School Sports Day - Our Future Today Learning for Tomorrow

Primary School Sports Day.  All to often we read today that here in the UK another school has sold of its sports field to a developer, and the government/local authorities actually condoned this madness.  So, the era of the school sports day did and does seem in jeopardy in some areas.

One of the reasons of course was the mistaken  belief by the airy fairy brigade that it is not good for children to be competitive.  Everything must be inclusive but, it can't be embracing or inclusive if you are pitting children of varying abilities against each other.  The bigger, the more active, the better aptitude a child has in participating in these days will always see the smaller, less adept child lose out and this engenders a life time of misery for the child/ children, who are always the losers, so they tell us.

You sometimes do wonder if these people actually live in the real world or what kind of sad unfulfilled lives that they had as children that made them to go on to become so introspective in their view of the world at large.  Let's face it, if you are of a certain age you had PE or PT when at school, both primary and secondary here in the UK, and if like me , you were pretty pathetic, you did what everyone else did, good or bad, you got on with it.  Yes, I do recall feeling pretty miserable at times, when I overheard remarks while out on the school playing fields such as, 'Hey, Jim /Bobby, (older brothers) what about the runt, are we playing him today.' And the stock reply would be, 'Are you kidding, you do want to win, don't you?'

I didn't take these jibes to heart because I knew I was pretty useless at certain sports, but it didn't stop me trying.  I was no good at football, just did not have the coordination or speed, although I was a pretty tolerable runner, but over distances.  I joined the local harriers for a while and was not bad at the distances.  I enjoyed the 1500 meters and I enjoyed cross country.  In fact I have a tiny little bronze medal, that sits next to my GS medal in the cabinet, the former I was awarded for coming third in the annual battalion cross country run, and I do mean the battalion, whether you were able or not, everyone had to take part in this little soiree, so third out of about 600, not bad!

As a kid in primary school, the emphasis all those years ago, seems not to have changed, from what Ishbel and I witnessed yesterday at the http://www.beaufort.surrey.sch.uk/ School in Woking where Mollie and Shannon attend.  Every single child was included in the day, or those that were able to,  Keiran (see), http://tomstronach.blogspot.com/2011/07/moral-dilema-at-8-years-of-age.html , one of Mollies boy FRIENDS, did not participate due to the fact that he had a broken collar bone, boys what do you do with them, but he was there giving support.

The day started with the children being divided into small groups and each group had different sizes and ages, and when the very smallest, of 4 years old, I guess, were doing something, one of the older children would be there guiding and helping.  There were screams of encouragement and support in all activities, but no one activity was ended until all of the children in a group had had a chance to participate.  And no one got fed up waiting for the slowest group to finish what they had started, (although my head did end up looking like a boiled lobster by the end of the day - ex Health and Safety Consultant with no hat - says it all really!)

So, what's the point of this then, well the point is that it doesn't matter how small you are, or how skilful (even at primary school age) you are at these activities, look at our Mollie, bigger milk bottles around than her and if you look at her next to her class mates she is a tiny Tim compared to them and indeed to her 5 year old sister. But, as we looked at her yesterday and the rest of the young ones, they were being included and encouraged at every stage.  They were enjoying it and getting involved and they were learning that it doesn't matter how insignificant you appear to be, as long as you try and put the effort in you will get a reward at the end of it.

That reward varies significantly of course, as it does in adulthood,  and in yesterdays sports day it was as varied as getting a sticker at the end of a race, and every one got a sticker, Shannon our 5 year old got a sticker for being first in the three legged race, with the two Granny's standing at the finish shouting her on with home made banner by Granny Susan Aunty Kelly, to cheers and applause from their friends and other parents and visitors.

They learned that taking part in an event, no matter what the outcome was, is just as satisfying and rewarding as it would have been had they actually won the particular event and while we get more cynical as we get older with people saying in a blaise way 'that it is not the winning that is important, but the taking part', with the contempt that normally can be heard by the speaker uttering that tired old phrase, it is a lesson well learned.  if we can instil in our children today, the values needed to be a better citizen, whether in their local community or for their country or for the planet, by being part of that small or large community, then I say lets see more days like these up and down the length and breadth of the country.  Lets get out there and show our support for the Hadmasters and Headmistresses, for the teachers and assistants, who give so much in teaching the values of inclusiveness to our children and our grandchildren.

PS. If you are going to attend one of these days do remember to take your bunnet [see] http://www.firstfoot.com/dictionary/b.html and some sun cream, be warned

Best Wishes

Mollie in the long jump

Mum Jennifer in the Mums Race [and she was not last]

Shannon on the balance beam

Shannon and Mollie in the obstacle course

Granny's Susan and Ishbel encourage Shannon in 3 legged race 

Shannon with sticker 

Mollie in the relay - go girl

Mr Fat has got the hump.....

I wrote a blog in June telling you that Mr Fat is not so fat any more and how quite proud I felt of myself in achieving, albeit ever so slowly, to lose 31/2 stone in two years.  That's 49 lbs in two years.  Slow, I know but apparently they do say the slower you lose it the longer it is to put it back on, here's hoping.

Now if you look at my twitter feed at @tomstronach and then into my twitpic links in particular you will see that while I am losing weight I am managing to do this without going on any mad dieting regime.  I still enjoy my food and the odd bar of chocolate, unlike my skinny other half whose gorgeous nose is always buried in a trough of food or 'another' bar of large dark chocolate, and whose weight never seems to vary, b***h, only kidding my lurv.....

Anyway, what Has Mr Fat got the hump about I here you ask, well I'll tell you. Other Fatties who are clearly to lazy to do what needs to be done for themselves and then after gorging themselves for whatever reason, expect the rest of us to pay for them to have an operation on the national health to make them skinny again.

I picked up on an article tweeted today from the The Guardian about a 62 year old ex policeman who weighed in at 22 stone, that's a stone and a half lighter than I was.  Now I may be wrong here, won't be the first time, but the article does not point out how the chap managed to get so heavy in the first place, was it because he was a lazy sod, stuffing his face and then sitting on his bum in front of the telly and stuffing his face while he did so.  Was the local shop a five minute walk away, and like me did he sweatily manouvre himself into the driving seat before wheezing the final few yards to the shop door and back into the car for the long five minute drive home......  I don't know, or was it because he had a medical condition that prevented him from DOING ABSOLUTELY NO EXERCISE  AT ANY TIME WHILE HE CLIMBED TO THAT WEIGHT? I just don't know, so, this blog is not a comment on him per say, except for the fact that he is demanding that me and others who pay taxes, pay for his remedy to try and fix the problem.

What is his remedy, well it's to try and force his local Primary Health Care Trust, who have already turned him down, into giving him a Laparoscopic gastric bypass.  As they, the health trust, have previously turned him down, his lawyers are now launching a challenge in the Court of Appeal, claiming that the original decision has breached their clients human rights.  Now, as I say, I do not know this particular chaps circumstances, but we all know that there are plenty of obese, and like me, morbidly obese people out there who got into the situation that we find ourselves in through no one else's fault, but our own.  And we also know that plenty of them then expect their local heath trust to sort the problem out by giving them surgery.  Now if the health trust refuses is that a breach of the patients human rights?

What about the Human rights of the people who live with us Fat Git's, what about their human rights being abused by us as we sink deeper and deeper into the furniture as it fights to cope with the ever increasing weight. What about lying next to Mr or Mrs Fat as we  snore grunt and sweat in the night, disrupting their sleep and making their lives miserable, is that not a breach of their human rights. Who is going to take up the cudgels on their behalf , and is it for the courts to determine that your partner, under these circumstances, is affecting the human rights of the partner and then to go on and make a ruling consigning all us fatties to 'fat prisons' of course it isn't.

When you got married or started living with Mr or Mrs Slim did you think you were signing on, regardless of, 'for in sickness and in health' I don't think self inflicted obesity is or should be covered by that statement, do you?

As I said in my previous blog, well not exactly these words but the sentiment was there, I had a bit of an epiphany. I suddenly realised after gradually getting bigger and bigger, sweatier and sweatier and being unable to sleep properly and being a right miserable bastard, that I had to do something.  Ishbel would keep saying your fine, but I wasn't fine.  I enjoyed seeing my grandchildren but resented it at the same time because I was expected to do things with them and the slightest exertion was making me sweat buckets and wheeze uncontrollably, so something had to be done.

The car was given up, and slow gentle walk were the order of the day. It meant getting up earlier in the day, to be able manage the walk to the rail station.  It meant walking to the shops.  And gradually over the next two years the weight began to come down slowly and the fitness level started to increase.

I now can walk comfortable for a couple of hours and I am not wheezing or sweating like a river in tidal flow.  I am even back to driving as I can bend the body into it, BUT I still walk to the shops, rain or shine and I have a small step exerciser that I use as well as going for at least an hour  or hour and a half walk each day, whether I feel like it or not.

I don't car how long it takes me, but I am going to keep it up, why because it is good for me and for my wife, my kids and my grand kids.  It is also better for those I work with as I not as miserable as I was now that I am obese and not morbidly obese, although probably I still am the latter, but like every thing else it is the mindset and getting into that is the first step to helping yourself rather than crying foul and expecting others to do it for you.

Best Wishes 

Is an immoral press our fault?

This was the question posed by the BBC's Sunday Morning Live programme on Sunday 10th July.  A programme hosted by Susanna Reid with guests Paul McMullan ex NOTW features and investigative reporter, Peter Hitchins Mail on Sunday Derek Hatton failed militant.

Now this is a BIG question and of course with what is happening with all the accusations and counter accusations that are on the go in the UK it is surely a question that is going to go on being debated for a long time after the presses have run dry with News of The World ink.

But here is my take on it, for what it is worth.

The answer to this question is not just a straight yes or no. First I suppose I have to tell you my newspapers, well to be honest I don't buy papers anymore.  When I was a kid growing up in Scotland until I left at 15 in 1971 it was the Sunday Mail and Sunday Post and I did read them, but the Post in particular was a great buy if for nothing else, the comic section, The Broons and Oor Wullie in particular.  But it wasn't just for them that I read them, and anyway it wasn't me buying them.  I was aware that there was other papers available, but I suppose like every other working class family in Britain you rarely picked up what is termed a broadsheet or 'quality' paper but stuck to what you knew.

When I left home in Coatbridge, located between Glasgow and Edinburgh, closer to the former than the latter, to join the Army, this was the first time I was away from home and you couldn't get much further, or so I thought at the time, arriving in Shornecliffe on the Kent Coast.  Anyway I was suddenly in a dormitory with about 20 other guys and while there was still no sign of the broadsheets  The Mirror and The Sun were my early staple diet as a young boy moving into manhood.

As my personal development grew this had to be matched by my interest in what was going on in not just the tabloids of the day but in a broader spectrum of newspapers if I wanted to know what was really going on in the world other than the staple diet of dross that was being fed to me by the 'red tops'.  So I moved on but to no particular paper but rather would visit the WRVS lounge in barracks where they had all the daily papers, The Guardian, The Times, The Express, The Mail,The Observer, The Sunday Times, and much later on The European.

I like to think that this broader spectrum of reading has helped to shape me into a much more rounded and knowledgeable person on world events and occurrence, than I would be if I had stuck to 'Red Tops and Tits'.  Surely you can not just live on another blaise headline proclaiming Brits drink another Spanish beach town dry or endless pages of naked women, and men, spread across what is essentially a terrible use of resources required to print these 'papers'.  I wont call them 'newspapers' as the paucity and quality of news contained in them is of such a dubious nature and much less informative to the sum of knowledge found in a kids comic of today.

I have to confess that I stopped buying papers years ago, once the internet and broadband came along and I found I could get all I wanted from that. Ishbel on the other hand continued to read the Daily Mirror, and while it did not have a page 3 it is just as bad as the Sun for the diet of gossip and innuendo that it throws at you.  I recall one day I picked it up to have a read and within a few moments I had put it down again.  Ishbel said, 'That was quick, you can't possibly have read the paper that quickly...' Well, what can I say.  I mean I can't remember what was in it as there was no news of note but I do recall replying that I had absolutely no interest in the fact the So and So was Seen snogging So and So or whether an 18 year woman had set up home with a 55 year old man.  I was even less interested to know what was happening in the daily drudge of soapland or that an actor from one of these had been found in another compromising position, or that So and So was again signing in to the Priory.

Of what social importance do these items have to the nation or it's citizens, absolutely none. One of the most recent intrusions was that of Max Mosely outed for his sexual proclivities by the NOTW.  I did not read the story in  a newspaper and I did not read it on-line at the NOTW site but one could not fail to know about it because of the storm it created. And do you know what, I was still less than interested in it.  I had heard of Mosley through my passing interest, not a complete died in the wool fan, but I am interested and occasionally follow motor sport and F1, so I knew who he was.

Was I interested in what he got up to in his or anyone else's bedroom, not in the least.  Was I interested in the fact that he was a married man and getting up to these shenaigans, well about as interested then as I am now. In other words not one bit.  If he had been in 'public office' and by that I mean local or national government I may well have been interested if evidence had been produced that he was giving away state secrets during his escapades, BUT he was a private fellow, working in a company with a public image, but that company or his running of it had nothing happening  in it that would have impacted on the lives of the readers of the paper that exposed him, or anyone else for that matter.  Apart from the damage to his personal relationships and family what purpose did it serve to run such a story other than to publicly damage and try to humiliate someone who was rich and successful? And who is to say that the guy had these urges and was in a relationship that did not return that interest but allowed him to wander.... who cares.

To then justify this and other stories of that ilk by saying that is what our readers want is  a totally and completely disingenuous response.  'You' print it.  'You' publish it and I am not just referring to the defunct NOTW, I am referring to every newspaper and gloss magazine that exists in print with one aim and one aim only. And that is to make the vast sums of money from sales and advertising that YOU do make.  It has nothing to do with the fact that your readers want it it has to do with the fact that that is what you want to print.  The Sun was of course the leader in this daily offering of sleaze and they have been literally force feeding it down the public's throat now since November 1969 when it changed from, believe it or not, a 'broadsheet' to a tabloid and then a year later in November 1970 when it published its first topless photo!

The relentless march down the road of sleaze over news has been constant since then and the public read it because that is what is presented to them.  Of courses 'editors' and owners will tell you if they did stop producing this tat and filled their columns with actual news, then their readers would stop buying, and of course the economics of that, not just to the paper alone but all of the associated jobs linked to the production of it, would be in jeopardy.  Maybe so, but at least in the current economic situation they would be joining the rest of us on the breadline. Anyway it didn't seem to be a major concern for Mr Murdoch when pulling the plug on the NOTW earlier!


So the question was, Is an immoral press our fault?  In a way then, it is.  The public continue to purchase and devour it and while there is an unappealing appetite for this kind of dross I am sure that they will, regretfully continue to do so, BUT don't ever forget it was THE IMMORAL PUBLISHERS AND OWNERS of these rags that took the decision to produce them in the first place and to turn round and try and now justify that first decision is just as IMMORAL now as it was back then.

Best Wishes 

"Conquest" A Kydd Novel by Julian Stockwin

 Mr Stockwin has done it again.  I was a soldier so did not get to spend much time at sea.  Once, while waiting to join my Regiment in Berlin, and at which time I ended up getting there 24 hours after my suitcase and kitbag (and that was me joining Man's service from Boy's service so my first time at the Regiment.... but that's another story) I had a trip on a destroyer from Edinburgh to Portsmouth.  The ship had an association with my Regiment, as inter service organisations seem to have, a bit like towns in different countries twinning is about the nearest simile I can draw for you.  I have also been on lots of ferries from Dover to Calais and from Portsmouth/Plymouth to Bilbao. And, finally a little bit of tacking about in small sailing dinghy's.  

So, what has Mr Stockwin done again, I hear you ask?  Well, even if you have never been near the sea  reading a Kydd novel by him has a uniqueness about it that is so descriptive, that you can almost taste the salt in your mouth and the spray on your face as you plunge through the waves aboard the L'Aurore captained and crewed by the utterly convincing characters at the helm and in the rigging of this ship.  Whether it be in the English Channel or rounding the Cape into the Indian Ocean you can feel the surge of the vessel as she is in full sail into the next adventure or chapter, it really is that good, and that is what you want from a book.  A book is something more than a collection of the words contained within the covers, a book is a device unlike any other whether it be TV or Movie or Video or Comic.

A book is a means by which an author presents to you the reader, his or her words in a way that allows you to visualise in your minds eye every detail of every character of every scene presented in full mind blowing technicolour imagery that only the imagination can present....always much more satisfying than on screen, to my mind at least.

Julian Stockwin does this so skilfully in the Kydd series and this is clearly down to the research he puts into each book in developing these quasi historical dramas.  Fiction is cleverly interwoven with past reality and we find that Kydd and the crew of L'Aurore, still recovering from their own trials at the Battle of Trafalgar are tasked with the honour of  bearing the body of Admiral Lord Nelson back to London for his state funeral,  Having been involved in the greatest naval battle of  all time you would think that Stockwin would cut them a break with some shore leave, but no, he is a hard taskmaster and no sooner is the body delivered to Greenwich and they are back on the outgoing tide back down the Thames and into the open sea, as fast as they can be re-supplied.

The Action moves onto Maderia where Kydd is attached a a squadron bound for Africa with Army units with orders to relieve the Dutch of their possession of the Cape and surrounding environs and bring it into the Empire.  Kydd is attached to Commanding General's staff on land for the first battles and is horrified by the carnage that he sees and that we feel as we also read the description of what takes place, and we like him are praying for relief by being allowed back to OUR ship.

Having won a decisive but unexpected victory, while the main opposing forces carry out a tactical withdrawal , well that's what British Army commanders call them, but if you were a grunt like me the shorter version was usually just a retreat, in land, the commander left in charge of the Cape capitulates and hands the town and fort over to the British.  Kydd is reunited with his ship but arranges for dear Renzi to then become attached to the Commanding General who has become the 'New' Governor and in need of a 'Colonial Secretary'.  If you haven't read any of the Kydd novels (why not?) you will understand the sublime happiness that this unexpected turn of events gives to the reader to see poor Nicholas so elevated, but you will need to read the previous books to get that feeling you get where Nicholas Renzi is concerned (sometimes you just want to give him a kick in the pants to get him motivated, but you do feel for him).

So, the race is on by the British to secure their new holdings and once again Kydd is in the mix, fighting the sea and the French to preserve this new part of Empire and all I can say is if you haven't read any of Julian Stockwin's novels you really are missing out.  They are both entertaining and educating.  Did you know that Royal Navy ships of old, for example, required both a Captain and a Sailing Master.  The ship could not sail without the latter who was responsible for navigation, not a function that the Captain was expected to carry out, well, neither did I until I started reading Mr Stockwin, so there you go, have a thoroughly enjoyable read and education for the price of one, what more can be had from a good historical drama............

Mr Stockwin can be found at;      http://www.julianstockwin.com/

Best Wishes 

The Kydd Series