Grace Under Pressure 2

With a 15 mile unmarshalled trail run on Saturday and the daily temperatures soaring around 30 degrees, the need to do a little something this week to keep my legs and lungs ticking over has resulted in a 5.30am jolly to what was possibly the first place I ran in Hucknall. Situated adjacent to the Hucknall Bypass but relatively hidden from the road itself, Dob Park is a favourite location for dog walkers and those looking for a close to home escape into nature. Looking at my Garmin watch the last time I ran here was back in November 2023 and so even though it wasn;t one of the longer or more exciting runs that I have done this year, it certainly counts as part of the 60@60. As you might expect there was no-one out at that hour, not a single dog walker or even dogger. I had thought, given the time of year, that parts of the route might well be overgrown and require some nimble footwork together with a bit of ducking and diving to avoid low hanging tree branches but it was surprisingly c...

But sadly not reading it.

I often find myself telling others to take a leap of faith. Yesterday I found myself doing that very thing myself with the launch of something I wasn't sure was going to work; the concept of running a Holiday at Home club. For a day a week for the next 4 weeks, we have invited people of a 'certain vintage' who might not be able to get away on a holiday to come to church where we would put on a day of different activities and a lunch thrown in, all for £5 a day. Yesterday we kicked things off with a morning of board games and a trip down memory lane looking at various aspects of Hucknall past and present. Lunch was a jacket potato with a choice of three fillings and a side salad and then we had 45 minutes of suddenly being made very very aware of just how difficult it is for non dancers to actually dance.  And when I mean dance I don't mean throwing my usual shapes down at the disco but dancing a la Strictly, although thankfully without the alleged abuse being associated...

  Just where does the time go? It's hard to imagine that it was a year ago this weekend when the 1st serving from FoodCycle took place in Hucknall.  And over the past year we have opened up every Sunday apart from a couple over Christmas /New Year creating a delicious three course meal to an average of 35 people every session from food that supermarkets would normally have thrown away. So thats roughly1680 meals. Run by a great team of volunteers organised  by Martha and Tempany, the cooking team works in the kitchen to create meals from scratch, often with ingredients they only find out about on the day whilst the serving team offer hospitality to our guests.  It's been a really fantastic experience to see people from all walks of life coming together and gathering around tables to share food and fellowship, many of them coming back week after week. Long may it continue.

A little while ago I posted an amazing version of Midnight train to Georgie that I had heard sung by The Privateers whilst on board the Azura cruise ship. They introduced it by saying that it was their version of the Neil Diamond version, of the Gladys Night and the Pips version, of the Cissy Houston version of the song written by Jim Weatherly.  Now I had never heard the Neil Diamond version, in fact I wasn't aware that he had ever covered the song, but he has. Yesterday I found it. And it is fabulous. So as we haven't had many tunes during July, I thought I'd ensure that irrespective of quantity, I'd make sure we had oen of real quality.  So this is Neil Diamond's version of Midnight train to Georgia, sung with the BBC concert orchestra at the Electric Proms in 2010.

  Another split day with TOM in Sheffield and me teaming up with the Youlgrave Harriers for another Saturday morning jolly in and around the plague village of Eyam, where I plodded round the half marathon course a couple of months ago. It was I have to admit a pretty mixed bunch of runners, more plodders than whippets, who set off a little after 11am; the late start being to ensure that the brewery open day had started by the time we got back.   A group that started to get quite spread out even within the first mile or so. But there were no prizes for getting too far ahead, as unusual position for me, especially as I had no idea of the route. And so we plodded at a rather pedestrain pace across fields, along country lanes and following bridal paths, pausing to allow the 10 or so runners to regather and catch their breath. Part of the run emerged adjacent to the Barrel Inn, which triggered memories of the Eyam half marathon, but from that point it was virtually down hill b...

  On Wednesday night TOM and I had a midweek jolly down to Derby to see a one man by Rob Madge show called 'My son's a queer: But what can you do? And it was an utter delight. From a very young age Rob was obsessed with all things Disney but especially Cinderella and often attempted to stage full-blown Disney performances and parades in the family house. As Rob donned a wig and played Mary Poppins, Ariel, Mickey Mouse and Belle, his Dad doubled as stage manager, sound technician and multiple additional characters.  Unfortunately, Dad missed all his cues, got the dialogue wrong and moved scenery at the wrong time. His Mum fared no better mistaking Aladdin for Ursula. The costumes went awry and Ariel’s bubble gun didn’t work properly. but Rob's Grandma had a nice time despite being whizzed round on a reclinign chair in an atttempt to recreate 'spinning teacups'. Sat amongst a very boistrous LGBTQILMNOP+ audience i t was a joyous, multimedia musical fairytale sh...

The great thing about these summer mornings is that it gives me the chance to get out an run early if that hapens to be the only available option that day.  Yesterday, unable to join the RR's on their annual run/swim/run jolly to Gonalston, I was left to my own devices and company to get out and put some more miles in my legs and cross off another from my 60@60 challenge.  Not wanting to drive too far and also to run somewhere I hadn't been for a while I chose a variation on what I term the Felley loop.  So by 7am I was out the door and on my way under an overcast and humid sky. Its a route that undulates run mainly on hard trails with ups and downs, and the occasional stretch through the forest. It was also virtually deserted as during the 6.2miles I was almost the only one out there, encountering only 2 people out walking their dogs. And its different running out on my own. Don't get me wrong I'm quite happy shuffling along in solitude but doing it with a group not on...

  I wonder is the clue to what might be involved for the celebrities was always in the title of the show....STRICTly Come Dancing?

The nation is aghast again to discover just what some of the BBC high earners actually earn. Up and down the land expressions of disbelief and exclamations of 'well I could do that' were heard as Garry Lineker was once again revealed to earn shed loads just for slagging / hyping (delete as appropriate) off the men's national football team whilst seeming to forget that he and his golden generation also managed to bring f&%k all home with them either. And in a revelation that shows it is not just one gender who seems to get bags of cash for doing something that apperars pretty simple, Zoe Ball raked in almost a million quid a year for playing some records and chatting to some celebrity who doesn't really want to be there unless it is to promote some product or other. Meanwhile Huw Edwards seems to have done remarkably well out of his recent scandal of having an online w&%k with a much younger man judging by the increase of £40,000 a year whilst suspended from work...

Technology is great until it either stops working as shown by the recent Cyberstrike worldwide outage or it changes. Or you buy a new device. This week, thanks in part to the recent Amazon Prime sale, I became the proud owner of two Alexa type speakers and a Galaxy tablet.  Well the owner of a Galaxy tablet once Amazon had managed to deleiver it on the 4th attempt. And then without a charger included in the purchase.That it turned out was the easy bit. The hard bit has been trying to work out how they work especially given that the tablet didn't come with a hard copy of how to set it up and the Alexa app didnt seem to like working on a computer. And I haven't even mentioned passwords.  I do wish someone had told me many many moons ago a safe and yet easy way of being able to remember the passwords to a multiple of different sites / applications without every single password being identical. Some had thankfully been 'saved' or stored within the browsers on my computers b...

So another day and another night out. Only this time it was a hot date. Or that's what people at one of Helen's churches thought when they heard she was going for a night out in Nottingham with me. Let them dream...lol. It has been a hot date that was a long time in the making with tickets purchased in 2022 under the impression that the gig was taking place in July 2023 only to discover that it was actually for July 2024! And so what or who was worth such a long wait...Sarah Millican, thats who.  A regular of prime time TV comedy shows and topical quiz programs she is also the author of a very good biography called 'How to be champion'. If you get the chance to read it then do because it is champion.. And compared to her TV performances live in concert she makes renowned potty mouth Adele sound like a nun. So much so that Helen's Mam was very worried that she was going to see her with a minister...lol.  Now I don't know how Helen's Mam knew this but she wasn...

I wonder if it is just coincidence that 100 years after the actual events took place in Paris, and less than a week before Paris 2024 kicks off, that a theare production of Chariots of Fire is doing the rounds. Famous to many for the film and its hypnotic opening soundtrack that seems to induce listeners to engage in slow motion running, Chariots of Fire tells the story of two of Britain's greatest ever athletes, Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddel and the differing struggles thay both had to overcome in order to become the best runner possible.  For Abrahams it was the prejudice he encountered for being both Jewish and for daring to engage the services of a professional coach. For Liddle it was the discovery that the heats of the 100 meters, for which he was the favourite, would be held on a Sunday which went against he tenants of his faith Last night show in Sheffield, one of my favourite theatres,  was superb helped in no little way by the very inventive staging on a revolving...

  how to spot an idiot...

It's strange how the mind plays tricks especially when it comes to re-running races after a gap of a couple of years. This week it has been the Pints and Pork Scratchings 4.9 mile jolly out at Epperston, a lovely little local race run to raise funds for the Brain Tumour charity. Since its inception in 2021 the number of people running has almost doubled with huge representations in this edition from RedHill and Hucknall runners who seemed to be in competition as to who could provide the most runners. In contrast Ravenshead Runners had less than a handful on show. But it's quality rather than quantity that counts. As a result the start, with 253 runners and assorted dogs was rather congested and slow which was a bit frustrating but probably not a bad thing given the lumpy nature of the course and the four hills that lay ahead which thankfully didn't appear as bad as I had remembered. I felt as if I was running okay in the first section and had memories of pausing much more f...

In an atttempt to be quick off the mark with its plans to provide up to 1.5 million new houses over a five year term, the Labour government has hit the ground running with it's first proposal; a cave on the moon. Fitting in with its plans to utilise the 'grey belt' Labour deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, described the area around property as being far more spacious and desirable that where she grew up in Stockport. Noisy neighbours won't be a problem either, something that has been an issue in Manchester in recent years.  In fact your nearest neighbours will be 252,000 miles away but Deliveroo still claim to be able to make a home delivery within 30 mins. The sale of the cave is expected to feature on Homes Under the Hammer, with presenter Martyn Lewsi no doubt recommendign that one of two wals be knocked down to utilise the space to the max. This is of course unless said cave isn't deemed far safer than Rwanda and repurposed to send illegal asylum seekers.

T here are not many certainties in life but one of them is that whenever I do a 5km Thieves Wood run with the Ravenshead Runners, we will never do the same route twice. Sometimes I have a fleeting sense of deja vu as part of the run starts to look familiar, or pehaps its a run I have run in the opposite direction until within 200 yards I am completely lost again. Tonight was a point in case. We even ended up taking a wrong turn on the planned different route which made it even more different than we had planned! It was what I am told is called a 'recovery run' ie an easy paced, slower than normal, short distsnce  run done after one that has been how shall I put it rather more taxing. The aim is to keep the muscles moving and flush out any residual lactic acid and tightness that might be lingering. It's something I don't normally do prefering in my sadistic way to have legs like Bambi and feel all the oohs and ahhs of every muscle ache a couple of days after a long run. ...

  As proposed Bank Holiday cancelled!!!

Medical teams in the USA have been quick to proclaim a miracle, after President Trump survived an assassination attempt. Speaking in a virtually true interview with Grace Under Pressure, Ivor Diagnosis, Professor of Virtual Medicine at the University of Life revealed,  "unlike the bullet fired in Dallas by Lee Harvey Owsald in 1963, which caused catastrophic damage to the brain of President John F Kennedy, this one discharged by Thomas Matthew Crooks appears to have entered one ear and exited the other without magnaging to make contact with any part of former President Trump's brain".  "It must be the bigglist miracle since Jesus and poses the difficult question for the voting population of the USA as to whether a man with no brain will make a better President that a man with a brain in cognative freefall".

Just a few days ago I found myself in the unusual postion of finishing a race first from the group of runners assembled from my local running club. It was a moment in the spotlight I knew wouldn't last long. But how the mighty fall. Not literally but in the finishing order of my very next race where I assumed my usual postion towards the back of the pack. Today was the Crich Monument race, a mere stones throw down the road from TOM's. And as he was otherwise engaged in Sheffield, I had a free pass to go and run. Literally a free pass as my entry was defered from last year when the run and associated fete had to be cancelled due to Storm Ethel or whatever it was called.  So a year later than expected I stood on the start line with three other Ravenshead runners, which was almost the last time I saw them. I ran the race back in 2019 so the question was how close would I get to the time I ran back then. Spoiler alert: Not very.  I started off okay and managed to keep in touch wit...

  In breaking news Grace Under Pressure can report that new Labour government is considering granting the entire working population of Great Britain a bank holiday irrespective of Sundays football result. Should England win the entire nation will be dumbfounded and definitely drunk. Should England lose the entire nation will be grief stricken and spend the entire day on Twitter claiming VAR got it wrong. And should England play like they have during the rest of the tournament, with Gareth Southgate expected to play a 1-10 formation in an attempt to combat the Spanish Armada, the entire nation will be in a coma.

  To be run ragged on Sunday by a 16 year old Spanish schoolboy

 Just a lovely little tune for today, one that especially on the chorus has a vibe that suggests a trip back in time to the psychedelic 60's. This is Travis and their new song simply called 'Bus'.  

  If his dad was a tool maker, will the son be able to out a cabinet together?

So with 14 year old children waking up to experience a sensation that have never felt before ie Hope, what has been happening in the rest of the political landscape? After winning the general election Sir Keir Starmer has to live with the knowledge that despite having a huge mandate he is still less popular than Jeremy Corbyn was back in 2019. Sexual experts have discovered that many people are now able to experience multiple orgasms just imagining Tory cabinet ministers losing their jobs one by one. North of the border SNP have managed to slash travel expenses after realising that they can now all travel in the one camper van. Despite the stunning success of the Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey is still hopeful that his audition for Cirque de Soleil will land him a part time job. Reformers push for political change by insisting that by the time the 2029 rolls around they will no longer have to use crayons to vote.

Sometimes I have the feeling that things are not going to go well even before they have started. Arriving at the theatre in Derby on Friday to discover lots of small, un chaperoned, hyeractive children running round outside and in the foyer did not bode well. We had come to see Alice In Wonderland which I had booked thinking it would be the kind of bright, energetic, fun thing we / TOM would like. What I hadn't realised was that it would also appeal to families with young children who seemed to have brought an entire tuckshop with them and who proceeded to munch and chat through proceedings with the attention span of well small children. The show itself, well despite the good reviews it had received, wasn't the best thing we have ever seen. Whilst it's great to see lots of teenagers on stage it can also reduce the quality of whats on stage too.  And TOM didn't appreciate that it was based around the fact that British Sign Language (BSL) had been banned in Wonderland.  A...

And no before you ask that wasn't the result of a baked bean burrito before hand. Rather it was the annual Winster Hill race, an inaugral part of the Winster Wakes festival. A 'lovely' little run only a stones throw away from TOM's and at only £5 an absolute bargain for what is a pircturesque 4 mile undulating jolly. It is a race I had done last year and so knew what to expect, only to realise that I actually didn't. My first first of the night was to turn up to discover that I hadn't actually registered to run (I'm sure I had). Thankfully despite the run being oficially full the organisers were allowing entires on the day, even though I didn't actually have any cash on me to pay for it. There turned out to be 170 of us on the start line but unlike last year when the pace was a bit frantic I tried to hold back a bit and just remember to breathe. It also happened to be rather windy so that on certain sections we were running straight into the full force o...

 Up early this morning. Expecting this to be the view out of my window following the election result as I'm sure it was in their manifesto somewhere. Hope I'm not disappointed.

 Or did you vote for the shower of s*&^e who have given the least, the most for the past 14 years

A 46 year old man who spent 72 hours wandering round a field searching vainly for the Pyramid stage has finally returned home to watch what he missed at Glastonbury on iPlayer. Speaking to Grace Under Pressure, Glastonbury virgin, Sam Postethwaite revealed, "It all seemed so exciting when Emily Eavis opened the gates on Wednesday morning with the prospect of seeing all my favourite bands. I got my tent set up and then set out to get in position. And then it all went wrong." "It was like being in a musical version of the Blair Witch Project except I never ever got to find the source of the music. I could just kind of hear it but it was impossible to locate.  Then just when I thought I had found the Pyramid stage I was back at the circus area wth those hideous clowns. Over and over and over!!" Sam who normally has problems finding his car after shopping at Aldi was finally found by police on Monday afternoon attempting to find his tent in and amongst the 1000 of porta...

With only two days of campaigning to go, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey is on course to complete his alphabet of outdoor stunts that he hopes will convince you he is the man to make Great Britain the world superpower it once was. Whilst Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have attempted to break the world record for telling people his mum was a pharmacist and his dad was a tool maker respectively, Ed Davey has attempted to put the fun back in dysfunctional. Since the date of the election was announced Ed Davey has travelled up and down the length of the UK demonstrating he has just the right kind of qualities to lead this country out of economic and emotional depression by engaging in Abseiling,  Bungee jumping, Climbing, Diving, Escapology,  Fishing, Go Ape , Hang Gliding, Ice Skating, Jousting, Kayaking, Lassoing, Mountain Biking, Naturism, Orienteering, Paddleboarding, Quiddich, Rafting, Skateboarding, Trampolining, Ultimate Frisbee, Volleyball, Wild Swimming, Xtreem Knitting an...

I had expected that given the amount of food available on the cruise that the need for a pair of trousers with an elasticated waistband would have been a neccessary purchase on getting back home. Amazingly that hasn't been the case.  In fact I was pleasantly surprised / amazed to discover that I had only put on a single kilogram in weight after 15 days of gorging on the high seas. Some of it might have been all the walking we did or perhaps its just that we were full of fluid trying to stay hydrated. Or maybe it was all the energy I burned throwing shapes at the silent disco that helped. And no before you ask...I didn't. (not on this trip anyway!!!)  Anyway whatever the reason the cruise wasn't the calorie catastrophe I might have expected. Hopefully the diabetic nurse thinks the same on Wednesday.