Category Archives: World News

Somebody that I Used to Know

There has been very little time to sit and consider the achievement of last week until now. I will be applying for the Ballot for the 46 when it is open, with no desire at all to complete the 100. Knowing what’s involved, having had to deal with the virtual versions of both hills, that’s not what will ever be considered enjoyable. I’m not sure a lot of the 46 was that much fun in the rain, but it would be a lie to say the overall experience wasn’t satisfying. Next time however I’m determined to complete the thing on more than three hours sleep.

Sitting here in a foreign country, this is the first opportunity there’s been for a while to think generally away from what counts as normal life since before I started race training. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that on my return there will be much more of the same, with a probable increase in frequency: not because there needs to be improvement, but because there’s more enjoyment whilst doing that than was previously realised. Exercise has stopped simply being for a purpose, and has evolved into a genuine form of relaxation, which may sound odd, but is 100% accurate.

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There are other changes already being formulated too: my working space is going to alter (and reduce) plus there are thoughts forming that might relocate me completely. The benefit of going away, ultimately, is to allow readjustment of everything that surrounds, and it would be a foolish person (in my mind) that did not attempt some form of reinvention at least on a yearly basis. So, on our return (after a break with its fair share of drama) it feels only right and proper to start as I mean to go on.

The other key to this shift will not be to go out and buy new stuff to fill this space, but recycle what already exists in the house. There is plenty of desk space available to move and shift, and I’m not looking for anything sparkly or ‘new’ to work with. It will be a challenge of an ability to creatively recycle, and that’s something that appeals to a brain which is beginning to grasp that the future isn’t about a relentless process of continual consumption. There are some issues left to address at home too, it would be lovely to try and fix as many as possible in the months that follow, and those within my grasp will be summarily addressed.

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This is a much needed holiday. When I get back, the hard work will begin again, but with renewed enthusiasm.

The Colosseum

One of the reasons why our holiday this year is in Europe was because of me. Italy’s always held a special allure, and with European travel (potentially) becoming a bit of a minefield starting next year (cheers Brexit) it seemed like a good idea to push for this trip before that happened. The fact Rome became a Bond location in SPECTRE is an added bonus (*cough* Florence and Lake Como on the way back *cough*) but this belittles a very important part of my real reasoning for being here. I’m a massive history nut, and the home of the Roman Empire’s been on the To Do list since I first learnt what a Gladiator was, and we’re not talking about the spandex clad athletes on ITV who used to battle with giant cotton buds.

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Our farmhouse is on the end of the Metro line which deposits tourists literally outside the front door: this was Nero’s grand plan, to transform the existing structure on the site to a massive stadium. Begun in AD 69, it became the Empire’s centre for entertainment and spectacle and, most importantly, one of the most famous examples of religious persecution in History. For a city that remains deeply Christian, this serves as the permanent reminder of how intolerance must take place for acceptance to flourish. I’ve never been religious but the multiple significances at play continue to fuel interesting and challenging moral dilemma.

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It is also a RIDICULOUSLY photogenic landmark, which has detail and depth that I suspect most tourists don’t even consider. The regulation in brickwork is frankly staggering, and the skill in construction means that it has survived several major earthquakes (and attempts to recycle its structure) to surprising effect. I will be poring over the books I’ve bought in the next few weeks, and the pictures taken are more than likely to end up in a collage in my working space at home. The place is a testament not only to the people who built the structure, but those who perished within it for their beliefs. This was entertainment, pure and simple, and there are still parallels we can draw from within the walls that mirror our own modern existence.

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There are those who will maintain that history is only useful if it provides the means to make good the mistakes that took place, but monuments like this are the exception to that rule. Here is a structure that mirrors the continuation of religious persecution for entertainment: these guys stuck believers in with lions, we vilify opposition via a global arena. When all is said and done, very little has changed in 2000 years. This monument however has survived attempts to destroy it, reminding us that sometimes, it isn’t about the memories of a place, but the place itself which defines an experience.

Once we’d done here, it was time for a change of clothes and then off to the institution that grew from their humble beginnings as cat-food to utterly dominate the same city that once considered them as heretics…

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You know I mentioned my e-mail address stopped working a while back? Well, yesterday I discovered a quite important e-mail that had gone astray.

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I made it into the Ride London 46 Ballot. Fortunately I’ve not missed anything vital and the participation’s confirmed, though not gonna lie, I’m terrified. It’s exactly seven weeks on Sunday, which is also the day before we go on holiday, and suddenly everything’s become a panicked, anxiety filled mess. This is not how it was hoped such a thing would initially be prepared for and so, as a result, it’s time to take a fucking huge step back at the weekend and quietly consider what is needed.

However, before anything else, it is time to start selling the reason why I initially signed up to do this.

I grow tired of the pontificating on Social media by people who talk a good ‘let’s all change the World’ speech but don’t ever push their own boundaries to do just that. So, I’ve set myself a £500 target, and have already contacted Mind, who will provide me with a jersey and encouragement along the way. This seems to me a far better means of making sure that the people who really need help are getting it, because I’m giving money to an organisation who’s sole task is to do just that. Rather than just sitting on my arse saying I care, this is a constructive means of making things better.

If the anxiety ridden depressive can do this, then maybe that will act as an incentive to others.

Stupid White People

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TECHNICALLY the book I’m referring to in today’s title is entitled ‘Stupid White Men’ but after last night’s episode post Gym, plus some other online tomfoolery? All will become clear.

This week, I’ve watched people doing stuff they thought nobody else would notice. It’s happened on social media, in the real world and even in my own house. Not thinking when there’s nobody else around means you’ll only end up hurting yourself, in the end. Doing it in public? Quite a different thing. The level of arrogance and selfishness this week I’ve watched exhibited by people who, in many cases, should know fucking better than this, has been staggering.

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From today’s Guardian.

You can’t tell other people to treat you nicely when you already punched them in the face, Mr Politician. You don’t dismiss other people’s comments over cultural appropriation with a clearly-undisguised arrogance. You most certainly do not cover your own arse with thinly-veiled excuses and a well-paid lawyer anymore. There’s a fucking World of Respect missing around these parts of late and it is really beginning to separate those people who want a decent, well-represented future and those who are just thinking with their genitalia.

It isn’t just men either, but for the sake of the current feeding frenzy in the media, white blokes (in the main) get to be the Bad Guys. I’m really sorry to the large raft of decent men out there as a result. I’m fairly confident I know who these people are in my own sphere, but who I can now trust outside of that is now hugely in flux. Entertainers, sportsmen, media celebrities… anybody who didn’t really do a decent job of being a human being up until this point is potentially about to get swept away in a tide of quite right and proper backlash. If you treat people without respect, especially in the spotlight? There’s no longer anywhere to hide.

However, all of my issues this week have been with stupid white women, hence the ‘people’ referred to in the title. Women who can’t see past their own basic desires. Women whose notion of respect is minimal at best… and the list goes on. Oh, and I utterly count myself as stupid here, because I did something utterly wankstainy this week and will be paying the price for quite some time. The wider point here, that to make society better overall is not just one group of people’s responsibility. Pointing fingers at each other and having someone to blame is all well and good, but what happens afterwards?

How do we as human beings stop this cycle of stupidity happening once and for all?

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30 years ago, the Kings Cross Tube Fire killed 31 people when a lit match ignited a wooden escalator. Because of this horrific event, over the last three decades attitudes to smoking in public have radically altered. Fire safety protocols have changed, the Underground is now full of people trained to deal with emergencies and wooden escalators are all but a memory. Yet smoking still kills thousands of people who don’t ever light a cigarette and tobacco companies remain a massive force in developing countries… and nobody seems to worry about what vaping may do long-term to their health because nobody’s had enough time to do a study.

In your own home, personal freedoms allow you to conduct yourself as you wish… unless you step foot on the Internet, and then everything changes. Except some people quite clearly cannot distinguish where their personal freedom ends and common decency begins. Social media is just making this worse, to the point where it is becoming abundantly apparent certain individuals truly believe their private outlook is what should be the public norm, despite the massive damage such attitudes could have to those who are genuinely vulnerable or susceptible. History will teach us important lessons if we stop and allow it to do so, but the truly innocent around us may already be blighted by bad decision making or stupidity because… well, if nobody’s died, what’s the issue?

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Society’s downfall is everybody’s responsibility to shoulder. Yes, even the people at the bottom of the pile could technically be considered culpable, but you’d have a hard time in my mind apportioning anything but the minimum of blame to any human being who looks at another and, regardless of skin colour, ethnicity or wealth, treats them as an equal. What we do now as human beings is look for blame: it was that actor, that politician, that sportswoman who caused the problem. 

Perhaps the time is fast approaching where the reaction to such events is not indignation, but action from EVERYBODY. Teach each other, learn from these mistakes, find ways in your own communities and workplaces to stop such things happening. Don’t smile and laugh when someone attacks someone else or simply ignore what you saw. Make choices based on what takes place, discuss these with other people and then approach the people concerned with your issues. Most importantly, if you don’t feel that the person will be responsive or even listen to your argument, warn others of their behaviour, and stop taking snide potshots at them via subtweets on Social media.

If we all try harder, shit might actually start changing and stay that way.

Musclebound

Exercise is bloody hard work. Believing that simply taking protein supplements is going to give you a body like The Rock’s is, like it or not, living a massive delusion. I have to admit, the implication that under 30’s would believe this feels pretty insulting, and without any kind of hard facts that prove the point, the bigger issue is teaching better nutritional awareness. Protein shakes have their benefits: my husband’s using them to very good effect currently as a way to maintain weight, in tandem with what is a stupidly healthy diet prior to another bike race on Sunday. They can be incredibly useful to kick-start weight loss too. The article that started all this talks about what an average body requires to stay healthy in terms of protein: no two bodies are alike, and if you don’t sit behind a desk every day the number of calories needed will vary.

Mostly, the press can only ever talk about health issues in general terms. Studies and reports increasingly are taken out of context to highlight particular issues, headlines created as clickbait. It is quite rare to be presented a whole truth in reporting: like it or not, that doesn’t make for very engaging content. History reminds us however that promising people better bodies using advertising is hardly anything new. This kind of ‘persuasion’ has been going on as long as newspapers have needed advertising: this isn’t about buying anyone into the idea of supplements or aids either, it is convincing the gullible that their physique is flawed. In the modern world, obsessed now with body image in all its various forms, that is probably more concerning that handing over money to companies for anything that could be considered largely pointless if you just amend your diet and exercise more.

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I was asked at the weekend why I’d started weight training by a total stranger. The answer is twofold: it has always been something I wanted to do, because I equate strength with physical fitness. Body image is largely irrelevant, but keeping asthma in check is far more important: I can have a direct and positive effect on managing an illness which, as a child, meant exercise was off the cards… except, now I find myself wondering what might have been different if my parents had encouraged that urge and not suppressed it. I’ll never know, of course, but now I’m in a position where breathing difficulties are the exception due to my own hard work. The sense of satisfaction and achievement that gives is beyond significant.

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The irony for me is that my stomach refuses to process either protein shakes or gels: I can swallow them but they’ll be straight back up in short order. If I want to lose weight and build muscle, it’s good old fashioned food groups: chicken, lean meat and white fish, flapjacks and nuts, or protein bars at a stretch. On days like this when the sugar craving is strong, that can be a hard ask, but my brain’s spent over a year grasping the undeniable truth that you really are what you eat. If protein shakes help people be healthy, honestly, what’s wrong with them? In 40 years, if Global Warming has its way, we could all be eating proteins in powder form anyway. There’s an assumption only one real way exists to be healthy, and that’s simply not true. Sure, you can eat cake and drink coffee but if that’s your life without exercise, it’s as bad in its own way as never eating a ‘healthy’ meal. The key here is not one thing or the other in excess, but balance.

The truth about health is never hard and fast. Reality, as always, depends on the individual deciding to make a change, and then sticking with it. There are many success stories, but for every miracle weight loss or transformation there are the many who can never make it past the scales or the next meal. Like so much else in life, change must be yours to instigate. If you want something enough, it will happen. For myself, I can attest that a healthier lifestyle has transformed my life at 50, but that is only part of a far larger and more complex set of circumstances. Knowing that, I’ll never discourage anyone wanting to start the journey, but it has to be on your own terms.

Decide what you want, and then make a plan to get there in the healthiest manner for you.

This is Mine

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There’s a ‘thing’ doing the rounds currently on Twitter, which promises that for every ‘like’ one can garner, a fact about that person’s life will be revealed. Here’s a fact for you: I’ve been doing this for seven years, on and off, across multiple platforms. All you need to know is here, if the time is given to sit and read, but that’s the issue with social media. If it takes longer than 45 seconds to consume, you’ve forgotten it anyway. Needless to say, there’s one simple trick to knowing me better, you can just ask. Or, if you subscribe here I can promise, every day, to reveal a fascinating fact about myself if you read to the end of the post. I won’t get mad if you skip the other stuff either: at least you turned up.

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Yesterday was awesome, not gonna lie. To and from the Gym was a breeze, when very little aggravated affected muscle groups. The trick, of course, is to not do anything that might. The Octane was tough, but probably because there’s been no serious exertion for several weeks. That should get easier every day, and only under supervision will ‘serious’ weights happen, though press ups today should be doable and that can be an effective fill in going forward. Mostly, I am waiting for the all clear from my body to know when I can ramp stuff up again, and in the meantime working on all of my core to strengthen it and prevent the possibility of the umbilical hernia popping again. Once the work for the day is done? I’ll be off down the Gym.

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However what mattered more was finally organising a bunch of domestic shit that has laid dormant for a while, and might never have been completed were it not for my 12 year old’s searingly accurate take-down of what happens when parents stop focussing on the domestic. As a result, three bags of recycling are outside, and the front room is tidier than I can recall for quite some time. The trick of course is to learn from this and not let the issues pile up over time, which is why I need to make a day next week to go out and finally cancel a credit card, pay in some money and shut a bank account. Then there’s a list of ‘maintenance’ jobs to do and, as soon as I am back to lifting duties again, serious attacks on dirty parts of the house.

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Then there’s the Patreon, which I sat down and talked over last night with the husband. I’d not factored surgery into my timescales and as I’d planned to early launch tomorrow… well, frankly I’m not ready to go. The last time I rushed myself into a major project it was never completed and that’s not something that can afford to be done when I’m going to take people’s money. Therefore, we will launch in June, but not until the 15th, which means Early Access will now be available on the 12th. I’m still missing a Patreon reward that needs to be chased from the manufacturers, so hopefully I can get that in house too before the new deadline. All this will be detailed on the Patreon site later, but you heard it here first. Consider this an additional reward for your loyalty, or summat.

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So there you have it. Starting tomorrow, we’ll do a proper countdown and try and drum up some serious interest. I can do marketing, I’m sure we can make the whole shonky mess work and still look professional…

Fact of the Day

I told my first story to an audience in Primary School. I made it up, on the spot and it went down so well I made the story into a daily serial…

Mexican Standoff

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Today, has all been about a woman called Gina Miller. That’s her in the picture, and she and her challenge to the belief that the Prime Minister nobody voted for could just tell Europe we were buggering off in March has set the entire Brexit ‘situation’ on its arse. Now, we’ll need an Act of Parliament and at least a parliamentary vote to make the whole thing legally binding because GUESS WHAT? That vote in June wasn’t. Back then the smart pundits said it: the vote might indicate the country wanted to leave, but without the ratification of Parliament? It won’t happen. The High Court’s judgement is already being called one of the most significant in modern British legal history, and with good reason. It pretty much roasted the Brexit people before chucking them out of court on their ears.

That vote in which you lied and deceived people to get your way? You know the one that many people called a veiled Tory leadership challenge in disguise? Well now it doesn’t matter that much. In fact, the first thing that happened when I turned on the radio after the judgement was the BBC suggesting we could have a General Election next year in an attempt for the Tories to secure a fresh mandate. I’m looking forward to Mrs May and her cronies trying to convince the 48% who didn’t vote for this that the ‘will of the people’ is what matters in this situation because if that were the case, you wouldn’t have tried to bypass Parliament, which is our publicly elected body.

Shortly afterwards the Daily Mail imploded and frankly after that, everything was glorious.

Honestly, if I made up this shit, people would laugh at me. It’s like the party in power refuses to listen to the advice its been given and instead feels this mistaken sense of obligation to entirely trash the UK because they had a vote that told them to do just that. It doesn’t matter how much damage and ruin will be wrought for future generations, let’s just do this anyway because we have to say we were good on our promises. Sometimes, it’s okay to admit you were wrong, and now the law of the country tells you how frankly awful this idea of the vote was to begin with?

STOP DIGGING.

Frankly, it’s been fucking fantastic theatre. It’s also a reminder to my mates in the US. You can still stop the trainwreck. There is time.