Grace Under Pressure 2

Struggling to finanace a little summer get away due to the cost of living crisis? Then worry no more. Let the election help you pay your way to Bogner, Bordeaux or Barbados. Not might I add as a result of any promises any of the political parties are currently making but as a result of Grace Under Pressure's single suggestion of an Election 24 swear box. Everytime in the next six weeks that you turn on the TV, listen to the radio, surf the internet, open a newspaper or discover yourself engaged in a chit chat with friends and find yourself uttering the phrase,  'Davie's such a d&^%head', 'Sunak's a total s&%^e',   'Kier's a c*&%', or 'Farage is a f&%*wit', just pop a pound into your election swear box. You could even boost your holiday funds by including political commentators and analysts thus adding another pound everytime you hear 'Mason moaning', 'Kunessberg catastrophising' or 'Rajon ranting'. ...

Whilst for many people half term is a chance to slow down and even switch off, for parents I suspect it is a potential nightmare as they search for cheap things to do with children of varying ages. And for me it's also a busy week arranging and then delivering craft days at several of my churches. This half term, in an intentional effort to be faith based its been based around the story of creation. Now in an ideal world it would have been great to start 'in the beginning' and work through the days of creation to end up with Adam and Eve so that the children get to journey through the story. Logistics regarding numbers of volunteers and the different times that families arrive to these events make that almost impossible. So we made the most of what we had. Up at The Church on Rise Park we had a great turn out of 13 adults and a gazzilion children. Down at Central the tun out was lower but all who came had a really great time. Not sticking rigidly to the biblical account(s) ...

It's not often I start a blog by saying that it was one of the best nights out we have had in absolutly ages, but both TOM and I would be in agreement over last nights little jolly to the theatre in Derby to see The Importance of Being Earnest, performed by the Say it again, sorry?' again theatre company.  This was not just the usual performance of the Oscar Wilde farce but rather a farce about a farce, one in which the lead actor due to play the role of Ernest Worthing fails to turns up for the performance resulting in the quick need for a stand in. From the audience. For the entire play!    A little bit like The Play That Goes Wrong productions, this one relied on the wonderful timing of the 'actors' and the enthusiasm of those selected from the unwitting audience. Step forward Kalil a member of the audience of Indian heritage(?) who worked as a patents attorney. Initially bemused by what he was expected to do, and I suspect only thinking he would be on the stage f...

Okay so not exactly 'the enemy' but rather the 'other' running group here in town that I don't normally run with. It would of course be better if the two groups ran on different days during the week so I didn't have to chose but off course they don't, so I have had to decide where my loyaties lie. So whilst the Ravenshead Runners women were engaged with trying to see how fast they could cover a single mile (between 5 and 10 min target) as part of a Womens Fastest Mile event, and with no one else posting an alternative run, I could either run on my own or join the Hucknall Harriers 10km evening trail run. So that's what I did. Now the reason I eventually chose to run with the folks at Ravenshead was that they are a bit more of a forgiving group for the slower runners, the pace isn't as 'rapid' and they regroup to allow the slower runners to catch up. And tonight within the first half a mile of starting out I had a reminder of why I'd made ...

  1) Diversity in Leadership: Don’t just vote for another pale stale and male captain to steer the ship. We have incompetent leaders of all sorts different shapes, sizes, genders and races. And you won't even have to remember their names just their characters ie the boring one, the dancing one, the buffoon one, the mad one and the teeny tiny Indian one. 2) Vote for change: We are the party that has had as many different Prime Ministers in recent times as Chelsea has had football managers. Labour haven’t had a single Prime Minister since 2010, and probably can't even remember what the job involves. 3) Reliability: It its fixed, you can rest assured that we'll not just break it but f&^k it up so badly even Jay Blades and his Repair Shop team won't be up to the challenge. Surely there are some institutions that we have completed shafted in the past 14 years just waiting to be destroyed? 4) All the benefits of taking back control post Brexit including that £10,000 trade...

 

It's not often I get to share some 'bloomin' marvellous news on here but today is one of those days. Pulp Friction is a social enterprise organisation that works with and alongside individuals with learning difficulties and autism to enable them to find employment in the workplace. Amongst the many things they do is help to run the community cafe at one of our circuit churches at Bestwood Park, where I often stop in for lunch. One of the other things they engage with are gardening projects across Nottinghamshire; at the Bestwood Community Garden, the Dig In allotment in Stapleford and in Greenhouse at JHQ. They also deliver gardening in the community, with all the food they grow is used within the social enterprise, with any waste composted to support a more sustainable approach Thanks to sponsorships from Project Giving Back,  Pulp Friction were invited to exhibit their Growing Skills Garden as an All About Plants garden at 2024’s Chelsea Flower Show. Proudly working...

Four days after battling the beast that was Eyam, it was time to get back in the saddle so to speak. This was my first run since that event and a chance to see how bruised toes and sore legs would hold up to running repeat 6 x 700 meter undulating hill loops interspersed with a 60-90 second recovery period. Which all very technical but in reality was just running up and down hills in a triangle shape. It is as you will know, not my usual sort of run but a chance to do something a little bit different and mix things up a bit is always good both for my general fitness and also the 60@60 challenge. There were seven of us, (no canine companions) on quite a blustery night, ranging from an effervescent 12 yr old schoolgirl to an effing and jeffing very achy 60 yr old almost pensioner. The toes were okay but the right hip / sacro illiac joint were rather niggly but not enough to send me to the glue factory just yet. Plus it meant I have completed a 1/3rd of the 60@60 runs which sounded great ...

Despite having spent 2.6 million pounds on a new state of the art Press briefings room only two years ago, just how well organised the Conservative party are could be seen by how Rishi Sunak was made to stand outside in the pouring rain to deliver his resignation, sorry I mean election speech, to a not very interested world, yesterday. In a bid to tap into the cultural zeitgeist or perhaps due to a water overload, Mr Sunak seemed to suddenly veer off track from his rapidly dissolving script.  Suddenly changing from reminding the press of all his achievements compared to those of Liz Truss, he appeared to channel the spirit of  Rutger Hauer's character in Blade Runner, Proclaiming in a more robotic voice than normal that he had  "seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Kensington... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near junction 11 of the M25. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die", ...

 A 54 yr old man from Hucknall is today recovering after the revelation that the clandestine online affair he thought he was conducting with an AI ChatBot was revealed to actually be a real life romance with a real life person. Speaking in an exclusive to Grace Under Pressure, Billy Nomates revealed, "I've seen the film 'Her' where Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with a computer program voiced by Scarlett Johannson. And I just assumed this was the same kind of thing. You know some clever software that allowed people like me to develop a relationship with an artificially generated avatar of a famous celebrity".  "It started off so innocently like a lot of online romances do with chats about likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams. And 'She', I mean the Chatbot was there whenever I wanted to talk. And 'Her' voice was uncannily similar to Scarlett Johannson's but then they can deep fake anything on a computer these days." "Imagine my sup...

I am to gardening what Monty Don is to the world of haute Cuisine. All that potting and planting and pruning and persevering and pretending you are not in a competition with your neighbours as to who has the neatest herbacious borders, it's just not for me. In fact it is one of my least favourite things to do with October to April being far and away my favourite months in the gardening calender when nothing grows and there is less than bugger all to do.  Unless it comes to a bit of judicious hacking. Give me a hedge trimmer and something to trim, or in my case 'destroy' and I am your man. I am the Greg Wallace of gardening, full of enthusiasm matched only by my limited skill / knowledge. If it's in my way, it's gone. So much so that I have have just spent a very theraputic 40 mins kneeling on my foam knee pad de-weedign my back patio, which had come to resemble an area it would have taken those at the Chelsea Flower Show several weeks to manufacture, such was the hy...

  Earlier on in the week the forecast for the Eyam Half marathon was light drizzle, which as you know turned out to be wrong as we ran under cloudless skies. So while my toes recover from yesterday's battering, here is a little tune to aid recovery and remind me that I should have had ....faith in the weather..by the Bookshop Band.

And no I am not even going to start attempting to pronounce the name correctly. All I know is that it is famous as the plague village where an outbreak of the Black Death in 1665-6 saw the villagers decide to isolate themselves from the surrounding communities in order to contain the disease and prevent its spread. As a result 260 out of a total population of 800 died. Today as I ran what is known locally as the 'Rat Race', there were moments when death seemed a viable option. Turns out that this is my 11th half marathon, well 13th actually if you included my only attempt at a full marathon in Chester and a 14 mile jolly in Charnwood, where that extra mile was the longest one ever. My first half was back in 2006 when I staggered round the very first edition of the Llanelli Half marathon, the last being in 2018 when it was the Worksop Halloween half. They have been a mixture of trail events and runs on the road with my 'fastest' ever time being just over 2 hours when ru...

Hands up any of you old enough to remember Woolworths and the highlight of a visit to any of it's stores...the pick and mix section. Now it appears that concept has been given a new burst of life via gender identity, which appears to be a something that you just make up as you want and the mood , situation or context takes you. So just before you start to jump on the bandwagon and line up to put the boot into Education minister Gillian Keegan following her anouncement regarding the limits to be placed on sex education in schools, just cast your eye over the possible 72 additional genders to the basic male and female that your little ones could currently be taught about. Confused, well just try to see which one are you...today. Let's all look forward to the day when Wetherspoons has to have a different toilet to cater for each one of them. Agender: A person who does not identify themselves with or experience any gender. Agender people are also called null-gender, genderless, ...

 A slight ' mix up' over checking in at my AirBnB meant that as I waited for my host to return home from work I had the opportunity to listen to the Folk Show on Radio 2. Towards the end of the show this drifted through the airwaves. I am not sure if I had heard of the band before, Villagers' and certainly wasn't familiar with this tune, but sat in the darkness it sounded lovely. Chanelling echoes of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, this is the beautiful 'That Golden Time'.  

Yesterday I was back in Wigan to take the funeral of my brother in law Dave. By doing so it was a chance to offer some practical support to my sister Pauline (Dave's wife) and also an opportunity even given the unusual circumstances to catch up with my other sister Lorraine.  Everything went well and it was a good send off with the crematoruim packed with freinds and work collegues, most of who raisea glass to Dave at the reception afterwards. But despite it going as well as such events ever can, it was as you can imagine an intense day, that was a rollercoaster of emotions.  So when it all drew to a close I needed to clear my head. To avoid the drive back to TOM's, I had booked an AirBnB  for the night quite close to an area that I used to run in frequently. So it was an opportunity to let the dust settle with a very gentle 3 mile jog through the local woods, along trails my feet were familiar with.  It was my last run before Eyam on Sunday. From here its downhill ...

Over 65 years ago the worlds most famous batchelor boy traumatised his fan base by announcing that he had a new companion. That turned out just to be about a new record release. Today however Sir Cliff Richard has made an appearance on Dragon's Den to reveal that, despite having to pawn most of his gold discs, he has finally managed to produce a living doll. Pitching his idea to the five dragons as he sought £100, 000 investment for a 5% stake in his idea,  Richard expounded on the anatomical details of his creation describing how she was able to cry and talk and sleep and walk. She even came with real hair that he invited possible eager beaver investor Peter Jones to feel. His offer was declined. "It's been a dream of mine for years," revealed Richard as he continued his pitch, "one that I took my time to perfect. I just had to do my best to please her, just so I can squeeze her. The Living Doll comes with a trunk so she can be locked away in order to stop being...

it is often said that desperate time require desperate measures (or was it pleasures). So with the history of a Brexit inspired election victory fading faster than the UK chances of winning Eurovision, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has hit on what he thinks will be a sure fire winner. Speaking in an exclusive with Grace Under Pressure, PM Sunak revealed, "In the past few months we have been banging on about halving inflation, reducing the national debt, cutting waitings list, stopping small boats and growing the economy but I now realise our focus has been wrong. This isn't what people want. What  they want are funny coloured lights in the sky. Not just at night and not just in one geographical location." "People are asking why is it the north gets these auroras and we don't. What's so special about them? Well the answer is nothing, and if you vote Conservative at the next election, then there won't just be northen lights but southern lights, eastern lights,...

Normal people up and down the land are dreading returning to work today and having to listen to or even worse engage in a conversation about something they have absolutely zero interest in. And that is the new series of Dr Who. With conversations threatened to be dominated by whether the new gay black doctor is better or worse than the scarf wearing one, the preppy one, the one that was the woman, all of the Scottich ones, the one who looked like Malcolm Tucker, the very tough northern one and the other ones no one can remember, the expected phone in sick rate is expected to soar. Speaking to Grace Under Pressure, life long Dr Who avoider, Tar Diss, revealed, "It's bad enough when Strictly is on and I have to deal with the inane chatter about Craig's voting or Gorka's foot positioning. But a new series of Dr Who, never mind one with a new Doctor in makes time spent at the photocopier absolute torture. Especially if I get trapped with Cheryl whose voice makes a Darlek...

A state of high tension has been noted in a cosy close in downtown Hucknall after the first and possibly last warm weather barbecue of the year has ended in A neighbourly niggle. Speaking to Grace Under Pressure, 56 year old resident,Ivan Issue, revealed, 'It's the perfect way to celebrate the arrival of warm weather with a vast array of partially cooked beef burgers and sausages cooked over a smoke belching barbie. Invite a few friends round, knock back a few cans, play some 1980's Brit Pop very loud and get a lobster red sun tan. Even the kids were slightly less than feral and Uncle Jack had managed to keep his hands to himself. Mainly. what could be more British. And then it was all ruined "Ruined by 'them next door' putting out all that washing with its overpowering smell of Fabreze. And it wasn't the basic Vanilla or Lavender Fabreze, oh no it was the throat irritating, eye watering Thai Dragon Fruit fragrance. It put everyone off their food and it...

Maybe I was just blinded by the fact that this was a run taking place on a Saturday that was close to home. Well close to TOM's home anyway. But the fact that it had the word 'crawl' in both the name and logo used for the race suggested it might have one or two hills along its 6.5 mile route.  Add into that that fact that it was the day when the sun decided to put its hat on which meant running in what I'd describe as 'rather warm' temperatures, didnt really help matters. And no one mentioned that the walk from the field allocated for car parking up to the actual start of the race would leave me breathless before the race had even begun. The name of the road 'Bottomhill Lane' should have given me some sort of a clue. Not having taken place for 5 years, the race drew a small select field of less than 100 with only one of two faces that I recognised, including 'Les' from Matlock Harriers who I have had a few duals with over the past few years. So i...

Two generations of the same family have been engaged in slagging each othe off without either side realisng thats what was happening. Linguists at the University of Linguistism have revealed that a difference in the understanding of language is at the heart of this as yet unlit potential timebomb. Frequently infuriated with his 15 year old grandson Brett lifestyle choices, 68 year old Alf Pickles' language has been littered with insults such as 'pillock, plonker git, berk, prat, nitwit and lummox', none of which has registered with Brett as a denegration of his character and intellectual ability. In a similar vein, pausing briefly to look up from his phone to deride his stuck in the 1940's grandad as basic, Karen, simp, delulu and salty, Brett's attention span wasn't long enough to notice that his insults had no effect on Alf whatsoever. At the time of going to press Grace Under Pressure is unable to confirm that it has received insulting comments about this blo...

"It's just wokery gone mad," exclaimed a bemused 60 yr old man from Stockport after discovering the existance of a Trans Pennine train services.  Speaking to Grace Under Pressure self identifying blogging genius, the man who wished to remain annonymous, (not to be confused with Ann Onymous) explained, "My regular 7.15am commuter train from Mancheter Piccadilly to Leeds is either jam packed, running late or simply cancelled. Now it appears that there are trains being put on just for the trans community."  "I mean how many of them are there who want to go over the Pennines and why do they get an 'express' train? Why don't they have to stop every 5 minutes and peer out at every God forsaken, rain swept grim village in Yorkrhire." "I knows its good manners to stand up and offer your seat to a lady but now I'm just not sure who is a lady and who isn't. And don't even get me started on who gets to use which toilet!"

The aim of the 60@60 running challenge, apart from stopping me getting 'more lardy'  was to discover some new and exciting routes that I might be happy to run again. The risk was that in the process I would also encounter some runs where once was perhaps once too many. Or certainly enough. I think Bank Holiday Mondays run, even though it was done under the most gorgeous blue sky, was one of those times. A potential group of 6 had been whittled down to 4 as we set off, not including Oscar and Sid, our 2 canine companions. Not that that is as issue but I often feel the more people in the group, the larger the possible number of stragglers to keep me company at the back of the pack. As it turned out, three of us were reasonably even paced , somewhere between plod and shuffle, whilst Laura was her usual boingy springy self, seeming to float across the ground with minimal effort.  The issue was there was that after a lovely half km stretch down through the woods on some very rooty ...

Sometimes its good to go along to see a play and have done a little background reading about what its about. on other occasions its good to know nothing.Last night was an occasion for the latter as I went to the playhouse in Nottingham to watch the openign nights performance of  'Punch' the new play written by Nottingham born author James Graham about 'an incident' that took place in Nottingham. That incident turned out to be the death of James Hodgkinson, who on a night out in Nottingham following a cricket test match back in 2011was killed by a single punch thrown outside Yates's wine bar by a complete stranger, Jacob Dunne, who was subsequently jailed for manslaughter. The stage set was based around a pedestrian subway in The Meadows in Nottingham, where Dunne grew up. Planned as a new garden city it turned out to be a congested area of alleyways, underpasses and deprivation where hope was in short supply. The first half set the scene recalling Dunne's upbrin...

If I hear a better song this month I will be amazed. I admit I had never heard of Adrianne Lenker or her band Big Thief  before but this is just beautiful. The perfect tune for a Bank Holiday Monday. Enjoy. It's a 'Free Treasure' Do you wanna go to the river? I know this spot so deep and green With wild raspberries and apple trees And rocks to climb between Water like a washing machine   Do you wanna dance? Sometimes I think I try too hard I trip on my shoes and I trip on my shirt Get caught on the dirt in the yard Caught on the dirt in the yard   You show me Understanding Patience and pleasure Time and attention Love without measure Love without measure   You're cooking dinner It's gettin' around half-past-ten I haven't smelled food so good Since I don't know where and I don't know when Where and I don't know-   Stove light glows like a fire We're sitting on the kitchen floor Just when I thought I couldn't feel more I feel a little more ...

Well the various inclusions for the 60@60 seem to be coming thick and fast at the moment. Yesterday was a rare Saturday back in Nottingham so a chance to link up for a pre Bank Holiday run, one that celebrated the 74th (or maybe 76th) birthday of one of our founding runners. Meeting at the site of the former Newstead Colliery, which now houses a pub called unsurprisingly 'The Pit', nine of us plus three dogs gathered for a 9am gallop to who knows where. Thankfully Peter did, and I was thankful that it was off on a route I had never run before and not what I feared it might be, a retread of Monday nights ache inducing jaunt. If and when I move from here, probably in Sept 2026, one of the things that I will really miss is the opportunity to run all the different trails just a stones throw from where I live. Even just a few meters to either side of what at times can be some of the most congested roads out of Hucknall, there are some really lovely mixed trails including today a who...