The 50 List – A Father’s Heartfelt Message to his Daughter: Anything Is Possible. Nigel Holland

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СКАЧАТЬ inner calm, because my name was called then, and we went off to a small temporary cubicle, where a nurse bearing a biro wanted to know all about my condition. This was a surprise, as it had been discussed at some length on the phone, as well as being detailed on the registration form.

      Risking a quip, I explained that my ‘condition’ was ‘sitting down’, which she obviously found so unfunny that she went to great lengths to explain that since she personally didn’t know anything about my real condition, she couldn’t take blood from me without a letter from my doctor.

      ‘But I’m absolutely fine to do that,’ I explained. ‘I’m not ill.’ I explained again that this had already been covered over the phone.

      But she was having none of it. As they didn’t know that, even if I did, I would need to get the letter before they could risk taking blood from me. And that was the end of it. I would have to go away and then come back again the next time the blood donor service was in town.

      ‘Isn’t there any way around this?’ I asked her. ‘Coming here’s been a really big thing for me today. It’s one of my challenges, you see.’ I told her about my 50 List, half hoping she might have seen it in the local paper; I explained how it worked, and what I was doing it for. ‘And this one’s particularly dear to me,’ I finished, ‘because of my phobia of needles. I’ve had it since I was a child, and I was determined to beat it. Meet it head on –’

      But I could tell from her expression that there was no way I’d be meeting it today. ‘You have a phobia?’ she said. ‘Oh, well, in that case, we wouldn’t take your blood anyway.’

      Apparently they felt it wasn’t a very good way of ridding someone of a phobia. So that was that. They all apologized, and I wheeled myself out again, my needle phobia still there to fight another day.

      ‘Never mind,’ said Lisa as we drove home, mission not accomplished. ‘You’ll just have to think of a new challenge to replace it. There’ll be something …’

      We lapsed into what we hoped would be a productive, thoughtful silence.

      And it was. An idea suddenly came to me. ‘I’ll try wood turning.’

      ‘Wood turning?’ Lisa asked. ‘Where on earth did that come from?’

      ‘Erm … it’s dexterous? It involves using my fingers? It’s probably tricky?’

      Definitely tricky, if my childhood exploits in woodwork class are anything to go by.

      ‘And there’s a thought,’ I said testily. ‘Let’s hope I don’t rip my finger off on the lathe and require pints and pints of blood to save me, eh?’

      Lisa smiled. ‘You’ll be fine,’ she said firmly.

      14 February 2012

      Number of challenges still to be completed: Er … still 50.

      But number of challenges that are almost definitely going to be happening less than 10 days from now, all at once, and ON THE BBC no less: A big fat 3! Hurrah! Now we’re talking.

      Just put down the phone to a man called Matt Ralph. He is a BBC television producer. Am amazed. What a difference a day can make, eh?

      Everyone makes New Year resolutions, don’t they? Give up drink. Lose a stone. Read War and Peace. Be a Better Person. But having already made 50 of them before Christmas – way more than most people – come the New Year, I didn’t need to do much resolving. No, what I needed to do was get on and actually do them, and suddenly here we were, edging into spring, and barely anything had yet been done, bar a failed attempt to get someone to take some blood. I was beginning to feel that my deadline, 9 December 2012, my 50th birthday, was breathing down my neck.

      I hadn’t even been able to get out and do much training for the half marathon, my initial burst of enthusiasm having been rained on from a great height. Frozen rain, in fact: the much forecasted, much anticipated and now interminable snow. And there are only so many times you can make a circuit of the coffee table before losing the will to live and/or becoming so dizzy you pass out.

      ‘You need publicity,’ my friend Simon Cox said to me firmly. It was a Tuesday, the kids were in school, and he was over to discuss business. He was a client now, as well as a close pal of mine, and once we were done discussing e-commerce solutions for his company, I’d showed him the new 50 List website I’d created – my pet project once the kids had gone back to school.

      I’d also by now set up a JustGiving account. My mentioning the list on Facebook had brought a flurry of enquiries from friends wanting to know where and how they could make donations – and, more importantly, who I wanted to have them. So it made sense to make things official by putting that information on the website too, explaining that anyone who felt inspired to could donate direct to CMT United Kingdom, the charity that was the first port of call for people with CMT, myself obviously very much included. The money would then be split equally between ongoing research and supporting youngsters, like Ellie, with the condition.

      I’d set myself a pretty ambitious target as well – to raise £5,000.

      ‘I know,’ I said to Simon. ‘It’s a lot to aim for, isn’t it?’

      ‘Which is why you need to get it out there,’ he said. ‘Fire people’s imaginations about it. Give them a chance to get involved. Local businesses even, maybe. It’s the sort of thing the local papers will jump on too, believe me. That might lead to sponsorship – financial help and so on.’ He pointed to some of the more outlandish challenges I’d set myself. ‘Which, by the look of this, you’re really going to need.’

      Perhaps because I’d always thought I’d fund the list myself, it had never occurred to me to involve the local papers in what I was doing. I said so.

      ‘Are you mad?’ Simon laughed. ‘It’s January, remember – nothing doing. They’ll be all over this, trust me. Take a look out of the window. I reckon they’ll leap on any story they can lay their hands on right now that doesn’t need to include the word “snow”.’

      I did as instructed and agreed he was probably right. I’d leap on anything that didn’t involve snow at the moment. Much as I didn’t want to be a grump and a killjoy, snow and wheelchairs were incompatible: that was a fact of life.

      ‘Seriously,’ he went on, ‘they’ll be all over this anytime. Tell you what. I have a friend who knows a journalist down at the Herald and Post. Let me have a word with her. See if she can get him to do a piece on it. Spread the word a bit for you. How about that?’

      ‘You think?’ I said. ‘You really think he’ll be that interested in all this?’

      Simon grinned. ‘Nige, mate, you really don’t know what you’ve got here, do you? Just you wait and see, mate. Just you wait.’

      And it wasn’t a very long wait. It was around 24 hours, give or take – no more than that – before a journalist from the Herald and Post was indeed on the phone wanting to talk to me and, having asked me a few questions about what I was up to, wanting to know when he could send their photographer round and get some pictures of both me and, he hoped, Ellie.

      She was typically bemused at the prospect of being in the paper.

      ‘But СКАЧАТЬ