Thursday, 29 August 2013

Evoking the spirit of Sir Bob

***Spoiler*** - short, hectoring paragraph to be followed by a few in the usual vein...

Those of us above a certain age can almost certainly remember Bob Geldof letting loose a stream of spectacular vernacular at Wembley in 1985 during Live Aid, which, once you'd distilled its basic meaning was "give us your money". Well, I feel the same, with one small difference - there's no minimum I'm after, £1 will do.  You see, on a bad week I get 15 or so people tuning in for this rubbish, which can rise to 50 or so if I happen upon a subject that's du jour. And yet, a mere six (6) folk have so far dipped into their pockets for my sponsored event this Saturday.  To those six, many, many thanks, and to the rest of you - I mean it, even if it's just a pound or maybe two, please do what you can here:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/StuartrunsMaccCanal

It's for MSF, who at this very moment have doctors and nurses in Syria (and many other places besides) doing what they can to save and care for the poor buggers who've been caught up in the turmoil of that place through no fault of their own, and have suffered appalling injuries.  Thanks.

OK, maybe it was two paragraphs, but here we go with the rest. My lad and I had a lovely weekend in the Shropshire hills. Maybe it's a reflection of the mild OCD that it's been suggested we both have, but we don't seem to tire of doing the same thing each year (this was the 4th time we've done it). We do put in minor variations, but in essence it's the same walk. This year our variations were an earlier start, a museum visit, and a Chinese takeaway eaten with B&B-borrowed teaspoons on a street bench. Dammit, we know how to live. The earlier start meant we encountered fewer folk than usual on our route, the museum visit was a bit disappointing to be honest (its subtext seemed to be "wasn't it great when we all had rickets?"), and the takeaway was top quality - though enjoyment of it was considerably enhanced by watching the good burghers of Craven Arms go about their Saturday night business. I'll say no more, other than I'm surprised we didn't see more cars with confederate flags on them. Yee-ha!

There were also some unexpected bits to the weekend which made it really good. These included the discovery of Stokesay Castle (somewhere we'll spend more time at next year), the climb up to Flounder's Folly and the views from it, and a superbly maintained 1950s Foden truck parked by our B&B on its way up to a heritage event at Shrewsbury. The best bit though was the fact that my grunting teenager is becoming an entertaining and erudite walking companion - not once did I have to make conversation all weekend.

I was planning to write more than this, but I've been up since 5.30, it's 9 now, I've got another 2 hours on the train and I fancy some shut-eye, not least because 36 hours from now I'll be running a marathon. Night, all.


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