Half birthday

My good friend A’s had his birthday at the weekend, which falls on the same day as my half birthday. For those not in the know, your half birthday is 6 months after your whole birthday. I only started celebrating my half birthday because it rained on A’s whole birthday parade, but its stuck, and once you start down the road of diving up the birthday year, various fractions of quarter, sixth and twelfth- birthday fragments are all available as excuses to get some cake in. It’s also nice to have a day in the summer – the longest day – to do some birthday type stuff, rather than having a day in the winter (the shortest day of the year – curse my luck!) when everyone’s already made plans for a Christmas party and can’t make it down the pub.

We had decided to do the Croyde Aquathlon, which is a Triathlon without the cycling bit, so I didn’t have any excuse to wear my new Porno pants and packed only ‘normal’ running shorts. We set off for the coast, put up our tents and watched in horror as the clouds swept in and began to rain on both of our various birthday fraction parades. The damp Saturday morning continued to keep any high spirits in check and we ate Weetabix in large units in the hope they would see us through the forthcoming efforts.

The sea was quite flat, the briefing anything but, and the enthusiasm of the race organiser made me smile. I struggled into my new swimming wetsuit and everyone pointed and laughed at my apparently strange shaped right knee. Ive never noticed this peculiarity before, and think it’s just an artifact of wearing the wetsuit. I wondered if I should put on my latest gadget - some mask-type goggles for the run to the sea, but feared they might steam up too quickly. I decided to hold them in my hand until getting into the water, and when the mini fog horn thing sounded, I set off in a crowd of rubber clad bodies down the beach. I went off to the left of the pack so as to get some clean water to swim into. I’ve been in the mix of the swim start before and once was definitely enough. The water felt quite warm on my head, and it was fine to get straight into the swimming rather than flail about doing breaststroke thinking ‘Ooooh it’s a tad chilly isn’t it?!’ We swam out to a big orange buoy, back in to a man on the beach then out and back around another buoy, making a big ‘M’ shape.

Check out my dodgy shaped knee!

A’s was just finishing getting changed when I arrived in transition and bid me farewell, shouting ‘take your time’ as he left for the run section. I wrestled my wetsuit off and trainers on, then followed him some 30 seconds later.

My back with A's in the distance and some very young looking race officials!

I remained this distance behind him for the whole race, never quite making any headway into the gap between us. I crossed the finish line and heard someone heaving, and looked over to see A’s puking up some of the extra Weetabix that hadn’t been required in beating me.

Well done mate.

Next stop in this summer of multi sport events is the Bude Sprint Triathlon on Sunday - and that will definitely be a porno pants outing!

Who my parents were

I had a trip home the other weekend. I pulled the car up onto the drive and looked at the lounge window to see Mum and Dad waving me in, just as they always do, even when I arrive late. Mum had made some multi-grain bread and a fruit cake, as she has for the past 4 visits, all stemming from an off the cuff remark about quite liking them 5 months ago (my Nan did the exact same thing with Welsh cakes for a decade). Dad is eager to show me his new iPod and is grateful for me posting him the software to get it up and running on his computer. He hasn't quite grasped the magnitude of what 80GB is though, bless him, as he has only put 2 or 3 songs from each of his 16 albums as he 'doesn't want to fill it up with rubbish.'

I settle in with a cup of tea, and we have an hour or so of chatting about how I've been getting on at work and what the family have been up to. My parents both show smiles and flashes in their eyes as they talk about how much 'the boys' - my nephews - have grown up. Myles (my 5 year old nephew) had apparently seen me running the London marathon the previous week, which was a surprise, as I had been severely hungover in bed at the time it was on. He had seen a tall blonde guy (I later worked out to be the American Ryan Hall) and had decided that it must have been me. I'm happy with this, as have recently been compared to Peter Crouch (again) and Johnny Rotten (oh dear), both of which are a level down from America's premier distance runner.

Anyway, I digress.

Dad had made a new collage of photos in the study. He does this quite a lot. There are collages of my holiday photos, my sisters wedding, and old family photos scattered all around the house. He has made a photo area under the stairs, and there must be 50 pictures there, so tightly packed that its hard to take them all in. Dad once found a picture of his mum when she was in her 20s, taken just as she was about to tee off from the 18th hole of their local golf course in Bathampton. The next week he was up there pulling the same pose, on the same tee, but some 60 years later. The next Christmas all of his siblings got a framed version of both pictures, which dad just couldn't smile enough at as he gave out.

The study collage is a little more interesting though. It's old photos of my mum and dad. There are a few photos of their wedding which I've seen before, but some new ones of them camping, my dad surfing, and playing the guitar. In an age of waterproof digital cameras and several attempts, I've never got a photo of me surfing that is as good as this one. Maybe its the black and white, maybe i can, or would like to see shades of myself in my dads youth, but they're the most interesting photos I've ever seen.

In one, my mum and dad are sat having a BBQ by the sea, which is my favourite ever pastime. My dads car in the background with the boards on the roof is the coolest thing I've ever seen. There is one of dad in a garden, with his sister and his old 8ft Bilbo fibreglass long board that I can just remember being in the loft when i was a kid. I remember stories they have told me which are suddenly more real with these pictures to illustrate them. I start to see pathways through their life to mine; memories of being a kid, sitting on the work bench while my dad fixed the car and told me every step of what he was doing - he probably learnt those skills on the car in the picture. My mum is unrecognisable, with long brown hair, looking away from the camera, probably a bit shy. It reminds me of my group of friends camping, and some of the girls being shy of a camera - I wonder what my mum was like at this young age. The photos are long before me or my sister came along, long before there were the pressures of parenting and paying the mortgage. They're just a young couple on the beach, but the same young couple who went on to become my parents, who made me, who moulded my character, to who I owe everything that I am.

I think about these pictures a lot over the next few weeks. I think about how I'm much older now than they were at the time, and what, if anything this means. I think about how much older they are now - my dad is 60 next year - and try not to think about how frail and old they currently looked with a picture of their prime to compare to. Most of all I think about the fact that they wont be around to ask me about work, or bake me multi-grain bread forever and I vow to make more of an effort to make them happy and proud.






To Mum and Dad, I love you

Voilà la conversation dans le camping

The memories of having a BBQ on the beach, with a sunset and friends stood around, nobody quite able to imagine quite how nice the moment is, will be the overriding memory of the trip.


There was lots of wine, of course, and several downpours that tested the smiling resolve, but certain hours in a holiday, and in your life just stand out from the rest.

The campsite was deserted, with maybe as few as 15 of the 200+ pitches taken, and 6 of those were filled by the tents we had just about managed to squeeze into our rucksacks. The beach was a 2 minute walk away, and unlike Le Grand Plage in Biarittz that we later visited, there were no other tourists around, so miles of golden sand in either direction was ours. We spent the days eating baguettes on the beach, trying out our school book French (much like Ant) that we remembered from Tricolore 1. We walked or bussed to a few different beaches and took in steaks and mussels, complete with miniature crabs, in some restaurants far too posh to be wearing sandy board shorts.


I also had my new compact camera, which when combined with my waterproof bag-type-thingy enabled me to get a few OK shots of some of the locals ripping the waves apart.


Then before long it was time to head back home to the inevitable post holiday blues, and sit in my room wondering if I should give up my job and go travelling. Writing this a few days later, I'm back in the groove and happy again, but it is slightly concerning how rapidly I flit between states of mind.

Similarly, the girl situation has become more complex. I had hoped that the Biarittz trip would consolidate or rule out things with The Twin, but neither has really happened, and for a variety of reasons I’m not sure where we stand, and if that place is even in the same country as to where we should be standing. I think my eyes have been opened to the fact that I’m probably not ready for a serious relationship – but I’m unsure as to whether that means its OK to keep seeing the Twin every two or three weeks, or if it would be a better thing to do to call time on it.

Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a tribute blog to Adrian mole, so onwards we go. I’ve got the small matter of an Ironman-distance swim this Sunday which I feel hopelessly under prepared for, but am looking forward to seeing family and friends back in the homeland. June has arrived – not one minute shall I waste.

A Bientot.