Put On The Spot

On an unnaturally hot, Wimbledon Finals Day last June, hubbie and I popped out on a bike ride. We noticed that there was an unfeasibly large amount of cyclists on the road with us and very little traffic. It was only when we spotted that all the other cyclists were wearing event numbers, that we realised we'd caught ourselves up in the annual White Rose Classic cycle event in Yorkshire.

This has happened to us once before. We'd snuck off for a birthday weekend in The Lakes for some champagne and cycling. On a bitterly cold Sunday morning, we clicked into our pedals and marvelled at how many other people had also decided that this rain spattered day was a good opportunity for a bike ride.

I was slightly surprised to be passing quite a few of the other cyclists – I wouldn't bet on me to pass people up hill – and as I was over-taking someone, we got chatting about how wonderful it was that so many people were out on their bikes whatever the weather and that this was indeed a bit of a hill after all the others, before I was forced to bid my farewell explaining that I needed to catch up with my husband. 'You go!' he said, 'You're doing so well.'

I thought that was very kind of him; I'd only left the B&B thirty minutes previously. It was only when I rounded a corner at the top of the hill to a groundswell of animated cheering and, 'Go girl!' that I clocked all the other cyclists' numbers and realised that we'd inadvertently joined the infamous Fred Whitton Challenge. With its 110 miles over hill and pass, it's generally considered the toughest bike ride in Britain. Everybody else had already done approximately 60 miles of hills and all but the most elite of bikers, were starting to feel it a little. I, however, after my big breakfast and a short warm up, was flying. Indeed, I was first woman past that point, according to the cheering crowd.

However, after laughing so much about my moment of glory, we realised that we were cycling in the wrong direction and the only option was to turn around and cycle back past the bemused crowed. I kept my head down.

Back to the White Rose Classic and a decision to do the race properly on 29^th June 2014. Then I got cancer. Chemo has chopped me off at the knee caps a few times but not too often. The rest of the time I've been trip-trapping along in trainers or on pedals, enjoying the wind or sun on my face, plotting challenges. I decided I was still going to give the White Rose a shot - a very slow, last one over the line kind of shot – but I kept it secret in case I was forced to pull out; I really didn't want to let anyone down.

Race day was approaching when a sympathetic nurse told me that my white cell count was low and I'd have to have a re-test before deciding if chemo would go ahead a few days later. I supposed that meant that I shouldn't go for a fifty mile bike ride that weekend. However, it surprised me to learn that there's very little you can do to increase, or even decrease, your white cell count. It's just down to how quickly your body manufactures the replacement cells for those lost to the cancer treatment. So, the problem mixing cycling and chemo, I learnt, was only if you had an accident. I could end up in hospital with my body struggling to fight the infection. I didn't like the sound of an infection. I know about efforts to unnaturally encourage my bone marrow to make extra white cells to deal with infection and the process hurt every bone in my body, even my jaw. I also didn't like the idea that chemo could be halted while the clever people at the hospital patched me back together again. 

But the sun was shining and my bike was looking at me like a dog when you've mentioned a walk. Should I categorically not cycle? I asked, one final time. Not necessarily, was the surprising response, but I should consider how likely it was that I'd fall off.

I thought of putting my arm in the spin drier and smashing it into too many pieces to count. I remembered my sky dive over a plant pot which resulted in a broken knee and I winced at the memory of the pain I felt when I broke my foot twisting it on an embedded tree root whilst running.

Pretty likely to fall off, I thought.

Now, I know cycling isn't for everyone but me? I was disappointed. Gutted, we'd call it in our house. My secret White Rose Challenge was off. Scheduled for twelve days after my final chemo, my white blood cells would be at their lowest. It just wasn't worth it, everyone said.

And then I saw it. I clocked the poster at the local sports centre: Four Hour Spinathon for Marie Curie Cancer Care. A cycling event to raise money for a cancer charity? It had my name written all over it. Yes, me being me, there was still every chance I could fall off my bike during the four class challenge - an exhaustion induced, away-with-the-fairies type of incident - but it would be onto a clean-ish gym floor and with twelve other participants as well as a teacher around to pick me up and dust off my bruised pride.

No matter that I haven't actually done any spinning for about six months.

Brilliant, my friend said, I'll do it, too. Well, actually, after she'd had a couple of glasses of wine I told her she'd love it, glossing quickly over the fact that you could choose how many of the four classes you'd like to attempt. Hey! The bigger the challenge, the larger the euphoria at the end!

My other friend I snagged when she was hosting twelve people for an evening of tapas.

So, we've signed up and it takes place on the 7^th June. Could I ask you to sponsor us? If not for the challenge of spinning for three hours longer than I've ever done in one go before, then for the fact that I have to be in my saddle by 8am on a Saturday. Those who know me well will understand that actually being ready for the start of a spin class would be an achievement in itself.

There are always lots of requests for our hard-earned cash and I will still speak to you if you can't manage this one. But if you'd like to support Marie Curie Cancer Care which provides high quality care and support for terminally ill people at the end of their life, I'd be so grateful for your support over at http://justgiving.com/brimhamsharrogate   

Thank you.

Very Inspiring Blog Award

I was really touched to receive a Very Inspiring Blog Award from the wonderful, Smirkpretty, AKA Shannon, whose own blog is, quite frankly, inspiring. If my writing can ever be deemed inspirational, then it really is worth every moment of the sweat and toil. Thank you, Shannon. You can visit Shannon's blog at http://smirkpretty.wordpress.com/.

As I’ve been writing this blog for a couple of years now and already had the dubious honour of dredging up seven things you wouldn’t know about me, this time, I’m going to have to dive a little deeper. Goggles on, we’re going in.

1. I was the unwitting guest at the wake of a decapitated man. It was almost twenty years ago and I had about tuppence-ha’penny to spend on rent.  After weeks of fruitless searching however, I’d reluctantly upped the amount I was prepared to pay by £5 per week. I was with my now-husband and as we drove up the crunchy gravel drive, we commented on what amazing house you could find for that relatively small increase in budget. I do recall it being a little dark, though. Eventually the door was answered by a tiny Asian lady who simply looked and beckoned us in. She directed us over to a couple of wooden chairs, the last in a line of eight resting against the lounge wall. We sat down. Other people nodded acknowledgement without taking their gaze away from the rolled up carpet in the middle of the floor. Nobody spoke. ‘It’s like waiting at a bus stop,’ I whispered to my boyfriend. ‘But what are we waiting for?’ he whispered back.

It transpired we were waiting for the landlord to come and take us to the actual house for rental. It was the landlord’s son who appeared in his place. I rejected the room which was opposite the graveyard and two miles away from where the advert had described. It wasn’t just because of the broken light hanging from the centre of the room with shards of faulty light bulb hanging threateningly from it and a muffled explanation as to why the light didn’t work; something about a fight between two tenants. Nor was it particularly the fault of the bed which had clearly collapsed on one side, so badly that the putrefying mattress had half slumped down on to the floor. No, it was the notes in the tiny kitchen assigned to 12 people which put me off. They made it quite clear, with a rather excessive brutal directness, exactly which item of food belonged to which person and woe betide anybody who dared to pick from somebody else’s shelf.

The next day we read in the paper that a landlord who had been ripping off his tenants had had a dispute with one of them. In the process he’d lost his head which explains why the alarmingly human like form rolled up in the carpet in the living room, seemed a little short for a fully grown man.

2. I’m learning Slovakian. I can say this in three tenses, can add in an adverb or colourful adjective, if required, and even tell you that my dog is also learning Slovakian (and add that I don’t actually have a dog, or a cat). But learning to tell the time has driven me to real tears on not one, but two, occasions. I suppose, with no other distractions and an interlocutor with the patience of Job, I could just about spit out the answer nowadays but by the time I’ve worked out that it’s, ‘five minutes before the first quarter of the tenth hour’ (ten past nine), it will already by eleven minutes past nine and I’ll have to start all over again.  If a Slovakian ever has the misfortune to ask me for the time, I shall say, ‘neviem’ and hide my watch.

3. I cycled the Pyrenees in a week last September and it was the best sporting experience I’ve ever had. I’m not sure I could really muster the energy, or time, to train again but I’m so glad I did it once in my lifetime. My husband and I raised £2,500 for the Stroke Association, a charity close to our hearts because our twelve year old daughter suffered a stroke when she was one. She’s made an amazing recovery. Pre- national health and research done by the Stroke Association, I’m not so sure she would have done. We will always be grateful to them.

4. I have arthritis in the third finger of my right hand which I have found out, only today, is not inflammatory arthritis but the other type which means that my degeneration may not be quite as fast as I’d feared. Please raise your glass of olive oil and share a toast to the longevity of joints.

5. I have bunions, hearing aids, glasses and the odd protesting joint but as I explain to my concerned-cum-amused husband, I feel it’s only my peripheries that are broadcasting my advancing years. The women in my family live for near-centuries and I intend to give them a run for their money. By then, they’ll have invented a pill to sort out feet, eyes and ears and a gadget to turn the pages on a Kindle, so I’ll be fine.

6. I ran the midnight marathon in Norway and got my pace so badly wrong that I was reduced to a lollop after the first half. I spent so long at one feed station, stuffing myself with bananas, cheese sandwiches, flap jack, jelly babies and energy drink - this is the girl who can’t normally eat within two hours of running - and chatting with the officials, that fellow runners thought I was a marshal and asked me to hand them a drink. At that stage, I have to say, I was tempted to jump ship.

7. I was a tour guide but I have no sense of direction. If you put me in a field and spun me around, I would die searching for the exit. Now my children are older, it is they who take me to the toilet in a restaurant to ensure I make it back before the end of the meal.

I did a season of bus and walking tours based in countries I knew but in places I hadn’t always been to myself. The idea was that we crammed up on the history of the ones we didn’t know and memorised maps so that we could guide our guests around.

Oh dear.

I used all the means at my disposal to get myself, and the holiday makers, around these foreign cities. The bus drivers would quietly point out landmarks before we arrived. The hoteliers would suggest a seemingly obvious building for me to aim for so that if all else failed, I could find the way there, sneak out the map and do everything in my power to recall the way back to the hotel. But the rest of the time I used to make it up.

Whilst I may not be able to remember which way to turn out of a car park, tell me a story and I’ll remember it for ever. Hence my oft-used line, ‘I’ve brought you this way because I just have to tell you about…’ I almost pulled it off. Almost. One wonderful American gentleman who kindly took it upon himself to give a little cough on the off chance I was about to walk past a turning on several occasions, wrote on his feedback form, ‘I’ve never had so much fun in my life. This lovely lady couldn’t find her way out of a square box but I could listen to her talking all day.’ I say, thank the lord for the American love of a northern English accent.

 
So, to my list of my 15 blogs which inspire and make me smile. Congratulations on your well-deserved awards! To this list I add my usual proviso, if your name is missing and you feel it should be there, it should. It’s my brain cells. I forgot to mention, they’re on the decline too.

http://annalisacrawford.blogspot.co.uk by Annalisa Crawford

http://alongthewritelines.blogspot.co.uk by Derek Thompson

http://www.standingnakedatabusstop.com  by Lesley Richardson

http://www.whoatemybrain.com by Nick Cross

http://skybluepinkish.wordpress.com by Gillian Smellie (hoping this will inspire you back to blogging, Gillian!)

http://isabelcostello.wordpress.com  by Isabel Costello

http://chicklittings.blogspot.co.uk  by Debs Riccio

http://authorhollyrobinson.blogspot.co.uk by Holly Robinson

http://spiesliesandpies.blogspot.co.uk by Charlie Wade

http://www.iamjakebarton.com  by Jake Barton

http://theelephantinthewritingroom.blogspot.co.uk by Sally Zigmond

http://cassam-isanyonethere.blogspot.co.uk by Anne Mackle

Kay’s http://1lovelife.blogspot.co.uk

Tash’s http://talesofstepford.wordpress.com

http://www.racheljlewis.com by Rachel J Lewis

In accepting your award, please:
 
1. Display the award logo somewhere on the blog.
2. Link back to the blog of the person who nominated you.
3. State seven things about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other bloggers for the award and provide links to their blogs.
5. Notify those bloggers that they have been nominated and of the award’s requirements.

I look forward to your posts :) 

Dusting the Piano

As I was flicking off a faint sprinkling of dust from my piano today, whilst studiously avoiding the burgeoning forest of cobwebs hanging from the lights above my head, I had to laugh at my priorities.

Whilst not claiming to be in the same stratosphere as a concert pianist, I am in love with my piano. I’ve pretty much always had one around, but none so fine as this. It was last November when I became the excited owner of my Yamaha Y3; a proper piano, loud, crisp and with notes that play however many times you touch them. Of all the inanimate objects in my house, the piano is my favourite which is why it receives most of my limited cleaning concentration span.

I’m going away tomorrow, to cycle the Pyrenees across France with nineteen others (hence the, admittedly, limited pre-‘holiday’ cleaning) and the fast approaching prospect has me lurching from great waves of excitement to petrified nausea. It isn’t so much the cycling uphill which worries me, I either will or will not get up, it’s the losing the pack, losing my way and ending up in Spain (sense of direction is not a phenomenon known to me), or my brakes failing downhill. At this late stage there is nothing I can do about this so I have to practice a little distraction.

From thinking how nice it would be able to sit down at the piano instead of on my bicycle seat on my return, I started thinking about which of the two pursuits I prefer. Cycling is much more sociable but for total relaxation, the piano wins every time.  And then there’s running. That’s my favourite sport, not least because I write my best ideas in my head while I run, but because it’s the ultimate drug - I know because I’m addicted. 

If I was on a desert island, which would I have, piano, bike or trainers? Of course I’d also have to have a notepad and pen. And books; a mobile library which turned up on Thursdays. I cleaned (sketchily) the entire house to the choosing between the aforementioned items and aside from dismissing the bike on the technicality that the wheels would get stuck in the sand, I couldn’t choose between them. However I did conclude that there wasn’t anything else I couldn’t do without (other than a special request for my favourite people to join me, of course). As my chosen items would all fit inside the mobile library van, I decided my demands weren’t excessive.

So while I’m away, I thought I’d leave you pondering the same question: you have a day to pack, which activities would you take with you and why?