money he had gleefully accepted from both other people and the government. Most amusing was watching several audience members squirm as he seemed to ignore any suggestions that he might actually return their actual money…

For a combination of self-deprecating tangents,  good-humoured rants and observations about the world, and genuine anger at the hypocrisy and paucity of thinking within the Tory Government, I Reckon you could do a lot worse than Marcus Brigstocke.

And for those of you who’ve read this far, the questions that inspired my interjections…

“What is acceptable to find hanging from a railing?” (Michael Gove)

“How would you deal with the tax-evaders?” (release the hounds)

“What would you do to support the elderly, who’ve worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes…” (is it Tuesday?)

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Scenes from a life…

Around 12 months ago, The Real Adventure (where I work) initiated a little extra agenda item for the monthly all-agency meeting. Volunteers were sought to present a pecha kucha, which could be about anything they chose. The purpose was to offer the whole agency to talk about something they cared about, and for the rest of us to learn a little more about each other.

This last week, it was my turn. I had thought about film clips or scenes, and even tried to make the technology work to play 20 sound clips. But in the end I opted for a more linear narrative approach, relating moments from my life that still resonate with me now, and/or have seemingly changed the course of my life, even if I didn’t realise it at the time…

You can view the full set of slides on slideshare, together with extended speaker notes (there’s no way I could tell all the stories I wanted to in 20 seconds per slide!)… but to give you a flavour, a couple of selections…

Monday 11th January 1988
Between school and university, I went to the States for 6 months on a school exchange, and this boy from the Cotswolds discovered the world…

I had no baggage, I found I could break out from my own self-imposed teenage constraints – clever, not ‘cool’, awkward in conversation – especially with girls(!). On the very first morning at school in the US, I was invited to skip a class by other guys in the Senior Year, and we went out to get ice cream (it was January and about 5 degrees below zero!), then one of them drove his car around the icy carpark, spinning and wheeling in all directions, before ploughing into a snowbank. This seemed a long way from Gloucestershire.

I played in a jazz band, started to write a screenplay, skied in Colorado. I travelled on my own from New York to Seattle and San Francisco and back again. I was refused re-entry to the US at Niagara Falls. I gambled in casinos in Reno. I thought I was Don Johnson on top of the World Trade Centre…

Thursday 7th June 1990

At the end of my 2nd year at university, I signed up for an ERASMUS exchange to study in France, without consulting anyone, let alone my parents. A real snap decision. It was a brilliant and far-reaching decision, as I got to go skiing in the French Alps A LOT, even buying my own boots and skis. We travelled down to the Mediterranean for a weekend, we took a trip into Italy. We met and studied with multi-lingual French, Italian, Dutch, German students.

Most far-reaching of all, it was in Chambéry that I studied marketing & market research for the first time, and discovered more human, practical, real-world ways to apply my thinking beyond the more abstract, macro-economic aspects of my degree course.

Even more so, if I’d not gone to France for a year I wouldn’t have been at Exeter in my 4th year, and almost certainly wouldn’t have met Rachel.

Thursday 12th March 1992

I’ve played the horn since I was 12. In my Final Year at University, I’m playing 1st horn in Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. It’s 90 minutes long, with 10 French Horns in an orchestra of over 100 and a choir of approaching 200. The Great Hall at Exeter is packed with up to 1,000 people (?certainly hundreds?). After the massive final chords, the audience erupts. Section by section the orchestra is called to stand by the conductor. Still shaking from the effort, the concentration, the exhilaration, it’s the turn of the Horns.  There are cheers, people are standing. We nailed it. I nailed it.

It’s still my happy place moment.

Friday 30th January 2003

I’ve only ever actively resigned from one job, and that was back in 1994. I’ve been sold once and made redundant twice – and all of them have been Good Things, especially this last one. On 30th January 2003 I was finally set free from the politics at Barclaycard. I was sent home on gardening leave while Rachel had Post-Natal Depression and Hannah was still only 7 months old. It precipitated our move back from Oxfordshire to Gloucestershire, and my career shift from client to agency, as I came to TRA.

My life, like all our lives, has featured many important and properly life-changing moments. But even more, there have been countless fleeting moments, or events that might seem like nothing, but are often a lot more than nothing.

Many of these moments don’t matter, are forgotten and lost forever. But many of them really do matter. For longer, and in ways we couldn’t begin to realise at the time.

 

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No Mudder Left Behind…

Having been fairly terrible at cross-country running at school, I have kind of surprised myself as an adult by entering events that wouldn’t seem that naturally appealing.

• In 1997, having seen a colleague run the London Marathon in a ridiculous fancy dress outfit, and witnessed the heroic personal achievements of people of all shapes, sizes and ages as they crossed the finish line, I committed to match them. And so, having never run more than 3 miles in one go, I came upon the start line of the 1998 London Marathon. I had pulled a hamstring barely 5 weeks before the day of the race, so my final weeks of training were shot to pieces. I was doing fine at 14 miles, on course for a 4-hour finish. But by 17 miles I had hit The Wall and bounced off. I was walking. But with the help of the crowd and fellow runners, I started running again and finished in just under 4½ hours.
• In 2004 I walked The Three Peaks, an event taking in the most amazing natural scenery in the UK, even if half of the time I was walking in darkness. I practically skipped up and down Snowdon under a lovely moonlit summer sky, then basked in a gorgeous day in the Lake District as we climbed Scafell Pike. We started up Ben Nevis at 1am, and there was a heavy, low cloud and drizzle throughout. Getting up was fine, but on the way down my knees were struggling and it took me longer to descend than to reach the summit.
• And now, almost on a whim, together with colleagues, I’ve taken on a shorter, but probably more insane challenge…

This is clearly me fulfilling some deep-seated desire to participate in the volleyball game from Top Gun…

The reasons why I’m madly excited about this are exactly the same reasons as why I’m more than a little bit scared.

• The average age of our team is under 30, making me and one other colleague The Old Men, as I’m 44 on Sunday. My knees and hips aren’t what they once were…
  …but I feel fitter and healthier now than I have done for years
• I’ve still got 6 months to adapt my general gym/fitness regimen to be better ready for this…
  …but if you put me near a set of monkey bars right now I would willingly just plunge straight into the muddy, icy water beneath
• I’m counting on the fact that the UK event in a field somewhere in the West Country will be slightly less self-consciously macho and chest-pumping than the US promotional video…
  …but there is no way on earth I want to actually be ‘prepared’ for something called The Arctic Enema

• With both colleagues and strangers, this should be enormous fun (like the marathon and Three Peaks were) and another great experience to chalk up, with a huge sense of achievement. It’s not a race, it’s a challenge. Mudders help each other…
  …but there is still enormous potential for total sense-of-humour failure, physical and/or mental humiliation
• And just on a practical note, I’m basically partially-sighted without my glasses, but there’s no way I’m happy wearing these very expensive things around that course. I do have some daily disposable lenses, but there are loads of people online advising against contact lenses, as they can get muddy & gritty, and there’s a fair chance they might come out in the many watery-based obstacles…

Anyway, I’m up for it. I’ve paid the pretty substantial entry fee, we’ll kick off some fundraising efforts in the coming weeks, and I can already do a few more press-ups than I could a few weeks ago. It’s a start…

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I remember when all this was just fields…

A couple of weeks ago I returned to my alma mater, Exeter University, to give a lunchtime talk to students about starting a career in marketing. I’d solicited views and opinions from some learned colleagues and clients, and added more than a few of my own, together with a couple of clips and quirky images to keep it interesting. I got some great feedback, and hope to do it again. But that’s not what this is about.

I already knew that in the *coughs loudly* 21 years since I graduated that plenty of things had changed on the campus, in terms of new buildings, state-of-the-art hi-tech facilities and so on. I knew I had to restrain myself from banging on about hand-written essays and having to actually read books. But in the few hours I was there, so many differences leaped out at me. But then again, quite a few things were still reassuringly familiar too…

I actually do remember when all this was just a field…

It weren’t like this in my day…

• The scale and quality of new facilities is pretty impressive. It makes me think how the whole place back in 1990 must have looked unbelievably shabby compared to today. Everything is clean and shiny.

Is this really the shabby place I played orchestra concerts, sat my exams, saw The Wonderstuff & James…?

• It feels so much more corporate and professional. The Forum is tremendously impressive, combining the library and main student building in a large complex with workspaces, shops and offices, including a huge internal atrium…

• The students seemed to have a more sober, professional attitude. The library was heaving with people when I walked past. Most of the people I saw in the coffee bars were actually working, and the ubiquity of laptops and tablets still surprised me even though I knew what it would be like…
• I tried to revisit my old Hall of Residence (Hope Hall), but (of course) the buildings were all locked, only accessible with a swipe card. The lack of security 20 years ago seems almost naïve to me now.

Missing, presumed lost…

• Among all the new signage and smart new paved areas, a few things are notable by their absence… with all the slick organisation and professionalism there felt like there was a bit of a personality vacuum; there’s precious little charm. For all its glass and cleanliness, The Forum could have been a shopping centre. It certainly didn’t feel like something the students could ‘own’.
• Exeter was never the most diverse campus in the world; it used to feature in The Sloane Ranger’s Handbook! But there was still a sense of youth, of at least some political awareness, even in sometimes trite things like The Nelson Mandela Room, or a strange metal sculpture that went up almost overnight to commemorate the students killed at Tianenmen Square in Beijing. These have gone. It seems older, somehow.
• The building where Rachel spent her first term-and-a-half, a residential annex of Hope Hall, the rooms where we first talked about Monty Python, first kissed, has gone. It’s been replaced by a modern block of self-catering apartments.

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

• The streets around the campus were still reassuringly familiar. Rows of terraces with resonant names for me; Jubilee Road, Old Tiverton Road, Monks Road, Mount Pleasant Road. Cambridge Terrace, where I spent my final year, was almost delightfully grotty compared to the renovations that have gone on elsewhere, with the same down-at-heel takeaways, and a very unwell-looking tramp slumped on the steps that led up to our old front door
• Similarly, many of the pubs still look the same (at least from the outside), and the local shops are mostly all still there
• Parts of the campus are unchanged, and look like something out of the East German Government’s Things to do with Concrete catalogue. Best of all of these is Cornwall House, always the lesser of the two main student buildings, but also home to The Lemon Grove, the legendary (sic) student nightclub on campus. It was inside these hallowed doors that I first met Rachel, and from where I first walked her back to the now-non-existent residence…

They don’t put this bit in the admissions brochure

• Best of all, when I walked intoThe Ram bar on campus at 2.30pm on a Thursday afternoon, it was packed.

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…saving lives, etc…

A good friend of mine is a heart surgeon. Occasionally, when we meet for a drink, we might run through the formality of how our ‘work’ is going. As I work in marketing, I’m fully, desperately aware that what I do can seem trivial, almost insulting when compared with his job and skills. When I try to offer the subject back to him, what has he been up to, he usually replies “oh, you know, the usual, saving lives etc…”

And he’s only partly joking.

Yesterday I might actually have helped save a life. For the first time in nearly six years, I gave blood. Call it a New Year’s Resolution perhaps, but it was a bit of an impulse decision, as we had a mobile blood donation unit close to our offices for a couple of days. While I was there, the staff were great; professional, friendly and calm. One person there at the same time felt faint after donating and they were terrific at putting him at ease, letting him take time to recover, drink and eat as many biscuits as he desired!

The staff were also all very concerned at the possible cutting of this mobile service. They were genuinely worried that their roles were under threat. I Reckon this would be a tragic mistake. While I was in the unit in Bristol on Thursday, five people approached the staff asking if they could donate. All of them claimed they were first-time donors, none of them might have come forward had the van not been present near their places of work, a stone’s throw from Bristol Temple Meads station. Take away the mobile vans and access to blood donation facilities becomes much harder.

Blood donations are vital – take a few minutes to read through the website. If you’re not moved by these stories, I can’t help you.

It shocked me to read that blood stocks in UK hospitals run to only a few days, and have been hit especially hard this winter by the more widespread incidence of illnesses like the norovirus. Constant renewal of stocks is vital, and right now this is more important than ever.

Apparently 96% of us rely on blood donated by 4%. Why don’t you do something worthwhile for a New Year Resolution and save a life?

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Never get out of the boat…

I suppose it was inevitable; with six friends, all Dads, late 30s or early 40s, in a boat on the Thames for a weekend, that Apocalypse Now might get a mention.

Pangbourne. Shit. I’m still only in Pangbourne.

…and other such adaptations of famous quotes. One of our collective iPods even had the film soundtrack, so for a while we cranked up the volume and chugged upstream to the strains of Ride of the Valkyries and The Doors. But who was Willard, who was Chef, who was Dennis Hopper, and where was Colonel Kurtz?

We started at Benson and went as far as Hurley lock

Saturday

The escapade had been in the making for months. Having rejected narrowboats (the clue’s in the name), and accepted the reasonable compromise that we should not to upset our lovely wives too much, we arrived at Le Boat’s HQ and moorings at Benson in Oxfordshire. Dinners had been pre-prepared, beers and wines procured, breakfasts provided for and there was more than a whiff of stinky cheeses from various cool bags.

We had some brief instruction about how to turn the boat around, how to park up and how to negotiate a lock, before setting off downstream towards Wallingford. Almost immediately we were all surprised by the near total quiet and the natural beauty of the river as it meanders its way through Oxfordshire.

Taking it easy
Thanks to Tom B for the picture

The bucolic bliss was somewhat broken by a huge rowing regatta on the river at Wallingford, and we had to carefully plot our way through more than a hundred boats, but by teatime we were playing French cricket on Pangbourne Meadows and looking forward to Anthony’s home-made curry.

As the sun went down we marvelled at formations of geese flying low over the river, the rising full moon in a clear sky, and felt very, very lucky to be there.

Sunday

If the previous day had been about events on the river, Sunday was about what was on the banks. We all felt very middle-class as Graham prepared endless sausage sandwiches and proper stove-top coffees, while we worked our way through iPods full of Neil Young, Bob Dylan and other ‘serious’ bands. We were heading downstream, and the architecture was getting serious. Mostly in a good way, with some stunning Huf Houses, new conversions and builds, and gorgeous period mansions and boathouses.

Not the poshest, but one of the prettiest
Thanks to Tom B for the picture

But great opulence often comes with questionable taste…

That’s just showing off…

We lunched in Henley-on-Thames on as fine a selection of cheese as you will ever experience, washed down with a couple of bottles of excellent Cotes du Rhone. Later that evening we played a (slightly tetchy) game of poker and dined on Boeuf Bourgignonne as Tom G declared “it always tastes better in a Le Creuset”, which became a maxim for middle-class life.

Cheese, wine, and more cheese.
Thanks to Tom B for the picture

Monday

Slightly worse for wear having consumed my own body weight in cheese, Monday dawned murky and grey. We continued our return upstream to Benson and beyond, mooring near a tremendously-sited WW2 Pillbox close to Dorchester-on-Thames (which, as it happens, isn’t).

Graham assesses Tom’s chances of making onto the Pill Box before the self-timer finishes…

er, don’t call us lads…

After posing for the cover picture of our never-to-be-released debut album, we tramped across fields for a swift pre-dinner pint before returning to a gorgeous Autumn sunset and our final dinner on the boat.

Tuesday

…saw an early start as our water tank was virtually dry and we needed to refill. We returned to Benson, cleaned up and disembarked (in between copious mugs of tea and a final bacon roll or two for old times’ sake). This was as good a weekend as I can remember, for spending quality time with good friends, for watching terrific films and playing games (even if Escape from Colditz got occasionally spiky!), for discovering new and old music, for Tom B’s enigmatic and improvised ‘dot’ pictures, for the satisfaction and fun of driving the boat (“loving your work…”), for the herons and geese, the Red Kites overhead and the quiet ripples of the river as we passed, the willows and the islands, for the laughs and just for taking it easy.

Thanks to Tom B for this great picture

Here’s to the next time.

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The river’s deep, the river’s wide, the river’s water is alive…

As I may have recently mentioned, we just spent a terrific holiday in SW France, where it seems that (utterly unlike the UK) the summer of 2012 has been unseasonably hot and dry. While we were there, the temperatures were consistently above 32°C/90°F and on several days reached 38°C/102°F. We stayed in a gorgeous little cottage whose only drawback was that it had no pool. But it didn’t take us long to discover the many local opportunities to cool off…

Driving the roads around this area, it’s not uncommon to see cars crammed into a layby or parked on the verges, or sometimes turning off down unmarked tracks. Almost invariably these are the locations for river swimming, and we discovered a few favourites very quickly, three of which are indicated on the map.

Off to the West of this map (about 20 minutes drive) is a lovely man-made lake at Puivert, where the local council has brilliantly created a sandy beach, set up a café, marked out areas for safe bathing and supplied a lifeguard on duty 6 days a week, and even built a diving jetty. But no toilets that normal humans would want to use. Still, the water is warm and the views are gorgeous.

Also off the bottom right of the map, on the road between Rennes-les-Bains and the tiny village of Sougraigne, is a fairly famous bathing spot known locally as La Fontaine des Amours. I’ve heard from different sources that this refers either to the shape of one of the pools formed by the river cascading down the valleys, or the fact that it’s a spot where two streams meet and become one. In any case, it’s almost impossibly lovely there, nestled below the road, overhung by steep hillsides of dense forest.

I pinched this photo from the netmefrance.com website. Thank you.

But because of this secluded, shady location, the water in La Fontaine is really, really cold. Even during this scorching summer, it moves too fast and never gets prolonged sunshine. Our younger daughter Eleanor was usually fine with wny pool, lake or river, but no sooner had she splashed into the deeper pool here than she screamed to get out. While we were there some local kids splashing around kept joking that they were turning into glaçons (ice cubes)…

The river at La Fontaine is the river Salz, so-called because it not too many miles upstream it bubbles out of the ground from a natural salt-water spring, although it’s barely noticeable to taste. Further downstream we found two lovely spots in the same river. At Rennes-les-Bains and close to the ruined Cathar castle at Coustazza, there are small concrete river crossings, just big enough for cars or (more likely originally) small farm vehicles and tractors. These bridges have been transformed into semi-effective dams, slowing the river flow just enough to create a pool deep enough for swimming.

The spot at Rennes-les-Bains was terrific, with easy access, a couple of benches nearby, and while it was just about deep enough for an adult to swim, it was also perfect for our children to splash about in safely. It seemed extremely popular with the locals, who would turn up for a late afternoon dip, and with walkers and cyclists to cool off.

Perhaps our favourite find was the spot at the top of this map, on the road North from Couiza up towards Limoux. A large layby on a sweeping bend in the road is the clue, and once you’ve scrambled down a short but steep path to the small beach, the river Aude awaits you.

There is easy shallow-water access and a small sand-bank on the near-side of the river. 50 yards downstream there’s an outcrop of rock for jumping (about 8-10 feet high). Better, though, just upstream the river narrows to a mini- set of rapids, which make for some exciting swimming for grown-ups in deeper water. And there are these amazing natural caves on the far side…

We loved swimming in the rivers and lakes of the Pyrenées – and are already trying to work out how we might go again next year. I’m not sure I would be brave enough in the UK, as the cold water of La Fontaine was only nearly bearable because the ambient air temperature was over 90ºF. River swimming was a revelation to me. If you’ve got a Mediterranean climate or a wetsuit I really recommend it.

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A Royale with cheese…

Among many great scenes in Quentin Tarantino’s brilliant Pulp Fiction, one of the most famous features Jules and Vincent, two hitmen, discussing the “little differences“ that Vincent encountered on his recent travels in Europe. Having just spent 2½ weeks in France myself and had a thoroughly good time, here’s a handful or two of little differences that I (mainly) love experiencing every time I cross the Channel…

• Fresh fruit and veg in the supermarkets (especially down South) is massively superior in quality to the UK. Certainly they have the climate for tomatoes, nectarines, avocados and so on, but the food seems fresher, tastier, more real. It doesn’t have the bizarre uniformity we get in the UK, and actually seems ripe and ready to eat on the day of purchase
• In all the towns we visited, they still persist with the (ahem) old-fashioned approach of shutting shops at lunchtime; similarly, on-street parking is often free over lunchtime. Most of the supermarkets don’t open on Sundays. How do they cope?
• Dunking a croissant or pain au chocolat into a bowl of coffee for breakfast
• Spending £5 every day on bread and croissants. The daily visit to la boulangerie is a real treat, but it needs careful budgeting!
• I love seeing coloured shutters protecting houses from the heat of a Southern French summer
• There doesn’t seem to be any great compulsion to compare prices on everything and anything. One petrol station might charge up to 10% more than another only a few hundred yards down the road, something which, in the UK, would probably spell doom and closure for the expensive one
• The French love a bit of Direct Action. Four years ago we were in Reims when we were treated to the sight of White-Coated (rather than white collar) protests. The local Pharmacists were angry at what they saw as the increasing encroachment of supermarkets onto their traditional areas of specialist advice and expertise. This time, we were in Carcassonne where the workers at a major nearby ice-cream plant were protesting against the proposed closure of this plant by its new venture capitalist owners. Crude hand-drawn cartoons, badly amplified megaphones and trestle tables made up the slightly shabby but very noisy event at the main entrance gateway to this UNESCO World Heritage Site.
• The broadsheet French newspapers are never knowingly underwritten. Libération was always my favourite when I studied in France 20 years ago, and I still like it now. Take this extract from a recent article commemorating the 30th anniversary of ‘The Thriller in Manila’, between Joe Frazier and Muhammed Ali…

Ali, c’est Achille aux pieds légers et aux bras lourds. Les pieds sont moins légers qu’il y a onze ans, du temps du match contre Sonny Liston, mais le jab est toujours aussi performant, et ces coups sortent comme des jets de lumière, à sa vitesse. Achille a 33 ans, l’âge du Christ. Et il a toujours sa tchatche. Il convaincrait les marchands de vider le Temple pour lui, mais le Temple, c’est lui.

This roughly translates as…

Ali is Achilles, light-footed but with heavy arms. The feet aren’t as light as 11 years ago, when he fought Sonny Liston, but his jab is just as powerful, and these blows flash out like jets of light, and just as fast. Achilles is 33, the same age as Christ. And he still has his chat. He could convince the merchants to empty the Temple for him, but then, he IS the Temple.

When did you last read anything like that in your paper? Achilles and Christ in the same paragraph. Beautiful, overblown, nonsense!

• When, how, and (more to the point) why do French men grow up thinking that it’s perfectly OK to stop your car at the side of the road, get out, and just take a p**s next to your car, in full view of traffic?
• Why does France persist with those awful ‘footplate’ toilets? Even at the stunning Viaduc de Millau, only constructed in the last decade and a fairly major tourist attraction, the toilets are primitive holes in the ground, with no paper provided. Near where we were staying in the Pyrenées, the local council had amazingly created a sandy beach next to a small lake, marked out safe bathing areas and provided a lifeguard 6 days a week: but the toilets had no doors or paper, or actual toilets beyond the hole in the floor.
• On the other hand, I love love love French markets. For the saucissons secs, the fruit and veg, the live animals, odd clothing, poulets fermiers, cheese and so on. We really enjoyed our local Sunday morning crush in Esperaza, walking back laden with food for lunch.

• Similarly, motorway service stations are very different in France. Probably because of the distances between major towns and cities, there are hundreds of aires dotted around the motorway network at regular intervals, ranging from landscaped picnic areas to full-blown affairs. But even these larger things aren’t much like those in the UK. When we returned home, we experienced Reading Services on the M4 on a Friday evening; a huge carpark rammed full with vehicles disgorging hundreds of people inside, swarming around fast food outlets. In France, far more people seem to travel with their own food; bread, ham, fruit, cheese. The service stations have more expansive grounds and outdoor seating. They feel less like a commercial conveyor belt for you to refuel on calories and caffeine, more like somewhere to stop and relax, recharge for a while.
• But then when French motorists get back in their car, they have a very strange way of driving (especially further North in the country). Most motorways are two-lane, and if you’re overtaking, God help you to be going more slowly than someone behind you. The standard plan is (rather than slow slightly to retain a safe gap) accelerate right up to the back of the car in front, wait two seconds, and flash your lights impatiently.
• Avenues of plane trees towering over long straight roads, with fields of vines or sunflowers alongside.
• Stargazing in Espereza is something wonderful. No light pollution, clear skies. Thousands of pinpricks across the night sky, with the Milky Way scattered through the middle.
• The city centre of Orléans is unlike most in the UK. The Medieval Quarter is full of restaurants, bars and cafés, packed with tourists and locals, students and families. It was often noisy, with music playing out across the terraces and streets, but nowhere did I see people drinking in packs, maurauding from bar to bar.

Vive la différence!

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The Olympic Games are for the world and all nations must be admitted to them…

Important Notice

Just in case you were confused, while this blog post refers extensively to the journey of the Olympic Torch around the UK, to the 2012 Olympic Games and to previous games, I am in no way associated with those games. I am NOT an official sponsor, nor do I hope to profit in any way from the Olympic Games, except to be thrilled, uplifted and inspired by my fellow humans running faster, jumping higher, being stronger.

Back in May, when the Olympic torch started its journey around the UK, I was fairly cynical. I was looking forward to the games being hosted here in the UK. I am very proud for our country. But  there were lots of things that didn’t feel right, and in some ways, when I went to see the torch come through Cirencester, I was right.

1. The presence of sponsors was significant and distracting: flags and buses, brightly-dressed staff handing out stuff and whooping the crowds up. It seemed as though it was more about them and how brilliant they were than anything to do with the Olympics, and definitely felt a bit uncomfortable to me, but on the other hand, noone else seemed that bothered. At the start of this there was a great deal of press attention about torch-carriers being asked to pay for their torch, then selling them on eBay. At the time my reaction was “whatever”, and it appears I was not alone.

2. There have been some very odd commercial decisions about ‘celebrity’ torch-bearers. I applaud the use of athletes alongside local celebrities and especially ‘ordinary’ people nominated by their communities. But in Taunton, will.i.am carried the torch. Forgive me, but (a) he’s not from round here, (b) he’s got nothing to do with sport, (c) he’s only in this country because he’s paid to be a TV show host…
My reaction to this is unchanged 2 months on: how would you feel if you’d nominated your mum who’s been a lollipop lady for 50 years and she missed out to will.i.am (with all due respect to Mr .am)? I know why these decisions were made, I just don’t like them much.

3. For all the slick commercialism, the communications on the afternoon were pretty ramshackle. It was a gorgeous hot day (perhaps the last one until this week!), but noone seemed to know what was going on. The torch was apparently running late, but the buzz in the crowd ranged from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. The elderly ladies next to me were getting tired standing for so long in the heat. Noone seemed to know exactly why it was late. Some said it was Didier Drogba in Swindon who delayed things, others just shrugged. Either way, despite the hoards of staff, noone told the crowds anything.

4. Money definitely talks. The restrictions on official sponsors and logos has been astonishing. This exclusivity seems utterly in conflict with the inclusive, universal ambitions of Pierre de Coubertin in this post’s title.

Again, I can understand the aims of these sponsors who have supported the Games with millions of pounds, but the more recent guidelines about the use of language, serving of chips within the Olympic Park and so on are all pretty laughable/unnerving. Luckily, Oddbins are trying to see the funny side.

HOWEVER, the afternoon I spent in Cirencester was enormously uplifting, and reinvigorated my faith in the Olympic Games, held deep from childhood, and why I am twitching like an excited boy waiting for Christmas and the promise of a new bike.

1. The community spirit on display was immense. Apparently 8,000 turned out in Cirencester, roughly equivalent to 50% of the town’s population, or at least a quarter of the local catchment area. The (Grand)Mothers’ Union were set up in the Church porch, distributing free tea and cold drinks to anyone who wanted them on that scorching hot afternoon.

2. The kids were all given the afternoon off school. I feel certain they will remember that day in a way they’ll never remember the final of X-Factor or Britain’s Got Talent. This mattered, and will live on as An Important Event.

3. Cirencester’s not the most diverse community in the UK, but there were all generations and all classes out on that afternoon, and not just because they had been given the afternoon off and it was sunny.

4. When the torch finally arrived, there was genuine excitement right through the crowd, which had nothing to do with the sponsors’ promotional staff clapping their hands or playing upbeat music over a tannoy from their mega-bus. In Cirencester marketplace we saw a paralympic athlete in a wheelchair, who had been preceded by a teenager. It did feel like everyone mattered and that, for today at least, we weren’t cheering reality TV stars. When the sponsors’ “caravan” arrived, it did remind me of the Tour de France (which, despite my deep love, is also pretty much all about the sponsors) with a big lift for the crowds, then a genuine buzz as it flies past for a few brief seconds.

Some of the most iconic moments from my life have been about the Olympics..

• The epic rivalry between Seb Coe & Steve Ovett in the 1980s
• Watching Daley Thompson rule the world
• Hearing the commentators run out of words, let alone superlatives, to describe Usain Bolt’s 100m world record in Beijing
• Hearing Alan Green at midnight commenting on Steve Redgrave’s 5th Olympic Gold at Sydney in 2000

I can’t wait for the 2012 Olympic Games to start.

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Dearly beloved…

I’ve recently read an adaptation of Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit with my younger daughter. It’s about a child’s favourite toy, and how he ‘becomes real’.

When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real…

…Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

Very old, very faithful, these things have covered hundreds of miles on roads, tracks, fields, cross-trainers, treadmills and in circuit training classes…

This week I am saying goodbye to my old trainers. 15 years ago last month I started nurturing a hare-brained plan to run the London Marathon. I was fairly rubbish at any form of longer distance running at school, being ‘the wrong shape’. I was fit, and I loved hauling myself around the rugby pitch or chasing up and down the wing playing hockey, but ‘cross-country’ both bored me and exhausted me. I didn’t like hills, and it all seemed so pointless.

10 years after leaving school I watched a friend run The London Marathon in fancy dress. When we met up after the finish, I saw lots of other people who were clearly ‘not built to be runners’. Yet they had all completed this titanic task and looked elated. Maybe I could do this. I was still quite fit, I regularly ran 3 miles or so on the treadmill at the gym. I got hold of a long-term training schedule for first-time marathon runners and I was off. And those Saucony shoes were my new companions through it all. Even after pulling a hamstring weeks before the event, and then “hitting the wall” at 17 miles, these trainers were with me to the finishing line.

Despite years of almost complete inactivity, they are definitely now “very shabby”. The tread is worn thin in many places, one of the laces has a knot so tight that it will never be untied, the material is scuffed and worn away, the support in the arches and around the heels is virtually non-existent and the soles are pulling away from the body of the shoe. In short, they’re knackered.

But they’re not ugly, at least not to me. And while I am saying goodbye, I’m not sure I can actually dispose of them, except to a box in the loft. They are a significant symbol of one of my finer achievements; not only conquering 26 miles+385 yards, but also the long weeks of rigorous training schedules in cold, dark winter evenings, and actually enjoying running for the first time in my life. More recently, they have seen far more frequent and intensive action as I have lost 25 lbs through a combination of diet and exercise. We’ve been through a lot: I think of this as their retirement rather than their ultimate demise.

My new trainers are lighter, springier, more supportive and better-looking, but I doubt they will ever become Real like these battered old things.

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