I can hold my head still with my hands at my knees...

At the back end of last year, I set myself a completely arbitrary running challenge. In 2014, I will run 600 miles.  I wrote it down, and I handed it in to my running club with the other members' targets and goals for the year: run a marathon, run the Robin Hood half in less than two hours, complete 5km without stopping to walk.... that kind of thing.

There wasn't any great science behind it, and I very nearly wrote out a target of 500 miles before deciding that wasn't stretching enough.  600 miles is 50 miles a month, and that seemed stretching but achievable.... not least because I'd spent much of 2013 being injured and was suddenly very aware of my apparently growing physical frailty, perhaps down to my multiple sclerosis.

I was unable to run more than a few miles a week between March and June because of a problem with my ITB, and I'm still not really able to go much further than about seven miles without really starting to hurt myself as my hip, knee, calf muscles, ankle and foot all start to complain.  So, yeah.  600 miles, why not?

When I got home, I had a look at my running stats on Runkeeper.

2013 471.3 miles
2012 666.7 (this was my first full year at running club, I think)
2011 562.5
2010 262.5 (well, we spent 9 months travelling the world)
2009 441.3

Injuries permitting, 600 ought to be do-able.  50 miles a month.  The stats tell me that the most I've ever done in  single month was 94.5 miles in August 2011.... goodness knows what I was thinking then, as I generally clock in around 40.  Another 10 miles a month, body allowing?  Why not?

I went out on a 4 mile run this evening.  That's not really very far, and I didn't really run it very fast.  My body felt tired and I had sore ankles and weak feeling arms and shoulders.  Physically, I wasn't feeling great.  Running is a funny thing, though.  Mentally, I felt absolutely fantastic.  That run took me to 253 miles for the year.  A third of the way through the year, and I'm 42% of the way towards my target.  I'm having physio on my ankle and I'm waking up in the night with muscle spasms in my calves, but I'm still running and tonight, I felt great.  I might be stubborn to the point of stupidity, but it's being able to flog myself like this that makes me feel alive.

Runkeeper have just emailed me to inform me that April 2014 saw the quickest average pace in my running since I started tracking in 2008.  I'm forty years old and I have multiple sclerosis, but I'm not dead yet.

Oh, and I entered the ballot for the 2015 London Marathon too....

dance magic, dance....

I was commiserating with one of my colleagues over coffee this morning about a spectacular series of pathetically childish escalations that he had experienced.  To cut a long story short, the whole sorry affair is an object lesson in how you should never try to do anyone a favour and how no good deed goes unpunished*.  He was filling me in on a few of the details and was struggling to find the appropriate simile to describe the nonsense he had just experienced.

"Are you familiar with the film Labyrinth?"
"Obviously"
"Well, it's a bit like the squabbling goblin hierarchy in Jareth the Goblin King's palace"

Firstly, well-played.  It's not every day that you get to conjure up a mental picture of David Bowie in a ridiculous wig in a work context....more's the pity.  I doubt that many of the members of my team would even know what this chap was talking about, and frankly that's their loss.  Secondly, if my office is a bit like the world depicted in Labyrinth, then the owner of the company would be the equivalent of David Bowie as the goblin king.....

... well, thanks for that mental image.

* as a bit of balance to this, I needed to find out some information from Ireland this week, and was given the name of a chap who might be able to help.  I dropped him an email, and it turns out that I was really helpful a few years ago when he needed something doing, and he remembered me well and was more than happy to repay the favour immediately.  So, to be fair, being nice to people sometimes does pay.

they can read all about it...

I don't know about you, but I tend to leave boring looking post unopened for as long as possible.  Bank statements, newslettters, insurance quotes... whatever.  If it looks boring, I'll leave it on the rack next to the front door until my wife finally despairs and processes it for me.  Occasionally, I'll cast my eyes over a pre-sorted selection of this mail and decide which ones to bin and which ones I'll reluctantly have to process.

Yesterday, I was slightly surprised to see that this pile awaiting my attention included an exciting looking lifestyle magazine.  A closer look showed that "INTOUCH" magazine was billed as "Your Avonex newsletter" and had apparently been sent to me directly by Biogen Idec, the drug company who manufacture the beta-interferon 1a that I inject every week to try and slow down the progress of my multiple sclerosis.  My first thought, given that the drug is prescribed to me by the NHS and delivered directly to me from them, was to wonder how on earth the drug company had managed to get hold of my personal details.  I don't remember signing a release, but I suspect it might be part of the package for the NHS to get a discount (apparently the cost per patient to the NHS for a year's supply of this stuff is £8,000 - that's £150 a pop.  Not cheap for something with little evidence it does anything).  

Security of data issues aside, what delightful lifestyle articles could my drug company have to offer me? Well, there's some news about medicine adherence: how around 30-50% of people with long term illnesses aren't taking medicines as they should do.  Hmm.  Why might a drug company be interested in people not skipping doses?  There's an interview with a nice lady who has been injecting Avonex for the last eighteen months and she tells her story.  She's doing well, you'll be pleased to hear, and has seen some of her longer term symptoms start to disappear.  She's pretty happy about that and that's good right?  She says "Before starting treatment, I had yearly episodes with my eyes. I haven't had an incident since the one that led to my diagnosis in March 2011".  I mean, there's a footnote saying "the opinions expressed in the patient interviews in this newsletter are the personal opinions and feelings of the interviewees and should be considered as such.  In no manner should such opinions be considered as representing Biogen Idec's views or statements".  Yeah, because they make no claims that Avonex will halt the symptoms of MS and have very little evidence to suggest that it does.  Obviously, if you want to infer that from the interview.....well, that's up to you.  

There are also articles on MS in the workplace, on good mental health, recipes for soup and creme brulee, a wordsearch, a quiz and a sudoku.  Quite the publication.  But.... what's the point?  On diagnosis, I was offered a choice of a number of disease modifying drugs; none offer a cure and all offer variously shaky statistics on how much they might slow down disease progression.   Doing nothing was a perfectly valid choice, but I decided that I would rather take a chance on something working than the certainty of doing nothing.  I chose Avonex because, although it had a longer needle and required injecting into the thigh muscle (rather than subcutaneously), you only needed to do it once a week and not every day or every other day like the other drugs.  You could also get it in a form that didn't need to be kept in the fridge (apparently you can feel a chilled drug going all the way in and I just didn't fancy that at all).  It was as simple as that.  There's some evidence that it might not be as effective as one or two of the other choices, but there's also evidence that it is better tolerated by the body over longer periods of time and you don't develop antibodies that counteract it as quickly.  

That was it. 

Does a glossy lifestyle magazine affect my choice of drug?  Not really, because I've already made up my mind.  Would I like to change?  Well, actually I'd quite like someone to come up with a treatment that doesn't require injection.... and of course I'd really quite like someone to come up with a cure.  Are Biogen Idec interested in either of these things?  Well, they make $2.91b a year out of Avonex, and most people who are on it are cash cows who will continue taking it indefinitely.  Biogen Idec's motivation for R&D is essentially to make sure that they have a product that is at least as attractive as the other similar drugs on the market - a market that they reckon will be worth $21b by 2018.  To be fair, they are working on a version of Avonex that needs injecting less often, and they've also got big hopes for a tablet based therapy called Tecfidera, but that is another patient milking drug you need to take every day with the aim of slowing down disease progress, not a cure.  As people would naturally prefer to take a tablet rather than inject, the forecast is that this will be worth $4b by 2018.

There's an awful lot of money in not finding a cure for MS.  If I'm totally honest, I wish they'd spend a bit more of it on research and a bit less on lifestyle magazines.

no tears goodbye....

My old idiot boss left the business last week.  It was announced he was leaving on Tuesday and he slipped quietly out of the building on Thursday.  It was common knowledge that he was going weeks before that, of course because it's a well-known fact that one is able to keep something like that to themselves.  He'd been with the business for almost exactly two years, and I think it's fair to say that he wasn't well liked.

He made my life miserable.  Ironically, it was directly after I won an award at work that I was offered the opportunity to work in what was about to become his team.  Even more ironically, it was my intervention a month or so after that that directly led to his recruitment as my boss.  In my wisdom,  I flagged to the IT Director that one of his major programmes of work was seriously lacking in leadership and was in desperate need of a senior, steadying hand if we were to have a chance of delivering anything.  The good news is that they acted; the bad news is that they recruited this clown.

It's apparently obvious to everyone how much happier I am in my current job.  I moved at the end of August, and almost immediately things began to get better for me after eighteen months of frustration and anger.  I actually can't bring myself to read my posts on here from that time because I know that my frustration is writ large, prompting some of you kind souls to attempt an intervention: just leave.   It's not worth it.  Sometimes, it seems, you don't realise how poisonous the air you have been breathing is until you stop breathing it.  For me, a change really was as good as a rest.

Idiot boss didn't leave my life entirely and was still nominally the IT lead on the project I was working on, but the reality is that he quickly became an irrelevancy to me.  As my personal distance on him grew, I was able to gain a bit of perspective on my time working for him and to let a lot of that anger go.  I was still angry, but mostly my anger was directed towards a department that was too weak and too stupid to do anything about him even though the feedback was coming in loud and clear from his team, his suppliers and his customers and the projects he was responsible for were leaking millions of pounds.  His first manager didn't have the courage to face into it, and his second manager just worked around him and sidelined him.  Pathetic.  At one point, the worst manager I have ever had in my whole career was made responsible for talent management.  I can remember sitting over a coffee explaining to one young girl who worked for him that no, it wasn't her fault and there probably wasn't more she could be doing and that she should not beat herself up or question her own competence.  Sometimes you need to accept that your problem is not your own performance but that you have an idiot for a boss.  It's still a problem, but it's an entirely different problem.  I have the experience to realise that, and I was still angry and frustrated.  Heaven knows how she must have felt.

Anyway.  He's gone.

He's been a dead-man walking since Christmas: irrelevant and sidelined on all his projects.  After an unopened Christmas card remained on his keyboard at one of his desks (he had two) for three months, I actually just moved his stuff and sat one of my new team there.  He didn't notice until he came up to empty his desk drawers.  It reflects poorly on the organisation, I think, that they allowed him to poison projects for a full two years before quietly getting rid.  We'll be giving him a reference, obviously, and apparently we're paying him to the end of May.

Unexpectedly, when I saw him mooching around the building on Thursday last week, I actually had a flash of empathy.  He's an incompetent idiot, but apparently he was told as early as February to hand in his notice, and he's been kept kicking around the business since then, apparently unable to just go on gardening leave or something like that.  What would you do in similar circumstances? He's just moved to a much bigger house, and at the age of 52, he's got one child of one month old and another under two.  He's obviously pitching the whole thing as his decision, but this is hardly an ideal time for such an upheaval.  Apparently, before he left, he was even advertising for a lodger in the company classifieds to move in with his new family (monday to friday only, preferably female).  He was a destructive, unsympathetic idiot, but apparently I'm not cruel enough not to feel for him a little.

Well, perhaps just a tiny amount.....

I was invited to his leaving drinks (he'd instructed someone else to organise them, of course).  I declined.  I also resisted the temptation to go and write "valar morghulis" in his leaving card.  That's because I'm the BIGGER MAN.

.... and I got myself a beer

On Saturday evening, we had a lovely dinner with some friends at Alyn Williams at the Westbury in Mayfair.  We don't go out for dinner all that often, but when we do, it's nice to go somewhere really excellent.  Actually, we were really tagging along with the same couple who gave me the Serrano ham for my birthday (thus reinforcing their claim to be the *best* kind of people).  They were good enough to invite us, and as we weren't planning on spending Easter with our families, what better than to spend it with your friends?

Often, when we come to this sort of restaurant, I have the taster menu with an accompanying flight of wines.  I don't really know much about wine, but it's nice to hear the sommelier telling you about the wine and why it's been chosen to accompany each dish.  It adds to my enjoyment of the meal.... and as you're often having multiple courses, a glass of wine with each course soon adds up, and by the end of the evening, you can be rolled out of the premises.  It's all good.

This time around, because it was on offer, I decided to have a flight of beers to accompany my meal.  It's the latest thing, apparently, to pair excellent beer up with the food, and I was curious to see what they came up with.

Well, here they all are:

Served to accompany langoustine/lemongrass/chilli/coconut/cucumber.

This beer is apparently finished off with some champagne yeast, and this gave it a more refined, interesting finish than your average lager, and it went very well with the fragrant seafood starter.  A good start.

Served to accompany hake/nasturtium/asparagus/sea urchin.

I'm pretty sure I've had this before.  It's a fairly typical new world IPA with bold, hoppy flavours, but it has a lovely spicy nose.  You probably wouldn't think that it would go well with the food, but actually it really does.

Served to accompany foie gras semi fredo/prune/celeriac/bacon/espresso.

This is brewed by Sharp's Brewery, the same guys who make Doom Bar and who have just been taken over by Coors.  It's a dark, sweet beer that, in my opinion, overwhelms the dish.  It was tasty, but I think too rich in flavour for the food.

Served to accompany Iberico pork/spices/spring salad/tarragon emulsion.

This was a delicious combination, with the beer not being one of those overpoweringly alcoholic Belgian beers, but being robust enough to hold it's own with the meat.  I really enjoyed this one.

Served to accompany Lomeswood Farm duck/wild garlic/barigoule or Pyrenees lamb/Jersey royals/seaweed/black truffle (I had the lamb).

They sell this in the beer shop round the corner from me, so I'm familiar with Bavarian smoke beer.  I generally find these a bit much when served on their own, but it worked well with the lamb.

(at this point I had a very tasty cheese course with a glass of port before the final push for home....)

Served to accompany a mango/avocado/meringue/sherbet
followed by
Chocolate/melilot/date/salt

Another one from Sharp's and another winner with the sweet courses.  This apparently has an ABV of 10%, but by this point the other beers have worked their magic and I didn't even notice how strong it was.

So that was it.  Do I think it was a worthwhile exercise?  Absolutely, yes.  Two of us at the table were having the beers with our food, and so the sommelier brought us one bottle for each course to share between us, and that worked out quite well: not too much, but enough to accompany the food.  It was also a bit less of an alcoholic slog than having the wine, which was good (although, in fairness, C isn't much of a drinker, so I also had a crack at a fair bit of her wine...which was excellent).  My favourite was probably the Goose Island IPA, but they were all really good beers and it was interesting to really savour beer with excellent food; a different flavour with each course.

It's not as expensive as you would think either: the taster menu is £65 (and they also have a full vegetarian taster menu too, which my friend Jonny says was excellent).  With matching wine, this is £125, and if you choose to have the prestige wines, it's £190.  Not cheap, for sure, but for Michelin starred food,  I don't think that's too bad and I've paid nearly as much in vastly inferior restaurants in Nottingham (I'm looking at YOU, The Riverbank...).

One gripe: the taster menu with beer was £110.  That means that you're paying £45 for the beer.  In other words, the two of us having beer paid £90 for six bottles of beer.  I know there's a mark up.  Of course there's a mark up!  We've all been served wine in a restaurant that we could have bought in Tescos for a fraction of the price.... you expect a mark up.  But.....but....but..... I picked up some of the Goose Island IPA when I popped into Waitrose in town on Monday, and it was retailing for less than £2 a bottle.  That's a little galling, wouldn't you say?

It was fun, but next time I'm having wine.  For that much money, I think I'd like to have something I can't get round the corner.

big man, pig man....

Apparently, I'm difficult to buy presents for.

 I don't agree with this, reckoning that all you need is a bit of imagination, but I've been told many times that this is the case so it seems that lots of people in my life believe it to be true.  It's true that I tend to buy myself anything that I really want rather than hoping that someone will get it for me, but surely to goodness it can't be too hard to think of something that I might like.  Can it?

I think a present that I was given yesterday rather proves that imaginative gift buying isn't quite dead yet.

I got given a whole serrano ham.

I'd rather thought that after a good six weeks of milking it, my fortieth birthday celebrations might be over, but apparently there was at least one more surprise in store.  The friends we visited over the weekend had ordered this little beauty some time ago and had been eagerly awaiting delivery.

So, now I'm the proud owner of both a ham and the stand to put it on.  It's as if they read my mind and thought of the one thing that was missing from my kitchen.

That's a lot of ham.  It's salted and air-dried, so it should last a while.... and in the meantime, I've been discovering the joys of carving my own ham and serving slices with olives.  It's a little taste of sunshine and it's lovely.  I also won't need to be buying any pre-packed slices from the supermarket for my lunch for the next little while.

It does, however, present me with a middle-class problem: how do I keep the cat off my whole serrano ham?  She's thus far only shown a ground-level interest, but this could yet develop into a battle of wills if she ever acquires enough of a taste for excellent quality artisanal ham to venture up onto the counters to help herself.

Good job I like my vitamin P, eh?  If anyone fancies popping round for a slice or two over the next few weeks, then please feel free as I should have plenty to go around.

What a brilliant gift, eh? Nice one R&L!

I knew nothing of the horses....

Earworms of the Week

“Walking in Memphis” – Cher

Another very mixed bag this week.  For some reason, when this popped into my head, I had the horrible thought that it might be a version by Michael Bolton.  Apparently though, it's a song that everyone thinks he has covered but he actually has not.  I'm not claiming any high ground here, relieved as I was, because the version in my head wasn't the original, but was the one by Cher.  Yeah.  Better, but not by a whole lot.

“(Remember) Walking in the Sand” - The Shangri-Las

The first version of this I ever heard was by Aerosmith on their classic Greatest Hits album, and that's pretty good.... but you really can't go wrong with the original, can you?

“Snooker Loopy” – Chas N Dave & the Matchroom Mob

The World Championship Snooker starts in the next few days, and you really can't argue with this little beauty, can you?  Reached something like number 7 in the UK Singles Charts, and I doubt there has ever been a finer record in that position in the history of recorded music.

“Brick House” – The Commodores
“September” – Earth, Wind & Fire

These two are paired in my head, and were triggered by one of my team saying (in response to one of those icebreaker question things) that "September" was the song that she would have playing all day every day in her head, if she had to choose something.  She played me a little, and it's obviously one of those records that everybody knows.  Would I want it playing in my head 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?  Well, no.  Particularly not the dance remix version she's got..... but I suppose you could have worse.  "Brick House" is entirely unconnected to that anecdote, but "September" brought it to mind, for some reason, and it just started playing in my head.

“You Can Go Your Own Way” – Fleetwood Mac

Probably going to be the unnamed headliner at Glastonbury on the Saturday night, aren't they?  Reckon I'll give them a miss.  I'm hoping they name Metallica, to be honest.

“In The Air Tonight” – Phil Collins

**air drumming**

“Blanket of the Night” - Elbow

Because it's a great, compassionate song by a warm, compassionate band.  Their new album is excellent, perhaps their best, and they were pretty good on Monday night.  Lovely, lovely Guy.

“Farmer in the City” – Scott Walker

This sounded like it came from another planet when "Tilt" came out in 1995, but the twenty years since have seen it grow and grow to the point where it now doesn't sound that outlandish at all.... perhaps I've just got more comfortable with it and it's a lot more normal than most of Scott's subsequent output, or perhaps he was simply twenty years ahead of his time.  Whatever, this is a brilliant song by one of my all time favourites and I'm definitely not sorry to have it in my head.

And that's your lot.  Short and sweet this week, but I've just had a bonus day in the office helping resolve a huge issue, and I'd like to get on to my weekend and to help celebrate a good friend of this blog's wedding.... and her new husband too.  Parp!

Stay classy.

roses....

A crisis in the office meant I didn't cycle home until it was already gone half-eight.  I really enjoy working with my team, so although it wasn't the best way to start the Easter weekend, it wasn't so bad. Still, as I got on my bike for the ride home, I was feeling pretty tired.

Nevermind, it was such a lovely evening that it was hard to feel grumpy for long.  Although it was late and I needed my lights for the cycle home, the sky was aflame with the most beautiful red striping of cloud and it was a cool and clear evening.  As I cycled offsite, the baby rabbits were out frolicking on the grass and a cock pheasant was busy corralling his harem.  Under the flyover, I saw there's a large patch of wild cowslips and then, as the cycle path curves alongside the Trent, I saw a freshwater cormorant, nesting swans and various coots, moorhens and geese. When I got home, I was greeted by my cat and my lovely wife.

It's a four-day weekend and it was sausages for tea.  What's not to like?

you and me babe, how about it?

As you know, thanks to my team at work, I've had something of a crash course in online dating over the last few months.  Because people apparently don't meet organically any more, several of the beautiful, intelligent women in my team are putting themselves through the wringer of dating websites.  One is very happy and several weeks into a promising relationship, but the other is still wading her way through hundreds of hopeful/hopeless profiles online.

Yesterday, I was introduced to Tinder.

Look, I've been happily loved up with C. for more than fifteen years now, so this is all pretty new and alien to me.... but I'll try to explain.  Basically, the way this works is that you load up a few pictures of yourself and a tiny bit of information, and you then select your preferences and how far a radius you're prepared to go for a date, and then you're off.  You flick through profiles, hitting yes or no.  Everyone else does the same.  If two people both like each other, then you get in touch and start exchanging messages.  Simple.  A little lacking in subtlety, perhaps, but it's a start.

My colleague handed me her phone and had me flicking through profiles on her behalf for a while.

No.  No.  No.  No. No.

After about ten minutes, I was in a state of despair at the future of humanity.  Pretty much every single guy on the system seems to have uploaded selfies that show one or all of the following things:

•  a gym shot, wearing a muscle vest and gazing lovingly into a mirror and flexing his guns
•  a topless shot, probably in a grubby bathroom, flexing his guns
•  several shots cheek-to-cheek with various females.  Ex-girlfriends?
•  bromance shots, up close and personal with your best buddies.  Drinking lager and probably topless.
• pictures of the amusing jape you get up to when pissed
• gangsta shot, perhaps in a fast car, wearing shades and an over-sized baseball cap.  Possibly topless.
• naked in a bathroom with a sock over your cock

Ugh.  Horrific.

I can't decide what's worse, that guys apparently think this is the kind of thing that girls are looking for in a man, or that these may actually be the things that girls are looking for in a guy.  Either way, we're doomed.

My colleague told me that she had a match the other day and the guy sent her a message.
"Do you want sex?"  That was it.
Who said romance was dead?

I think I was a lot more choosy than she generally is.  I basically clicked "No" to everybody.  I did click  "Yes" to the guy with long, wavy hair holding a cello, but that was because I was so busy laughing that  I was looking for more photos of him and I hit the wrong button.

This, my friends, is how young people find love.  Well, sex, anyway.

The bastards.

I am a preacher when I've got it on me, and I've got it on me....

[photo by Kevin Cooper for the Evening Post]

Elbow @ Nottingham Arena, 14th April 2014

Elbow are one of those bands that I've seen many times over the years.  We go way back: I first discovered them way back in 2001 when "Red" - the first single to be released from their forthcoming debut album was available to stream on Yahoo or something like that.  I liked it enough to buy the album when it came out, and we've been together ever since.  I've reviewed them a few times on here over the years, too.  As is now traditional on Elbow reviews here, let's revisit a few choice quotes from those before we get started on last night's gig.

When I saw Elbow in February 2006, as they toured in support of their album "Leaders of the Free World", I had the following to say:

"They remind me a little of a non-stadium friendly Coldplay - with a better and more inventive lyricist. They're very downbeat and slightly melancholy, but they have a wonderful knack with a tune, and given the right moment, can be wonderfully uplifting. They deserve to be massive, but I would be very surprised if that ever really happens."

When I saw them again in April 2008, touring the newly released "Seldom Seen Kid" album, I quoted that line again, adding that:

"Their media profile seems to be a bit higher these days, but somehow they remain a band that it's difficult to see ever really becoming as big as they deserve. Perhaps they're too self-effacing..."

Of course, not long after that, their world changed forever when they (deservedly) won the Mercury Music Prize on Tuesday 9th September 2009.... and they are now well established as an arena band and have their music featured to soundtrack inspiring montages on the telly and as the theme tune to the coverage of the London Olympics.  I couldn't be happier for them, but it shows what I know, eh?

As I said after their Sheffield gig in March 2009, "Elbow are a marvelously textured band; they write songs that take a while to soak in, but once they have soaked in, they seem to mature and deepen like a fine cellared wine, getting richer and broader with every listen"

Well, that's probably a more perceptive comment.  I'm not sure I can think of many other bands that produce songs as rich and layered as Elbow.  It's cliche to say that Guy Garvey is a warm and inclusive frontman and welcomes everyone into his genial embrace, but you only have to watch them to know that this has always been true and remains true even though he now plays to a constituency of tens of thousands of people every night.  The band have been together for more than twenty-five years, only relatively recently finding real success, and they so obviously remain a tightly-knit band of brothers, entirely comfortable with each other.  The band are far more than the sum of their parts, coming together to weave a web of carefully constructed sound, now often supplemented - as tonight - by a small orchestra.  On top of this, Garvey whispers his beautifully observed songs of love..... love songs not just to his lover, but to his friends, to drinking companions, to strangers he meets on the street and to every person on the whole damn planet.

The gig tonight is busy but not quite sold out, with tickets available on the door (even with the £30 I paid a good deal cheaper than Kylie is charging for her gig here in October).  The crowd is everything you'd expect from a mid-week arena gig for a band like this, and there is a pretty broad demographic here, swaying towards older couples and beardy blokes in their 30s and 40s.... in other words people like me.  We're more sedate than we used to be, and a double-bill of Jimi Goodwin from Doves followed by Elbow is just what the doctor ordered.

The band are really good tonight.  I've seen them better - and they seem to have been tailor-made for a sundown slot at Glastonbury - but they're pretty damn good tonight.  "The Take Off and Landing of Everything" is their sixth album and might just be their best yet.  For my money, "Build a Rocket Boys!" wasn't quite as good as "The Seldom Seen Kid" or "Leaders of the Free World".  It was good, but it wasn't quite as good.  This one sounds amazing; the songs here don't feel the need to shout for your attention, and I also think they're all a little bit less Elbow-by-numbers, reaching for all the right emotional buttons at all the right points.  Elbow have got a pretty good back catalogue to work with now, and it's hard not to be disappointed that we don't hear more songs from "Asleep in the Back" or "Cast of Thousands" (particularly "Fugitive Motel"), but such is the quality of the new album that it's hard to grumble that the set is heavily weighted towards it.  Take "The Blanket of Night": how many songs do you reckon are written from the perspective of two desperate refugees seeking asylum aboard a "paper cup of a boat"?  Always a compassionate man, Garvey really excels himself here (although, to be fair, it's also hard - as with almost all the songs on this album - not to see a subtext here about the end of his relationship to Emma Jane Unsworth too.  Poor heartbroken Guy).

Garvey, in particular... lovely Guy.... sounds fantastic tonight.  "Fly Boy Blue / Lunette", "New York Morning" and "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" all sound incredible (apparently, mentioning a much-loved New York celebrity in a song is a great way of getting her to ring you, should you be thinking about mentioning Yoko Ono in song).  All his usual stage banter is in place too: if you attend an Elbow gig, you should expect to be asked if you're okay at least once between every song.  He never varies much from his usual template, but he always seems entirely genuine when he asks, and you really sense that he cares about his audience in a way that someone like Liam Gallagher will never understand.  Special mention to guitarist Mark Potter too; where the dirty, stinking riff on "Grounds for Divorce" used to stand out as the exception in Elbow's set, I can't help but notice that he's managed to squeeze several more massive riffs into the new material.  Good work, fella!

Even a song as familiar as "One Day Like This" has refused to be dimmed by overexposure.  I've seen this song sung back at the band with greater gusto and feeling than I heard last night, but it didn't make a damn bit of difference to my enjoyment of it or my desire to sing it back to them as loudly as I could.  We even harmonised for them.

Guy Garvey is exactly one day older than me.  I may have weathered a little better than him, on the whole, but I can only aspire to a warmth and compassion on that kind of scale.

They're a band to be treasured.

VERDICT: 8 / 10

Setlist:
Intro: This Blue World (instrumental)
Charge
The Bones of You
Fly Boy Blue / Lunette
Real Life (Angel)
The Night Will Always Win
New York Morning
The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
Great Expectations
The Blanket Of Night
Mirrorball
The Birds
Grounds for Divorce
My Sad Captains
Encore:
Starlings
Lippy Kids
One Day Like This

don't you cramp my style....

I did a half-Olympic distance triathlon in the early summer of 2005. I was preparing for the London triathlon, and I wanted to practice open water swimming in a wetsuit. It went pretty well, on the whole, and apart from getting excited and trying to breath once every four strokes, I was very pleased with how my preparation was going. After the event, before heading for home, I took advantage of one of the on-site physios and had a massage. The physio asked me if I had problems with my left calf, because I seemed to have a golf-ball sized knot of tissue in there that wouldn’t respond to manipulation. Um, not really, I said… and then later on that same night, I woke up in screaming agony as my entire left calf was seized up in a cramp that just would not ease off.

I never actually did the London triathlon. A month before the big day and a few weeks after that triathlon, I woke up with a numb hand and started my four-year journey towards an eventual diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. I’ve had various problems with my legs since then, but mostly they revolve around numbness and pins & needles and I’ve pretty much been able to ignore them and carry on with life as normal.

Over the last twelve months, it’s become apparent that I have a distinct weakness in the left side of my body: my muscles are smaller than on the other side and I’m slowly losing the ability to lift that leg up enough to prevent me stumbling as I run. As a result, I’ve developed a whole pile of knock-on injuries in my plantar fascia, ankle, ITB, knee and hip. It’s tedious, but I’m still running so life goes on.

Recently, I’ve started waking up in the night with cramping in both my calves. This usually happens in the small hours of the morning, and is so painful that I have to hop out of bed and desperately try to straighten out my spasming muscles. I have been hoping that this is just a sign that I’m working my muscles hard and not hydrating properly or eating enough potassium…. But it’s looking increasingly likely that this is another symptom of my MS. Apparently muscle spasms are an extremely common presenting symptom of MS, and cramping like this could affect as many as 40% of people with MS at some point. I’m actually starting to wonder, given how close the remark was to my initial symptoms, that the physio at that triathlon in 2005 may actually have spotted an underlying problem.

So what can I do about this? Honestly? Nothing much. Yet another thing to be excessively stoical about because I can’t really do anything to change it. I’m clearly not going to stop running, so I’ve now started to rigorously roll my calves and to massage them before bed every night and I’ve added magnesium and calcium supplements to my ever-increasing selection of pills that I take every day (they join fish oil, glucosamine, vitamin D, and vitamin B, as well as my once weekly injection of Avonex and a hatful of assorted analgesics). I might start drinking tonic water too – sadly without the gin – as the quinine is supposed to be helpful in preventing cramping.

In other news, I’m thinking about running a marathon. Given that I’m currently too broken to run more than about 7 miles without really hurting myself, this might sound ambitious…. But if I can adjust my mindset to stop myself thinking that I can do it inside four hours and to just focus on finishing, then it should be perfectly manageable.

Ha! Listen to me! It’s as if I don’t know myself any better than that. As if I’m not going to enter swearing blind that I’ll walk it if I have to, and will then train as hard and as fast as I possibly can, probably breaking myself in the process. Having that insight into myself doesn’t, of course, make me any less powerless to halt the inevitable…..

ride the tiger....

Earworms of the Week

Usually at this time of the week, I'd be blathering on about the songs that have been in my head.  This week it would mostly have been things like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" by the Beatles and "Knives" by Therapy?  All these plans were somewhat blown asunder by a conversation I had this afternoon that has completely altered the landscape of my internal jukebox.

I'd had a day of meetings and presentations.  It was hardly ideal after a very late night to have to run some presentations first thing in the morning, but perhaps putting a brake on my drinking of the free booze on offer was no bad thing, and once caffeine was on board and I'd eaten some vitamin-P, the presentations went really well.

When I returned to my desk, later in the afternoon, for some reason I started talking about karaoke with one of my colleagues.  This colleague is 23 years old and tries very hard to be mature beyond her years.  She told me once that she doesn't do karaoke any more after a bad experience, and because she wouldn't tell me what the song in question was, I told her that I was assuming that it was "All By Myself".  She seemed a touch offended, but didn't correct me by filling me in what she had actually been singing, so I ran with it.... mostly because it amused me as much that she didn't get the joke as by the actual mental image of her singing the song.

Anyway, for whatever reason, we started talking about karaoke again.  She still won't tell me what the song was, but now I've expanded her repertoire of imaginary karaoke classics to include a number of bona-fide 1980s power ballad classics.  It started with me teasing her that I was now imagining her singing "Alone" by Heart.  Her look of confusion at this led to a quick YouTube play and a lot of joyous singing along by some of my other colleagues and lot of admiring of the 1980s hair on display in the video.  From there, I began composing my colleagues imaginary setlist to include "Eternal Flame" by the Bangles, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler, perhaps "The Power of Love" by Jennifer Rush, "It Must Have Been Love" by Roxette, "My Heart Will Go On".... the list went on.  She's also got the right kind of hair for epic, back-combed bouffante.

My colleague was confused and not quite sure if I was laughing at her, and this only made things funnier.  Clearly, all other earworms in my head packed their bags and left immediately and I've been singing female power ballads ever since.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

I should probably also declare at this point that I have also been listening - perhaps inspired by cheesy rock classics - to "Breaking the Law" by Judas Priest (and also covered by Therapy? on Saturday night), "Smokin' in the Boy's Room" by Motley Crue, "Spirit of Radio" by Rush, "The Boys are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy, "God Gave Rock & Roll to You" by Kiss and *ahem* "Holy Diver" by Dio.

Tell me about it.  We're literally moments away from "Africa" and "More than a Feeling" aren't we?   Brilliant. I'm totally not complaining.  It's been that kind of a week.

In other news, this....

Me?  The 13th Duke of Wybourne?  Here?  With my reputation.....?

lay down all thoughts, surrender to the void...

I was earworming “Ob-La-Di Ob-Bla-Da” this morning. It’s not my favourite Beatles song by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s definitely a step up from the version of “Strangers in the Night” with all the words replaced by doobie-doobie-doobies, sung in the style of Frank Sinatra that’s been stuck in my head for the last few weeks. One of my team asked me what I was humming so I told them, adding that I didn’t think that it even makes my top 20 of songs by the Beatles, perhaps not even the top 50. It’s above “Old Brown Shoe”, but not by much. This immediately led on to a discussion about our favourite songs by the band. “Eleanor Rigby”, “Let It Be”, “In My Life”, “Tomorrow Never Knows”, “Hey Jude”, “Something”, “Help”…. All sorts. Pretty much everyone had a view and chucked in a suggestion, except for one member of my team, who came up with nothing. She just looked blank and shook her head.

“Can you name a song by the Beatles?”
“No”
“Not one?”
“No”
“But you know who the Beatles are, right?”
“Yes. I’d know it was them if heard something, but I can’t think of any song in particular”
“But you can’t name a single song?”
“No”

I listed a few song titles, but she just shrugged at me. You wouldn’t think it was possible to grow up in the UK and be completely unable to name a single piece of music by the Beatles, but apparently it is. Remarkable.

At this point, another colleague – who comes from Liverpool – had her head in her hands in despair.

Seeing this, I pressed on.

“Do you know where the Beatles are from?”
“Yes. I think so…. They’re from Manchester, aren’t they?”

I don’t think my scouse colleague is ever going to talk to her again.

She may not be a fan of the Beatles, but this girl does, for the record, really love Katy Perry. I think she’d want you to know that.

I love my team.  I really do.

where there's music and there's people who are young and alive....

A whole lot of shit is going to be written about the life and death of Peaches Geldof over the next few days and her face is going to be used to sell even more papers than it did during her tragically short lifetime.... let's hope that, amidst the feeding frenzy and rubber-necking, we don't forget the basic human tragedy of a 25 year old woman dying and leaving behind a husband, two young sons and a grieving family.

My boss came into work on Monday morning and was glassy-eyed, tearful and overcome with grief.  It turned out that she had just found out that a good friend of hers had been found dead on Sunday at the bottom of a flight of stairs in her home.  She wasn't yet thirty years old.  It seems such a tragically banal way to die; something that could happen to any one of us any day.  What can you say?  What platitudes are going to bring back someone so irretrievably gone?

We tried to send my boss home, but she didn't want to be alone and, to steal the phrase from The Smiths, she wanted to see people and she wanted to see life.

Life is precious and fragile and so easily snuffed out.  Now is not the time for tired, cynical quips.

“There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.”

jesus without the suffering....

Therapy? @ Nottingham Rock City, Saturday 5th April 2014

In my third year at University, when we got back from spending a term in Venice, we were guaranteed campus accommodation. In my case, in the January of 1995, this meant a room in a flat in a purpose built plot of university accommodation just a couple of minutes away from the main student union. Very handy. In fact, my room was on the first floor and looked directly back down the road towards the main campus. People standing at the pedestrian crossing waiting to come across to the residences looked straight into my room.

If anyone did idly look up at my room, this is what they saw:

I had a **massive** poster of this on the wall above my bed.  Nice, huh?

Something prompted me to dig out my copy of "Troublegum" a couple of weeks ago.  It is one of those CDs that long pre-dates the time when I started ripping everything, so I didn't even have a copy on my iPod when I had a sudden craving to listen to "Screamager".  When I was thinking about what to listen to for my run on Saturday morning, I shared with the world on Facebook that I couldn't decide between Johnny Cash and Metallica and ended up with Therapy?

Almost immediately, both Graham and Mark messaged me to tell me that the band were performing "Troublegum" in full at Rock City that very night as part of the twentieth anniversary tour.  Tickets were still available.  Did I want to join them?  Of course.  The bloody thieves charged me a £1.95 booking fee and a £1.50 charge for a ticket that wasn't actually a ticket at all but my name down on the door, but at least I was in...

When I walked past the venue in the early afternoon, I overheard the band's roadcrew talking about how they had managed to get half price baguette for the rider, so it seems that even rock bands get old and sensible.  As you might expect, the crowd for a show where a band are playing a twenty-year old album in full doesn't contain many young people.  That's fine by me.  The kids seem to like The Horrors and The Palma Violets, so clearly their ears have been painted on.

Therapy? played "Troublegum" in full and it sounded amazing.  It's two decades old, and it sounded fresh and vibrant and LOUD.  The band looked like they were having a ball, and the crowd certainly were (apart from the plums standing next to me who spent most of the gig snogging each other and taking selfies of themselves kissing, with flash.  They didn't seem amused when Graham photobombed them...although it certainly amused us).

"Screamager" is the song I've kept coming back to over the years, and it is an amazing blast of a single... but the rest of the album stands up pretty well too.  The hits keep on coming: Hellbelly, Stop It You're Killing Me, Nowhere, Trigger Inside, Femtex.....It's not everyone's cup of tea, I'm sure, but the musicianship is good and the themes of the songs are reassuringly gloomy.  They played the album top to tail.

Set
Knives
Screamager
Hellbelly
Stop It You're Killing Me
Nowhere
(with snippet of "Nowhere Man" by The Beatles)
Die Laughing
Unbeliever
(preceded by a capella verse of Halfway Down the Stairs)
Trigger Inside
Lunacy Booth
Isolation (Joy Division cover, obvs)
Turn
Femtex
Unrequited
Brainsaw
You Are My Sunshine

... and then they played a whole pile of singles and b-sides from the same era.

Encore
Evil Elvis
Auto Surgery
Misery
Pantopon Rose
Totally Random Man
Speedball
Bloody Blue
Teethgrinder
Opal Mantra
Breaking the Law (Judas Priest cover - sounded epic)
Potato Junkie (with buzzsaw guitar snippet of "I Wanna Be Your Dog")

I haven't been to a gig that loud since I saw the Hives in the same venue in 2004.  It was fucking brilliant.  As spur-of-the-moment decisions go, this was a really, really good one.  I know this isn't really a proper review, but it was a damn good gig.  If you haven't listened to the album for a while, then you really need to dig it out.  It came out at about the same time that Kurt Cobain died and those  hooks, that guitar and those gloomy, self-loathing lyrics are kind of magnificent synthesis of grunge and metal.  It still sounds great.

Oh, and word out to Slam Cartel, who played the basement directly after Therapy's set.  Sounded pretty good.

Verdict: 9 / 10 ....best gig in a long, long time.

your loss becomes my gain....

Earworms of the Week

“Walk the Dinosaur” – Was Not Was

Boom boom acka lacka lacka boom / Boom boom acka lacko boom boom / Boom boom acka lacka lacka boom.... isn't that all you need to know?

“Firestarter” – Prodigy

Fat of the Land was released when I was working in HMV in York, and because it was the biggest album of the month, we tended to play it all day.  Now, when you work in a record shop, you become pretty adept at tuning out the godawful chart shite we generally had to play.  When you do get to play something you like, it's almost worse because constant repetition will kill pretty much anything.  It took me years to make peace with OK Computer for exactly that reason.  Fat of the Land actually held up pretty well, on the whole.  The main problem was that our manager decided that "Smack My Bitch Up" was not appropriate to be played across the shop, so every time it came on, everyone dropped whatever they were doing and the nearest person to the CD player had to dive across the counter and hit skip.  This continued for a while, then I innocently enquired if our CD player was like every other CD player in the world and could, in fact, be programmed.  It could.  I programmed it.  I kind of missed the adrenaline rush.  Can you remember when "Firestarter" was considered in some way a threat to society?

“Stay Together” / “Sleeping Pills” – Suede

I've only seen Suede once live; at Glastonbury in 1993.  They were really good.  Now that they've been back together and performing for 4 years, I should probably pull my finger out and see them again.  Some friends of mine saw them performing "Dog Man Star" at the Albert Hall last Sunday, and by all accounts they were superb.  It's an album that will always remind me of living in Venice.  Apparently they don't play the full version of "Stay Together" live very often (if at all), but they played it on Sunday to an ecstatic crowd.  Lucky them.  I just bought the first two records on vinyl and they sound magnificent.

“Do You Remember the First Time?” - Pulp

One of my team has been dating a guy she met on eHarmony.  It's been about five weeks and tonight is apparently their eighth date.  He's pulled all the stops out by booking a decent restaurant and by asking her to come round to his so they can travel into town together.  Of course, what this really means is that he's asking her to stay the night, and that tonight it's on, for the very first time in their budding relationship.  She's been bouncing around the office all day with excitement and nerves, and it's been lovely to watch.  My wife finds it hysterical that my team tell me these sorts of things, but I like that they do and actually I feel kind of nervous for her.  As Pulp say in this song, can you remember a worse time?  It's exciting but so awkward and fumbling and I'm not sure I'd want to be back there again.  You probably just need to get it out of the way, right?  Still, if things don't go well, there's always another song by Jarvis that seems apt: "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time".

“Helplessness Blues” – Fleet Foxes

Quite a departure from the more choral stuff on their first album, but the second album by the Fleet Foxes is quite beautiful too.

“Beat It” – Michael Jackson

One of my oldest friends and I disagree on Michael Jackson. When this song popped up on the stereo at our dinner party the other day, he promptly despatched his wife to skip tracks.  As I was literally in the middle of a conversation with someone about what a good song this is.... definitely in my MJ top 3... I wasn't having that, stood up and put it back on.  It's my party, etc.  At the very least, there are ways of going about it, eh?
It's a classic!

“Happiness” - Pharrell

I defy you not to be uplifted by this.  It may actually be impossible.

“New York Morning” – Elbow

I'm seeing Elbow on Monday night and very much looking forward to it because their new album is a corker.  Are there many better lyricists than lovely Guy Garvey?

“Antenna up and out into New York
Somewhere in all that talk is all the answers
And oh, my giddy aunt, New York can talk
It's the modern Rome where folk are nice to Yoko”

Fantastic band.  Seemingly getting better and better.  Plus, as I discovered the other week, Garvey is exactly one day older than me.  I think I've aged better, to be honest.... but he's perhaps more successful.  It depends how you're keeping score....

“Harvester of Sorrow” / “Blackened” - Metallica

As the party wore on last week, the number of people in our private room at the hotel slowly dwindled. By about midnight, we were down to the hardcore and all the women had left.  So what did we do?  We drank bourbon and put on Metallica.  I bought "....And Justice For All" when I was about 13 or 14 years old.  On cassette.  It sounded epic then and it sounds pretty good now.  On Saturday night, in the company of three or four of the guys I used to sit and listen to this album with back in 1988, it just felt right.  I was apologetic to the hotel on Monday, when they asked me if everything had gone okay, and said I hoped we weren't too noisy.  Not a single complaint, apparently.  I suppose that means that, even after a lot of drinking, we're old enough and polite enough to keep the volume down and the door shut. It was a fantastic night.... and what a band to finish with.

Right.  That's your lot.  Have a good weekend, y'all.

10/10

My working life has changed dramatically over the last few months.  Where before I might find myself reluctantly sucked into a conversation about non-functional requirements, these days I am much more likely to find myself asked what constitutes "attractive but not easy" clothing for a date.  As changes go, I have to say that I quite like it.

Yesterday, we got talking about the ten male features that women like the best.  Someone had been reading an article, and they wanted to get me involved to see what I thought.  We're an inclusive team like that, you see.

Anyway.  The list.

10. Muscular chest  / shoulders.  Apparently, when asked what they think women find attractive, lots of men put this right at the top.  I can't say it's something that's ever really been an issue for me, to be honest.

9. Penis.  Surprise, surprise.... men rate this a lot higher (at 3).  As the article says, women take a different view: "you might have a cool red sports car or even a stretch limo, but if the suspension’s shot and the ride’s too uncomfortable, well, that’s more of a deal-breaker. It’s okay if a guy has a mid-range vehicle that’s maybe dented on one side, especially if it drives like nobody’s business".  No comment.

8. Neck.  If you say so.

7. Hair... although apparently bald is ok on the right person.  By which I assume they mean Jason Statham.

6. Height / Tallness.  Self-evidently a desirable asset, no?

5. Long Legs.  Tend to go with height, I would have thought...

4. Eyes.  Apparently laughter crinkles are especially good too.

3. Flat stomach. "When a woman is admiring your flat stomach (that goes hand in hand with a guy who’s not sitting around drinking beer or playing too many video games), she’ll want to dip her hand along its concave edges, and that very well might lead to…well, you know."

2. Slimness.  Men thought women would vote for their muscular arms here, but apparently guns are less important than being slender.  Agreed!

1. Buttocks.  Men foolishly voted this at 8, but apparently the girls are all over it.

Once we'd been through the list, my colleagues inevitably asked me to list out the features that I find attractive in a woman.  I thought for a moment.

"Intelligence"
There was a confused silence and an exchanging of looks.
"Not breasts?"

Come to think of it, these conversations might be more complicated than the ones I used to have about non-functional requirements......

filthy....

With hindsight, perhaps a day when the whole country is enveloped in a thick, toxic fog and air pollution levels have reached a record high wasn't the best day to go for a run straight after I'd cycled back from work....

Still, my running (and now also my cycling) buddy and I hopped off our bikes and set off up a hill for a 4.5 mile run.  How bad could it be, right?

It's been a bit hazy all day.  I often see mist when I cycle in to work alongside the Trent, but this usually burns off during the course of the day.  Today, it just never quite went away.  Nottingham hasn't exactly been covered in the sort of saharan dust as other parts of the UK, but it's been an oddly grey day.  Now, clearly that wasn't going to stop me going out for a run, so off we went....

Still, I was confident.  I was okay to start with, more troubled by the heaviness in my legs from cycling home from work into a headwind, but after a mile or so, I began to see that I could see my breath as I exhaled... in spite of the fact that the temperature was well above freezing.  That can't be good, right?

Still, the Daily Mail has apparently known this all along.  They ran an article today (**warning** link to the Daily Mail!!) that claims that running can shorten your lifespan.

Well, if the Daily Mail says so.....

(the big payback)

I received a phone call from my older brother on Sunday afternoon.
"Don't worry, everyone's okay.... but I've just been in a car accident with Mum and Dad"
As conversational openings go, that certainly got my attention.

My parents have been visiting my brother and his family to celebrate Mothers Day.  They had been travelling for a walk before lunch with my brother driving when they collided with another car.  Given that the roof and all the supporting struts had to be cut from the car by the fire brigade before they could be taken to hospital, it's remarkable that no one was more seriously hurt.  My brother walked away with only the bruises from his seat belt and my mum was released from hospital on Monday with bruises and some "minor" cracks in her spine that may actually have been there already. Sounds pretty horrible, but apparently it's a lot less painful than when she slipped a disc.  My dad is still in hospital.  He's been on blood thinning drugs and the collision saw an artery in his chest rupture and lots of blood leaking into his chest cavity.  Apparently, so he proudly told me whilst high as a kite on morphine, it have him a D-cup on one side of his chest.  He's okay, I'm told, but just waiting to see what needs to happen to secure the artery and make sure everything is okay.  He was most perturbed to have lost his ridiculously large "phablet" smartphone to be honest, and since he got that back he's been busy chatting to all his church pals on Facebook.

My dad is a doctor, so he tends to make a terrible patient: always full of comment and criticism of his treatment and what he would be doing instead.  He's always been pretty unsympathetic with his family too.  If he's concerned about you, you know you must be ill, and I can only really remember that three times in my life: when I had measles and pneumonia together when I was about thirteen, when I had glandular fever and when I started exhibiting the symptoms of what was later diagnosed as MS (he initially thought I could have broken my neck).

My mum told me an interesting story when I spoke to her on Monday though.  Apparently, she was stuck in the car waiting to be cut out for around an hour.  My father, who for the last twenty years of his career worked in Occupational Medecine, joked that as he'd worked with the Cambridgeshire fire brigade, he might well know some of the firemen they were waiting for and how terribly embarrassing that would be.  When the firemen arrived, as my dad was bleeding, they focused on getting him out first.  As my mum was waiting, in pain and getting cold, she was comforted by one of the firemen who kept her warm and held her hand.

"I'm only here because of your husband, you know"
Apparently, a few years before, this guy had been through a really messy break-up and had really hit the rails.  The brigade had wanted to get rid of him as too much trouble, but my father played a critical role in convincing them that he was worth the trouble and that he could be helped. He then provided some of that practical help.
"I haven't had a drink in three years and gave up smoking a year ago.  I owe your husband my career"

I don't see that side of my dad very often, but it's nice to hear a story like that and good to know that his care and compassion was repaid a little further down the line.