Celtman Solo Point Five Photos (Andrew)
Category Archives: Andrew
Celtman Solo Point Five (Andrew)
This Saturday I’ll be getting up at 3am to take part in the Celtman Solo Point Five race around the Applecross penisula on the west coast of Scotland.
It is meant to be a triathlon. But, with the 3am start, as bags have to be dropped off with organisers by 4am, it should have an extra leg of “Getting Up In The Middle of Night” alongside the traditional swim, bike and run.
I say “getting up in the middle of the night” but as the race takes place two days after the shortest day of the year, it’s likely to still be light at 3am. No wonder the organisers haven’t included a head torch as mandatory kit for the run, it won’t even be needed at midnight.
Celtman Solo Point Five is a middle distance extreme triathlon with a sea swim in Shieldag, a challenging 56 mile cycle around the peninsula (and up the Bealach na Ba) and a trail run along part of the Celtman run course and around Ben Eighe.
The race has come after a spell of illness and injury including six weeks of not being able to do anything, so it’s very much a case of turn up and see how far I can get round. It will be slow. There are cut offs to watch out for – and I need to make sure I don’t injure myself again.
The forecast is looking decent, with some rain forecast, but a tail wind for most of the bike course, which would be much appreciated by this injured competitor.
Two days to go, can’t wait.
Find our more about the race here: Celtman Solo Point Five
The Sound of Football: Doncaster Rovers(Andrew)
Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here
Doncaster Rovers
Nickname: The Rovers
Ground: Keepmoat Stadium
Stadium Capacity: 15,231
Song: Walking Out Of The Darkness
In 1991/92, FA Women’s Premier League side Doncaster Rovers Belles won the Women’s FA Cup and the national woman’s league without losing a single game. The men’s side (who should really be Doncaster Rovers Beaus) cannot boast of similar success – it’s never won the top division, the FA Cup, or remained unbeaten throughout an entire season.
While this has meant that the men’s side has never had the opportunity to release an FA Cup final song, the Belles did, recording ‘Northern Pride’, the first ever female FA Cup song in 1992.
‘Northern Pride’ is not the only musical achievement from Doncaster. In August 2013, former One Direction star Louis Tomlinson fulfilled a childhood dream by ‘signing’ for the team as a non-contract player. However, having US number one hit singles doesn’t guarantee Rovers will play any of One Direction’s song. The team already had a fan with an American number one song. Rovers fan John Parr is better known as a singer songwriter whose greatest hit was the 1985 US number one single ‘St Elmos Fire (Man in Motion)’.
The song ‘St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)’ appeared on the soundtrack of the film of the same name. But it was not inspired by the film, instead the song tells the story of Canadian athlete Rick Hansen.
Rick was 15 when he was paralysed from the waist down. After he was injured he excelled at wheelchair sports, especially long distance races, winning 19 international wheelchair marathons. To raise money for spinal injury research Rick set out to circle the world in his wheelchair. It was a journey of 26-months and 40,000 km through 34 countries and he successfully raised $26 million. The lyrics in the song reflect his journey.
Despite the success of the song, it never appeared on a John Parr album, only on the official film soundtrack. Another song which doesn’t feature on any of his official albums is ‘Walking Out Of Darkness’, which he recorded especially for Doncaster Rovers. Unlike ‘St Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)’, ‘Walking Out Of Darkness’ has never been number one in the US charts.
John was inspired to write the song when Doncaster Rovers reached the final of the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in 2007. He wanted to tell the story of the club and how it had transformed itself. Only a few years earlier, Doncaster Rovers had almost been relegated from the conference league but had now reached a final and built a brand new stadium. It too has walked out of the darkness…
The B-side to the song is called ‘Dream On’ and is a tribute to Doncaster Rover’s greatest player – Alick Jeffrey.
Alick was a young player who was described by Jackie Milburn, the former Newcastle United and England forward, as: “This boy has everything. He is by far the best youngster I have ever seen“. Unfortunately, a bad leg break in an England international game when he was 17 curtailed his talent. He went onto play for Rovers but never reached the heights of the game that he should have. The street next to the stadium is named in his honour – Alick Jeffrey Way.
‘Walking Out Of The Darkness’ is played at every home game when the team walks out. Ironically, the tunnel is very well lit.
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Bag and Bin it (Andrew)
Travelling with a baby and a dog requires careful planning as neither will tell you when they need to go to the toilet. You need to plan ahead and work out places to stop to give the dog a chance to do his business and the baby a chance to check a nappy and change it, if required.
We were driving to Ullapool and planned to stop at the Kessock Bridge in Inverness. There’s a toilet block there, so it was a good place to stop, as we thought it was bound to have a baby changing room. We were wrong. It didn’t. It also didn’t have any bins outside. So, when Barney the Schnauzer did his business in the car park, we picked it up, bagged it and had to carry it with us as we looked for somewhere to change Infant TwinBikeRun.
It was sunny and we decided we’d change her on a mat on the grass at the side of the car park. As Mrs TwinBikeRun started setting everything up I said, “There’s bound to be a bin in the toilet. I’ll take Barney’s bag and drop it in there.”
I was wrong.
There were no bins in the toilet just as there were no nearby bins in the car park. So, I did what any man does when he goes to the toilet. I went to the toilet. It’s impossible to stand in a loo without thinking you need to go to to the loo too. I went into a cubicle. I went to the toilet. I came out of the toilet and I bumped into a man who’d just walked in.
He looked at me.
I looked at him.
He looked at my bag. Barney’s bag, which I was carrying in front of me like a waiter presenting a bottle of wine to the table.
And all I could think, as I carried a bag of poo out of a toilet, just as a man walked in on me carrying a bag of poo out of the toilet, was to try and offer some sort of explanation that would show him that I’m not a weirdo who went fishing in toilet bowls and carried his poo back home like a goldfish won at the fair.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
And what I said, made it a whole worse. Because what’s worse than walking into a toilet and coming face to face with a man carrying his own poo out of a toilet.
All I could say was “It’s not mine!!!”
Photo – April/May (Andrew)
The Sound of Football: Derby County (Andrew)
Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here
Derby County
Nickname: The Rams
Ground: Pride Park Stadium
Stadium Capacity: 33,502
Song: The Derby Ram (also known as When I Go To Derby)
The world series of baseball is misnamed. It’s the championship of the major-league baseball teams in the United States and Canada only. The rest of the world doesn’t get a look in despite the sport’s popularity in Japan, Latin America and Cuba.
Although baseball’s a minority sport in the UK there was, for a short period of time, a British Baseball League. In the 1890’s a Derbyshire businessman, Sir Francis Ley, wanted healthier and more productive workers and he constructed a baseball pitch at his factory in Derby.
Sir Francis organised a team to enter the British league, a four-team professional circuit, which he would have won but the other teams complained about his lack of sportsmanship – he’d bought American players to bolster his squad. Even in the nineteenth century, money could buy sporting success.
Although the league was short-lived it did leave one legacy. Sir Francis Ley’s baseball ground became the Baseball Ground, the second (of three) stadiums for Derby County.
Derby County’s one of the original twelve founding members of the Football League and one of only ten clubs to have competed in every season. It also holds a number of other records, most of which are unwanted. During the 2007-08 Premier League campaign it equalled the league record of just one win in a season; it had the least home wins and the least away wins; the most defeats; the least number of goals and the worst goal difference.
Perhaps Derby is cursed? When the club moved to the Baseball Ground in 1895 there was a story that a group of gypsies was forced to move their camp to make way for the Baseball Ground. Legend has it that they put a curse on the ground preventing Derby County winning the FA Cup. It wasn’t a very good curse – Derby won the FA Cup in 1946.
Derby has one record that’s unlikely to be matched. It’s the only club to have had three home grounds host full England internationals. Once at Derby’s original ground The Racecourse Ground in 1895, secondly at the Baseball Ground in 1911 and lastly at the current home, Pride Park, in 2001.
The club also had the first ever club mascot – a ram named Rammie. Rammie is a full-time employee of the club and works to maintain the club’s links with fans through charity and community work.
The club has a ram as its symbol to represent it’s link to the First Regiment of Derby Militia. The militia took a ram as its mascot and used the song, The Derby Ram as its regimental song.
“As I was going to Derby,
All on the market day,
I spied the finest ram, sir,
That ever was fed on hay,
And indeed me lads,
It’s true me lads,
I never was known to lie,
If you’d have been to Derby,
You’d have seen the same as I“
(Source: trad)
No one knows the song’s exact origin. It has been around for at least 200 years with reports that in 1796 the first US president, George Washington even sang The Derby Ram to a friend’s children.
In 1855 the first Regiment of Derbyshire Militia adopted a ram as its regimental mascot, a tradition which continues to this day through the Mercian Regiment of the British Army. Lance-corporal Derby, as the current mascot is known as presented to the Mercians by the Duke of Devonshire. Derby is paid £3.75 a day, draws his own rations, and, as the Derby Telegraph reports, he even has to have his leave card with him when he takes his annual holiday on the Duke’s Chatsworth estate.
American country and western star Merle Travis once recorded a version entitled Darby’s Ram. Identical twins the Kossoy Sisters recorded a version titled The Darby Ram on their 1956 album Bowling Green. And in 1963 the New Christy Minstrels released Down to Darby, an adaptation of the Derby Ram on their album The New Christy Minstrels Tell Tall Tales.
Buy the Sound of Football from Amazon.
Beware The Boot Button (Andrew)
At the weekend, I discovered that if you press the ‘boot’ button on the key fob for my car, it will open the boot (which I already knew) but, if you then close the boot, the car will lock itself completely. The ‘boot’ button doesn’t leave the doors open.
I wouldn’t have minded learning this fascinating fact but the key fob was still in the boot when the car locked…
And I was in a layby near Kinlochard…
In the middle of nowhere…
In shorts and tshirt, after running up Ben Venue…
With no mobile reception…
And my spare key was also in the car…
And my spare spare key was 50 miles away in Larbert…
How was your weekend? 😊
Medically Certified (Andrew)
I have a big nose. My dad had a big nose. Iain TwinBikeRun has a bike nose. You could say that, wait for it, here it comes, big noses run in the family! Boom! Boom!
I thought a big nose would give me an advantage when it came to getting a throat scan last month. I had an appointment with an ENT consultant and he asked if it was okay if he could check my throat by sticking a camera down my nose. I didn’t rush to say “yes” so he tried to reassure me.
“It’s okay,” he said, “I’ve tried it on myself.”
That didn’t sound good. Or reassuring. Or within acceptable medical guidelines.
He made it worse: “I had a go when the kids were out. I thought why not see what it’s like so I just stuck it down and had a quick look at my tonsils”.
While the kids were out? Unless his kids worked as nurses or doctors, he must have done this at home. It’s not reassuring to think that your doctor is conducting self-experiments at home. And it’s really not reassuring to hear that he waited until his kids were out. If it was so are and normal, why did he wait until he was alone?!?!? Could he not have done it during the evening meal. Hello, darling. Hello, children. Don’t mind me, just like an Instagram influencer, I’m just taking a video of my meal – except I’m doing it from the inside!!!
He then undermined all his comforting words by adding “it may hurt a bit as it goes in”.
I said “I’ll be okay, I’ve got a big nose, there’s plenty of room in there”.
He didn’t;t contradict me. He didn’t say “oh, you shouldn’t say that, you’ve got a petite hooter.” he just laughed and then tried to stuff a an optical cable down my nostril.
“Damn”, he said, “it’s very narrow, it’ll be a tight squeeze so let’s try the other nostril.”
“Damn,” he said again. This nostril is also narrow.”
I was scared of what he might say next. “Oh well,” he’ll say, “if we can’t stick it in your schnoz then we’ll just need to stick it up your bum. But don’t worry. I had a go when the kids were out!”
But he didn’t say that. He didn’t offer a self assessed bum probe, he just said: “You know, medically, you have a small nose.”
And he just pushed harder. But I didn’t mind, through the pain, all I could hear was that I now have a medical opinion that I have a petite conk, a small hooter, a normal nose.
The Sound of Football: Dagenham & Redbridge (Andrew)
Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here
Dagenham & Redbridge
Nickname: The Daggers
Ground: Victoria Road
Stadium Capacity: 6,078
Song: The Digger Dagger
Bands dream of one day performing in the O2 in London, the world’s most popular music venue. But not Dagenham-born ex-England manager Terry Venables. He dreamt of performing on the O2. In 2010, he made history by becoming the first singer to perform on top of The O2. He sang the Elvis Pressley song ‘If I Can Dream’, released to support England on its South African World Cup campaign. The song raised money for both Help for Heroes, and Malaria No More UK.
It’s not the first time El Tel has appeared in unusual musical circumstances. He was also on the cover of ‘Dagenham Dave’ by Morrissey, released as a single in 1995. It was only the second time Morrissey had not appeared on the cover of his own song. Instead he picked a picture of Terry Venables sticking his tongue out. Morrissey might have written some classics but this one is clunker. It was reviewed in the weekly musical paper, the NME, and it was described as “piss-poor old crap” and a “tune-impaired three-minute drone.“
Dagenham & Redbridge was formed in 1992, making them only three years older than ‘Dagenham Dave’. It was formed after a merger between Dagenham and Redbridge Forest.
Redbridge Forest was also an amalgamated club having been created from Ilford, Leytonstone and Walthamstow Avenue. so the full name of the side should really be Dagenham & Redbridge & Ilford & Leytonstone & Walthamstow FC.
Dagenham is the setting for the film and musical ‘Made in Dagenham’ which chronicles the 1968 Ford sewing machinist’s strike. This was a landmark labour-relations dispute that led to the passing of the Equal Pay Act 1970. The women who were skilled workers walked out when they found out the plant was downgrading their pay to a lower category than the equivalent male worker. It seems an unlikely idea for a musical but who would have thought that a barber who kills people and turns them into pies would be a huge success. What next? A bunch of cats singing songs? Madness!
Dagenham’s nickname is the Daggers for reasons which are self-evident. And the club’s anthem is based on this nickname and Chelsea’s ‘Zigger Zagger’.
It’s a simple call and response: one fan leads and everyone else shouts the reply.
“Lead: Digger Dagger, Digger Dagger
Crowd: Oi Oi Oi
Lead: Digger Dagger, Digger Dagger
Crowd: Oi Oi Oi
Lead: Digger
Crowd: Dagger
Lead: Digger
Crowd: Dagger
Lead (faster) :Digger Dagger, Digger Dagger
Crowd: Oi Oi Oi“
(Source: fan chant)
The ‘Zigger Zagger’ has a long history. It’s thought it was derived from the Cornish “Oggie, oggie, oggie!” chant. An oggie was Cornish slang for a Cornish pastie. Legend has it that this was called out by Cornish woman to make their menfolk aware that they were about to drop the freshly baked pasties down the tin mine. The original chant was adopted locally by the navy and later used at rugby matches. Famous Chelsea supporter, Mickey Greenaway (see Chelsea for more on Greenaway), is said to have introduced the ‘Zigger Zagger’ version in the early sixties. With his booming voice, he would bark out the call and the crowd would reply with an “Oi, oi, oi!”. It quickly spread to other clubs, including Dagenham & Redbridge.
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(Not A) Race Report from the Loch Leven Half Marathon 2023 (Andrew)
My throat is not the most important part of my body, when it comes to racing.
I’d pick my feet first, then legs, then arms and hands to pick up any water as I run. If I have feet, arms and legs, then I have the basics to be a runner because I never really think about the other parts of my body, except when they hurt.
Over April and May, I couldn’t call myself a runner as I, unlike Danial Day Lewis, didn’t have a left foot. See last week’s entry. But, as my foot healed, I was looking forward to running the Loch Leven Half Marathon last weekend. It’s one of my favourite races and I’ve covered it before here and here.
This year, in the run up, I was able to test my foot and, with no reaction, I was hopeful of running it again.
Except my throat gave in.
And, while I know, in theory, a throat is a vital part of running – and of living! – as we need to breathe through it; it’s not a part of my body I give much thought to when preparing to race. Perhaps, I should have. Last week, I had a niggly cold, decided that there’s nothing wrong with some outdoor swimming, and managed to swap a cold for a full on Vin Diesel impression (minus the baldy head, my hair didn’t fall out).
So, for this year’s race report, I offer a spectator’s view only as Iain TwinBikeRun took part and I gave him a lift to the start.
And my report is one which can be summed up as: Kinross has a very nice EV charger. This year the race was held on closed road so it wasn’t possible to view the race while it was on. I charged my car instead in a park and ride. In terms of EV charging then I would give the Loch Leven Half Marathon 10 out 10. And in terms of starring in Fast & The Furious, I’d give my voice 10 out of 10. But, in terms of racing, I’d give my race 1 out of 10 and I look forward to coming back next year with a properly working set of feet, legs, arms and throat.
Twin brothers swimming, cycling and running in Scotland 