Happy Birthday to me...

Considering I was at work yesterday I had a really rather nice birthday.

I got some good books:

Andrew Davies's "The Gangs of Manchester";
Tom Robb Smith's "The Secret Speech";
Neil Shubin's "Your Inner Fish";
Ian Hough's "Perry Boys";
David Kynaston's huge "Family Britain 1951-57" which was chosen on the way home from the beer festival, which probably explains the slight over-ambition!
Thomas Cook Rail Map of Europe.
Plus The Human League's "Travalogue" as I'm trying to catch up on all those LPs I should have bought in the '80s.

And some Irish linen sheets I'd ordered also turned up, so they felt like a birthday present to me, from me!

Although I was in work, I didn't do very much yesterday afternoon because Chris Evans and a sidekick were having a go on the Skeleton training track for some sporting challenge that they're doing on his radio show. So we decided to go over and "help out" despite neither of us actually being interested in Mr Evans or his antics (my colleague has spent most of her adult life outside the UK and had to have Mr Evans and his cultural significance explained). We took an auditor over there with us too, as he was just finishing up and decided that he didn't want to be locked in the office.

The producer (or maybe she was a representative of his agent*) was getting a bit skittish when we arrived - she didn't seem to have much of a sense of humour and what there was seemed to be exiting rapidly. So my colleague volunteered to watch the gate for 'intruders' and keep an eye on the local press photographers at the far end of the track. I baby-sat the auditor at the top of the track and kept him out of everyone's way, as they were filming the event for the radio show's website as well. This strategy was going quite well until Mr Evans found our hidey hole and insisted on shaking hands and asking how we were. I've got to say that I responded with grace and aplomb whilst the auditor went into, "I'm your biggest fan" mode. A short while later the stars were coming into the shed to change into their lycra suits ('sperm suits' one of our coaches calls them) at which point I decided that the auditor was big enough to fend for himself and I volunteered to relieve my colleague guarding the gate - middle aged men, commando under lycra are not my idea of a happy viewing experience.

Actually, she didn't want to be relieved 'cos she was having great fun chatting to the photographer and scribe from the Chron. and the photographer from a Sunday tabloid. It turned out to be quite a good vantage point as it's just where the bungee rope stops the sled from flying off the end of the track, and instead flicks it and its passenger back up the track. I've got to say that Mr Evans' face was a picture on the first practice run, not quite, 'Ooo, I'm enjoying this adrenaline rush as I hurtle toward the trees on a bit of plastic 2 inches above the concrete'. It was more the face of a man pondering how much stainage shows up on lycra and resolving to check his employment contract and medical insurance cover once he got back to London. If he got back to London. I bet they never asked Wogan to do this...

He looked far happier on subsequent runs and the Chron got some cracking shots - click here and search on 'chris evans'. Our photos are in the album over on the right. After the two stars had done their training runs and then their 2 final 'competition' runs, the crew were allowed to have one run each (not in lycra, but they did have crash helmets!). All of them were very quick and one of the lads was really good - there were a couple of half-jokes from us to him about whether he'd like to come to a talent id day. The auditor left early, shaking hands, waving and doing the thumbs up to Mr Evans as if he was his new best friend. Well, I suppose accountants don't get out much.

I've got to say that Chris Evans turned out to be a very nice chap. He even came over to us to say good-bye and when I asked if he'd enjoyed it said he had, but that he was a bit miffed that ALL the film crew had beaten both his and Jonny's times hands down! It's probably because all the crew had an average age of 12 and were probably 8 stone wet through. He'd come down to Bath in the van with the crew but him and Jonny were picked up by a helicopter for the return journey. The official video and photos are here.

So we had a lovely day sitting in the sunshine, chatting with some friendly journos and watching lunatics whizz by on sleds (I say 'lunatics' 'cos after the stories I've heard about the track there's no way you'd get me on that thing!). They were so lucky with the weather as it has hammered down all day today.

Jon and I left work early and went to the cinema to see Tom Ford's 'A Single Man' staring Colin Firth, which was brilliant. The attention to period detail was fantastic. Then a take-away Thai meal. All in all a very pleasant day.

*(I found it interesting to watch a video being made and how the 'star' is perceived through the people around him. For example the producer/agent told the scribe from the Chron. that "Mr Evans has refused all interviews, so he won't be speaking to you", although she would be allowed to stand behind the TV crew from the local BBC news when they asked their questions. But when the scribe went up there Chris said, "Do I talk to you first?" only to get a sharp 'NO!' from the producer/agent and get dragged off to see the TV crew. It's easy to see how stories of difficult celebs can get around when they've not actually done anything wrong.)

A post about post and a rant

This is the standard of post we've been getting into the office for the last 3 weeks. What gets me is that the Royal Mail can deliver this to her home and training base, but on a daily basis they can't get our properly addressed and stamped post to its destination. Actually, this is quite well addressed in comparison to many as it has a surname on it - many have just had a first name and town.


The organisation that I work for isn't the one that won gold recently, but we our relationship with them is pretty incestuous. The golden girl tried our sport many years ago and is still friends with some of our athletes, whom she invited onto the bus for her 'homecoming'. Jon and I did get invited to the homecoming party and the up-coming black tie do, but it really isn't our sort of thing, and also on the evening of the homecoming party there was a free lecture on the archaeology of the Bronze Age Aegean at the uni - so, no contest really!

But I still can't believe that I'm in a job where I'm coming into contact with such people. How did that happen then? Luckily, as I'm not interested in sport (unless it has an engine attached) I don't recognise them and so treat them quite normally. It's only once they've left the office and I ask my boss who that was that I've just made coffee for and he says, "Phil de Glanville", that I think, "Ooo, I'd have been more impressed had I known!".

Anyway, having said that I'm not interested in sport without engines, I'm now going to have a little rant on its behalf. I've also included at the bottom of the page a post that I wrote on another webpage during the last Olympics.

The entire BOA winter sports budget is £5.8m. We're the 4th richest country on the planet and our winter sports budget is less than the price of a posh house? Let's face it, £5m isn't even a decent lottery win these days and yet the government expects Team GB to go out and win medals in a dozen sports? Some of those sports must only be getting a share of that money that amounts to a hundred thousand pounds, which probably barely covers travel to competitions. And don't start wapping on about how there's a recession on and money could be spent on better things. The current budget will have been set long before we'd all heard of 'sub-prime mortgages'. This budget is a reflection of how poorly sport (outside of cricket, football and rugby) is viewed in Britain and the paucity of our ambitions. It fails to recognise the massive emotional lift to the country that happens when we succeed in something - witness the homecoming parades for various Olympians, as well as those for cup winning rugby and football teams. Our country's sportspeople winning medals makes us feel good about ourselves and counters the over-riding negativity that seems to be a British characteristic and comes out of our printed media on a daily basis. Success in sport also has measurable benefits to industry and the economy; from increased motivation and productivity of workers to the FTSE rising, so it's arguable that investment in sport sees returns in the country generally.

You'd be amazed at how much grass-roots work the sports do with, frankly, pathetic budgets. These sports go into schools and work with youth clubs all over the country. In some inner cities the kids' horizons may be limited to the few blocks of their local neighbourhood, but through the input of sporting bodies they can find that an activity they enjoy like riding a bike, swimming, sliding down a snowy hill on a home-made sled, could actually take them somewhere in life. What benefits does greater investment in sport have for society in general? With kids doing something other than getting into gangs and knifing each other? Or kids adopting a healthier lifestyle and not becoming a drain on the NHS through obesity?

Not funding sport properly snatches opportunity away from children. It's also a kick in the teeth to the hundreds and thousands of ordinary people who go out there week after week and volunteer to give up their time for free to support something they love. These range from all those marshalls without whom motorsport, from the lowest Saturday afternoon hillclimb to an F1 race, could not function. British marshalls are the best in the world and they risk their lives for free every weekend ensuring that races can happen safely. But also, when you watch a large athletics event, all those red-jacketed judges and officials around the track are volunteers. When we held the World Champs last year people from all over Britain used a week or a fortnight's annual leave to come and work like slaves from the early hours of the morning to late at night (actually many worked into the early hours of the next morning), without pay, to ensure a successful event. OK, we pay their travel expenses and give them accommodation and food, but we're taking hostels not the Ritz.

Doubling the money we put into sports, especially winter sports, would still barely register as a blip on Britain's economic radar but the benefits it would reap are out of all proportion with the investment. That's also why I see London winning the Olympics as a wholly good thing, no matter what it costs. If we put on a good show it will make us all feel better. And even if we don't win every medal going, we'll still be raking in the money from all those tourists and teams who'll be coming over. I do wish we could stop being a country of miserable b*stards and see the bigger picture!


****************************
Summer 2008

"I've just been pondering what Gareth Southgate (?, well, someone on Football Focus anyway) said at the weekend regarding the dodgy result mid-week, that England seemed out of love with its footballers and its footballers seemed out of love with England.

I think this week the sport-watching public found the contrast was just too great between a bunch of 'pampered, preening pillocks' (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/manutd/2305486/Sepp-Blatter-is-this-really-slavery.html ) who are over-paid and constantly under achieve and our Olympic athletes who are just the opposite.

OK, I know that at the higher echelons of athletics, etc, athletes have fantastic sponsorship deals and are on very good earnings. But at the bottom, in those sports we've never heard of before this week (kayaking, BMX, etc), competitors fit their training in around daily life because the grant cheque from the sport funding body won't pay all the bills. They're getting up at ungodly hours to train before school and work and can expect to do the same in the evening. Often the grant cheque is late, putting mortgages/rent at risk.

I know our footballers may not deserve, as Southgate says, to be booed as they walk on, booed as they play and booed as they walk off, but fans are justifiably frustrated.

After the Olympics there will be 'inquests' into underperforming sports like judo and certain athletic events. Funding will be withdrawn and people will lose their jobs because they've failed to reach the targets they've set themselves in negotiation with the funding bodies. But let's not forget that entire sports are run in the UK on less than a single Premiership footballer's annual salary, often on less than their monthly wage. From this each sport's governing body must pay coaches and athletes, travel to world-class competitions, pay for kit, put on competitions, have some admin back up, etc, etc. For those sports to actually get one athlete to the Olympics can be seen as a major achievement, but to then win a medal...

If Premiership footballers showed the same sort of dedication and responsibility that our Olympic sportsmen/women have shown, I think they'd be on their way to winning back some of the respect they've lost over recent years. And, who knows, they may start winning on the pitch too."