Special Friends

Ahhhh.

My mate Sherryll, she is so Special. Let me give you an example of a typical Sherryllism:

The other day I was with her when she bought a birthday card for her Gran's 70th. It was a great card - witty, and inoffensive. She wrote her message inside before sealing the envelope and writing "GRAN" in big letters on the front. We went to the Post Office to get a stamp and that was that. End of story.

..but not quite. Speaking to her last night she suddenly made a confession.

Sherryll: "I posted that card to my gran right."

Me: "Right."

Sherryll: "The envelope said "Gran". Whooops"

..like I said, so Special.


Ahhh Sherryll ...bless her. Her Pa, Alan, is quite Special too, just look at those red shoes.

The 31st Annual Dumyat Hill Race

*dramatic music* Dum...Dum...Dummmmm-yat

Last night, rather than have a quiet evening down at the local pub quiz, I was gripped by the strange compulsion to expose myself to pure unadulterated torture instead - I took part in The 31st Annual Dumyat Hill Race.

According the Stirling Uni Athletics Club, this is "the challenge of all challenges". The course is five miles long and has 1250' of ascent.

This race was created by a member of the Psychology Department who was propping up the Gannochy Pavilion bar, and thought to set an impossible challenge. A £1 bet was placed that no member of the University could, without mechanical assistance, do the return trip from the Gannochy to Dumyat in less than an hour. On Graduation Day 1971 the £1 bet was lost by 3 minutes. The race has been held annually ever since. Last year 191 runners took part. The current records are 33:07 minutes for men (2000, J Brooks), and 36:52 minutes for females (2000, A Mudge). The event is integrated into the Scottish Hill Running Calendar and it attracts professional runners, and running teams from across the country as well as a number of students and staff.

Apparently, "you can’t call yourself a real athlete until you have completed this race".



But it looks all pretty and harmless all the way there in the distance...

I entered the race just because I thought it would be "a laugh". And also because I think its good to give yourself personal challenges. This was to be especially challenging considering I am definitely more of a sprinter than a cross country runner. And I hadn't run anything like this distance for about 2 years. Certainly not up hill. And stupidly I had been out on the beer the night before. Oops. Perhaps not looking such a fun idea anymore. I actually thought there would be alot of students signing up for it for fun, but when I turned up to register, I was horrifed to see nothing but professional runners!! Deffinitely not looking such a fun idea anymore... My mate, Dom, was also running, but that was no comfort as he does this run 2 or 3 times a week! *gulps*

But I am a stubborn little thing, and had already got my running number on my chest, so couldn't back out now.



Before the race - smell the fear!



On your marks....

But guess who beat the original challenge and completed it in under an hour!! ..Just! I managed a time of 59 minutes!! And although I was far from being first, I was far from being last! I even managed a sprint finish. WOOOOOOOO!!!



After the race - smell the satisfaction!!

It has to be one of the most satisfying feelings in the world. The sheer horror that was the uphill slog is completely negated by the thrill of hurtling downhill again at great speeds. Brilliant!

I will be intrigued to see what time I get when I get in better shape. Dom finished in an impressive 42 minutes - so I'm totally psyched now to get into some training to see if I can't try and beat him, or at least get below 50 minutes next year. Bloody minded competition - my new raison d'etre.

VE Day

Car versus Rock. Rock wins.

I killed my car.

Contrary to popular belief, I was not infact "rally driving" at the time - merely driving around my forest study site. That happened to be on what could be described by some people as dirt tracks. A fateful wrong turn led to and encounter with a rock. And geatly reduced clearance. Needless to say, the rock won, and my sump and radiator were quite pitifully defeated. Cue: lots of smoke, oil, funny coloured fluids, and more smoke - but of the even scarier kind.

Result: Fi and Sarah stranded 200 miles from home. In a forest. With a car that is not only very-much-not-going-anywhere, but is now blocking the route for some irrate looking timber truck drivers!!

So we did the only thing we could, and left my poor little Punto abandoned at the side of the road and hitch hiked a lift back to civilisation. Oh, not forgetting first getting laughed at by the foresters I will be working with for the next 3 years.

The car has subsequently been retrieved by my insurance company. I am guessing by the solemn look the damage estimator's face though that it is not going to be a happy ending. Not for my car, or my insurance premiums anyway.

Ho Hum.

Cosmopolitan Carlisle

Back in my home town constituency there were only five parties running. The top three mirrored national results, but quite bizarrely the only other parties running were the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (which came in 5th with 1% of votes), and UKIP (which came in 4th with 2% of votes).

...I think that just about sums up Carlisle, potheads and racists.

The Country Has Spoken

So Labour has won its third consecutive term, but did so with a greatly reduced majority (66 down from 161-ish). I think this was always going to be the predictable outcome. Given the circumstances, at least it is not as bad as it could have been. Labour's reduced majority means that there should be enough opposition, including from Labour rebels, to counter Labour being able to force bills through. But neither is it anything to get excited about - disturbingly, both the Conservatives and the BNP have managed to increase their seats.

I was finding it very difficult to decide which way to vote - there is no way I would have even considered voting Tory, or Labour. I wanted to use my vote wisely. Make a protest.

Because of our anachronistic, supposedly democratic system of "first past the post", it means we were always only ever going to get a choice of between the bad, and the worse; Tony Blair or Michael Howard. I can definitely see why people would rather spoil a ballot than vote for either of them! But spoiling ballots in my opinion will not change the status quo because in the meantime, the small number the voters who do turn out to vote will get complete say over who runs the country ...and they could vote Tory for all you know!! Eeeek!

If those who spoiled their ballot or abstained had voted Lib Dem, we might have seen some moderately more promising results. Voting Lib Dem is the only real alternative... but thats hardly saying alot.



And people are always predictably neophobic when it actually comes down to it, and vote in the same dictatorial idiots that they always do *sigh*.

I would have felt my own personal political preferences be better represented by voting for one of the minority leftist parties, such as the Greens. However, until we reform our electoral system and get proportional representation in this country, a vote for the Greens at this time is more or less a "wasted" vote (no matter how optimistic I am, the pragmatist in me knows that society is not yet at the point where it will vote Green en masse). And I won't be holding my breathe waiting for that to happen.

Oh well, on the bright side, it looks more than likely that Blair will be given the boot any day now, and Michael Howard is on his way too.

One thing that still puzzles me though is I don't know why people are more positive about Blair's obvious successor, Gordon Brown, than they are about Blair. Afterall, Brown voted strongly for introducing foundation hospitals, tuition fees, terrorism laws, and of course, the Iraq war. He was Blair's 2nd in command. If the public distrusts Blair so much - why on Earth is Brown any better??