Life – Page 4 – Middle Age Fanclub

Book Review: The Runner by Markus Torgeby.

As a young man, Markus Torgeby quickly grew disaffected by a lot of what the world around him had to offer. He knew that society’s expectations were not for him. Despite being a talented runner though, he sensed that pursuing this as any kind of career was not going to work. Too often, injury or just not being in the right mindset got in the way of any kind of competitive edge. As he says himself at the start of the book, “My head was full of dark thoughts. I didn’t know what to do. I had to rethink what it was I really wanted, I had to find a way out of that well.”

What Markus did next – which is documented in the book – seems both astonishing and really quite wonderful.

‘The Runner’ is an international best seller and tells the tale of one man and his quest to find contentment. In short, Torgeby headed up into the Swedish wilderness to live in a tent and dedicate himself to a more simple life, where money didn’t matter, but running most certainly did.

It’s an amazing true life tale, beginning in Jamtland, northern Sweden where the temperature is -22 and Markus is the only person for miles around. This is where he escapes the norms of society, pitching his tent and living among nature complete with enormous amounts of snow, elk and even the threat of bears.

As you’d imagine from the title, running is very much central to Torgeby’s existence. When he vows to run every day, he means it and nothing will stop him, be that extreme weather conditions, injury or mental health issues. Torgeby isn’t just testing his fitness – he’s pitting himself against both the most extreme elements and also just the odds.

Running is where Markus is at peace and I have to say that resonated with me, as I’m sure it would with many runners. The only difference would be – and it’s a seismic difference – that while the majority of us are running around the civilised, normal streets or trails near where we live, Markus Torgeby is running around in one of the most isolated, northernmost territories on the planet! There are threats to life almost with every step he takes. This is not the tale of an everyday runner, despite the fact that he runs every day!

‘The Runner’ is actually really well written and Torgeby rarely shies away from telling us exactly how he’s feeling or what he thinks of the world, even if it can be uncomfortable to read at times. His blunt honesty is one of the most positive features of the book and it’s hard not to be impressed by Torgeby’s principles and way of life.

And then there’s the sheer courage of it all. As someone who rarely takes much in the way of risks, ‘The Runner’ makes for an absolutely fascinating read. Torgeby leaves home to live his life his way when he’s barely much more than a child. And yet, his lifestyle choice is utterly remarkable, especially when you know that he is burdened by the thought of his mother’s suffering, back at home. She suffers with MS and some of the most beautiful passages in the book revolve around her relationship with her son, as he cares for her and helps to make sure that she is still able to experience the wonder of the world around her.

After four years of living in his tent in the wilderness, Markus begins to come to terms with the world around him and the contentment that follows – I won’t spoil what that consists of – gives us a bit of a happy ending.

Part of me felt jealous of Torgeby while reading the book and I questioned some of my early adult decisions in life. It’s funny how something like this can take us back and make us more self critical. Ultimately though, at the age when Markus left home for the wilderness I was probably barely able to cook for myself, let alone live in a tent in some of the most unforgiving territory on the planet, so I was able to give myself a break after all!

Whether you’re a runner, health freak, someone with an adventurous spirit or none of those things, this book is a great read. For me personally, it was interesting to see that I had things in common with the writer and that we shared such a love of running. Ultimately though, if you like an interesting take on life or just enjoy learning about some of the bolder ways to live, then you’ll enjoy this book.

I give ‘The Runner’ by Markus Torgeby

Poetry Blog: ‘Willow’

It’s the Easter holidays and as I’ve got some time on my hands I decided to sit down and try and write something for the blog. Other commitments have been getting in the way of late and so my blog has been very much neglected.

So, with not a lot in mind to write about, I thought I’d trawl through some notebooks and accompanying scraps of paper in order to see what poetry I have knocking about. It turns out that there are quite a few that have either been started or simply finished and then just left and so, after quite a bit of reading I decided to add this one to the blog. It brings back a lot of memories and I really like it.

Willow

As the spots of rain get heavier 
and begin to change the colour of the roads
and pavements around,
you scramble for the familiar shelter
of the giant old weeping willow.

Everyone is out, the house locked up,
but you chose friends, football and 
the top of the hill Wembley of a pub car park
over the visit to family,
and now that team mates have chosen bricks and mortar for cover,
solitude in nature is forced upon you.

A mass of leaves and sagging branches provide ample sanctuary,
so you position yourself so not to be seen
from either road or the neighbour's house,
shift your knees up to your chest and enjoy this place
where there is no shouting, no conflict and
no storm of any kind.

The willow tree in question here is the one that we had in the garden of my childhood home. Everyone else regarded it as a nuisance because of its sheer size and mass of leaves that would be shed in autumn and litter the surrounding area, but I loved it.

I’d play in it as a small child, inventing games and characters and swinging on those branches. As I got older it became somewhere to hide and just be on my own, away from what I remember now, rightly or wrongly, as a lot of shouting and anger in our house. Sometimes, as in the poem, it was just a convenient shelter of a different kind as the rain just didn’t seem to get through it. As I got older, I’d often stay at home when my parents went across to see family, but would rarely remember to take a key. These things got forgotten when there was a game of football about to start! And so, I’d end up just sitting under the tree to escape the elements.

In later years, after we had moved out, the tree was cut down. I still kind of miss it to this day.

Spring, where the first cut is the deepest, noisiest and the smelliest!

Well, it would appear that we’re well and truly right in the throes of Spring! The weather is largely warming up – although we stood out in hail while volunteering at ParkRun this weekend – and the days are getting lighter all round. There’s colour in the garden and I’ve also been able to get some washing out on the line, which always makes me feel a bit more optimistic about the time of year…I don’t really know why.

Today though, I thought I’d write a little bit about my morning and the sights, sounds and the feel of Spring that I got to experience. Let’s just say that none of it really stuck to the stereotypes!

So, this morning, seeing that we were going to have dry weather until early afternoon, I took the opportunity to give our back lawn its first cut of the year. It’s always an arduous job as by the time the weather is good enough, the lawn has always grown to a good few inches in length and is soaking wet, meaning that it will take hours to get through. In truth, I despise having to do it!

At this point, I’ll introduce my neighbour. Now, don’t get me wrong, he’s a lovely, well meaning elderly gentleman who’d do anything for us. He’s also very hard of hearing and loves to chat. The job of listening to him generally falls to me and believe me when I say that sometimes this can be even more arduous than cutting the lawn as he never really hears what I’m saying and has a tendency to repeat a lot of what he’s already said to me!

Anyway, having got the mower out of the shed and put it back together – it’s over 10 years old and very much on its last legs – I started to mow, kind of knowing exactly what would happen next. I was still surprised by the immediacy though!

After no more than 20 seconds of mowing I heard the click of the neighbour’s gate – one of the first sounds of spring round these parts. And when I looked up, there he was. My neighbour. He didn’t really wait for me, just set off talking. So the mowing got delayed for a while!

Our back garden is bordered by houses on both sides. My aforementioned neighbour’s garden runs parallel to ours, but on the other side, the end of two gardens back onto us. One of these neighbours has a terrible habit of clearing his throat and nose, very loudly. He seems to save it all up for the moment he sees me in the garden as well. It’s not something I hear much of through winter as I’m not outside anywhere near as much. However, this morning just as I’d reached the end of the first couple of strips of the garden, there it was. Another delightful spring sound. A wonderful hacking of the throat and nose sounding like it had been played through Glastonbury’s PA system, all the way from inside his house to the middle of my garden. And every time I stopped mowing, there it was a again! This must have gone on for about 10 minutes! So, no nightingales singing, just the sound of phlegm!

I had the wonderful Spring experience of clearing fallen blooms away too. We have an enormous camellia that gives us an abundance of huge bright pink flowers from February. It’s genuinely stunning. However, the downside is that by the time I come to cut the lawn, hundreds of flowers have fallen from the plant and litter the garden. And I get the job of having to pick them all up, as if I mow them they splatter all over the place. In turn, picking them up gives me the wonderful sensation of soaking wet flowers in my hands and also quite a few slugs, who seem to find the flowers far too good to resist. I hate anything on my hands, so this genuinely makes me feel queasy.

Later, sounds included a really annoying crow, some girls walking along the footpath that borders the back of my garden and swearing loudly and my neighbour’s wife asking if he wanted a cup of tea – she didn’t extend the offer to me. I also managed to unearth some cat poo in the long grass, before sliding through it a little later and suffering the stench of it every time I went near!

Finally, the sounds of spring reached a wonderful crescendo when my neighbour came to talk to me twice more; once to rant about the price of the new England football shirt and the modifications made to the flag of St. George on the back of it – capitalism, mate – and then to talk of something that seems to be uniquely him!

He’s a keen gardener and tends to order his plants off the internet. However, I swear that every time he does, they seem to mess up his order. And then, when he complains, the companies always seem to send him more than he needs. This isn’t just restricted to plants; he’s had plant pots too. And he always offers us his cast offs, which is nice, but even when we politely decline he just doesn’t listen and brings stuff around anyway! This happened again today, which given that we’ve only just started ‘garden season’ is quite some going! Anyway, to cut a long story short, despite turning them down we’re due to get a load of free mystery plants in a few weeks. Lord knows what we’ll do with them!

So, Spring has indeed sprung. But round these parts there’s no delightful birdsong or the smell of budding roses; no, just elderly neighbours, coughing and sniffing of Olympic proportions, wet and dirty, slug laden hands and the feeling of almost pulling a hamstring as you slide through hidden cat poo!

Reader, I hope your Spring is going better than mine!

The Apprentice Episode 6 – Cereal Losers.

Although I was able to watch last week’s episode, time constraints meant that a blog update just wasn’t possible. And perhaps it was a good thing to give myself a rest from my own cynicism about this year’s candidates!

This week our merry bunch of halfwits find themselves without Onyeka, while probably all puzzling over the mystery of what Virdi is still doing there. And if no one is asking the question of what it is that Steve actually does, then it’s got to happen soon.

Tonight, the teams are at the Savoy to learn that their next challenge will be to design and market a new cereal aimed at kids. And for what feels like the umpteenth week in a row, Lord Sugar appears as some kind of cartoon.

Sam and Steve take on the project manager roles and before we know it, we’ve got our cereal ideas. Steve decides that their cereal will be based around superheroes – because if you ignore the million and one superheroes around at the moment, this one hasn’t been done before. Meanwhile, Sam’s team decide on the theme of the Arctic. And that’s not even an attempt at a joke. Their children’s cereal theme really will be based around the Arctic.

There follows a debate about whether or not Sam’s sub team should follow a STRONG RECOMMENMDATION about the fruit content in the recipe. They decide not to because they of course know best. But never mind, because I’m sure this won’t be a decision that will come back to haunt them.

There follows a strange moment where Virdi is caught on camera looking terrified by the mere image of a cartoon polar bear taking shape on the screen before him and for a while I wonder whether he’ll be able to have any effect on tonight’s result. And then I remember, it’s Virdi, so if there’s any dancing to be done he’ll find a way to get involved, but other than being scared of a drawing, that might be tonight’s high point.

Over on the other team, Tre and friends try to come to some important decisions about the character for their cereal by just saying ‘erm’ a lot, before in the end deciding that their superhero needs a cape. A superhero in a cape?Surely, that’ll never catch on.

Having watched both teams grapple with the demands of the target audience I’m left questioning why, year after year, no one on the show ever seems to understand what kids of a certain age might like. It’s up there with the Bermuda Triangle in terms of life’s great mysteries for me.

Later, I’m similarly confused when Maura announces to her team that their kid friendly character is just “an ordinary boy…who’s a polar bear”. Well, I suppose we all went to school with one of those.

The task continues with both teams trying to come up with an augmented reality game that will appeal to kids who have scanned the QR code on the cereal box. As someone who seems to be evermore unable to scan QR codes I’m in full on ‘Virdi meets cartoon polar bear mode’ and my wife has to slap me back to reality, pause the show and make me a hot chocolate in order for me to calm back down.

As expected, both tasks bring out the candidates not so inner idiots and it’s not long before we’re witnessing Noor failing to read words and move at the same time and Virdi deeming a cartoon polar bear as “absolutely amazing”. Well, he changed his tune!

At the taste test, no one seems to be able to taste the passion fruit in the Super Hoops. But is that just because no one’s ever been able to actually finish a passion fruit?

Before we know it, the teams are squaring up to face the industry experts and it’s time for more fun. From the facial expressions in the room it becomes clear that these cereals are not exactly taste sensations. Either that or several of the watching experts have walked through the same fart that Karen does every week. Dentist Paul starts his negotiation with frozen food giant Iceland by telling them that linking up with a cartoon polar bear would be a “match made in Heaven” and you think, he’s got a point…this might work. And then he follows this up by telling them that the cereal tastes bland – that’ll be what happens when you ignore a STRONG RECOMMENDATION – and as the air is sucked out of the room I’m left wondering why he even bothers asking if they’d like to buy some.

On the other side of the room meanwhile, while Phil pushes hard to get a deal out of a reluctant customer, Virdi’s contribution is to pull the kind of faces that suggest he’s mistakenly put on underwear that’s about four sizes too small. No wonder the client walks away.

And then I watch on, out of my business depth (which peaks at about 2mm, if you need to know), while Foluso secures an exclusivity deal with Iceland for 200,000 boxes of Super Hoops cereal. It means that they can’t sell to anyone else for 3 months, but is it a gamble worth taking? I haven’t a clue, but my smidgen of knowledge tells me that 200,000 is a shitload of cereal. And so, it’s over to Sam’s team to see if they can sell more.

It turns out that they can’t.

And so to the boardroom. where Lord Sugar, you’d expect, will have plenty of spontaneous cereal related gags lined up to test Karen and Tim’s acting ability. Instead though, he starts with another tried and tested favourite – making the candidates feel really uncomfortable. And even then, after some initial frost he thaws out quite quickly. A bit like Sam’s team’s Arctic cereal idea, really.

It feels like Sugar has lost heart this evening and there’s a feeling of just going through the motions, which when we hear the sales figures and get the result, you can kind of understand. While Steve’s lot sell the aforementioned 200,000 boxes of cereal, Sam’s team finish a distant second – and lose in a catastrophic manner – selling just over 7000.

It’s all too much for Lord Sugar, who almost explodes with cereal puns, calling Sam’s team ‘cereal losers’ and telling them that when they come back in to the boardroom some of them will be saying ‘Cheerios’. Later, he completes his hat-trick when he refers to the loser’s cereal as being more ‘All Bland’ than ‘All Bran’. It’s like he’s been willing himself not to go too early with the comedy until the point where he literally can’t wait any longer and simply has to blurt out some puns. Classic Sugar!

The candidates don’t laugh and instead just head to the cafe to bicker.

At this point in proceedings I’m beginning to feel sorry for Flo, who has pretty much been the only candidate I’ve had much time for so far in the series. She’s clearly capable and yet has found herself stuck on a team hampered by the incompetence of others. She must feel absolutely cursed.

In the end tonight, the only surprise is that Virdi and Phil are still here. Having lost on every task, their time must be almost up. Watching the episode tonight though, I can’t help feeling that there’d be no great loss in getting rid of most of them and just making up the shortfall with the polar bear and Mega Bella from tonight’s cereal boxes.

When we’re done tonight, Sam has been fired and leaves by telling Lord Sugar to remember to ‘pop round for a cuppa’. It’s a deserved firing, but that last bit puzzles me. I mean, imagine Sugar standing on your doorstep, inviting himself in and then make snide remarks about your biscuits and getting Karen to pull faces at your kids.

Back at the house with tonight’s ‘winners’, we end with the penny dropping for Phil. Apparently, ‘one slip up and we’re gone’. No shit, Sherlock.

Spring is springing, so why am I looking back?

As we creep out of the darkness that winter has held us in for the last 4 months or so, I’m finding myself casting my mind back a year. I don’t want to. I’d told myself I needed to move on. And yet, here we are, reliving many of the negatives of a year ago and I’m not entirely sure why.

This time last year, I was 4 months into my recovery after heart surgery to fit a pacemaker. I was suffering physically and mentally. However, while physically I was slowly getting better and might even have started running again, mentally I was struggling.

I would continue to struggle for a while longer too.

This time last year though, I could at least feel like the end of being so poorly and frankly useless, was in sight. Every day I’d go for a walk and since starting this in the November of the previous year, I’d gradually been able to go out for longer. So, a year ago I was managing to take myself out for a walk for a good hour, some days more if the weather was brighter and warmer. I’d just wander, but mainly I had two routes. Either I’d walk slowly up to one of our local parks and take in the sights there, or I’d head out a bit further across some farmland and along a public footpath, past horses and cattle and down towards a golf club before realising I was way too tired and ambling home.

As the days got warmer and lighter I started noticing more. Leaves appearing on trees, buds of life on shrubs and flowers and as soppy as it might sound, it gave me a bit of hope.

A year on and it’s funny how things change. I’ve been back at work and back to the usual routine since around March 2023 and I don’t feel like I’ve settled at all. I still feel my pacemaker every day. It’s just there; a slightly heavier presence in my chest than normal. Day by day, it just sits there and whenever there’s even the slightest palpitation or flutter, it just kicks in and works. Sometimes, for no apparent reason it makes the area around it ache and can be more than just a little bit uncomfortable. Recently I’ve had a sharp pain around the place on my chest where the wires come out of the top of the pacemaker. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about, but I’d rather it wasn’t there as well.

Being back to ‘normal’ has been strange, mainly because deep down I don’t feel like I am really back to normal. Most things are a bit more of a strain than I remember. I’m much more tired, much more easily, which in turn means that I have to really try hard not to be grumpy at everyone and everything! And I am really trying.

In September, when the new academic year started, I made it my goal to just try and be relentlessly positive. I praised classes for the slightest thing, spent a chunk of down time every day adding positive points to our monitoring system so that kids could see I appreciated them, kept smiling and was as energetic as I could be in class and even in meetings, which was a major struggle for me!

I felt that the positivity had slipped around Christmas time. I was counting down the hours of the day, the days of the week and just clinging on for the weekends when I could relax and just get out more and have time to think.

Since January I’ve tried to get back on that positive horse and I think I’ve done ok, but if I’m honest I’m still just clinging on. But then clinging on is not losing my grip, so maybe I should be grateful. I find that I’m looking back a lot. For one, I wish I’d admitted to being poorly about 6 months before I did! Whether much would have changed, I’ll never know. I’m also thinking back to those early spring walks and noticing the colour returning to the world. Oddly, despite feeling so lost at that particular time, I really miss it.

I remember speaking to a friend when I first had my operation last year. He’d previously had heart surgery too and he told me that feeling like myself again was going to be a long process. Turns out he was right!

So, while the buds appear on the shrubs in the park and trees begin to go green once more, I’m looking back when I really need to look forward. Maybe I should take spring as my inspiration. Clearly, some kind of changes are needed.

Apprentice Week 3 – Virtual Escape Rooms.

I’ve never liked the idea of escape rooms. The challenge of getting out of a room that someone will eventually just let me out of anyway has no appeal to me. I don’t want to spend a shed load of money to then find that I’m way too stupid to figure out some puzzles. Coupled with the fact that if I went with my wife, we’d end up arguing to the point of possible divorce, tonight’s task doesn’t exactly excite me.

And then, I remember that Asif will be a project manager and I’m diving for the remote control!

Tonight Lord Sugar has sensed early that the boys are a dead loss and so he splits up the teams in the hope of adding at least a little bit of competition to the competition. I mean, we can’t all be satisfied to spend the entire series laughing at people who regard themselves as business gods, but make the decisions of toddlers, can we?

The first task for the newly formed teams is to decide on a name, but when Maura suggests what sounds like an Irish name, her team mates are stumped and get her to repeat it three times before rejecting it presumably because they still don’t know what she’s saying. And when so many people are so confused by just two syllables, then the writing is surely on the wall for tonight’s result.

On the other team, Flo seems to have decided that she actually is the team, which even after her excellent pitch last week, seems like a bit of an ask. Perhaps she’s a Flobot though?

As is often the way with creative tasks, these young titans of business just aren’t very creative and so the whole online escape room idea threatens to descend into even more chaos than usual. I’m forced to remind myself that in around 6 weeks time, some of these candidates will have morphed into genuinely credible business types before my very eyes, as is the case every year. For now though, it’s the usual festival of f***wittery.

In response to the brief that their game should be kept fairly simple, Asif’s team are genuinely discussing something that involves crash landing on a derelict ex-military island where there are not only rare animals, but inbred ones too. Thankfully, not enough eyes light up at that suggestion, but it is an indication that perhaps the BBC should be vetting the candidates with a bit more scrutiny in future.

This week, once again, it’s the editing that gives us our moments of genius as the silences that accompany a series of ever more bizarre suggestions taking the limelight away from the contestants themselves.

In the end, after one silence too many Asif’s game design team settle on a rare animal to inhabit their island. It’s a bear. Not even a rare one. Just a bear. And in fact there are three of them that because they’re computer generated, look like they might be line dancing. Escape that, gaming nerds!

Over on the other side Tre decides that the mayor character in their game needs to be young and handsome, so decides to cast himself in the role and proceeds to guide the computer bloke to find a face that’s as close to his own as he can! He then proceeds to double down on his Tre-ness by doing the voiceover as well.

On the other team, Maura struggles with her voiceover – as well as simply looking in the right direction – so that the end result is akin to me getting one of my Year 8 students to act out an airline safety briefing. Suffice to say, if somehow, someone had got me to have a look at this particular escape room, the intro would have me doing a swift about turn and heading for the nearest exit.

As ever, both teams make a mess of their logos. This is always the way and again begs the question about business types perhaps not being particularly creative. And Asif’s logo very much backs this up, given his obsession with adding a couple of arrows to both of the words. Someone suggests that it looks ‘a little like a supermarket logo’. Surely what they mean is that it looks a Lidl like a supermarket logo?

With both Escape Rooms complete – and frankly pretty shit – the teams go to pitch their ideas. Flo is quick to back herself, which after last week’s performance seems like a safe bet. So, it’s a shock when she dries up mid pitch and clearly doesn’t know what to say. It’s both compulsive viewing and a moment where you want the ground to just swallow her up. In the end, she just introduces the video for the escape room and passes it off in the boardroom later on as something that lasted a millisecond. It’s a shock after seeing her being so competent in negotiation last week though.

At the end of the pitch one of the investors declares that Flo’s escape room is ‘as fun as a wet fish’, proving that the game might be a bit of a failure, but not as much of a failure as a gamer having to come up with a slick one liner.

Meanwhile, with the other team, the experts declare that their game is a bit surreal. However, Asif has the perfect comeback – it isn’t surreal, it’s meant to be realistic. That’s the game where a military helicopter crash lands on a derelict military island (whatever that might be) and the pilot not only survives the helicopter crash, but has to get away from some line-dancing bears, before running across a rickety bridge and then having a dance on the deck of a conveniently located ship. Yep, you’re right Asif. That’s not in the least bit surreal.

Tonight I suddenly realise that there are several candidates that I don’t even know the name of. In fact, there’s at least one I have no recollection of whatsoever. Could we see a sacking next week just because someone has been hiding a bit? You heard it here first, folks!

Paul then gives such a convoluted explanation of their game that after the full 3 minutes of him rambling on about what the game entails, all we need is a cry of ‘Parklife’ and we’re done. Suffice to say though, there are a few puzzled faces in the panel of experts.

In the boardroom I realise that I’m spending far too long trying to work out Asif’s hair. I mean, what does he ask for when he sits down in the chair? At one point it looks like there’s a giant spider attached to the back of his head and there’s sections of hair heading to every compass point on the top of his head. By this point in proceedings his team have lost and despite making a profit, they’ve lost by a landslide too.

Asif proceeds to blame everyone else for the failure, but unless the twist is that Amina is sacked because she forgot how to speak in the pitch, then there’s only one decision to make.

And so it comes to pass that Asif is fired having lost control in the boardroom and seen the other three candidates simply turn on him. When he’s told he’s “a poor, poor manager” he tells us “I won’t be defeated”. Famous last words, my friend! Before we know it he’s getting into the black cab never to be seen again.

Back at the house, the surviving candidates are as full of themselves as ever, until Lord Sugar knocks at the door. I really want him to be trying to sell them something, but alas he’s just introducing next week’s task, which is the purchasing task over on one of the Channel Islands.

The candidates are delighted, with one declaring, “a treasure hunt on an island. What more could you want?” Ooh, I don’t know…some line dancing bears, maybe?

But there’s more. In the outro of tonight’s show we get a teaser for next week with Lord Sugar growling the line “pretty much the worst team I’ve ever had on this task” which makes me laugh uproariously.

They say that we love the underdog in the U.K., but I’m gradually coming round to the idea that we love an abject failure even more. I cannot wait for next Thursday!

The Apprentice – Episode 2: Cheesecakes

A familiar start this week, when a tired candidate is woken by the phone in the hall and stumbles down seemingly with no idea at all who could be calling at this time of the morning. It’s the lass that works for Lord Sugar…always her!

And then, aided by the magic of television and an audience that is quite happy to go along with the old lie that they’ve got just 20 minutes to get ready, the early morning darkness has given way to bright sunshine and the candidates are scrubbed up and leaving for work. Exactly how we all get ready for work, right?

This week, we’re making mini cheesecakes and while the boys go with experienced pie maker and ‘Supreme Pie Champion 2020’ Phil as their team leader, the girls plump for Foluso because no one else was willing to step up. Actually, that’s a lie. Maura said she’d “made cheesecakes before” but surprisingly, no one viewed that as a serious bid for office. It did make me think that perhaps I could have PM’d this task though. I too have “made cheesecakes before” – you know those ones you get in boxes – and have a high propensity for bullshit (which I’m aware makes me at least 50% eligible to PM any task, ever). If only I’d thought to take my business experience of three years working in a call centre and applied.

I always find the group meetings pretty funny. It genuinely amazes me the amount of truly awful ideas one table of people can have and tonight it’s a real surprise that no one suggests something like an offal cheesecake. However, once the decisions are made, Paul B rallies the troops with a cry of “Any hiccups, let’s not cry about spilt milk!” And I thought you just had to hold your breath…

Tonight we hear the first pitching klaxon when Flo assures the girls that she’ll do the pitch as she does them all the time to massive clients, so everything will be fine. This type of thing usually ensures that there’ll be a stuttering disaster and the longest few minutes of someone’s life, followed by the very same person declaring that they thought it all went well. This time though, the klaxon is a red herring and Flo follows through on all of her promises, leaving us all probably rather impressed, while also a little disappointed at the same time.

In the kitchen with the girls, the expected chaos ensues. But it’s not this that catches my attention. No, what grabs me is their inability to say the word kilogrammes. It seems that tonight, we’re only able to refer to KGs. Weird.

The boys go to pitch their idea to the smoothies company Innocent, who are extremely well know for their mission of charging the country ludicrous amounts of money so that they can have all their fruit and veg in liquid form. Fine by me. This is not a mission that the boys are on board with, however and instead the mantra appears to be ‘WHATEVER THEY SAY ABOUT FRUIT, VEG AND HEALTHY EATING, JUST KEEP INSISTING ON CHOCOLATE’! Surprisingly, the Innocent representatives don’t feel that they want to pay £8 a cheesecake for something that sticks two fingers up to their mission statement. The boys meekly drop their price and offer some vague fruit based dessert instead. Later, Lord Sugar misses a trick by failing to label it “Not a very smoothie move”.

Amazingly, there’s a moment of business synergy tonight between the teams. Sadly, it comes during deliberations about flavours for the cheesecakes as both spend far too much time discussing popping candy as an ingredient for their high end cheesecakes. It’s sadder still when neither team goes with the idea.

As the episode goes on, I’m finding myself more and more fascinated by the boys. They actually seem to be making a decent fist of their cheesecake business and yet they still manage to add a healthy dollop of incompetence to their ingredients. Every few minutes brings something that leaves me asking ‘WHAT?’ of the telly.

First, they spend far too long discussing making a more efficient system before being unable to come up with an efficient system. Then they decide that they need a cover story about the crumbling bases of their cheesecakes, but all they can manage is “Give them a spoon and tell them it’s a dessert”. I mean, it kind of is a dessert, guys.

After last week’s corporate away day task descended into 90s rave territory, the theme surfaces again when one of the boys rallies the troops with a cry of ‘let’s make some noise’ and suddenly I’m thinking of glo sticks and bucket hats. And finally, there’s even more befuddlement when one of them tells the Innocent people that the cheesecake contains a fruit they might not have heard of.

In the boardroom, there seems to be no obvious winner tonight and yet, when the result is announced it’s the girls who get their just desserts (see what I did there?) with another landslide win. And it’s well deserved too with Flo in particular flagging herself up as one to watch with her impressive negotiating skills.

Meanwhile, the boys are left to face another heavy defeat, even though they didn’t really put in a bad performance. Yes, there was the usual halfwittery along the way, but they actually made a profit, which in a profit task is the name of the game.

It’s no surprise when Paul B is called back into the boardroom by project manager Phil and Asif pretty much talks himself back there too when he just sits there and tells a few half truths while grassing up anyone who he happens to even glance at. He even swerves Lord Sugar’s question about what he did on the task by ignoring it, flipping it round and just asking his fellow team members what it was that they did. He may well have out sugared Lord Sugar and I’m amazed when he’s allowed off the hook.

In the end, it’s Paul B that goes. And while this Pie man fails on the cooking task, he leaves as an Apprentice legend (in my eyes at least). For there is none of the usual fawning of ‘Thank you for the opportunity Lord Sugar”. Instead, Paul just shrugs his shoulders, smiles and tells Lord Sugar, “Fair enough, mate” before taking his wheelie suitcase off towards a waiting black cab. Well done, sir!

Always Look on The Bright Side: 5 Things that Made Me Smile in January.

I’ve not written one of these types of blogs for a little while. It’s not been a case of everything being terrible during that time; more just being incredibly busy. And anyway, who really needs a blogger telling them that Christmas makes them happy?

I went into January purposely telling myself to be positive. It’s not a month that I’m a great fan of and I decided that if I just forced myself to be relentlessly positive, it might make it easier to get through. And while I wouldn’t say that it’s been a resounding success, it’s definitely been helpful. This attitude did mean that I actively sought out reasons to be cheerful.

So, what’s made me smile this month?

The tidy Welsh mouse. I loved this and I couldn’t stop watching the accompanying video. It’s a BBC report about a retired postman in Wales who was baffled by the fact that bits and pieces kept getting tidied away in his shed at night. Seeking an answer to this mystery, he set up a night vision camera on his workbench. When he watched footage back he was greeted by the fantastic sight of a mouse tidying stuff like nuts, bolts and pegs away into whatever container had been left out.

And it got better – Rodney (our retired postman) then started experimenting by leaving different types of objects out, but whatever he left got tidied away! The only disappointment was the name that he gave the mouse; Welsh Tidy Mouse. I mean anything would have been better than that! Anyway, you can watch the little fella on the link below. The mouse that is, not Rodney.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67902966

Newcastle United winning the derby. If you’re not a football fan or just have no knowledge of Newcastle United and our derby match, allow me to fill you in. Our closest geographical rivals are called Sunderland. However, we haven’t played them in a long time due to being in different divisions. Well, this all changed when we were drawn to play against each other in the FA Cup in early January.

The lead up to the game was tense, to say the least and there was the usual back and forth about who would win between the two sets of fans. It’s an intense rivalry, to say the least.

It’s a game I really don’t enjoy and the nerves are horrendous. Suffice to say, come the day of the game I was unusually quiet and felt very sick indeed. I needn’t have worried though, as we wound up winning the game fairly easily (3-0) and it was an absolute joy to behold. Football eh? It’s only a game and yet somehow, it’s really much, much more than that!

Making plans for a bit of a meet up. I live a long way from both of my childhood best friends. One of them, I see a few times a year as he lives in the town where I grew up, so a visit to see family will always take in a meet up with him and his family.

However, the other spends a lot of his year living abroad as part of his job. We haven’t seen each other in a good few years, so when we were exchanging messages a few months back we came up with the idea of a meet up. It’s something we’ve often floated in the past but it just never seems to happen.

This time though, things are looking good and the provisional idea is that we’re going to meet somewhere that is reasonably equidistant to our houses and go for a hike. It might be in the Peak District, which also happens to be one of my favourite regions of England. We’ve not quite got anything concrete planned as yet, but I’m right in the middle of planning and for once, it looks like we will actually see this one through. Definitely a reason to smile.

Some good news on the running front. Regular readers of my blog will be familiar with my love of running. People who are new to the blog, forgive me; it’s something that I never tire of banging on about and I’m probably very much a running bore!

Anyway, so far this January I’ve managed to get myself entered for two 10k races – one in March and one in May – and my training is going fairly well. I’ve not pushed myself too hard, but have still been regularly going out and running between 5 and 6 miles a week. And as of yesterday, I learnt that the 10k I’m taking part in this March will also feature several mates from work, which is always good fun. It’s always lovely to see people at these things, not least because they’re all incredibly encouraging.

I still get incredibly nervous at these things and nowadays am always worried that something will go wrong and that I’ll have another episode with my heart, however unlikely that might be. So, when I’m getting ready to run, I know that I’ll probably bump into someone that will ask about my health, my pacemaker and just really help to calm me down. And that, dear reader, will at least make me smile a tiny bit.

Yoga. Several years ago and with more than a hint of cynicism, I was persuaded to give yoga a try. I was sure it wouldn’t be for me and sure, given the fitness I thought I already had that it’d be a breeze. I quickly learnt that it was very tough going indeed.

However, I loved doing yoga from that very first session and although it confirmed my lack of flexibility, I was keen at least! Sadly, with the pressures of work and having a young family we ended up giving it up after about 6 months. We always thought we’d start again fairly soon. That didn’t transpire though.

This January my wife suggested we try again and given that I seem to be constantly training for something or other, I was quickly in agreement. We started about three weeks ago and have been doing a couple of sessions per week. We’re not attending classes, just using the YouTube app on the television to follow the regime of one of many yoga instructors out there, but it’s working.

I have to say, I’m loving it once again. Yoga is generally tough, especially when you’re as inflexible as me, but it helps me to relax and I know that in another few weeks I’ll start to reap the benefits. So, when I’m stuck in some ridiculous position, every sinew straining, my body probably wobbling a bit with the pressure of that particular pose, you can be sure that a smile won’t be far away.

If you’ve never tried yoga I can definitely recommend it!

Poetry Blog – ‘The old tyrant’

This is a relatively new poem, written about one of my grandfathers. I barely knew him, but a while ago I got one of those DNA kits as a Christmas present and as a result started to research my family tree. At the end of it all, not only was I disappointed to have no sign of any Viking ancestry, but I felt I knew my grandfather even less.

It’s always been something that held an interest to me. Both my mam and dad come from big families and so, growing up, we were surrounded by aunties, uncles and cousins whenever there was some kind of ‘family’ occasion. However, for any number of reasons I never felt that I really knew them that well. Being quite a shy kid probably didn’t help.

We lived in a different part of Newcastle to the rest of the family and so didn’t see them on a day to day basis and then as I got older I was busy with friends and different interests. Going away to university didn’t help my cause either; if anything, it made me stick out like a sore thumb! When I finally moved away from the North East entirely, I pretty much drifted away from all but immediate family.

The relationship with my grandparents on both sides was difficult, to say the least. With this grandad, he died when I was very young and there always seemed to be a reluctance on my parents part for them to take us to see our grandparents. If I’m honest, it doesn’t look like they were at all interested in us and I literally can’t remember ever meeting my grandma. However, I do have one extremely vague recollection of my grandad which is where the poem comes from.

'The old tyrant'

If I close my eyes, I still see him
from exactly the same vantage point, every time.
A dot of a man, his appearance betraying every terrifying snippet 
I'd ever heard.
Brown shoes, dark trousers, midnight blue raincoat
and a black trilby hat, shadowing his features,
making those eyes even darker, so that it felt like he looked straight through me
as he crept closer, a shining silver coin grasped in bony fingers.
The childcatcher had come, bearing gifts.
Then, with a pat on the head, he was gone.

Everything else is mystery, legend,
even your name uncertain.
"The old tyrant", my mam would say with just a hint of a smile,
"a villain", but maybe an entertainer, singing and dancing
on the West End stage, if that was to be believed,
the cold, hard presence passing your distance
through the generations,
many leads to your life, but never a final destination,
many strings to your bow,
but barely a finger print of recognition left behind,
the untraceable ghost, continuing to haunt
despite the fact that none ever really knew you at all.

When I was very young my parents ran a business. As part of the business we had a shop and a market stall, I think. My dad would be away buying crockery – plates, cups, bowls etc – in Stoke-on-Trent for the business (that’s what we sold…everyone needs stuff to eat off, right?) and my mam would be running the shops. As I was a poorly child (yes, heart nonsense even at that age!) I’d often find myself in the shop.

One day, when both parents were there, my grandad paid us a visit. I was perched on a stool in a corner of the shop, like some gaunt, pale kind of mascot and he came in, spoke to my parents a little bit as far as I can remember, and then made his way across to me.

As the poem says, he just came over, pressed a coin into my little hand and then left. That was the only interaction that I recall. No talking, no affection. He might have smiled, but I can’t remember.

Growing up, I picked up nothing but negativity around him, which comes out in the poem. Apparently, he wasn’t the greatest dad – although times were very different back then – and was very tough on his children, one of them my dad. When it came to seeing his grandchildren, he just didn’t seem to be interested. Well, not in this one anyway! So, I’d hear the types of descriptions that come up in the poem, labelled at him time and again.

When I came to research my family tree, he was just as big a mystery as ever. I’d been told that he was ‘a dancer and singer’ on stage in London by my dad when I was a kid, but there wasn’t much evidence of that. In fact, what he actually did remained a mystery and I uncovered bits of evidence that he had possibly led a bit of a double life a times. I won’t go into it because it’s obviously quite personal, but also because it left me no closer to knowing a great deal about the man!

So there we go; my grandad, man of mystery and little affection or it might seem, any kind of feeling whatsoever!

I hope you enjoyed the poem.

The Joys of Volunteering

For the last few months I’ve been trying something a little bit different. It started with just giving my son a lift to where he was going and then curiosity and trying to be a good dad somehow got the better of me. Now, I seem to be a fully fledged volunteer!

In actual fact, the whole thing really started around a year ago. My son had decided to do his Bronze for the Duke of Edinburgh Award and as part of his challenge he had to do 6 months worth of volunteering and so, following in his sister’s footsteps, he started helping out at a local Parkrun. For the majority of the time there were four of them, all friends, doing this. But then occasionally it’d just be him and so I got involved and stood marshalling with him on various parts of the course. Often cold, but always bearable!

When he decided to then do his Silver D of E award we thought he’d change his volunteering to something else. But he didn’t and so here we are again!

For the first few weeks I would just drop him off and then go for a long walk around the country park that the run takes place in. After all, it wasn’t me who was taking part in the Duke of Edinburgh award and besides, I saw my Saturday morning hike as good recovery time, as my heart operation was a few months previous. The exercise combined with that early morning solitude was blissful!

Then, one week my son asked if I fancied joining in and doing some marshalling with him. Having done a few weeks scanning the barcodes of the finishers he fancied a change and so of course, in my quest to be dad of the year, I said yes.

There are loads of different roles that you can volunteer for at a Parkrun. I had a look at our latest roster and that told me that there were 15 different jobs to choose from. You can fulfil various roles at the finish, as well as tail walking with the last participant, be it a runner or walker. And in marshalling alone, we have 11 different checkpoints to fill. So, there’s a lot of variation in what you can choose to be doing in supporting the runners.

As a marshall, all we really do is watch the runners come past our checkpoint, keep an eye out for any problems, answer any questions and make sure no one walks across the course as the runners approach. Oh, and clapping. We do a lot of clapping and encouraging.

Of course, it’s been winter and so the conditions have been cold, to say the least. The standing around doesn’t help either and in fact it can leave me in a bit of pain as my back and my feet don’t seem keen on just standing. A couple of weeks ago we were soaked to the skin, despite wearing heavy coats, as the rain was just torrential. But the race went on! It made me look forward to Spring and the weather being a bit warmer though!

Volunteering always leaves me in a good mood. For a start, there’s the sense of pride that you get in just being able to help out. It’s nice that lots of the runners will actively thank us as they go round. I always think it’s nice to be appreciated, even though it feels strange to be thanked when the runners are the ones exerting themselves! But at a time when my mental health hasn’t always been good it’s a welcome boost.

It’s nice to feel like part of something too. There’s a friendliness and a sense of community amongst both runners and volunteers and although I’m quite quiet and don’t really talk to too many people, it always feels like we’re welcome and very much appreciated. And of course it’s good to spend some quality time with my son too, despite the early mornings!

In the future, perhaps in retirement I’d like to do more volunteering. We’ve talked about helping out at one of the RSPB reserves as it’s something that’s been of interest for a while. I’d like to volunteer with the homeless too. I think that given I’ll have a bit more time to play with once I’m retired or at least semi retired, it’d be good to use that to help others.

In the meantime, volunteering is something that I’d actively encourage anyone to try. It can get you exercise and undoubtedly helps with your mental health. The fresh air alone is really important to me.

If you’re thinking of volunteering, there are over 1200 different Parkruns around the U.K. It’s easy to do, even if it is quite early on a Saturday or Sunday morning and the rewards are great. I can’t guarantee the weather, but it’s something that I’d definitely recommend. Give it a go, it might just make a really positive change in your life!