Long jump

Is it just me, or is some of the cycling in the Olympics utterly baffling? For starters the events all have weird names, like The Omnium and The Scratch Race, but some of the rules themselves are really strange. They need to be desribed in detail by experts because the presenters haven't got a clue what's going on, and however hard you concentrate, it's impossible to follow them. I think they get made up for a laugh...

I've done nothing but sit on the sofa watching the Olympics today – and I’ve had a very lovely time, thank you very much. Sometimes, as I watch the athletes running around the track, I wonder how far behind them I would be if I ran next to them. Just how fast are those people running? I'm watching the long jump at the moment and wondering if I would now be able to do the event to a world class standard having seen the way the jumpers sort of run through the air after taking off. I think my best ever long jump at school was about 2 meters - surely, having seen how it's done, and even with my little legs, 8 meters would be well within my grasp? I had to give up sport in my fourth year at school to do music. My mate Tammy had to stop doing the long jump because her boobs were too big. She used to hold them as she ran down the track.

Is it just me, or are these Olympics really moving? Or am I simply in a daze of requiem sadness?

I’ve plainly got nothing else of any interest to say...

Pepys spent the day 350 years ago in the Rochester area examining various ships, forts and naval stores. The decision was made to start the journey back to London after dark, but a series of incompetent boatswains and some seriously inclement weather, meant they made slow, and in many cases terrifying progress. They alighted at Gravesend to catch their breaths and have a quick bite to eat whilst being entertained by a “drolling, drunken coachman,” before heading back to their boat,

It being very dark, and the wind rising, and our waterman unacquainted with this part of the river... I in such fear that I could not sleep till we came to Erith, and there it begun to be calm, and the stars to shine, and so I began to take heart again... and so made shift to slumber a little. Above Woolwich we lost our way, and went back to Blackwall,and up and down, being guided by nothing but the barking of a dog, which we had observed in passing by Blackwall

Angmeringagain

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd died and been buried in the night. It was fabulous to be in Fiona's cozy flat, but I was sitting on Hove beach until 1.30am recording my audio blog and it was bracing to say the least.

I hauled myself up to the train station to eat my customary breakfast plate of beans on toast at my favourite cafe. Sadly, they forgot about my order, and I sat patiently, like a pathetic little dog for half an hour, my stomach in knots, desperate for food. 

I missed the train to West Worthing by seconds, chiefly because I now have so many used train tickets, receipts and seat reservations in my wallet that I couldn't pass through the barriers in time.  I instantly  discovered that the next train was running 20 minutes late. There was some confusion about which stations it was scheduled  to stop at, and as we trundled along the coastal track, I became convinced that I was sitting on one of the curious trains which, for seemingly no reason, bypass West Worthing and the next five stations before trundling off to Portsmouth again.

I'd learned about these silly trains the hard way when, some months ago, I ended up in a random place called Angmering, feeling desperately angry and sorry for myself. 

The train pulled in at Worthing, and I jumped off and rushed up to the man wearing an Olympic-branded "here-to-help" day-glow tabard, who was standing proudly like a munchkin on the platform. "Am I right in thinking this train doesn't stop at West Worthing?" I asked. "You're wrong," he said, "it does! Quickly get back on before it leaves." I did as he said, feeling relieved and grateful that he'd been in the right place at the right time, despite having dodgy hair and looking like he'd melted in the rainstorm we'd just had. 

The train picked up speed as we shot through West Worthing, and the next stop, and two more after that. And suddenly there I was all over again. Angme-bloody-ring! 

I phoned Nathan for a whinge. "Take a deep breath and start the day again," he said. And as the train pulled into the station, I remembered the lovely hole-in-the-wall-style cafe on the platform which had made my previous trip round the Wrekin worthwhile. The place was like something from the 70s, covered in bunting, selling everything from home made cakes and lollies to books, bacon butties and buckets and spades. 

I told the woman behind the counter that her charming cafe was the one positive thing about ending up on the fast train to Angmering. She said that I'd made her day and we got chatting. She told me all about the mobile homes in Angmering and then gave me her potted life story, which has got to rank amongst the most action-packed/lucky/unlucky lives in history. "I'm a cat with 89 lives," she said, before launching into a five-minute soliloquy, which started, "well, like many young children, I was sexually abused by family members..." 

And then it all poured out... She'd survived a house fire, been swept out to sea and rescued by coast guards. She'd been stabbed and strangled. She'd had 7 motor bike crashes and been run over twice, once deliberately. A broad smile burst onto her face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud as the tales of woe continued. "I'm not a victim anymore," she said, "I always look on the bright side of life..." 

The cause of most of the mayhem, I learned,  was her first husband, who regularly beat her up and then repeatedly tried to kill her after she'd finally told him enough was enough. 

"When I'd finally dealt with all that, I decided to start facing my fears," she said. "I work with knives every day in the kitchen, I regularly visit the places where the bad things happened, and," she said gleefully, "my ex-husband went to Thailand on an holiday the week the tsunami happened... And no one's heard from him since!" Ah! The wheels of karma. 

She was adorably upbeat and continued to talk to me right until the train doors closed to take me back to West Worthing. "Come and visit me again!" she shouted, like I was a long-lost brother. I blew her a kiss as the train pulled away. She caught it and mimed putting it in her pocket. I will visit her again. Genuinely. 

350 years ago, Pepys woke up in Rochester, obviously in a very good mood, because he used the adjective "fine" five times in the space of the first paragraph of his diary entry. The weather was fine, a walk around the docks was fine, as was his breakfast of sweet meats, the furnishings and finally the garden of his host.

He went to church -twice - to ogle at the pretty Kentish ladies, and spent the afternoon examining various Navy yards and dry docks, before walking leisurely through sun-drenched fields until dusk. Ah! To peek just once into that 17th century world.

Stress head

It struck me at about 6pm today that I'm stressed out of my tiny mind. Much as I'd like to say that the experience of camping in Cornwall was both fun and deeply relaxing, the combination of sleeping on grass, not being able to take a bath and being woken up at 7.30 every morning by excited children rather took its toll. 

I returned from camping and almost immediately jumped on a train to Newcastle, and then had to be up with the lark this morning to stagger across to East London to edit the third film about the requiem for The Space.

I'm now at Victoria station, about to head to Hove, where, before bed time, I have to record another audio blog, this one whilst sitting on the beach. I am in desperate need of a lie-in, or a day of watching the Olympics, but my diary is full until a week on Saturday. The sum total of my food intake today. One weetabix and a 2 pieces of toast with marmite. 

I got to East London and was really ratty with Hazel the editor whom I like enormously. I simply didn't have the energy reserves to remember my manners, which I'm very angry about. I ache all over; every inch. I just want to bury my head in a little blanket and sleep. 

Now the train to Hove has been delayed by a track side fire. I shouldn't find this stressful, but I do. 

350 years ago, Pepys made the epic journey to Rochester, which started with a short hop along the Thames to Greenwich. The water taxi was forced to make a u-turn, however, because his clerk had forgotten to pack his riding boots. 

In Greenwich, Pepys was fed and watered by George Cocke and his handsome wife. A frugal but delicious meal, which included plates of fruit. Pepys was delighted to find mulberries, the first he'd eaten since a childhood visit to Kent.

From Greenwich, they travelled by boat to Gravesend, but arrived after dark. They stuck to the  plan of riding horses to Ashford despite the darkness and Pepys worrying about a pain, which one assumes was what he normally referred to as his "old pain" as, before going to bed, he regaled his travelling companions with gory accounts of his successful operation to remove a bladder stone the size of a tennis ball! Straight through the perineum. Ouch!  

Kee-yah

The woman on the train in front of me has one of those comedy Northern Irish accents. She says “key-ahh” instead of “car”, “hise” instead of “house” and “so she does” as often as she can. There’s a brutal nasality in her voice, which means she can be heard talking on the phone in the next carriage.

I’m somewhere in Lincolnshire, heading back from Newcastle, where we've just had a meeting for my next project. I can’t reveal too much about what we’re doing, but its working title is “100 Faces”, which might offer a few clues. I met Alistair and Helen at the railway station, and we immediately started reminiscing about the Metro project, which was launched 2 years ago now. Having caught up on how everyone was doing, and travelled round the Wrekin to get to the BBC in Newcastle on account of one of the Olympic football matches being played at St James’ Park, we settled down in meeting room 2 with about ten other people, to thrash out some of the finer details of the project. We even had a buffet lunch, which was entirely beige, but absolutely delicious, with more vegetarian food in one place than I’ve seen in all my journeys north of London.

I was back at Newcastle station before I could blink. I adore train travel. Give me a power cable, a cup of tea and no screaming children and I’m as happy as Larry.  

Passing through Lincolnshire is still a distressing experience, however. It’s now almost exactly a year since I was crushed by a somewhat misinformed judge - in a pokey East Midlands courtroom, whilst experiencing the early symptoms of whooping cough - and still the potato-covered fenlands in this part of the world make me feel physically sick. And bitterly angry. And a whole host of emotions that I don’t feel proud to experience. I still occasionally wake up in the night in a cold sweat. I always had such a profound respect for the legal system and genuinely believed that the truth in these situations would always out, and yet on that day, my trust was completely shattered. I stare out across the flat cornfields for answers; and yet in the mile upon mile of farmland which stretch out like a chess board from the window to my left, I find none.

It’s strange, but when the rolling hills of Rutland begin to make their presence felt, I feel the cloud lifting from me. Such a funny thing, life...

Here we are in Land's End by the way

In a daze in a maze

...And here's Meriel wearing the headache strip which I thought was a sanitary towel

It was a roguish Pepys who wrote a diary entry on August 1^st, 1662. I feel, really, he says it in his own words best, so here he is...

I was sorry to hear that Sir W. Pen’s maid Betty was gone away yesterday, for I was in hopes to have had a bout with her before she had gone, she being very pretty. I had also a mind to my own wench, but I dare not for fear she should prove honest and refuse and then tell my wife

could this be the scariest ride in the world?

The trouble with tenting

One of the major problems with going camping is that the aural landscape which often accompanies the experience, rather than being the soft sighing of wind, or the relaxing tweeting of birds, is the ear-splitting din of tantrum after tantrum from small children. Sometimes it's like dominoes. One goes off, somewhere in the middle distance, and then there's a veritable dawn chorus of grizzling. I say dawn chorus because the experience invariably begins at sun up!  

The flip side of the early starts is that, by ten o'clock in the evening, the camp sites become deathly silent, and eerily dark. We walked Uncle Bill back to her cottage last night (her clan aren't camping this year) and returned home via a series of pitch black lanes as high winds turned the trees above us into creaking, moaning, chattery old women. The only light came from the silvery moon, and a mystical orange glow just above the horizon in the West, which I assume was the sun setting somewhere in the mid Atlantic.

It rained in the night. I kept waking up to hear spattering on the roof of our tent, but we were gloriously warm and dry inside Meriel's tent.

The weather improved and improved throughout the day, and once again, we found ourselves crossing over the estuary on the King Harry ferry in order to reach the Glendurgan Gardens, a National Trust-owned, 25-acre, semi-tropical pleasure garden, which rolls down a valley towards a tiny beach.

It was a brilliant place. The kids were in their element. There was a maze, a bamboo wood, trees to climb, streams to splash about in and a brilliant spinning rope. Every winding path brought a new adventure. It's well worth a visit.

Much to our great disappointment we're now wending our way back to London, over Bodmin Moor and now into Devon. In 5 hours, we'll be home and the dream will be over. 

Land's End

I woke up this morning feeling like I'd been run over by a steam roller. Sleeping on the ground in a tent is no laughing matter. It's also not great fun in high winds and rain. Today's rather beautiful weather, which actually sunburned my face, collapsed spectacularly at 3pm. 

We spent the morning on a beach, swimming in the dazzling deep blue water, our skin turning to sand paper because it was so insanely cold.

At 3pm, as the weather started to turn, Nathan, Meriel and I decided to fulfil one of my life ambitions by driving to Land's End. It's taken me almost 40 years to get to Cornwall, and surely no trip down here is complete without a visit to the southern and Western-most tip of our beloved isle.  

The journey there took us onto King Harry's ferry which relentlessly tos and fros every 20 minutes across an estuary, linking communities which would otherwise be hours apart. It seems to be dragged from one side to the other on giant iron chains and has probably remained unchanged in decades. 

We drove through the most spectacular scenery; rolling dales, green, green pastures, tall hedges; here a disused tin mine, there a palm tree. It feels like Ireland here, or Britain in the 1960s.

Land's End itself is a horrifying mess geared towards the most unpleasant form of tourism with Victorian style lamp posts, and grotesque souvenir shops selling cider-flavoured rock, and tacky photographs of the awful modern sign which tells us the distance to New York and John O'Groats. The cliff faces and rock formations down there, however, are magical, even in a force 8 gale!

From Land's End we went to St Michael's Mount, or more specifically to Marazion, where we sat, eating chips on a harbour wall, staring at St Michael's Mount; a glorious monastery, sitting on top of a wood-lined hill, surrounded by sea just off the Cornish coast. The chips were served by the nicest people in the nicest chippie in the world. 

As we pulled up in Marazion, Meriel emerged from the back of the car wearing some kind of anti-migraine patch on her forehead. She'd been sleeping on the back seat and I genuinely thought she'd woken up with a sanitary towel somehow glued to her head by mistake. It took me some minutes to pluck up the courage to tell her what I thought had happened! 

We returned home to the campsite to play a game with pens and paper which involved writing names of famous people and putting them in a hat. Tanya's incredibly sparky 5-year old daughter immediately started to unfold the paper to see what was written on each sheet. "Oh no, no!" everyone shouted, "you can't look at the names before the game starts..." "It doesn't matter if I see them" said Lily, matter-of-factly, "I don't actually know how to read!" Quote of the week! 

Cornish blue

I am sitting in front of an open fire in the middle of a field in Cornwall. It's almost pitch black, the deep blue sea is like a tall, flat-topped mountain to my right, the moon is a spotlight in a star-filled sky. The fire is glowing an intense orange and cracking like a thousand secretaries in a 1940s typing pool. The air is laced with the alluring scent of wood smoke. I'm surrounded by great friends. We've had a wonderful meal which tasted of charcoal, and Wils and Tomas have just performed Star Wars for us as a five act play. A distant clock strikes 11. The vague murmur of fellow campers going to bed.

Coming to Cornwall is a first time experience for me. Heaven knows why it's taken me this long to get down here. I guess it's not really en route to anywhere else. It is, however, absolutely stunning. 

We walked down to the little cove below our camp site earlier on and swam in the turquoise, crystal clear water which was cleaner than any I've seen in this country. It was colder, too, than anything I've dipped my toe in for some time. The coastal paths are lined with wild flowers; purples, yellows, vivid reds; sweeties on a snooker board.