your boy all glowed up...

As I received another job rejection without interview, it's just dawned on me that my CV seems to mean that I get rejected out of hand for more junior, lower paying jobs and seems to receive more consideration for better paid, more senior jobs.  It's true that my experience is probably better suited to those kinds of roles, but I rather naively assumed that somebody might be glad of the chance of getting the benefit of that experience on the cheap.

Here's the thing:

I don't really want (or need) a more senior, better paid job.

This is leading me to reconsider my career path. I'm starting to think that I really might be better served doing more volunteering and seeing where that leads me. I know how the recruitment process works. Hell, I've been a recruiter myself and have no doubt rejected plenty of people who could have done an excellent job. It's an imperfect process and you'd be a fool to take it personally.

All the same, it's been lovely working with people who really appreciate what I have to offer rather than just binning me off via email on the basis of my CV. (Or, more typically, not bothering to reply at all).

Volunteering only doesn't pay well in monetary terms. In every other way, it's much more rewarding.

time is on your side...

It's now been 7 months since I stopped working. Technically, as they paid my notice, I suppose I've only actually been out of work for 4 months... but it all amounts to the same really.

As I've mentioned before, I decided about three months ago that I was actually going to look for a paying job. This wasn't always a given, and it took a bit of time away from the long hours of my last job to start to be able to see things more clearly.

Looking for work is a vaguely depressing activity: you need to give it the attention it deserves if you're really serious about it, but at the same time it all seems frustratingly arbitrary. It's a buyer's market, and although job sites and electronically stored CVs means that it's probably never been easier to apply for a job, lots of these places don't even bother to acknowledge your application, never mind telling you that you've been passed over.

As anyone who has been in this position before will know, you just can't take these thing personally. At the same time, sometimes the process is so arbitrary that you just want to scream. There's never going to be a really fair way of recruiting people, but there are certainly plenty of unfair ways. David Brent famously said that you can avoid employing unlucky people by throwing half of the CVs you receive straight into the bin. I sometimes wonder if that's a fairer process than some of the ones I've recently had the misfortune of being exposed to.  The University of Nottingham was already in my bad books for rejecting me for a job on the basis of a competency based interview they tried to carry out over the phone in 15 minutes with a two person panel on a dodgy line. They went even further down in my estimation when they gave me 8 days notice of an interview with a presentation (which itself was on a subject which had nothing to do with the job, but that's another story). The problem wasn't the relatively short notice, it was that I wasn't available on the day of the interview. As is always the way now, the invitation to interview suggested I contact them if I needed any accommodation. Well, presumably you can shift the date of the interview to a date I can attend? No, came the answer, we can't. Thanks for your interest. What?

Anyway. The search continues. In the meantime, I'm carrying on with voluntary work. I've been acting as a sighted guide for the Guide Dogs MyGuide service, and this has seen me acquire a chap I take out running once a week, and another who I take out for a walk every other week. As well as this, I've been doing my usual volunteering for parkrun and, as of this month, I'm now officially a trustee of a Nottingham-based domestic abuse charity. All together, this little lot takes up around 3 days of my week, more or less. To be honest, I'm not sure how I managed to find the time for a full time job. As I said to the chair of the trustees when he asked me how I would find the time to keep up this level of volunteering when I do manage to find another paying job, you don't have to work 60 hours a week, do you? Towards the end in my last job, 50-60 hour weeks were fairly common. No one was making me do them, but I did them all the same. When I get back into work, I'm going to free up all that extra time by trying to just stick to my contracted hours.

Let's see how that plan stands up to the first contact with the enemy, eh?

I'm also thinking of starting to volunteer at the local Oxfam store. It's not out of the question that I might try to find a part time job that brings in a bit of spending money but leaves me with the freedom to spend my time doing the things that I really find fulfilling.

It's nice to have the flexibility in my life. I don't need to find a paying job at the moment, I'm just choosing to look for one.

Anyway. Happy new year.

2020 already looks like it's going to be a difficult one for the world, but as long as we each try to do our bit, then we have something positive to hang onto, eh?

I know what's coming, I'm not working...

I find myself caught in a strange kind of halfway house.

I've been productively spending my time volunteering... it keeps me busy and makes me feel like I'm doing something useful for the world after many years of working for a fairly soulless corporation.

As well as the MyGuide stuff that I've been doing for Guide Dogs, I'm also about to be appointed as a trustee for a Nottingham domestic abuse charity and I'm excited to get started with that and to learn the ropes. As I currently have the time, I have the opportunity to go and watch them working at first hand as well as learning what it means to be a trustee.

When I met the other trustees, one of the questions that they asked me was how, if I was looking to get back into paid employment, was I going to find the time to do all the volunteering I do.

It's a good question.

My answer was simply that, if I do go back into full time employment, nobody is making me work 60 hour weeks and I should therefore have plenty of time for my volunteering if I stick to a standard 37.5 hours.  They seemed happy with this and it's 100% true that no one was making me do the hours I ended up working in my last job. That was entirely down to me and a misplaced sense of responsibility.

If I've learned anything over the last few months, it's that I get far more satisfaction and fulfilment from the stuff that I do for nothing than I ever did for any job that paid.

But here then is the dilemma: why am I looking for a paid job back in the kind of thing that I used to do? I'm distinctly ambivalent about going back to work in a corporate environment and I don't really need the money.... so why am I not looking to do more volunteering or, at the very least, look for a job somewhere that won't pay so well but will be doing an awful lot more good for the world and for my soul?

This morning I spent some time looking at maybe volunteering at a food bank. It obviously wouldn't pay, but it would undoubtedly be a good way to use my time.  I then spent the next couple of hours looking at business analysis jobs that I could do but really don't want to. I might apply for one.

This shouldn't be this hard.

he just stares at the world, planning his vengeance....

Within my own personal social media echo-chamber, I follow a number of MS-related pages and blogs: some of the main charities, but also a few interesting individuals too (hi Steve!). At their best, they are an excellent way to keep up to speed with the latest news and developments,  but they're also a good way of getting some basic, nuts-and-bolts factual information about multiple sclerosis. Of course, as with any other form of social media, you have to wade through huge amounts of memes and other unsubstantiated nonsense from the great unwashed to get to the good stuff.  If you haven't got a finely tuned bullshit filter up and running by now, then you should probably just stay well away from the internet for your own safety.  Still, if you do have the patience and a modicum of critical appreciation, then you can pretty quickly find the nuggets of gold of helpful information and a support network of organisations and individuals ready and willing to offer you support. If you know what you're looking for, then you really don't have to go through this alone. This is one of the things that the MS Trust is fantastic at... providing unbiased information and support to people with MS or going through the process of diagnosis.

There is an awful lot of old toss out there, though.  My own personal bugbear are the pity parties, the people who use these forums as a way of wallowing in their own world of personal pain. There's one guy on the MS Trust pages who posts a different "no one understands my suffering so don't judge what you don't understand" memes every single day. Every. Single. Day.  He must have a folder on his desktop where he saves them down when he finds them from his google alerts so he can quickly publish them every morning. I suppose he's looking for validation and a bit of human engagement, and he gets it in spades.  Every post is re-shared and filled with comments from people saying "so true, so true".  Look.  I get it, I really do.  MS is one of those conditions where people can get isolated and where increasing levels of disability must make the temptation to mourn what you've lost impossible to resist. It's also easy for me to judge when I'm able to run marathons.

But that's the thing, isn't it? I can run marathons, but that doesn't mean that I haven't suffered as a result of my multiple sclerosis. I ran before my symptoms and diagnosis, but I had only done one or two half marathons. I had no idea that running was going to form such a central pillar to my life, nor that my body was going to be robust enough to stand finishing 6 marathons (to date), including one that dipped under the 4 hour mark. These things seemed impossible to me before my diagnosis, but that diagnosis somehow gave me a strength and determination to try these things and not just to lie down and be beaten.  I'd like to think that, even if I couldn't run marathons, or if something happens that means I can no longer run that far, then I'll find something else to focus on instead. 

Starting with parkrun, I've discovered a joy in volunteering. Now, as well as happily volunteering most Saturdays, I also give up my time to coach as Couch to 5k programme at my running club, and when the first batch graduated, I started coaching an Improvers group too. I've got enormous satisfaction from watching these guys go from C25k to pulling on their club vests and racing 10km races for their club.  My point is that something made these guys get up off the couch and to start running. If they're anything like me, they have a little voice in their head that is constantly questioning what the hell they think they're doing running around a track with all these excellent runners; that they don't belong and that they look ridiculous. Like me, they've faced that fear and done it anyway, and now there's no stopping them. It would have been a lot easier to stay on the sofa and say that they couldn't possibly ever do these things, but instead they've taken the harder path and faced down their fears. 

MS is similar, at least in my experience.  Sure, not everyone is going to be able to run, but there's always going to be something else you can do to stop yourself wallowing in your own suffering.  Or, even worse, projecting that suffering at other people.

The other day, someone on the MS Trust Facebook page published a link to a story on the BBC website about someone with MS who completed an Ironman triathlon.

Conor Devine - the Ironman with MS

Here's the comment she put up to accompany the link:

"This is fab for him, but makes me angry. I am just going to sit here and try really really hard to overcome optical neuritis or trigeminal neuralgia for all of us. I am so pleased he can do this, but I (we) can not go out and improve our mobility more than we can. This implies to the world that we could be well if only we tried. Pleased for all of you who can do any degree of activity to keep you fit, some can’t. If it had just said that"

Someone else felt the need to add, 'Great now the dwp will think we can all do this'

Now, the BBC could definitely have done a better job in that piece of making it clear that MS has a variety of possible outcomes, and that completing an Ironman probably puts you at one extreme end of the scale.... but I find it so difficult to stomach the wilful tunnel vision displayed by this kind of attitude, an apparent inability to share in someone else's successes and a determination to wallow in their own limitations.  I once received a comment (here or elsewhere) from someone else with MS saying something along the lines of "There's always someone like you, climbing a mountain or running a marathon when I can't even run for the bus". Why can't we just revel in these successes? Where's your generosity of spirit?  Someone else's success doesn't reflect on your own failures, does it? Why try to limit your expectations to a world of what you can't do and not think upwards towards what you might be able to achieve instead?

It's a cliche, but you really don't know what you might be able to achieve until you try. Sure, you might not be climbing a mountain or running a marathon, but who knows what you might be able to achieve instead?

I'm doing my training with Guide Dogs tomorrow, so I'm about to embark on another chapter in my volunteering. It would be a lot easier to do nothing and to stay at home instead, worrying about the progression of my MS and how no-one understands my invisible pain, but I'm trying to do something useful with my life instead.

I'm not dead yet.

cut down, shot down...any way you please.

There's a really nice little charity that provides toilets for the third world.  Their hook is that you get to "twin" your toilet with a toilet somewhere in Africa or in another less-developed part of the world. You get a little framed sign with a picture of the bog you're sponsoring and the GPS coordinates that you can hang in your own cloakroom.  My mum and dad gave me a toilet in Cambodia, and I gave one of my best friends and his wife a block of toilets at a school in Burundi (they met in Africa, although, as a French-Canadian, his wife was a little uncertain about the appropriateness of this as a wedding gift. "Is this some kind of British joke?").

It's a nice gift and the money you're spending is being used to provide safe, clean and hygienic sanitation to a community.  It's all good.

Except for one thing.

They're a Christian charity... which is obviously fine ... but they keep sending me emails like this one, which arrived this week:

--

Dear Tim,

What’s your perfect ‘Bible moment’?

It’s time to get thinking if you want to win a copy of this rather splendid prize. I’ve got five copies of a very special Bible to give away. It’s ‘The Bible in One Year’ read by actor David Suchet – best known as TV’s Hercule Poirot.

On six CDS you get 365 MP3 files – each file contains a portion of the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Psalms or Proverbs. It’s the perfect ‘three-portions-a-day’ way to listen to the entire Bible.

You could listen on your computer, phone or MP3 player – while you're on your commute or walking the dog...

How to win

You just need to hit ‘reply’ to this email and tell me:
A favourite passage of scripture.

Where you would most like to listen to or read it and why.

For instance, you could choose Malachi 4 v 2 (‘But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays.’) while you are sat watching the sun rise in a favourite picturesque spot. It can be anywhere in the world (universe?) you like, just give me a great reason. Our five favourite responses will win the prize; as always, our decision is final.

You get the idea. Get those inspirational thinking caps on. I look forward to hearing the result.

With every blessing,

--

[sigh]

I really like supporting them, but COME ON! Does it even occur to them, do you think, that this proselytising might be off-putting to the demographic who are happy to support the work that they do but could happily do without having any particular flavour of deity - or, indeed, any flavour of deity at all - thrown into the equation?

Besides, Malachi 4 v2?  What the hell? Isn't everyone's favourite Bible verse from Ezekiel? 25:17?

"The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children".

You know it.

Word.

angel is a centrefold...

As well as my legs feeling a bit weird over the last few weeks, I had a late night yesterday and as a consequence was absolutely shattered all day today.  I injected on Tuesday night as normal and Wednesday morning was one of those days where I woke up feeling as though a giant invisible hand was pushing me back into the mattress.  The day was a bit of a struggle, but because I'm stubborn, I attended the first of the season's interval sessions at the Embankment that evening.  I didn't feel great then and the late night just finished me off.  I didn't even really do anything too exciting and actually ended the evening at about 1am sitting on my kitchen floor trying to work out why my newly installed bicycle tyre looked wonky.... but it's been a long week and I paid the price for my exertions today.

Rock and roll, eh?

As you know, running is the one thing that really makes me feel like I'm sticking two fingers up to my MS.  I may not be moving as far or as fast as I would like, but the very fact that I'm moving at all makes me feel better about myself.  I was planning on attending tonight's interval session at the track run by that athletics club I joined a couple of months ago.  I always feel a little bit out of my depth and like an imposter, but I'm also usually very glad that I went (once the session is over, of course!)

This evening, I reluctantly decided that I should probably give it a miss.  I like to think that I can push through fatigue most of the time, but I've been head-swimmingly, bone-achingly tired all day and just didn't think it was a good idea... especially since my fall the other day.

Naturally, my masochistic streak now means that I just feel lazy and weak for not going. My urge to punish myself is strong indeed.

Still, to cheer me up, I received a leaflet through the post today from the MS Trust.

I've always felt as though I had unexplored potential as a page three pinup and, at last, my dream has become a reality!

(...and please also note my wife's backside making a guest appearance stage left)

I'm fairly sure that this will soon be a collector's item, so my advice would be to grab hold of a copy as soon as you can. Available in all good hospitals and MS Clinics across the land.

If you feel that the value of this publication could be greatly enhanced by a signature, then I will be more than happy to oblige. If you ask her nicely, my wife might also scrawl her name across her delightfully betutu-d derrière for you too.

And she might sign the picture too.

because of the dark, we see the beauty in the spark...

My #MistletoeMugshot for the MS Trust - pucker up people and share the love! And text MWAH16 £5 to 70070 to donate £5 to support the 100,000 living with MS in the UK this Christmas.

It has to be said that Minou was less than amused to be taking part in this picture. The cat box was down from the attic, so she was already suspicious... and this seemed to confirm all her fears.  And then we took her to cat prison.

Whatever else you're doing during the darkest time of the year, try to spend some time with the ones that you love and who love you.

See you on the other side.

centerfold...

I've had some post from the MS Trust.

It's a little pamphlet suggesting ways that you can raise money to support what is a very worth charity indeed.  My wife is a trustee now, you know. There's a Survival skills weekend, a Grand Canyon Trek, an Alps Trek, an Iceland Trek, a Sahara Trek, a Great Wall of China Trek, a Kilimanjaro Trek... lots of Treks.

Don't fancy that? How about cycling? You can cycle London to Paris, the Prudential Ride London-Surrey 100, London to Brighton, the MS Circuit Challenge at Goodwood.

No? How about skydiving, a reindeer rally, attending a massive garden party, baking a cake for a Christmas Cake Off or maybe just painting yourself blue?  It's all here.

What about running?  Well,  let's see: you can do the British 10k London Run, the Great North Run.....

....oh, wait a minute.... what's this?

Oh man.  That guy gets everywhere.

But you know, there's a reminder in the back of the booklet about why we do these things:

"Because we receive no government funding, we rely on our supporters to fund our vital work.  People like you, who donate or take part in events like the ones in this brochure, contribute one third of our total income.  All the pennies, all the pounds you collect by running, cycling, partying or baking, really add up.

"The funds you raise will make a difference today for people living with MS.  You could help fund a new MS nurse for people who are currently having to manage MS alone.

"You could help train and support every MS specialist nurse in the UK to make a difference for hundreds of thousands of people with MS.

"And you could help to make sure that there's reliable, trustworthy information available to help everyone with MS make decisions that are right for them."

And as Lucy says here, you have a chance to prove that love for life can prevail over illness.

More power to them, I say.  All of the runners, cyclists, trekkers, bakers, jumpers.... the whole damn lot of them.

pale blinds drawn all day...

For the last couple of months, I've been planning a special day at my local parkrun to celebrate and to encourage visually impaired runners.  We're lucky enough to have a couple of regular VI runners at Colwick, and Terry - who introduced me to guiding - has now done well over 100 parkruns with us and has been guided around the course by more than 30 different guides. Accessibility is one of the core principles of parkrun: it's open to everyone and is completely free; it doesn't matter if it takes you 15 minutes to get round the 5km course, or it takes you over an hour... everyone is welcome.  We wanted to try and extend this to people with visual impairments.

Running has never been more popular: more and more people are getting up and out on 'couch to 5k' programmes and the like.  At parkrun, we reckon that people with visual impairments are just the same, with the crucial difference that they have a much more obvious barrier to participation: they can't see and likely need some help to get involved.

So, part of the idea of a VI parkrun day was to try to encourage participation amongst the VI community and to show them how accessible parkrun is and how easy it is to come along and to walk, run, jog or volunteer.

Just as importantly though, this was an opportunity to drive awareness of the barriers facing visually impaired people amongst a community at parkrun who have already shown they're keen to get involved by sticking their hands up to volunteer as guides.

So I spent some time over the last few months trying to engage with both our community of parkrunners, our local network of VI runners and guides and some of the local VI charities....and the big day was last Saturday.  It took a bit of time to get everything together, but in the end, I think it was worthwhile.

Time well spent.

You can read the full story in the run report here.

Two weeks ago, there were 16 recorded blind runners at parkruns across the whole UK....which doesn't feel like all that many to me, to be honest.  At our VI parkrun, we had 3 blind runners and eight sighted runners who bravely ran around the course blindfolded with a guide.  I was maybe hoping for more, but one of the key things I've learned along the way is that, if we're serious about engaging visually impaired people, then we need to work harder with the charities to reach out into the VI community - many of whom have plenty of other things to worry about than running. The blind runners we did reach were already runners and already parkrunners; blind people who aren't runners aren't generally able to just get up and head off to a strange park for a run... for starters, they need transport and they need guides.  I'm sure they're out there, but if we want to reach them, we're going to have to work harder to get them to the starting line.

Still, I'm pleased to have been involved and I think it went pretty well.  The next one will be better.

Oh, and apparently I have a commanding presence on the megaphone....

no matter how far....

I don't seem to get lie-ins any more.  Like any self-respecting teenager, I used to consider it something of an outrage if I had to be up before noon.  As I got older and had to start working, epic lie-ins had to wait until the weekend.  These days, some weekend mornings, I actually get up even earlier than I do during the week. Voluntarily.  

My teenage self would doubtless be both horrified and disappointed.

This weekend was fairly typical.  For once, we weren't volunteering at parkrun, but we were up and out in good time for a 9am start.  We then headed straight across to deepest, darkest Derbyshire where a dear friend of mine had organised a 5km fun run on Stanton Moor in the Peak District.  Rachel is competing in her first Iron Man (Iron Maiden?) triathlon in a couple of weeks and she's raising money for Macmillan in memory of her late Mother-in-Law.  Such an epic undertaking -- 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile cycle and 26.2 mile run - definitely deserves some support, wouldn't you say? It's also a pretty heroic thing to do for your husband and his family.  I wanted to help out, anyway, so I borrowed a parkrun stopwatch for the afternoon and had the distinct privilege of acting as timer for the event.  The weather was appalling, but it was a wonderful afternoon.  Rachel's running friends and her family had turned up en-masse, and there were smiles all round as we braved the weather before retreating back to her cottage for tea and cake.  Oh...so much cake.  It was a lovely, heart-warming day.  I often say that either runners are the nicest people in the world, or that there are a disproportionate number of lovely people who run around the Nottingham area... but this was one of those days where you really feel the joy of the running community. Rachel raised £1000 on the day to add to the £4000 she's already raised.  She's worth all that and more.

No lie-in on Sunday either: up and out to get across to Gedling Country Park on the other side of town to volunteer at Junior parkrun. As we don't have children, this might seem like a slightly odd thing to do, but we do it because one of our friends helps to organise the event, and because we all run around the hills of Gedling after the event is over.  As I live by a river and do most of my runs on the flat, it's sometimes nice to get up and run in the mountains!  (the 10km I did was the equivalent of 50 flights of stairs, according to my Garmin...)

By the time I got home, I was knackered... I don't mind telling you.  Nothing else for it but a snooze on the sofa and a West Wing marathon.

Yeah.  It was a brilliant weekend, but I think I pretty much go to work for a rest these days.

so call on me, brother...

When I did that Guide Running course organised by England Athletics last year, part of their longer-term plan was to get a database of qualified guides for visually impaired runners up on their website. They had a theory that, just as loads of other people have started running and were taking part in 'couch-to-5km' programmes and heading out to parkrun, there were also loads of visually impaired runners out there too who wanted to start running but had a few more obstacles to overcome before they could get out of the door.

It took them a while to get that database off the ground, but it's online now and I've been contacted three times in the last few months by people in the Nottingham area who were looking for a guide to help them get out and running.  I ran with one at Colwick parkrun earlier this year; another asked me if I would be happy to guide them to a 3hr 45m marathon (happy? I'd be delighted to be able to run a marathon that quickly... even more so if I was somehow magically able to do it whilst guiding a VI runner). The third contacted me a little while ago, but because I was marathon training and he was busy moving house, we were never able to make it work.

Until this evening, when we had a little 6-and-a-bit mile pootle along the canal with my running club.  We didn't run all that fast, to be honest, but I don't think it really mattered.  Nick has just done a half marathon in 2:04 and is looking to train up for the Robin Hood full this summer and for London next year, so is clearly capable of going faster than we ran tonight, but we were feeling each other out and seeing if we could make this work.  He has other guides, but he's looking to get as many as he can so that he can manage all the training runs he's going to need to do without being totally reliant on one or two people.  I won't be running a marathon with him, but I'm happy to train with him when I can, especially if he makes things so easy for me as to meet at a running club session just up the road from me that I already attend most weeks anyway.  It felt good.

When I guide Terry at Colwick, he always worries that I'm giving up a run so I can escort him round.  That's nonsense, of course.  If I felt like that, I don't think I would do it and I run with him because I enjoy it.  It seems like such a little thing to do, to take someone round to enjoy something that I love to do and that they can't do on their own.  It helps when you're with someone as great as Terry, but actually I've enjoyed all of the guiding that I've done.  Nick and I had a good rattle as we ran and he seems like a decent guy.  I only dropped him the once, and he said he really enjoyed it, so perhaps it will be a regular thing. I'm also probably available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals... Just talk to my agent.

One thing I don't understand is why England Athletics gave me a card to prove that I'm a guide runner.  They were really fussy about the picture too, so I've ended up with one that I took in a meeting room at work to meet their required standards, and as a result I mostly look cross.  There's some tiny print writing on the back too, indicating that I've been CRB checked and have qualified to guide.  I'm not sure how they're expecting this to work with a runner who is visually impaired: am I supposed to read it out to them and describe how I look in the photo so they can do the touching-your-face thing from the Lionel Richie video?  I'm not convinced that they've thought this all the way through....

straight for your heart...

So, with that very gentle 2-miler, and after around 500 miles of training since Christmas, that's marathon training done!  There's now just the small matter of the 26.2 miles from Blackheath Common to the Mall on Sunday to go now....

Around £11,200 raised too, which should help keep me going along the way.  And look what arrived in the post today too.....

I guess there's more than one licensed guide runner in Nottingham now, so Pete is going to have to come up with a new brag.  I'm sure he'll think of something.

we ran a miracle mile...

I know I talk about running on here a lot.  Well, let's be perfectly honest: now that I'm marathon training, I think it's fair to say that I talk about running a lot.  In fact, I talk about little else but running.  Well, I guess I'm not going to apologise for that.

One thing that I don't do all that often is to trumpet our sponsorship site.  We're running London again this year to raise money for the MS Trust, but although all financial support is most welcome, one of the things I was keen not to do too much this year was to rely on my friends to raise the money we need to hit our target.  There are so many good charities, and I know that everybody gets asked for donations all the time.  It's hard.

We raised £7,200 last year, and the vast majority of that came from people we know putting their hands in their pockets and making a donation.  It was a truly humbling experience to have all those people show us how much they supported us by donating to our charity.  This year, I wanted to do things a little bit differently, and to try and give people something for their money. I was thinking cake sales, raffles and perhaps a silent auction or something.   Luckily for us, our friends at Virtual Runner gave us a couple of runs that meant that we were basically up to £4,000 before I'd even started training.  (Incidentally, there are still a few places left on the Revenge of the Sixth run.  Who doesn't want a glow-in-the-dark Darth Maul medal? Enter HERE!)

But we are still asking for donations.  I wasn't going to keep going on about it, but this morning, I woke up early: it was the morning after my injection and it was dark and cold and I didn't feel especially great.  But I got up, pulled on my running gear and went out into the freezing morning to run the 3.6 miles to work in the sleet.  This evening, after a full day at work, I pulled on my slightly soggy running gear and ran the 3.6 miles home in the dark - nearly being mowed down along the way by the idiot rowing coaches who cycle along the riverside looking at their boats whilst riding on bicycles with no lights.  I'm not asking for your sympathy because I got into this out of choice.... but I'm getting to the part of my training where the miles really start to rack up and it can feel like a bit of a slog.

I'm doing this marathon partly to prove to myself that I can run 26.2 miles on my own.  I've got multiple sclerosis and it is slowly taking its toll on my ability to run, mainly by wasting the muscles on my left side and reducing the flexibility in my ankle.  Running 500 training miles in four months in order to complete a marathon is the best way that I know to stick two fingers up at this horrible bloody condition.  But I'm also doing it to raise money for a brilliant charity that provides a critical support to people with MS, their families and the medical professionals who care for them.  And you know what, I am going to need your help and support... financial or otherwise.

I'll just leave this here.

YOU CAN SPONSOR US HERE:

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

Thanks!

ch-check it out...

This came for me in the post today.

It's a DBS - Disclosure and Barring Service - certificate, and it means that I've been checked out by the Criminal Records Bureau and found to have a clean record.  I've had the check done before, when I used to spend a morning every week reading with kids in a local primary school.  This time around, I've been checked as part of the process I'm going through with England Athletics to become a properly registered guide for visually impaired runners.  Apparently, according to the certificate, England Athletics are now my employers.

I've guided Terry for a little while now - he hasn't required a background check - but England Athletics have been looking to kick off a register of qualified guides, and I thought I'd give it a go. Running has blossomed as a participation sport in this country, thanks in no small part to parkrun.  All sorts of people are starting to get involved, and England Athletics have a view that visually impaired people are no different, and many would probably like to start running, but obviously their barriers to getting started are that much bigger.  I love volunteering at parkrun, and I love guiding Terry... and it seems such a small thing to do that could potentially make such a massive difference to someone's life.

I wasn't really expecting very much to come of this, but almost immediately, England Athletics have put me in touch with a lovely guy who lives fairly near Colwick.  He's 63, is blind and has had multiple organ transplants (in fact, he's a gold medallist at the World Transplant Games, no less!).  He likes to run, and participates in half marathons, but he's been struggling for some time to find a guide.  24 hours after he got in touch with England Athletics, I'd set up a date to take him out around Colwick parkrun.  I'm marathon training at the moment, so I can't commit a whole lot of time to guiding (I think he'd quite like a guide to take him to the various competitions he enters), but I will be at Colwick most Saturdays for a gentle loosener, and there's no reason why I can't do that with someone else in tow and it feels good to be able to help.  Besides, the parkrun team at Colwick are brilliant and they'll be able to help this chap to find more guides to help him out more of the time.  In the meantime, the volunteer credits for guiding him around parkrun are all mine!

He might not like me, of course...

from the place we were born to the land of the free...

It's 23rd December, but for some reason, I don't feel especially Christmassy yet.  I've wrapped my presents, we've had the big Christmas Jumper run at parkrun (also my 50th parkrun)...

...and I've sung in my big Christmas concert at Nottingham's Albert Hall in front of hundreds of people; I even got a really excellent secret santa present at work this year, with a little pack that included some homemade blackcurrant jam...but I just haven't got the feeling yet.  I like Christmas too, so this is something of a disappointment.

I think part of it is that I haven't finished work yet - I'm in-store on Christmas Eve - and I'm working between Christmas and New Year too; maybe the unseasonably warm weather also has something to do with it; maybe too it's the fact that I haven't listened to as much seasonal music as I usually do because I've been so busy listening to my choir rehearsal tracks.  Who knows?  Maybe it's all of these things.

Well, whether I'm feeling it or not, Christmas is almost here.

As is now traditional at this time of year, as I sign-off for the festive period, I make a donation to a charity in the name of everyone who takes the time to read any of the nonsense that I write here throughout the year.  This year, thinking back to the things that have fired me up the most over the last few months, I've chosen to make that donation to Refugee Action.  They're a fantastic charity who provide emergency food and shelter to asylum seekers and refugees, they provide legal support to asylum seekers, they support the refugees resettled in the UK by the UNHCR... well, it seemed like a worthy and appropriate cause to support.

As the charity themselves say on their donation page, £30 will give vital advice and emotional support to families in distress, £60 could provide a refugee family with a room for the night, warm clothes and a hot meal and the £100 that I donated could help ten survivors learn English. This was in the charity's thank-you email:

Mohammed escaped persecution in Eritrea and eventually made the dangerous journey to Greece in a rubber dingy from Turkey. He came to the UK because he already spoke English, and was granted refugee status. “I love the UK,” he says. “I feel like a human here. I’m treated with dignity and respect regardless of my religion or race. I can speak without restrictions. I never knew what freedom meant before, but now I am free". To the people of the UK he says: “Thank you for the safety, respect and values you share with refugees. Thank you for sharing with us your shelter, food, time, thoughts and smiles.”

Long may we continue to be that kind of country.

Compliments of the season to you all.  Wherever you are, I hope you are safe and happy and with the people you love.

Speak to you on the other side.

au suivant...

*IMPORTANT VIRTUAL RUN NEWS*

The May the 4th Be With You virtual run has now completely sold out.  Two batches of 500 medals sold out in a matter of hours, raising £2000 for the MS Trust and making a huge dent into our fundraising for the Marathon... before we've even really started.

This was humbling and exciting.

It gets better though: Virtual Runner have announced that they will be hosting another run on May 6th: The Revenge of the Sixth.

Once again, all money raised will be donated to the MS Trust.

This vastly exceeds my expectations and left me completely speechless and left C. in floods of tears when we heard on Friday evening.  This race goes on sale on Tuesday evening at 7pm.  If you fancy the look of that glow in the dark Darth Maul medal, then you probably need to be quick if you want to get yourself entered, as I imagine these will sell out pretty quickly too.

Sometimes people can be amazing.  I know these races are selling out because of Star Wars, but the races are being put on by some very special people who are doing everything they can to help us hit our fundraising targets for a small but very worthwhile charity that is very close to our hearts.

Sometimes, 'thank you' just doesn't seem like enough.

bling...

So, I was all ready to announce to you that the Virtual Run to raise money for our London Marathon fund for the MS Trust went live today....

In case you're not familiar with Virtual Runner, this is a brilliantly simple idea that allows people to enter "races" of varying distances (5km, 10km etc.etc) and then run them in their own time, receiving a medal once they have finished.  Lots of people are intimidated by big, formal race meets, and this enables them to take part as a member of a vibrant virtual community of runners.  The real beauty of this is that it's a not-for-profit thing, and the proceeds for each race go directly to a number of very worthy causes.  Since starting, a little over 2 years ago, they have raised over £50,000 in total now, and are regularly in the top 1% of donors on JustGiving.  It's very impressive.

Lucky for me, Susan - the founder of the site - is a member of my running club, and she has been good enough to find room on their schedule for a race to support our fundraising for the MS Trust.  It's an "any distance" event, due to take place on May 4th... and just take a look at that medal!  My friend Claire, who is also in our running club, has her birthday on May 4th and asked me what I thought of the idea of a Star Wars run as a theme.  Needless to say, I thought it was a brilliant idea, timed to perfection with the release of the new film (these things don't happen by accident, you know).

I was all set to make the big announcement here and to encourage you all to enter.... but the race completely sold out all 500 places in the first two hours of being open to the general public.  It's humbling.  Of course, most of these people are excited about Star Wars, but I'm happy to say that my friends and colleagues have also been really keen to take part because they want to do something to help us to support this fantastic charity.  It's all very humbling.

...and sold out. 500 places with 20% of the entry fee for the race going straight to the MS Trust.  That's £1000 in less than two hours.

Don't worry though: Susan is sourcing more medals as we speak, and hopefully we'll have loads more places to sell in the very near future.  After all, who wouldn't want that medal?  Obviously, from my point of view, the more runners we can get signed up, the better (it's open to international runners too, incidentally).  This goes straight onto my fundraising page for the London Marathon and will go from there directly to the MS Trust.  It's all win for me!  I'll let you know when more places are up for grabs.

Expect invitations to a medal-packing party at some point in early May!

it's not as simple as how much you think you care...

I’m trying to think up ways of raising money for our MS Trust marathon fund that don’t just rely on badgering people to give us money. We raised around £7,200 doing exactly that last time around, but I’m acutely conscious that I was holding my cap out for cash not much more than six months ago, and I’m starting to do it again now. It’s just not fair to keep asking the same people for money and to expect them to contribute time after time.

I want to try to be a little more creative this time around.

Clearly, pretty much everything that could be done to raise money has already been done by someone, somewhere (doubtless with a big nose who knows)… so I’m not necessarily looking to be innovative in my fundraising, I’m just looking to do more than just badger people for cash. We did manage a cake sale last time, and, with the help, enthusiasm and baking skills of my friends at our running club, we raised more than £300 in the process, so I imagine that we will be doing more of those along the way... what with my wife being a keen baker and all. It’s really a question of what else we can do to raise the bare minimum of £3000 that we’ve committed to raise (and hopefully more).

I was thinking of a silent auction: we’ve just done one for the charity we’re supporting at work, and we raised something in excess of £3000 in a week. Once we had the prizes gathered, it was an extremely simple process to get the site together on Jumblebee and to watch the bids roll in. It’s a smart site that allows you to enter a threshold bid and it will then proxy bid on your behalf until that limit is reached, emailing you each time your bid is raised. It’s brilliantly simple and encourages you to spend more on something than you might otherwise have done by sparking your competitive juices. From a fundraiser's perspective, that’s genius. If you get people to then pay for their items using a fundraising page on Virgin Money Giving or something, they also contribute gift aid, effectively adding 25% to each item at no extra cost to them.

I’ve started hoarding things that might make half decent prizes, even though an prospective auction will be months away yet. We had Steve Redgrave in the office the other day, and I keep thinking that, if I’d been a bit more organised, I could have sourced a cool photo of him rowing and then asked him if he minded signing it. Stick that in a frame, and you’ve got a pretty reasonable auction lot right there. Well...except for the fact that, if I had a signed photo of Steve Redgrave rowing, I’d probably be keeping that for myself. I suppose I could have bid for it, but that just seems ridiculous. Anyway, I suppose the lesson is that I should keep my eyes open over the next few months to see who is coming into the office to do promotional stuff and try to tap them up. Charlotte Crosby was here the other day too, with Mark Hill the hairdresser… they’re not really my cup of tea, but someone in our silent auction just finished paid £30 for a DVD of “An Idiot Abroad 3” that Ricky Gervais had signed (his office responded to a request we put on his Twitter feed, which is pretty cool of them). Someone else paid more than £20 for a signed Al Murray DVD… so it just goes to show what’s possible. If you’ve got anything you’d like to donate to my prize fund, I’m all ears.

I’m also in the process of negotiating with both Virtual Runner and the MS Trust to see if we can get a virtual run set up. If you’re not familiar with the concept, essentially this is where you pay between £6-15 to enter a race in a particular time window. You then complete that race wherever and whenever is convenient to you, submit your time and receive a medal. It’s not run for profit, so the majority of money taken goes directly to the charity attached to each race. It’s a brilliant idea, and each month, they’re amongst the top 1% of givers on JustGiving and have raised £££££ for charity. If I can get an MS Trust run on their roster, then it will be a fantastic way of raising both money and awareness for the charity. A good medal will get all sorts of people signing up, and a run to raise money for an MS charity – if publicised in the right places – will get people with a particular interest in MS taking part. Susan, who created Virtual Runner, is in my Running Club… so I’ve got my fingers crossed that we can pull that one off.

Mind you, I wll still be shaking the bucket and looking for donations the old-fashioned way… and doubtless I will be talking about little else but running on here for the next 170-days or so.

Sponsor us here! http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TCMS

(or come round and buy some cake or something)

anger is an energy....

I'm sure that you've seen the terrible pictures from Turkey and from Greece as Syrian refugees desperately try to reach Europe.  I won't republish them here, but if you want to see them, then you can go and look at them over on the Guardian.

Shocking, isn't it?

There's been some debate on my feed on Facebook about how it's a step too far to publish and share these pictures; that we know that the death of a child is awful and we don't need to have those photos of a personal tragedy for one family shoved in our face.

I disagree.

Those pictures are hard to look at, and they should be shocking.  But it also serves an important purpose: it reconnects us with the fact that these people are human beings who are desperately fleeing a conflict zone.  In spite of what you may have read in your newspaper, they are not trying to come to Britain because they are seeking an easy life with free money and housing and healthcare.  They are fleeing their homes and leaving almost everything behind them as a last resort; they are risking their lives in a desperate attempt to get themselves and their families to somewhere safe.  From the other side of Europe, it seems to be easy for us to forget that.

As Herman Melville once wrote: 'Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed."

It's easy to feel helpless, but there are things that you can do to help.

Oxfam have a page where you can donate to their response to the Syrian crisis.

If those images of that little boy on the Turkish beach have moved you, then Save the Children have a page where you can make a donation.

If you want something a lot closer to home, then my friend Abigail met a man today who is trying to raise £2,500 to fill a van with essentials to help the refugees in the camps at Calais.  You can pledge to help him towards his target here.

Meanwhile, our Prime Minister David Cameron, recently re-elected by the Great British public with a full majority in the House of Commons, is busy telling everyone that Britain is full and couldn't possibly take in any more refugees.  Germany will take in 800,000 migrants this year, and apparently we're looking at a maximum of 1,000 Syrian refugees (280 so far!).  Nigel Farage doesn't even believe that these people are genuine refugees.

Not good enough.  Nowhere near good enough.  Embarrassing, in fact.  We should be FURIOUS about this... at the very least, we should share those images to shame our spineless government into action and we should reach into our own pockets to help where we can.

Labour have made a right mess of things recently, but Yvette Cooper had it about right when she said today, "“Hundreds of thousands of refugees are fleeing from a new totalitarianism and Europe has to help – just as we did in generations past. We cannot carry on like this. It’s immoral, it’s cowardly and it’s not the British way.”

And here's Jeremy Corbyn:

"Nobody could fail to be moved by this harrowing and heartbreaking image, it should remind us of the situation facing millions of people desperately fleeing a terrible civil war. The government's response to the refugee crisis has been wholly inadequate, and we are being shamed by our European neighbours. It is our duty under UN law, but also as human beings, to offer a place of safety, and play a role internationally to share our responsibilities, and to try to end the conflict."

I'm sad and a little ashamed that this needs to be said. And people think Corbyn is a radical outsider.

just call on me, brother...

Over the last few months, I've been doing a bit of guide running at Colwick parkrun.  I meet up with Terry, pull on a fluorescent bib saying "guide runner" and then talk him around parkrun.  It's pretty easy really: Terry knows the course so well that it's really just a question of letting him know where other people are and guiding him around corners and changes in terrain.  He's a lovely guy and great company, so it's barely any bother at all.

In fact, I've enjoyed it so much that, when the opportunity arose to do a session earlier this week with England Athletics on guide running, I jumped at the chance.  EA are naturally keen to get people more active, and are specifically interested in helping people with disabilities enjoy the benefits of regular exercise.  Clearly, one of the biggest barriers to visually impaired runners is finding someone willing and skilled enough to guide them.  The aim of the session was to introduce potential guides to the various types of visual impairment and to introduce us to guiding.  We got to try on various goggles that show the different types of impairment, we watched a video on guiding and had a good discussion on that with a blind runner and his guide who are working up towards the London Marathon next year.  Best of all, we had a practical session where we got to play the part of both visually impaired runner and guide.  Now, clearly I've guided before.... but I quickly discovered that pulling on a blindfold and putting yourself entirely into the hands of a guide runner is something quite different.

It's frankly terrifying until you learn to trust your guide and to understand how you like to be guided: how short a rope you like; what kind of feedback you need to feel comfortable... that kind of thing.  As a guide runner, experiencing being guided myself also taught me a huge amount about how I could give better guidance.

All in all, it was a fascinating, worthwhile experience and I've signed up to have my name put down into a database of guide runners maintained by British Blind Sport.  There's been a massive increase in people of all sorts taking up running recently, from C25K programmes and parkruns all the way up to participation in longer races.  Apparently, the visually impaired community is no different, but the barriers to getting started are much higher because people don't know how they go about finding a guide to work with them.  Hopefully, pulling together this database will help to change all that.

Running has made a massive difference to my life and the way I feel about myself.  Maybe there's a visually impaired person around here who is just looking for the right guide to get out and change their lives for the better.  Just maybe that person is me.

I'm available for all distances up to marathon at a variety of possible paces.  Also weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals....