Paragliding, somewhere in Cornwall...not sure where. Taken by Julie.

Cheggers

Keith Chegwin

Keith Chegwin

Keith Chegwin found himself at the centre of an alarming piece of Twitter anger for no good reason this week. Now I know that most of you don’t Tweet and might have only caught this story as it fleetingly filled an otherwise quiet day of news. At it’s core lies poor old 70′s survivor Keith Chegwin, most famous for leaping around in primary coloured jumpsuits whilst I ate my tea between 1973 and 1978. Since distancing himself from Swap Shopping and Noel Edmunds in general, he has battled alcholism and appeared naked on a chat show (you mean you have forgotten?). About a month ago, he appeared on Twitter and started to tell jokes. I am not ashamed to say that some of them made me laugh – far more than the usual rubbish that people love to share from the internet when you probably don’t want them to. Well…some people claimed he “stole” some of these jokes from other comedians and there followed a ridiculous hail of abuse aimed solely at the cheeky chap. I don’t know about you but I honestly don’t see the difference between someone telling me a joke in the canteen at work and Cheggers telling me one on Twitter. I don’t demand to know where they first heard it and I certainly don’t assume they wrote it.

To his credit, Cheggers didn’t claim to have written any of them and even more to his credit, he hasn’t stopped. He is obviously a nice bloke who has done nothing wrong. On the scale of bad things happening in the world this past month, he barely rates a 1/10. On a scale of cheering me up these past few weeks, he rates a 10/10.

I will never be able to get in a taxi without thinking of Gareth Gates ever again and if Cheggers hadn’t told me that one, I would never have heard it.

Lighten up, Twitterworld.

Race For Life

No, don’t get excited. I didn’t don a pink vest and shuffle around a hot field raising money for an amazingly good cause, I just went and watched 1000′s of ladies do it instead and 2 in particular.

My friend Claire was ill when the Plymouth one took place and my other friend Hayley works in Exeter and was running with a colleague, so it seemed like a good idea to travel to Exeter on the train at the previously unheard of hour of 8am on a Sunday morning.  Still, as I wasn’t wasting any of the time that I was normally awake, it wasn’t too bad. Having someone nice to talk to makes time fly and having someone to bitch with practically compresses a journey into a quick (if expensive) coffee break. So, a brief 75 minute journey later we arrived in Exeter and headed for the taxi office to arrange what we though would be a quick ride. Unfortunately, every other person in Devon was also heading for the Westpoint Show Ground so the 5½ mile trip took about 30 minutes and cost £16. Our soon to be wealthy driver avoided the queue to the main car park and dropped us a bit further up the road, greedily took the money and left us in the burning morning sun. The good news was that it was only about a mile and a half to the start line. Seriously….and me without a hat.

Changing facilities were primitive, toilet-themed and strangely reminiscent of Dr Who.

There were a lot of people there and as Claire got changed in the Tardis, I sat on the grass and pretended I wasn’t already too tired to go on. Try and spot the old guy in pink making me feel strangely overdressed. Also, try and spot the embarrassed dog.

In the distance, the sensible women who had arrived an hour ago were foolishly and smugly “warming up” under the direction of a quite annoying woman who had discovered the magic coming together of a loud distorted microphone and a captive audience. Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” started to grate a bit after the 7th play too. It would have been ok if she had bothered to shut up when it was on. Unfortunately she just talked louder and punched the air like she knew what she was doing.

Claire emerged from the loo, all pink and prepared and she joined thousands of others near the start. It was time for me to leave. It was race time.

Clutching my own rucksack and someone else’s large brown handbag, I gathered what was left of my masculine dignity and headed for the start line to take some photos. I didn’t manage to get any of either of my friends.I missed Claire’s start and  I had no idea where Hayley was. Thanks to the recent aquistion of a new mobile phone and the incomprehensible complexity of it’s operating system, I didn’t have her mobile number and my plan to look for the redhead in the pink vest, shorts and ponytail was ill-conceived at best. Quick thinking led me to send a text to Julie (see below) to get her to send me Hayley’s number (or Harley as the autocorrect helpfully renamed her). This would have been a brilliant plan had the sun not been too bright to see the phone’s screen properly. I tried standing in the shadow of a particularly abundant lady but she kept moving and eventually decided I was trying to take a photo of her capacious behind and walked off. Selfish cow.

I didn't get to the start quickly enough to snap either of the people I knew. Photo fail. :(

As thousands of females of all shapes and sizes ran, jogged or walked off into the distance, hundreds of men finally got to visit the burger stall they had been smelling since they first arrived with their eager sportswomen. Seriously, the surge to the stalls was almost as impressive as the start of the race across the other side of the show ground. There were plenty of worried men too. The fastest runners were due back in about 20 minutes, so there wasn’t time for both onions and mayo. It was one or the other.

The sun beat down on us poor men as we stood on the hot gravel next to the prearranged meeting point next to the St John Ambulance. Yes, 5000 blokes had agreed to meet their sportswoman  in the one place. Genius. The grumpy cadets/marshalls tried to move us on and even resorted to a megaphone at one point but there was no way any of us were going to move. Spending an hour finding someone blonde, sweaty and pink was going to be hard enough without Private Pike intervening.

48 minutes after the start, Hayley ran into me. Almost literally. Annoyed, I noticed her hair was no longer red. I supposed we managed 4 minutes of conversation and she was gone into the crowd. Not brilliant but I’d have hated to have gone all that way and not seen her at all.

A few minutes later, Claire arrived, impressively not out of breath but in need of a sit/lie down. So we lay on the grass nearby and I think we went to sleep. Half an hour later, everyone had gone. Really.

Deserted...

I couldn’t believe it. What had been a sea of pink was now a car park. We had to think about getting back to Exeter St David’s station without spending another £16. Claire once again visited the loos to change and we headed to the nearest bus stop, a mere mile away. The bus eventually arrived and deposited us at the bus station and we walked the rest of the way. Poor Claire jogged 5km and then had to walk about 3 more to get home.

We had plenty of time to rest however as the train was delayed over an hour, giving me time to take a photo at a slightly rakish angle, incorporating Claire’s knee.

What fun it all was. A brilliant way to spend a Sunday and £100′s of pounds raised as well. But seriously, sort the trains out or I refuse to use one ever again. Your computerised, caring voice apologising is patronising and totally unconvincing.

Dougal & Julie

I also thought I’d take the time to show off the photographic skills of my buddy Julie and her husband. They have their own blog at http://dougieandjulie.blogspot.com/ where they talk about their Paragliding adventures and share their photographs. Most of these are taken from the air and mostly by Julie as Dougal does the flying. I hope you like the ones I have shared below and I hope you become fans of their website too.  I think they are astonishingly good.

Cornwall somewhere...

I really must ask them where this is...

Now, I know this one. This is Jennycliff in Plymouth, near where I used to live. In the distance you can almost see where I live now. ;)

My friend Julie, the photographer

See you later..

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