Название: The 50 List – A Father’s Heartfelt Message to his Daughter: Anything Is Possible
Автор: Nigel Holland
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007493258
isbn:
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Having sent in the entry form for the Silverstone half marathon, there is no turning back, and even if there were, I decide to seal the deal by announcing that I am taking part in it on Facebook, for good measure. As with telling all your mates you plan to give up smoking, putting it out there means there is NO WAY I can back out of it now.
For all my efficiency in telling the world what I’m up to, though, it’s still going to be quite a leap of imagination to actually see myself completing a half marathon. And if my plan is to have any sort of credibility – not least with me – it’s a leap I’d better start getting fit for.
Which means training. And training means several things must happen: hours of training itself, yes, but I must also cultivate a mindset of self-discipline and a big stock of dedication. Though in reality, I don’t have a clue what I need to do to prepare. Note to self: so hurry up and find out!
6 December 2011
Number of shopping days till Christmas: 19.
Number of days till my 49th birthday: 3.
Ergo, number of days till my 50th birthday: 368.
Number of challenges that need to be completed per day, therefore, on average: 0.137741.
Number of challenges that have actually been completed per day, on average: 0.000000.
Well, I’ve been busy training, haven’t I? I have just, in fact, returned from a 5-mile training lap around the town. And I have decided upon a new motivational slogan: if I can make it around Wellingborough, I can make it anywhere. (Which will obviously, of necessity, include Silverstone.) No, it doesn’t have quite the same ring as the lyric from ‘New York, New York’, but it is what I believe to be true.
It’s all about motivation, obviously. The way the weather is looking right now, I might not get another chance to get out and train till after Christmas, so it feels good to have got the laps I have done in the bag. Admittedly, a half marathon is 13 miles, not 5, but in terms of conditions there’s no contest. What with the state of the roads and pavements, pot holes, broken kerbs – not to mention countless badly parked cars – just negotiating the route of my training lap is a major challenge. It’s also pretty hilly, which, in a wheelchair, is hard on the arms, so all things considered (and wheeling round, I’ve had plenty of time to consider) 13 miles on a perfectly smooth, level racetrack doesn’t daunt me quite so much now.
I Skype my brother Gary, who lives just outside Frankfurt in Germany. He studied performance sports at school and still plays squash at a high level, so is the ideal person to give me training tips and encouragement. He tells me to eat carbs, drink plenty of water, practise having a positive mental attitude and generally live a life of such wholesome sobriety till March that as soon as we’re done I feel a compulsion to crack open a large beer.
10 December 2011
Number of years on the planet now: 49. And I don’t feel a day older than 77 (post-training complications – i.e. I hurt).
Number of challenges completed: Erm … still have not quite done any yet.
However, bottles of good Merlot consumed: 1.
I was 49 yesterday, and the thing that most sticks in my mind is that I now have just 364 days to complete all 50 challenges, or else I am going to look something of an idiot. It was a nice birthday – though we dubbed it something different. As Lisa and I dined from the Christmas lunchtime menu at the Beckworth Garden Emporium (and why not? They have a cracking restaurant) we decided we’d call it the Mantisweb staff Christmas party, Mantisweb being the name I’ve given my new business. Which of course gave us licence to misbehave generally, though neither of us actually photocopied our bottoms.
My birthday over – Christmas isn’t allowed to begin until it is – the festivities are coming around super-fast now, and Lisa and I still don’t know what to get the kids. With all my redundancy pay already allocated to pay the mortgage, money’s tight, so it’s not going to be an extravagant affair this year. I find I don’t see that as a bad thing, particularly. Perhaps it’s good to keep things a little simpler – more like the Christmases of my own youth, when there were only three TV channels, there was no 24/7 scheduling, and a snowball wasn’t just something you lobbed at your mates but some foul, yellow, frothy thing your mum drank. Well, my mum did, anyway, and whichever way you look at it, I can’t help but look back at Christmases past and wish Christmases present were just a little more like them.
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Despite us having very little materially then, compared to today’s festive excesses, it really did feel like a time of plenty. It was a time when not only did the dustmen get a crate of brown ale from Dad, as an annual thank you, but also the entire contents of the drinks cabinet (actually the sideboard) were brought out on top, dusted off and arranged, like a help-yourself bar at a wedding reception. It was a time of corner-to-corner paper streamers in the living room and glittering skeins of tinsel for the tree. Which was, of course, a real one.
The presents done – a military exercise, involving four piles, four anxious children and then one unholy scramble – we children would accompany Dad, playing family postman, delivering gifts to all our relatives while Mum got on with lunch. And what a lunch it was, because Mum was a fantastic cook, and made the best onion bread sauce on the planet, bar none.
The drink of choice on Christmas Day chez the Hollands was Pomagne. A poor man’s champagne, made from cider, it felt like the height of sophistication – or would have, had Dad been more adept at handling it. It was always a tense moment when he attempted to get the cork out, ever since the year when it flew out, headed for the ceiling at great velocity, came back down and landed in the gravy boat, propelling most of its contents all over my brother Mark.
Lunch over – and perhaps as a result of the Pomagne – Mum would always tell her annual Christmas joke. Which was a pretty ropey one, but, in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, we didn’t care: we’d roll about at every telling.
Mum: ‘What did the elephant say when the mouse ran up its trunk?’
Us: ‘We don’t know. What did the elephant say when the mouse ran up its trunk?’
Mum (pinching her nose hard together with her thumb and forefinger and speaking in a squeaky voice): ‘Hmm! I suppose you think that’s funny!’
You’re right. You probably had to be there.
But for all the joy of my childhood, it wasn’t without its worries. Though I was unaware of it, my СКАЧАТЬ