Good morning folks
I trust you are in fine pre-festive fettle.
After a lacklustre year of blogs totalling less than less than the digits on one hand, WordPress.com auto-subscribed me for another year and so I thusfore strive to write a bit more habitually or maybe more customarily next year.
So, before everything descends into fallen pine needles, flickering/failing fairy lights , Rudolf jumpers and Egg Nog/Snowballs, here is Mambo No.5 of 2022, up to now…
I will be honest, I (personally) have had better years, as have many of us.
Out of a pandemic straight into a war into a global recession and continual political clusterf@cks, it is easy to get a bit down in the dumps.
I stopped watching the news this week, there are no cats-rescued-from-up-a-tree stories these days and it grinds you down, so I currently live in ignorant bliss.
We all have bad days, little bra$$, and arguments with the husband/wife/lover/cat/dog/guinea pig, but the world is still a beautiful place.
Life is short, live it to the full and keep smiling 🙂
The comeback?
2022 was originally destined as the year of the comeback, for me anyway, from someone who rivals Sinatra for the number of comebacks attempted.
However, after dodging C19 for 18mths, the bugger finally got me in January and yet another comeback failed to materialise.
Breathing problems, errartic heart rates, tests, tests and more tests have proved inconclusive. There are folk a LOT worse than me and I am not actually ill-ill, just shagged basically. In the grand old Duke of York scheme of things, I am lucky to have had the tests I have had and I am grateful to the NHS, who could have told me to Do One. Keep positive, but not Covid positive!
Sadly the drugs don’t work and this inhaler contraption (not a sex toy) doesn’t work either 😦
I can just about pootle to and from work, jogging or on the pushbike, but if I ever try to up my game just a touch, a strange manevolent force bites me in the ar$e tout-suite, knocking me back to where I came from.
Deep breaths and ommmmmm…..
I have missed my CX this season, hopefully 2023? Time will tell…
RLWC 2021
A year late but worth waiting for.
The critics were out to shout it down with calls of one-way-traffic matches, cricket scores and overpriced games (which was justified in my eyes, why half fill a huge stadium with a £40 entrance fee when you could fill it with £20 ticket punters!? It looks better on the telly!)
We got to see just the one game, thanks to Badger and Shoresyman, and what a game it was!
The Aussies Vs. the Kiwis at the mighty Elland Road.
The Australian men’s side (and women) had trounced everyone who dared to take them on. Meanwhile NZ had done just enough but hadn’t truly set the world on fire.
That all changed in the first 15 minutes at Leeds when they really got in the Aussie’s faces and an upset looked on the cards, but the Kiwis let one weak try in and that was the difference and the northern neighbours ran out 16:14 victors.
England did look on course for a battle with the Aussies in the final, but sadly just didn’t show up for their semi-final against Samoa (who they had previously done in 60:6 in the opening game) and were beaten by one cruel point in a sudden death extra time golden point catastrophe. It just wasn’t to be.
(Tenuous Barrow link with Willie Horne leading out England against the Aussies at Headingley in 1952. The Lions ran out 19:6 winners).
Back to the RLWC 2021 (IN 2022) Australia beat Samoa 30:10 in the men’s final and the Kiwi women, who had previously looked strong, just couldn’t get past the Aussie women’s defence, who won 54:4
A great opportunity for some relative newcomers such as Greece and the Lebanon, but in the end the Kangaroos and Jillaroos were just too good.
However, the real two winners of the tournament were the Wheelchair rugby tournament, which had to be watched to be believed.
No spoilers, but just check this out!!!
And the incredible Sir Kevin Sinfield, who ran 40miles a day for 7 days to raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Leeds Hospitals Charity, The Darby Rimmer MND Foundation, My Name’5 Doddie Foundation and MND Scotland, setting a target of £777,000 and way exceeding that amount with a total of £2,259,061.11
Still time to donate HERE:
https://donate.giveasyoulive.com/fundraising/kevin-sinfield-ultra-7-in-7-challenge
Watching Sir Kev run into OLd Trafford at Half Time on final day was the highlight of the RLWC for me.
RIP Doddie Weir 1970-2022.
Gone fishing.
The one thing that has kept me sane this year is something that would bore the pants off most folk, not this blog, but the genteel pastime of angling.
When I realised around about March time that my plans to train my ar$e off and get back on the fells was simply not going to happen, I panicked and made a hasty Plan B, for I know that without something/anything to focus on I do start to go off my head very quickly. The girls were away, I was home alone and I tried to think of something that was
a) Cheap
b) Local
c) Doable
As a youngster growing up in the Lakes, none of my mates (or especially myself) were any good at football, and as we couldn’t play snooker or darts in Clinton Davis’s garage all the time. We all took up fishing, none of us had any real idea, none of us caught much, we got cold, wet, fell in, but generally had a laugh and sometimes a mini-adventure. (How 4 of us survived crossing Coniston Water in a Canadian Canoe, in a big storm, I will never know).
I then went to Kendal Library, read some books, learned a bit and started catching fish.
Back then, cheap gear was rubbish (everyone started off with a next-to-useless “Starter Kit” from Woolworth’s) and good gear was expensive.
Nowadays, thankfully, cheap gear does the job adequately and expensive gear is still expensive.
The Nipper and I have been all over and had some top days out. (and some mishaps….)
The next big focus iin 2023 s on Sea Fishing and hopefuly catching something we can eat, bringing the food bills down and getting some fresh North Sea air in the process.
Get the chips on!
Watch this space…
Mountains on Stage.
Back in the day, pre-bairn-era, Lina and I did a fair bit of climbing.
Mainly sport (bolted) stuff, but we got about; Sardinia, Kalymnos, Spain and Almscliffe Crag (no bolts there mind!)
Along the way we mopped up every single mountain film festival going, Reel Rock, SHaFF, Kendal and all of Al Lee’s masterpieces, of which everything began with the outstanding Asgard Project, which was in fact my devious husband funnel of persuasion which got Lina into it in the first place…
After leaving the land of the AQP Holy Trinity, living surrounded by 20,000ft+ volcanoes, and back to Yorkshire, where Windmill Hill is about my steepest slope, I kind of turned my back on the hills, which were an out-and-out obsession for most of my life.
I think that the current health issues have put me off even trying, but sometimes you just need a size 12 up your backside for a bit of motivation. My mate/2nd job boss, Dave suggested this mini film festival of which the trailer really didn’t do it justice.
VAGABOND OF LOGAN was an absolute epic.
Crazyar$ed French skiers/boarders/Alpinists/rafters/chancers on a mad adventure. Reminiscent of Asgard Jammin (they were Belgian, I know!)
Watch at your earliest convenience
Not that I am just about to set off on some 45 day epic, but it is good daydream material, shelved away under the heading “One day…”
(Incidentally we saw a mouse climbing vertically up the wall, obviously inspired by the film!)
And finally…
When I sold my soul and most of my Worldly goods, I did keep back one pair of climbing shoes and my harness/rack, sadly I flogged my mandolin, but you can’t have everything.
Dream, dream, dream…
Hasta la proxima amigos 🙂
Johnny, Lina and the Nipper.
p.s. Watch out, Jimbo is back in town!
Not seen ‘are kid in almost 8 years, good to see the lad 🙂
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