Festive Spirit

Where has the time gone? It’s mid-way through December already. Mind you, the festivities have been on-going at Chez Hayward for a couple of weeks, much to the disgust of certain friends. I innocently posted on a social networking site that our Christmas tree was up and I was bombarded with strongly worded and distinctly unseasonal comments about my inherent lack of class. What can I say, I’m a working class boy and if my tree goes up on 30^th November then so be it. 

Christmas after all is about the build-up so why not start a little early? If you’re lucky you get about 60, 70, or even 80 Christmasses in your lifetime so suck them up and enjoy them is what I say as it’ll soon be over and before you know it you’ll be hoovering around the feet of the last remaining relative late on Christmas Day in the hope they’ll take the hint and bugger off.

Not that I’ve ever done that of course. It’s just what I’ve heard people do.

Let’s be honest, Christmas ends on Christmas Day. Boxing Day is just a hangover, a Christmas Day-lite. Anyone who tries to re-live the spirit of the big day on the 26^th December is just kidding themselves. Just choke down that cold turkey and move on.

Talking of Turkeys, I have already consumed my first two Turkey dinners of the festive campaign. The first was at The Haycock over at Wansford and was the final farewell meal with our good friends who are leaving these fair shores in the next couple of weeks to set up a new life in Australia. Or at least that’s what they’re telling us. It could of course be an elaborate ploy to rid themselves of the more boorish hangers on like myself. In which case I can’t say I blame them.

The meal itself was good. An 8 out of 10. It lost points for the economy of veg but everyone’s a critic. I blame Come Dine with Me and its loathsome procession of self-professed “I’m crazy, me” characters. Seriously though, if a dinner guest of mine started poking around my underwear drawer then a) good luck to them, but, b) they’ll be asked to leave. 

A good night was had by all and I’m sworn to secrecy as to who, when asked what the worst thing they’d ever drunk, said their own cold sick. There’s nothing like shameless honesty.

The second turkey dinner of the season was in the staff canteen at work (bonus points for value for money) but I still have 3 more turkey dinners to come, the final one being the biggest and the best courtesy of the present Mrs Hayward. Before that I have one in a pub in the New Forest on Sunday and the work’s Christmas party at Orton Hall on Thursday, but to be fair the latter one will pass by in a bit of an inebriated blur if previous parties are anything to go by.

So Christmas is well under way. I’ve done my Santa duty at the kids Christmas party already – yet again they didn’t see through my disguise and if they did they kept it to themselves. Probably for the best, Santa doesn’t give presents out to naughty boys and girls who blow his cover. Mind you, this was the first year I disguised Santa’s incongruous strawberry blonde eyebrows with the application of a bit of white make-up. 

I believe I said to a friend that I’d go out in Bourne dressed as Santa on Christmas Eve but in retrospect I don’t think I’d welcome the unnecessary attention this may cause. They’re simple folk in Bourne and I don’t want them to get a little spooked by my appearance as the worst case scenario is that I find myself spending the small hours of Christmas morning tied to a stake outside the Corn Exchange while the townsfolk converge to light the surrounding bonfire with a view to sacrificing Santa to the winter sprites. That’s bound to have happened before. 

So, burning at the stake aside, I also don’t want to get remnants of my fake beard drifting around in my festive winter ale like flotsam. 

So, Christmas is in full swing and I embrace it. Now I must get round to writing those cards, they just won’t write themselves.

The Bargain Bucket List

Being middle aged it’s about time I reviewed my life so far and established what the important things are to me. I’m not talking about loved ones or good health necessarily, although these are important, I mean that it’s about time I established what things I need to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil. 

Some people call it a bucket list, but having seen the film of the same name (which quite frankly bored me to the very pit of my stomach) I am loathe to follow suit.

However, whilst some people fill their lists with extreme sports such as white water rafting, base jumping, and sphering, I’m more likely to avoid these life-limiting activities in favour of more sedentary experiences. 

Don’t get me wrong, my mid-life crisis has set me on the path of running, of which long term readers of this blog will be sick of hearing about by now, and next year I am climbing a mountain or three over a few days whilst living on a train, but that’s another story. 

I do have foreign travel on my list; I’ve always wanted to visit the United States as it looked exciting on TV when I was growing up, and ever since my Bjork obsession of the early 1990s I’ve quite fancied a trip to Iceland. 

I’ve never fancied Australia by the way. Too many spiders. 

Every time I tell this to someone who’s been ‘down under’ I get reassurances that it’s not that bad, and then they go on to tell me how there was a giant fast moving spider in their bathroom or one hidden under a park bench or a load of tiny poisonous spiders swamping their back garden.

Anyone who has a spider story that includes them saying “the spider was so big that I heard it breathing before I saw it” is not going to convince me that a trip to the Antipodes should be high on my list. If you’re reading this in Oz then please feel free to correct me, but I bet you have a scary spider story.

It’s a shame really as I’ve always wanted to visit the big orange rock thing that you’re not meant to call Ayers Rock anymore, and also Ramsay Street. Come on, I’m British, what do you expect? 

I’ve digressed.

All I’m saying is some things on my list are, well, a little more day-to-day. A bit more achievable, if you will. So don’t laugh when I say that one of the things I wanted to do was, well, er, go to Nando’s.

Yes, I know, it’s sad and pathetic but we didn’t have one locally until quite recently and it always seemed so exciting and, well, chicken-y.

I like chicken. I don’t like chickens mind you, they’re terrible soulless creatures with unnerving beady eyes that stare right through you, but in cooked form they’re a particular favourite. Apologies to vegetarians or animal lovers there but it’s true. Chickens are the eyes of the devil and it is our duty to defeat them or we’ll all become possessed by the Dark Lord himself, and I don’t mean Simon Cowell.

Nando’s does come in for a fair bit of criticism though. This weekend I’ve heard it referred to as a “posh KFC”, which it kind of is, but I like KFC so there, and that it’s basically just chicken with the same three or four sauces added.  Well, yes, at heart it is, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing. McDonalds is essentially the same burger spruced up in a variety of buns but they don’t seem to do too badly for themselves.

What I enjoyed when I went last Saturday was that it’s good quality chicken in a variety of tasty sauces at a reasonable price and in comfortable surroundings. To be honest the company I was keeping was also very congenial which helped the overall experience but if the food had been inedible mush I wouldn’t have enjoyed it, but I did, because it wasn’t. 

Nando’s does exactly what it says on the tin and it must be popular as people were queuing for a seat as we left. To be fair I wouldn’t do that, there’s a Chimichanga two doors down and as I also like Mexican food I would have trekked down there instead, but I understand the ‘catnip’ appeal of Nando’s.

So there you go, another thing ticked off the list. So what if it’s not abseiling or quad biking or climbing up Vesuvius (all of which are on the hypothetical list), you need to have a mixture of things to make life interesting.

So what’s next? Driving a tractor? Flying a plane? Drinking absinthe? Appearing on a game show? All of these things at once? Who knows?

I’ll be sure to tell you about it though, regardless of whether you want me to or not.

Nice To See You........

I’ll be brief, I promise. Seriously I have to be. There’s only 21% left on the Sky+ planner and I really need to clear some space before the weekend as the heady mix of Formula One coverage and Saturday night reality shows may blow its circuits.

Also this is a bit of a check-in to prove I’m still alive as I haven’t been prolific of late. I could blame my job as it’s been quite busy and I’ve been travelling about a bit, although mostly to Essex. I have to say that Essex is less TOWIE and more Jeremy Kyle. Seriously, it makes Swindon look dead glamorous and sophisticated.

So I could blame that as when I get home of an evening the only thing I’m thinking about is my nice comfortable bed. I could of course blame a sudden lack of inspiration or creativity. In my student radio days there used to be a sign on the wall of the studio which read something along the lines of, ‘If you have nothing to say, play a record’.  So here’s Bananarama with ‘Love in the First Degree’…….OK, maybe not.

Well, I hadn’t felt I’d done anything of note. Then I realised that hasn’t stopped me posting before so I’ve cracked on.

Mind you we did go to London last weekend. BBC TV Centre in fact, to be in the audience of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. I love that title, it makes no sense at all and if you think it does then you’re even more crackers than I am, and I’ve got a certificate.

It all passed off well, particularly as Lulu got voted out. I don’t know what it is about Lulu, she really gets my goat. I think it may have something to do with the fact that she is known for (at best) about four songs (‘Shout’, ‘Boom-Bang-A-Bang’, that one that was a James Bond theme and ‘To Sir with Love’ - the one with Take That doesn’t count, she was just a guest vocal) yet she insists she has some sort of long-standing career and is still releasing contemporary and relevant songs today. 

Newsflash to Lulu, you’re not, now stop squawking that intro to ‘Shout’ at every available opportunity and bugger off.

And breathe….

Yet for all the Lulus in the world there’s always my favourite person involved in Strictly…....Brucie. I am joking although I don’t have the same beef with him that the present Mrs Hayward has. For some reason he makes her skin crawl and she will merrily tell you that if she had a gun with one bullet Brucie would be at the top of her list. Not some murderer or corrupt dictator, no, she would choose to take out an octogenarian light entertainer. I had to point out to her that if he happened to expire suddenly on Saturday night, no-one would believe she didn’t have a hand in it. 

No, my favourite (as Brucie would say) is the lovely, the striking, the beautiful, Aliona Vilani. I’ve never really had a laminated list but if I had she would be on it, somewhere near the top. I should have pointed this out to Aliona on Saturday night but I fear I may have got myself ejected for my troubles, and not in a good way.

It’s not just blind lust, I also respect her as a dancer, or something.

Anyway, it was a good night and I always enjoy watching a TV show being made as I spend as much time watching the camera crew and backstage people as I do watching the show itself. I also get a big thrill out of going to TV Centre. I heard someone say once that to a kid growing up in my era, BBC TV Centre was like Hollywood. When I was in Studio 1 I thought about all the shows that had probably been made in there that I used to watch as a kid…….Morecambe and Wise, Kenny Everett, Top of the Pops, Doctor Who…..the list is long and glittering. It’s a crying shame that the BBC have been allowed to flog it as the old concrete doughnut is part of our heritage. I really must do the tour before it closes.

Aliona aside though, I was also confronted with a blast from the past as in the audience were two members of Bananarama. Yes, a second mention. They were the first band I saw when I was about 14 and I had a crush on the one who replaced Siobhan, I think she was called Jacqui. This was one of many teenage crushes. I think this one came somewhere between Wonder Woman and Calley Donington off of ‘Grange Hill’.

So this brings me round to, oh yes, here’s Bananarama with ‘Love in the First Degree’…….

Water, Water, Everywhere.......

I have been called many things in my time. I don’t mean nicknames as such; after all I’ve had plenty of those over the years from school upwards (Four-eyes, Joe 90, Brains, Pickles, Duracell, Trevor, Terence Trent Hayward, Brig, etc). I mean descriptions.

One Maths teacher wrote in my school report that at times it appeared as if I had my head on backwards.  This was actually a clever way to describe both my erratic mathematical abilities and the fact that I used to spend most of the lessons talking to the girls in the row of desks behind me. This is why I know little about quadratic equations and quite a lot about late 1980s popular culture.

Well, when you’re faced on one hand with a bearded Maths teacher wearing a pink bow tie and, on the other, a row of pretty faces, what else is a teenage boy with raging hormones to do?

What I’m labouring manfully to get at here is that I’ve never been described as practical. When I was a small boy my Grandfather wisely declared one day that when I get older I was inevitably going to end up in a job where I don’t get my hands dirty. I wasn’t sure whether this was a sign of disapproval or not but being brought up in a family of manual labourers I did appear to be somewhat of a square peg in a round hole, but that’s another story altogether.

So on Saturday, there I was sat minding my own business in the privacy of the loo, pondering which pizza I was going to order from the takeaway menu that evening (I didn’t take it in with me, I know it off by heart), when I heard a dripping sound from somewhere nearby. My investigations led me to a small tap underneath the sink which had created a bit of a puddle. I decided to manage this developing situation by turning the tap off.

“There”, I thought, “that was easily sorted, another problem solved by….oh”.

Unfortunately my intervention hadn’t had the intended result of quelling the annoying drops of water which now started to drip in earnest.

A practical man would have known what to do in an instant. In fact a more practical man would have known what this tap was for in the first place. All I knew was that it was leaking and there was water all over the floor. I decided to break the news to the present Mrs Hayward.

She was not thrilled with this turn of events and entered the bathroom, investigated the pool of water, uttered a few loud profanities and, before I could say a word, she had removed the floor covering, some sort of modern lino, to reveal more puddles of water.

I was shocked by this discovery and knew that, as the man of the house, decisive action needed to be taken, so I confidently instructed Mrs Hayward to call her father.

My father-in-law is a much more practical man than I by quite a margin. He was brought up in an era of ‘make do and mend’ and can turn his hand to most DIY based tasks around the house regardless of whether he has tackled the job before.

Some of his methods are unorthodox. He once tried to remove wood chip from our walls with a blowtorch and he seems happy to tackle electrics without first turning the electricity off.  

Unfortunately this job was beyond him. All he could ultimately do was turn the water off so that our smallest room didn’t become a (very) wet room. Don’t get me wrong, he tried in vain to rectify the situation. I can’t say that I really helped though. At one point he asked me where the outside stop tap was and my response was to look at him blankly as if he’d asked a complex question about nuclear fission.

Being the Sherlock Holmes of DIY he deduced that it was probably somewhere near the water meter and some elaborate tool was brought into play which is still sat in our bathroom as I type, just in case I need it. I’m not sure what I will need it for or how it will be of any use to me, other than to smash the window to escape the inevitable flood, but cometh the hour….

What I established here was that being practical isn’t all that. I don’t wish to denigrate his abilities but sometimes the mettle of a man is in who he knows. Whilst Mrs Hayward was hastily scanning the local free magazine for emergency 24 hour plumbers I calmly flicked through my phone to call a nice chap called Simon, who’d installed our shower a couple of years ago.

He’d come as a recommendation from another chap called Mark (whose sister works on the telly you know, but this isn’t really the point). He explained that, as it didn’t sound like we were about to be swallowed up by an impending tsunami, we should just turn the water off and live with it until Monday morning whereupon he’d come out and sort it for us. 

He explained that there was really no point in him coming out now as he wouldn’t be able to get the relevant parts as the traders were now shut and, in any case, it would cost more for him to come out on a weekend. 

Of course what he really might have meant was that it was 5pm on a Saturday afternoon and he just wanted to have a beer in front of the football rather than crawl around on our damp bathroom floor but his sage advice made sense to my little brain and I could now take charge of the situation in a sort of supervisory way.

So, with traditional British spirit, the availability of shower facilities at the in-laws house, and 10 litres of Tesco Value Still Water (17p for 2 litres – what a bargain), we coped admirably with the lack of water until Simon arrived on Monday morning as promised, sorted out our dripping issue, and charged me a modest £20 for the trouble.

My point here is that sometimes it’s not what you know but who you know. I may be a DIY ignoramus but if you know someone whose sister is on the telly who knows someone else who’s handy with a spanner then ignorance is bliss.  

The Finishing Line

It seems hard to believe that nearly two weeks have elapsed and I’ve only just regained my breath, and indeed my wits, to put digit to keyboard.

After several months of complaining that it’s all too difficult and my feet hurt the moment of truth had finally arrived. The day of the Great Eastern Fun Run. In front of me was 4 kilometres (2.5 miles in old money) of chafing and sweat.

So there I was a week last Sunday, up at an unfortunate time of the morning for the so-called day of rest, although the Japanese Grand Prix was on so I had some entertainment to take my mind off things, pondering what I was going to eat. In the day or so leading up to the race this had become a pressing issue for me. Should I eat porridge or poached eggs on wholegrain toast? How, for that matter, do I poach an egg? I normally fry or boil them. In the end, the present Mrs Hayward suggested I just eat what I normally would so I decided upon a couple of slices of toast (plus some peanut butter I found in the cupboard) and a banana. To be fair I didn’t need the banana. 

Fuelled on this cocktail of peanuts and phallic shaped fruit I left the house with Mrs Hayward and my father-in-law in tow for support. Mother-in-law was indisposed with a stinking cold so she was let off. 

I have to say that taking my father-in-law was a risk. The man is just about to turn 65 but is probably fitter than I am by quite some margin. He’s always on the go and when Mrs Hayward did the Race for Life a few years ago he found her on the course and then ran ahead of her at some speed so he could see her cross the finish line. She was most embarrassed that her father who is some 30 years her senior was showing her up with his surprising fleet of foot.

I have to say that, somewhat surprisingly, it didn’t feel weird being stood in Cathedral Square surrounded by people in shorts and fancy dress, after all I go to the Peterborough Beer Festival every year and there’s some rather bold fashion statements made there, although there are many pints of fine real ale on hand to numb the senses. 

It wasn’t even that weird when former Olympic athlete Sally Gunnell wandered past me. When it properly got weird was the moment I found myself about two rows from the front at the start line. Well, I got bored with the whole warm up thing the DJs from BBC Radio Cambridgeshire (bless their cotton socks) were trying to get us to do in Cathedral Square and they were generating far too much whooping and excitement when I was more concerned that the banana I’d recently ate was going to make a dramatic reappearance during the race.

Funnily enough my friend who was attending in her St John Ambulance role later told me that the majority of cases heading her way were not sprained ankles or broken legs but people incessantly vomiting. Oh and there were a couple of runners who should have stopped and done a ‘Paula Radcliffe’ by the side of the road but instead kept going, which is just dirty.

I stood on the road, watching the time tick down and it was all a bit of a blur from there. There were kids jostling around me, a blue dragon thing was on the podium to my right, followed by a woman dressed as a fairy (something to do with a local charity) and then, bang! The start gun went and we were off. 

I had decided before I got there that I was not going to be out of the traps like a Greyhound or else it would be all over for me before I even got to 100 metres. This was the case for a lot of the excitable kids around me who didn’t get very far at all, including the ginger chubby one that had barged past me. Maybe that was just my reflection; it was hard to tell in the mêlée.

My main objective from thereon was just to keep going. I found it useful to identify a fellow athlete in front of me who was going a pace I liked and stick with them, until they either stopped or sped off into the distance. In the end I followed a guy in an NSPCC top who was doing a reasonable pace and was with him until near the end.

My concern had been that I would be overtaken by someone dressed in some sort of animal costume and these concerns were well founded. At the 2 kilometre mark I was overtaken by two guys dressed as parrots. To be fair to them they must have been fit as they were not showing any signs of being hampered by wearing a heavy felt costume. They were part of a group who were running as part of a pirate theme. I met the Head Pirate himself just before the end and he told me he regretted that he’d worn a hat to run in. I was impressed that a) he was running at all and b) that either of us could speak at this point.

Fuelled by a heady mix of adrenaline and peanut butter I kept going and going and going until suddenly I could hear the sound of the tannoy at the finish line. This was the first time my legs started to tell me that they thought we’d had enough, but my brain fired off a terse memo that read ‘Keep going you fools’.

Before I knew it the end was in sight as well as sound and even though by that point I’d just run 3.80 kilometres the last few metres seemed the longest. It didn’t help that the run up to the finishing line takes you off the firm concrete path and on to the undulating terrain of the Embankment but I managed to avoid any embarrassing trips or falls, and as I crossed the line I heard the tannoy announcing the safe return of “…number 57, Terry Hayward…” and I knew it was all over.

I quickly got ushered through a marquee, stripped of the timing chip attached by Velcro to my ankle and handed a cloth bag (which I initially thought was an apron, but having never done anything like this before I didn’t express surprise), some water which was well received, a medal, and a banana. My stomach sent a memo this time to say that quite frankly it had seen enough of bananas for one day so I put it out of sight in the bag.

I was met outside the finishing zone by Mrs Hayward and my father-in-law who hadn’t got down to the finish in time to see me triumphantly cross the finish line and so we consulted our watches. It wasn’t even half ten so I knew that I must have got round relatively quickly for me. 

As it turned out I ran it in 24 minutes and 40 seconds. This will serve me in good stead the next time I go out for a drink with my good friend Ned and he suggests we go to another pub some 2.5 miles away with half an hour to go before closing because it has a rare ale on that we have to try. Trust me, this is not an unlikely scenario.

And so, before I knew it, it was all over and I was off, medal around my neck, heading back to the car. My moment of glory was over. 

When I returned home I had a bath. This is not normal for me. I don’t really like having a bath; I’m more of a shower man. I feel uncomfortable in a bath and usually just sit bolt upright looking quite uncomfortable. However it felt like the right thing to do and so I found myself slipping into the bubbles (come on, I had to have bubbles, do they still sell Mr Matey?) and relaxed.

So, that is one of my New Years Resolutions done. Ticked off. Completed. Oh, and thanks to some very generous people (you know who you are) I raised £423.00 for The Stroke Association. Me and my tired legs say thank you.

It has inspired me to do something else next year. I keep being asked if I’m going to do a half marathon, or a full marathon, or even the Olympics, but I’m wondering whether it’s time to hang up my trainers and just run for fun.

After all, there’s so much else I could do. I’ve never abseiled, or bungee jumped, or walked over hot coals, or climbed a mountain, or jumped out of a plane, or chased some cheese down a hill…..

The mid-life crisis continues.

Final Thoughts

I remember back at the beginning of April I went for a run. It was early days and I was just starting to build up on the distance I could run before my chest felt as if it was about to explode over the pavement. Whilst at the time I was impressed that I was improving, I also had concerns about whether I’d ever have the level of fitness to make it to the required 4K.

I wasn’t too worried at the time though as I knew it was a good six months away. In fact October seemed so far away that it may as well have been another country. Not a distant country like Australia. It was more sort of Northern France. So now, here I am, stood on the passenger deck of the ferry, with Calais in sight, hardly believing that it’s come around so soon.

Am I ready? I guess so. On a good day I can run 4K. Not necessarily with ease but then, as the present Mrs Hayward once told me, if it was easy everyone would be doing it. What it has done is to give me great admiration for those who run marathons, or even half marathons. I have friends who can do this, some even combine it with swimming and cycling although not necessarily at the same time, and this is impressive when I consider that on a bad day I struggle to run at all. Curse my weak shins.

Sunday will be very surreal though, not least as there will be other people around me who are also running, and some others just staring at me.  I believe the latter group are called spectators. When I’m out and about in Bourne I tend to speed up when I see an actual person so I have no idea how I’ll react at running in the presence of so many people. Perhaps I’ll get around the course in record time but I’m not holding out much hope. 

My main ambition is to finish without prematurely expiring during the race. According to a friend who will be working at the event on behalf of the St John Ambulance, three runners died during last year’s event. This makes the whole thing seem much more dangerous. Perhaps there are minefields or crocodiles en route that I was hitherto unaware of. I’ll let you know afterwards, if I still have my arms.

Either way, there’s no going back now, and no matter how surreal it will seem at 10am on Sunday morning, with a number on my chest and a chip around my ankle to record my time, I know at least that any pain or embarrassment is for a good cause.

The last time I did anything for charity I had my legs waxed, again this was another idea that seemed good at the time after a few beers in the pub. That, if I remember rightly, was for Comic Relief. This time, when I decided to enter the race, I decided to do it for The Stroke Association.

It’s hard to pick a charity to support as each cause can touch a person in one way or another. Normally I would have picked one of the many good cancer charities as that hateful disease has affected so many of my close family and friends. However I had The Stroke Association suggested to me by Mrs Hayward and I’m glad that she did.

My nan had a stroke many years ago. Prior to that she was so fit and active that she put us all very much to shame. She lived for another six years after her stroke but she was never able to walk again and spent the last few years of her life in a rest home, and I know that she was intensely frustrated at her lack of mobility.

Last summer my mum suffered a stroke. For me it was the first time I realised that she was unwell. I don’t think I’m speaking out of turn to say that my mum could have a tendency to be a little bit of a hypochondriac. I used to joke with her that she had a season ticket with the doctor’s surgery as, even when I was little, she seemed to have an appointment most weeks about something or other. 

So when she used to tell me about her various medical complaints I, like a lot of people who knew her,  probably took it with a pinch of salt as that was just who she was. In the past nothing serious had ever come of these things.

After the stroke she became frail and visibly started to look much older. Before and after the main stroke that saw her hospitalised for a few weeks in June she suffered a number of ‘blackouts’ or ‘mini-strokes’ as the doctor called them. 

On reflection it came as no surprise when she had another heart related episode a few months later. However this time her heart stopped for a number of minutes and despite the ambulance crew resuscitating her and a few days spent in intensive care it was clear to the doctors that she was never going to regain consciousness. She was taken to a ward to, as the medical staff tried to delicately put it, let nature take its course.

I have no idea whether she had any idea what was going on. Her brain was virtually dead. However she obviously had a tougher constitution than even she would have imagined as without the aid of equipment to keep her alive she survived for another six days. They were the longest six days of my life.

For a week, I, my wife, and my Dad made the daily trip to sit in shifts with my mum as she lay dying. There was no hope that she would recover, we were just waiting for her to die and to be with her when she did. It’s hard to describe how difficult it is to spend so much time watching someone you care about, and who cared about you so deeply, slowly and visibly deteriorate. You want to do something but there’s absolutely nothing you can do.

Each day became more and more difficult to make the trip to the hospital, to sit there and listen to her breathing become more erratic and raspy, whilst normal life in the ward continued around us. There were distractions of course, when I left the ward the real world would creep back in and other family members provided some practical support during that time for which I will be eternally grateful.

I will confess to the fact that I’m scared of death. I worry about it on a daily basis. What I really didn’t want to see was anyone, not least someone so close to me, just die in front of me. Rather selfishly I had hoped that when it happened it would be during the night. However, as fate would have it I was there with my wife when my mum died. 

All deaths are different I would imagine. Some are peaceful and some are not. Having had no previous experience of death I don’t know where to put my mum’s but it appeared, when it came, to be sudden and difficult. I won’t go into details but I will never forget the sights and sounds and smells associated with that moment.

My father said afterwards that he wished he had been there when she died. I tell him that I’m glad that he wasn’t, but I don’t think that he will ever really understand why I say this. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I was there for her but in many ways I wish I hadn’t been as, in amongst all the good memories I have of the mum I remember as I was growing up, I will also carry with me the memory of that terrible week and those last desperate moments for the rest of my days, and I suspect that she wouldn’t have wanted that.

So, when I’m running on Sunday morning, when I feel like my legs are aching, and I’m starting to wheeze a little and just want to stop and have a little sit down, I’ll remember that week back in September last year and recall that if you’d given me the option then I would have given anything to be anywhere else, doing anything else, including running 4 kilometres in some ill-fitting shorts in front of a load of cheering strangers.

So, to all my friends and family in the real world and online this is my last plea for sponsorship, I promise, at least until the next time. If you can spare a few pennies or a few pounds for the good work that The Stroke Association do, then please visit my Just Giving page at http://www.justgiving.com/Terry-Hayward3

 

Anything you can give is much appreciated and you can always donate after Sunday if you’d prefer. The website stays open for donations for up to three months after the event.

Thank you.

What Not to Wear

Despite the Indian Summer we are currently experiencing, which technically isn’t anything of the sort as there needs to be a frost first before the warm weather, my mind has turned to the end of October and All Hallows Eve. There is a good reason for this; I have been invited to a Halloween party. 

It’s been organised by my employers and sounds like it will be a jolly jape, but the dress code troubles me a little, and I’ll explain why.

I have to say to my fellow colleagues, some of whom are regular visitors to this blog and read my incessant ramblings, although heaven knows why when they have to put up with me all day at work, that the dress code in itself is not a problem and covers all bases, but that’s where I’m most likely to slip up.

Let me share the dress code with you. It says something along the lines of, ‘fancy dress optional’. Yes, optional. Not essential but optional. Now I have read this clearly, fancy dress is allowed, but if you don’t fancy the fancy dress then you don’ t have to dress in a fancy way. 

Now, despite this party being a few weeks away, I’ve already started to think about what I can wear. I’ve been to previous Halloween parties organised by wife-in-waiting up in Lincoln but she has always been clear on the dress code and, quite frankly, unless you’re in fancy dress you can take a hike. 

When it comes to Halloween outfits I take a lateral thinking approach and have, in the past, chosen not to dress up in an obvious costume like a vampire or a werewolf. I haven’t put a sheet over my head and gone as a ghost or even donned a pointy hat and sat on a broomstick like some sort of transvestite witch. I have usually attended the Halloween party dressed as a dead celebrity, specifically ones that have met their maker unexpectedly or in unusual circumstances.

One year saw me in matching khaki shirt and shorts, a fetching blond wig on my head, and a giant rubber snake around my neck as I tried to resurrect within me the spirit of crocodile and stingray-agitating antipodean, Steve Irwin. Some may think that is thoroughly tasteless. Sorry about that but it did attract a little bit of attention and a lot of young (and some old) ladies were keen to stroke my snake, so to speak.

 The next year I stuck a tux on, whacked a fez on my head, and went as Tommy Cooper. Just like that.

I’m not sure why we weren’t able to go last year but I had plans to dress as Michael Jackson. Whilst I may have the moves (if you can imagine a middle aged man trying to do Thriller) I don’t really have the same body shape as the late Jacko so I’m not quite sure how that would have panned out, but I feel the moment has passed for that look now.

So I’m left to ponder who I should dress up as next, but let me get back to the main issue of the day, that vague dress code instruction.

You see my main worry stems from a party I was invited to by a couple of work colleagues at my previous employer, some years ago. They sent out invitations and stated the dress code was ‘black and white’. 

Now, our brains are all wired in different ways. Some people have brains that are very good at detail; some are more creative and focus on the bigger picture. Without immediately disclosing which neurological camp my flag has been planted in I think it is fair to say that I saw the word ‘party’ and my mind went into possibility overdrive.

For no explicable reason I had misunderstood the dress code as being fancy dress and so I started to exercise the old grey matter thinking of what I could go as given the black and white theme. My colleagues did nothing to correct my error of thinking although for some reason most of my immediate colleagues weren’t going to the party despite one of the organisers sharing an office with us, and maybe I should have followed their lead.

So, caught up in the fancy dress whirlwind, I didn’t notice the look of bemusement in the face of said organiser when I speculated that I might go to this party dressed as either a penguin or a panda. I think she thought it was just silly old Terry being silly old Terry. He comes out with funny things you know, just smile politely and back away.

In the end I followed my internal fancy dress rules. I went for something that I could pull off, given my shape and the general look of me, and in which I would still be able to hold and drink a pint of beer.

So, after a bit of ruminating, I came up with what I thought was a good idea. I would go to the party dressed as a football referee. OK, so it’s mostly a black outfit but with a few flourishes and the addition of a black and white football I had the perfect fancy dress costume. 

The present Mrs Hayward opted not to go in fancy dress, rather to wear a black and white frock, but even that didn’t ring any alarm bells with me.

We turned up at the venue that evening just as other party guests were arriving. As I parked in the car park I noticed immediately the distinct lack of anybody dressed as a zebra, a policeman, or a mint humbug, as I had expected. Instead men were wearing black suits and white shirts and the ladies were in black and white dresses, much like Mrs Hayward.

I was not unduly concerned. I figured that these were just the people who had chickened out, the real fancy dress people will be inside having a great time. Again, I didn’t notice the curious glances of my fellow partygoers as I got out of the car looking as if I was about to head out onto the football pitch to referee a Sunday pub league game. 

I guess I don’t need to tell you the rest. There was no-one else in fancy dress at the party, just me. Everyone else had not mis-read the invitation like I had and so I spent the whole evening self-consciously clamped to a seat with my bare knees hidden under a table. I gave my football to some kids so they could go and play in the car park and at no point did I need, or dare, to blow my whistle or show someone either a yellow or red card.

I felt like a bit of a fool although my fellow work colleagues didn’t appear to be at all phased by my bizarre interpretation of the dress code. I worry about my reputation sometimes.

Mind you it wasn’t the most bizarre thing that happened that evening. Later on the two organisers, both women in their fifties, got on to the dance floor and did a high energy rock and roll routine together, as a bit of entertainment for the crowd. That has burnt itself on to my synapses and still troubles me when I’m trying to get to sleep at night, but I think they were happy with it and everyone clapped politely. 

So, you can understand my problem. Do I go in fancy dress to a Halloween party where there’s a good chance that no-one else will dress up in a costume, whilst I arrive dressed as Rod Hull and Emu, or do I just risk being labelled as boring and go in my usual ‘going out clothes’? You see, the problem with me is that I prefer things a little more black and white.

Come on Emu, let’s get our coats. We’ve just got to sort out the picture on that TV first.