I was sorry to hear about the Oscar Pistorius situation. I found it both strange and yet somehow expected that if something dark was going to happen it would be with someone so high profile. I just hope it gets sorted out with more justice and less hysteria. Certainly I won’t let it affect my memories of last summer. From a personal point of view, the true highlight of the year was the Olympics and Paralympics. I was lucky enough to go to many of the events and was amazed and overjoyed by the attitude and positivity that pervaded the whole event. This was particularly true behind the scenes. I was lucky enough to serve as a London Ambassador in the Athlete’s Village during the middle of the Olympic Games helping many of the non UK Competitors to find their way around London after they had finished their events. Everyone wants pictures of Big Ben it seems. People were happy and open, from the athletes themselves to the security men, to the cleaners. Everyone seemed to enjoy being part of something where the competition as on the field, and off the field we were brothers and sisters. If the world I normally live in replicated what I felt during those precious few days it would and could be truly wonderful, where all relationships large and small, long term and transient could be epitomized by smiles.

One thing that made me smile last week was the rumour that the Ice warriors were returning to Doctor Who on the BBC. They’ve always been one of my favourite monsters, as like all the best villains you should have some complexity. Your bad guys should be doing what they do for a reason, and the Ice Warriors have enough in their concepts of a shattered home world (Mars) combined with concepts of honour and a societal structure that lifts them above the more one dimensional. They may even be good guys this time out, as there is precedent. I must stop nattering about Who though; it’s part of my life, as while other people seem to have a first memory of school or some other real life thing, mine is the dead Wirrn queen falling onto the hapless Harry Sullivan at the end of the Ark in Space, part 1 (January 25th, 1975). Sad but true. I was almost 4. Probably explains a lot about me

Working on a fiction thread for this blog, probably in bite sized installments. Partly to contrast against my main attempts which are getting increasingly long and rambling and partly just as an exercise. You never know, they might turn out to be entertaining. As I say, at least they’ll be short.

I seem to spend so much time writing things it seems to be amazing that I’ve not got around to rambling on the internet until now. I guess I’ve always thought I’ve had nothing to say of any interest but then that probably puts me slam in the middle of most bloggers so I’ll try and at least find some point of difference. So brief intro.
Married. No kids (not our choice). Practicing Christian so let’s get that out of the way first, at least it is not as bad as working for a Billion dollar American multinational! Oh, hang on, that is me too. It’s OK. That’s a subject I wouldn’t touch anyway at least not directly. Scientist by history, but increasingly arts and creative writing leaning and that’s probably where I will wander off too, might even post stuff if I have the courage.
Also will probably warble on annoyingly about training for the London Marathon despite promising myself back in 2002 I’d never do it again. Just goes to show you, people should never, ever, say things like “I’m never going to (Insert thing that despite your insistence you will find yourself doing)”. The universe just loves that kind of dare, and you’ll lose. Anyway, so I’m going to half kill myself again because I have been gently suckered by someone at my church into running for Mission Without Borders. In reality it did not take much persuading as I’ve seen the work they do with families and children in poverty in Eastern Europe and it makes my heart burst. So April 21st is going to be more of a tumult than expected a few months ago. It might be better if my love wife was not quite so enthusiastic on getting me a training schedule which has uncomfortably long looking training runs listed.
Still started off well enough and was feeling the benefit (and getting through a lot of podcasts – Kermode & Mayo, Radcliffe & Maconie mostly, can’t get enough bickering and luncacy, and I guess “Hello to Jason Isaacs”) before the damn Brussels virus (well, I contracted it in Brussels and it’s a virus so that seems good enough for me) knocked me over for a week. So crawling back onto schedule, better now than closer to the day!