The Olympics - am I bothered?

THE Olympic Games opens in London a year today. Am I bothered? Absolutely!

I was fortunate enough to cover the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. The highlight was watching Matthew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave capturing Britain's only gold medal at the Games in the coxless pairs title at Lake Lanier. This, just hours after most of the reporters had been working through the night reporting on the bomb explosion which had ripped through Centennial Park which killed one spectator and wounded 111 others.

As a sports reporter, it was a wonderful experience. I spent almost three weeks in Georgia, first of all at the British training camp at Tallahassee and then I had an amazing time in Savannah where the sailing was hosted. Savannah was very typical slow and laid-back Georgia, and the bench in the town square is where the chocolate box scene in Forrest Gump was filmed.

Though there wasn't a tremendous amount of British success to report on, as a sports nut it was a privilege and a wonderful experience being close up and personal to watch the greatest sports stars in action. I don't pretend to under gymnastics, but watching the gymnasts perform their routines live was simply gob-smacking. You could have heard the preverbial pin drop in the huge auditorium at the Georgia Dome as the gymnasts performed.

I watched my heroes in action. There was Michael Johnson smashing the world record in the 200m and then before the press conference afterwards he chided a couple of journalists for wanting his autograph reminding them how they had a job to do! And at the opening ceremony, we witnessed a frail-looking Muhammad Ali light the Olympic flame.

I didn't bother to apply for Olympic tickets next year. I've been there, done it, and what I would say is that when you are in the midst of the Olympic Games you exist in a goldfish bowl, almost oblivious to other events going on around you. Television will inevitably give you the best coverage and perspective, but there can be no substitute for actually being there.

One friend told me the other week how he had managed to get tickets for the athletics heats after going online just before 6am shortly before the second roll-out of tickets last month. He isn't bothered that the tickets are not for the finals, but it is about being there, and being able to take his children to this once in a lifetime experience.

What is scandalous is some of the huge mark-ups some of the hotels are offering for ticket and overnight packages. The whole Olympic ticket distribution is a complete mess. Today, there is a story how British fans trying to buy Olympic tickets abroad are being charged a delivery fee, almost 10 times the amount continental Europeans are being charged by the UK. In competition law no country in the EU can discriminate against applications based on their nationality.
       
In a year's time, these hassles will be long forgotten as London welcomes the 30th Olympiad. Hopefully it will be a legacy we can be proud of.

When being christian is more than being just a Christian

I MET a friend earlier this week who confessed to reading my blogs. Shame on you, say a dozen Hail Mary’s and wash your mouth out with that scrag end of Imperial Leather lying by the sink!!

It was a pleasant surprise to know my blog was being read. According to the statistics, my blog has been read all over the world in South Africa, China, Australia, Singapore, Canada and America - amongst others. Who is picking up on this dross?

I like reading other people’s blogs out of sheer curiosity and interest. I’m not much into Tweeting or following Tweets, but I appreciate a decent blog where the writer has something to say which is either funny, thought-provoking, or simply a darn good read.

 

It begs the question what drives people in such a busy world to read blogs which are, at times, part confessionals, the perfect platform for a rabid rant or even an opportunity to show off with a touch of literary exhibitionism? Isn’t this vanity publishing in its purest form?

 

Vain? Moi? Anyway, I’ve checked my hair, the eyebrows look less ragged, and I’ve cleaned my teeth this morning to get rid of the coffee breath, so move on!

 

So, back to my friend who had read the blog written last month about the fit suffered by my youngest son Ross. She remarked: “I didn’t know you were religious, but then there was no reason why I should do.”

It was an interesting remark. Some folk wear their faith like a badge, they even stick a fish badge on their car boot, while others go about their faith quietly. Writing about your faith in a blog isn't exactly hiding your light under a bushel, but it was the first time I had even been very public about faith - or my frustration.

 

For me, being a Christian is about being christian - with a lower case 'c' - with how you behave in every day life. It’s about behaving with humility, integrity, love, honesty and caring for others – qualities which sometimes you don’t see in ‘Capital C’ Christians, who forcefully show their badges of faith like shields, but possessing no humility whatsoever.

Maybe they should look in the vanity mirrors to see what we see. The word grace is a wonderful word, which captures the essence of someone who is a Christian, someone who has dignity, serenity and grace.

 

Last night, while the boys were at the cinema watching the latest Hairy Potter hoe-down, I read the report from the respite workers about Ross's fit, and how he was found head down on the floor, clutching a pillow with his body convulsing and his eyes rolled back. It made harrowing reading. How can you explain what has happened to someone who could not possibly understand the concept of what has gone on inside his body?

In the days after Ross’s fit, I received many messages of support. The response was simply stunning and unexpected. I received scores of messages, some from friends who I hadn’t heard from for 30 years but who, thanks to the wonders of the vanity confessional, had picked up on my plight.

Their words were not mealy-mouthed throwaway lines, but carefully constructed messages of comfort and understanding. One comment which really made me sit back and think came from a kind lady who wrote: “Maybe you receiving Communion at that moment (of Ross’s fit) was God’s way of holding you close?”

 

For Ross, he is doing amazingly well. He celebrated his 14^th birthday with a beach party at Hengistbury Head near Bournemouth on a beautiful sunny Sunday. What has emerged from his amazing head is a new-found skill to type words onto his laptop. Words such as monkey, ice cream, penguin, Mr Men, motorcycle, vacuum, bicycle, puzzle, giraffe, lion, rabbit, and even Postman Pap!

 

It’s as if there has been an earthquake of cranial plates in his head which have collided and forced out these words from his brain. In talks which I give about autism, I often liken the body of someone with autism as akin to a bottle of wine, with the wine inside that bottle being the potential of that person.

 

All we can do as parents and carers is to try to unhinge the cork which is secured tightly in the hope of releasing that person’s potential. It is unlikely you will ever fully release the cork, but the goal has to be to slowly pull the cork free so droplets of potential can drip out. And maybe, just maybe, for Ross we are seeing the cork moving and those first droplets falling. The challenge now is to harness that potential into something even greater.

 

Faith is such a difficult test. Why is it that way? Why can’t faith be so simple it fits into your heart like a glove and never moves? Over the past month, I’ve thought hard about it, listened wisely and the answer is never there.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor who courageously stood up to the Nazis. He was involved in a plot by German Military Intelligence to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was arrested in April 1943 and was hanged two years later, just 23 days before the Nazis’ surrender.

This is what he wrote shortly before he died - and thanks to the dear friend who sent me these powerful words of inspiration.

 

We turn to God when we are sorely pressed;

we pray for help, and ask for peace and bread;

we seek release from illness, guilt and death:

all people do, in faith or unbelief.

We turn to God when he is sorely pressed,

and find him poor, scorned, without roof and bread,

bowed under weight of weakness, sin and death:

faith stand by God in his dark hour of grief.

God turns to us when we are sorely pressed,

and feeds our souls and bodies with his bread;

for one and all Christ gives himself in death:

through his forgiveness sin will find relief.

The beauty and the beast of the New Forest

THE New Forest in mid-summer is simply divine. Forest ponies wander aimlessly across roads which weave their way through the 145 square miles of Forestry Commission land.

The magnificent and serene view is a mixture of heathland and thick forest, rich with English oak, beech and ash. The foliage is so thick and the canvas so green, you’re almost tempted to turn down the contrast button.

The view is very much the same but far less appealing from a runner’s perspective. The forest then becomes an unedifying slog along bone-crunching gravel paths and softer, but lumpy tracks, with a few annoying, little climbs thrown in. All this is set beneath a choking canopy of trees which hide the sunlight but which, on a hot summer’s day, leave your lungs bursting and straining legs screaming with effort amid the stifling humidity.

The New Forest 10 was my first race for over a year since suffering a monumental running disaster during a half marathon in Poland when I blew up big time after seven miles.

At mile seven in the heart of the New Forest, with a tough dogleg of a hill lying ahead and my body hurting badly through a simple case of being palpably unfit and blatantly ill-prepared after a niggling knee injury, I was asking myself why I had bothered to enter. Only the encouragement of cheery, yellow-bibbed marshals, some familiar running friends watching from the sidelines, and walkers traipsing through the forest spurred me on, plus the lure of a magnificent horse brass which every finisher receives.

It was a case of mind over matter – and not letting it matter. My body wanted to quit, as memories of that torturous run in boiling heat of Torun in Poland 13 months ago returned. Then I did stop and walk. The humiliation of giving up has never left me. In the New Forest, it was dispiriting to watch runners, who I normally beat in these races, ease past me in those last few miles with their eyes firmly fixed on the finish.

The teasing Tasmanian Devil on my shoulder was taunting: “go on Dave, have a rest, what harm is a little walk going to have?” Agonising and haunting memories of the humiliation in Poland returned. Feet were dragging, there was hardly any lift, my shoulders were sore, stinging sweat was running into my eyes and the hamstrings were so tight a concert harpist would have had a field day. I was running so slowly that even my Garmin GPS watch ran out of battery juice.

I ran for a while with one guy who, like me, is in the autumn of his running years and who had just got back into running after a long-term injury lay-off. We both lamented how we were not running as fast as we once used to but agreed that as the body gets older you need to re-set your goals more realistically.

And that’s why I’m now foolishly considering a second edition of Around Britain in 80 Races in 2012. The first tilt in 2007 spawned a book, so now I’m thinking of taking on a fresh running challenge in Olympic year with another 80 races around the UK? Stark raving barmy!

Discovering the soul of Swindon

SWINDON is a town easily misunderstood. It has fast become the new Slough or Milton Keynes for comic mock-taking, just like one of those chronic playground jokes which everyone laughs at but few understood.

I was back in the town last week for a few days catching up with friends, and it was good to be back. If ever you want to discover the soul of a place, to understand what makes a town tick, then meet the people and listen to them.

Swindon may not be blessed with the formidable architecture of Oxford, even the centuries-old history of Bath and boy it’s got its fair share of problems, but this is a town with a heart of gold which took me years to truly understand.

I caught up with former mayor Rex Barnett and his wife Sandra. I’ve written about fabulous Rex previously so I won’t dwell too much on the great man again. When I saw him on the Friday, Rex had just undergone a third course of chemotherapy in a bid to hold back the tide of lung cancer. He was looking good, formidable and as jolly as ever, waiting to learn the results of an x-ray which would determine how the course of chemo was faring.

The Reverend Simon Stevenette, vicar of Christ Church in Old Town and his delightful family played host to afternoon tea. He had heard about Ross’s plight at the weekend and read my blog about how sorely my faith had been tested. Simon didn’t try to defend what had happened, he didn’t come prepared with a ream of answers, but instead he listened, questioned and I was surprised to leave the vicarage with my heart filled with a better sense of purpose.

Few will have heard of David Latham, but he is the man who pulls the strings behind Mindful Employer which is run by the Richmond Foundation in Swindon. Mindful Employer does such formidable work to improve mental health in the workplace by educating employers and working with them. In just over three years, David has already achieved huge results in the town through conferences, seminars and networking with companies to highlight issues of mental health. He is just a one-man band, yet as we chatted over a curry in Old Town one evening, there was no curbing the enthusiasm of a man.

Tony Martin is another top fella. He is Zurich Community Trust’s volunteer manager, and one of the leading lights behind the Pride of Swindon awards. I had lunch with Tony who is the driving force behind Involve Swindon which provides so many volunteering opportunities in the town for companies.

In April, along with Swindon MP Robert Buckland, I spent two days’ volunteering at places such as the Broad Green Breakfast Club, Prospect Hospice, the Samaritans shop and enjoyed the best part of a day painting at the Swindon Scrapstore. Those 48 hours, which were organised by Tony, helped me to truly discover the soul of Swindon; a town filled with hundreds of unsung heroes who are the Big Society which David Cameron talks about. They do their unselfish work without reward or recognition – they are the foundations upon which Swindon is built.

There were several others who I was genuinely pleased to see again last week and whose friendship I value. Seeing them last week served as a reminder that those who write off Swindon do so through blind ignorance, without fully understanding the value that this town delivers.

Toiletrollgate: when the shit hit the fan

WELL, what an interesting week with the cyber fall-out over my blog “Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to Bournemouth?”.

The blog was picked up by the journalists’ website, Hold The Front Page, who lit the blue touch paper on Monday with an article headlined: “Former regional daily editor likens job to ‘toilet roll’” and retired. The article was swiftly picked up by several other websites and discussion boards.

That, in turn, prompted some interesting on-line comments and several emails too – an interesting mix of positive and negative - from former colleagues, journalists, business contacts and friends.

The negative fall-out came from several characters who had clearly seen the HTFP article but who had not read the blog. Had they done so, they would have recognised the light-hearted, mocking mood it was written. The clue was the amusing photograph of Blakey from “On The Buses” and the irreverent tone of the article.

The angry writers conveniently forgot the HTFP article posted weeks earlier on their website (the link was provided within Monday's HTFP article) when I was quoted as saying: “I have thoroughly enjoyed editing the Swindon Advertiser and was privileged to work with a very talented team of journalists.” They are comments which still hold true, but then you only read what you want to read, don’t you?

Fortunately, I received unexpected support on HTFP from former Birmingham Mail editor, Steve Dyson in his well-respected blog “Dyson At Large”. On Wednesday, Steve was complimentary about my editorship at the Adver, but he also described how he “laughed out loud” at the blog for the “self-deprecating accuracy” of my toilet roll description. 

http://connect.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/blog/stevedyson

To clarify one point which cropped up in Steve’s blog, I resigned from the Swindon Advertiser – I wasn’t made redundant, I wasn’t sacked, I didn’t even jump before I was pushed – although any pay-out after 11 years with Newsquest would have been nice! No, I resigned from the paper on principle and it was amicable. Those who needed to know were told the reasons why I resigned before I left.

What was interesting about the whole experience was how fast the cyber world moves. The blog was posted to my friends and contacts on Facebook and Linkedin, as well as to my four illustrious Twitter followers, yet very soon Toiletrollgate became the number one read story on HTFP.

My blog is in the public domain and so it is fair game. I just wish that those who choose to comment and let fly with their brickbats, do so accurately and informed, while understanding the context of the article in the first place.

• Thank you to everyone for their kinds emails about Ross. He went back to school this week and we are seeing the doctors next Wednesday. This new phenomenon of typing random words onto his laptop seems to know no bounds with Ross writing new words each day such as "penguin", "monkey", "bicycle", "puzzle" and "crayon". This does provide plenty of hope for the future and on Sunday we will be celebrating my son's 14th birthday.

Now tell me there's a God ....

IT'S 1am on the Children’s Assessment Unit at Portsmouth’s Queen Alexandra Hospital. There’s an aroma of hot food wafting down from the nurses’ work station along the corridor.
Alison, our duty nurse, has just popped her head into our room to take Ross’s temperature and other vital signs.

He’s still restless, trying to pull off the bloodied bandaging which leads to a canula stuck in his arm. Ross hates anything attached to him like that; hat, gloves, even the red wrist band he’s wearing which denotes his details – let alone a tube stuck into a vein in his wrist. 

Ross is confused, he’s in pain, yet no-one can explain to my young autistic son who is wrapped in his cotton wool world why he is lying on a creaking plastic mattress in a sweaty hospital room, surrounded by a load of electronic gadgetry.

It was 16 hours ago when I received the awful call from Ross’s mum that Ross had suffered a fit and had been rushed to hospital by ambulance. She was in Wales, I was in Wiltshire 90 minutes’ away – the race was on to get to the south coast.

It’s at times like these which really test your faith, and mine is now sorely tested. 

Moments before the phone call, I had been in church. At the time when Ross was lying postrate on the floor, clutching a cushion and raging into a convulsive fit, I was accepting Holy Communion. 

While Ross was lying in an ambulance, blue lights flashing to take him from the respite home in Fareham on a 15 minute journey along the M27 to the Queen Alexandra, I was repenting my sins and offering up prayers to my family.

But why? How can God inflict such torment on someone so young and so innocent? Is Ross, or are we as his family, paying for sins past? 

I just don’t get it and right now, sitting in this darkened room watching a poor frightened boy lying in bed, I don’t give a flying fig for God, Jesus Christ or any Holy Spirit.
Where’s the pay back, where’s the fairness, where’s the common sense? I am so angry.

The juxtaposition between my praying in church while my son was enduring a 30 minute convulsive fit with his tiny brain doing electronic gymnastics, is almost perverse. 

You try to live a Christian way, according to Christian teaching and you get a God Almighty kick in the teeth – not just now, but for the 13 years we have endured Ross’s autism which has left him without speech, still in nappies and requiring 24 hour care and attention.

I turned my back on God yesterday and I doubt I will ever return. 

Instead, without any of that Bible-bashing, Christian flag waving, "look at me" attitude, I have seen true care, love and devotion over the past 16 hours. 

The ambulance crew who treated Ross came to visit him in the afternoon. “It’s so great to see our little buddy,” said one of the crew. He was a hard-looking guy, with tattoos lining his arms and the build of a bouncer. But he and his other two colleagues possessed hearts of gold. “We’ve had a tough day, but seeing little 'un looking a little better has made the day a good one for us.”

I witnessed as first hand the unceasing care and devotion of the nurses in the ward. Anyone can knock the NHS, but when you see how the staff there take their time, explain and treat the patients with such care and attention, it is humbling.

Ross’s brothers were there, along with his mother, to comfort and sooth our little boy. Their love was unconditional, the pain and concern readily apparent.
Do we now face the added burden of a boy with epilepsy who could fit at any time, even while we are sleeping? He can't cry out, he can't warn us, he can't tell us where it hurts.

And then from Ross, a glimmer of hope, a straw to clutch onto in these dark hours of despair.
We were working on my laptop a few hours ago. There’s no wireless signal in the hospital, so he couldn’t log onto YouTube to watch his Thomas The Tank Engine videos. Instead, he has been watching Postman Pat DVDs.
However, at one stage Ross tried unsuccessfully to connect to the internet and remarkably started to type in words into a search engine.

I had never seen this before. He has never uttered these sounds before, yet slowly he typed in perfectly the words “Cat”, “Bag”, “Van”, “Sheep”, “Dog” and “Cup”, clearly hoping that one of these words might bring up a video he wanted to watch. It was remarkable, and a small victory. A further foundation block to build on.

Now there will be some who will claim how this was God’s doing, some sort of sign not to give up on my faith. Rubbish. If there was a God, he would not allow the suffering of others. 

Instead, this was one small step, one amazing achievement, from one remarkable young boy. 

Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bournemouth....

I hate you Butler, not the bloody number 36 bus again!!

THE number 36 Wilts & Dorset bus plies a long and tortuous route from the heart of the picturesque New Forest rumbling into Bournemouth.
I can't remember the last time I caught a bus. On a radio show yesterday, the presenter asked listeners when was the last time they had written a letter? For me, the last occasion when I bought a ticket on a bus was around the last time I wrote a letter.
But as I stepped onto the red, single-decker in the small town of Verwood, I couldn't help but reflect how quickly times change.
A few weeks ago, I was working as the busy editor of a regional daily paper - at my desk at sparrowfart a good couple of hours before the rest of the staff, and not leaving the office until nigh on 12 hours later, with sometimes the prospect of an evening function or meeting to come.
I was responsible for a team of journalists, an incredible Addams Family set of characters, as my day often depended on their whims and moods, or what issues popped up in my emails.
As an icebreaker for one of those terribly dull management training sessions, I was once asked to draw my job, so bizarrely I sketched a toilet roll. I explained to colleagues that my job every day was not a creative journalist, but instead it was determined by dealing with other people's crap!
So as the bus travelled slowly past the thatched cottages of Three Legged Cross and Ashley Heath (I know an Ashley Heath who works for BBC Wiltshire!), I reflected how I no longer miss those toilet roll moments.
After 30 years I had stepped off the incessant media merry-go-round, and it felt good. I had no-one asking me to do their thinking for them, no phones ringing, no Microsoft Outlook heralding the arrival of the latest piece of cyber dross to be dumped in my email basket.
No, the only decision I had to make was what stop to get off as the bus drew closer to Bournemouth town centre.
I was the youngest person on the bus by a good 20 years, and the only fare-paying passenger - everyone else had OAP bus passes! By car, the journey from Verwood to Bournemouth, a distance of 15 miles, takes just under half an hour. The number 36 takes over an hour as it winds its way south. But time was no issue.
A couple of ladies behind me spent the entire journey putting the world to rights. They were several rows back but talked in that loud hailer way which only old folk can do.
You couldn't help but eavesdrop their conversation as they disclosed their own medical histories, the annoying traits of their lazy husbands, and why mutual friend Mary should stop feeling sorry for herself 12 months on from her husband succumbing to cancer by getting out more.
The conversation was so trivial and charming, the atmosphere on this gentle charabanc so leisurely and cathartic.
As we reached our destination by the elegant Pavilion Theatre, the sun shone brightly, the sea glistened on the horizon and all was right with the world.
I helped one grandmother off the bus from the step to the kerb, and as we alighted in the south coast sunshine even the bus driver has a smile and a kind word.
Talk about Smallville, but why not?