A Christmas birthday party

Christmas excess was cancelled at Warrillow Towers this year; no presents, no decorations, no tree, no cards (to those of our friends who sent them - we will be making amends in the new year).

 There isn’t even that much alcohol in the house :( :(

 You only have to read the post below to realise why, of course; the afterglow of Sun Eden meant we were in no mood to prepare for winter festivities; summer, sun and the glories of the South African veld, still in our minds as we head into 2012, hopefully won’t go away for a while yet.

 That’s not to say that we didn’t have a family Christmas; although Mr W senior lives in Spain and is only arriving in the UK for a three-week visit on the day I write this, Christmas on the other half of the family was a very special time. My mother-in-law has tried for years to conceal her true age but an unfortunate encounter with her medical records this spring confirmed that she was, in fact, facing her ??th birthday.

 What made this even more special is that she was born on December 24. A perennial pain for those of us faced with buying two lots of presents for two consecutive days, the Yuletide financial grief is added to by the fact that one of her sons was born on December 16.

 Nevertheless, this year, we felt it was right to push the boat out for a special party, to be held eight days prior to the birthday. Relatives from the wilds of the Cotswolds and the far west of Ireland were contacted and cajoled into making plans to visit; friends in Tamworth were alerted; a venue was booked - and everyone was sworn to secrecy.

 Mrs W, of course, lay at Sun Eden for a fortnight, worrying whether anyone would bother to turn up on the big day and how and whether her mother could be cajoled out of the house. When the morning of December 17 dawned wet, cold and miserable, it seemed her fears might come true but when the phone started ringing mid-morning with calls from relatives checking that everything was still OK, she started to calm down.

 And we will never know whether Ma had the slightest inkling that something was going on.

 In the end, everyone played a blinder. The birthday girl’s niece and her husband arrived from Ireland while her sister looked a different woman from the sorry figure who lay in a hospital bed, gravely ill, earlier in the year; Mrs W’s brothers were on top form and the restaurant owner was totally relaxed about us sitting down to eat 40 minutes later than planned, then having to push an ever-so-slightly relaxed group of people out of the door four hours later.

 It was one of those afternoons which reminded me that you really must look after your parents as they get older. My own mother died at just 49 years and seven days, while Mrs W’s dad tragically got to nowhere near that age.

 Occasions like Ma’s birthday party are where lifelong happy memories are made. However much trouble planning such events may seem beforehand, you never know when it might be the last big thing you do for your parents.

 We wouldn’t have missed it for the world and the stunned, delighted, look on Ma’s face when she walked into the restaurant will stay with me for just as long as anything we did in South Africa.

 And it was definitely worth cancelling Christmas for. Happy New Year, everyone.

Two weeks of magical moments at Sun Eden

I have a pair of old slippers. The soles are coming apart, the inner lining is breaking up. They’ve been lying at the end of the bed for three days when I decide to tidy the room and throw them away.

 I casually mention my plan to Mrs W, who is standing not two feet away; half-looking at her and half-looking at my slippers, I plunge my hand into the shoe.

 Thirty seconds later, when I have finished screaming and scraped myself off the ceiling, I begin the search for the large brown frog who had been snoozing inside, cosy and undisturbed.

Welcome to South Africa; a country of wild contradictions, of boundless beauty, of unbelievable wildlife and, for the most part, genuinely friendly people.

 We are enjoying the holiday of a lifetime at Sun Eden (www.suneden.com), a naturist resort some 30 miles from Pretoria and 70 miles north of Johannesburg, deep in the bushveld of Gauteng (formerly Northern Transvaal). The nearest supermarket is at least 15 miles away, the new Dinokeng Big 5 game reserve sits just next door, supply of hot water to our otherwise outstanding chalet is hit-and-miss, to put it mildly.

 But the whole place is wonderful, even the frog (who vanished behind the king-sized bed and re-emerged unharmed 24 hours later, to be gently dropped into a nearby mud pool) and the shongololos (see here - http://www.focusonpictures.com/zuidafrika/insectplus/insect5.htm), brightly coloured millipedes who are ubiquitous on the floors and walls.

 After a trying couple of months, it would have been all too easy for Mrs W and I to throw off all our clothes, pull up the sunloungers, pour a cold drink and spend 12 days watching the warm sun drift across the sky, with occasional visits to the swimming pool five minutes’ walk away.

 Had we been on desert-like Fuerteventura, we would have done. But you can’t come to a continent as magical as Africa and lie in the sun for 12 days.

 So we visited the Cullinan diamond mine, where some of the largest precious stones in the world, including some which lie in the British Crown jewels, have been found; we enjoyed a couple of quite spectacular drives around the game reserve, rattling around in the back of a truck while experienced game rangers pointed out wildebeest and zebra and giraffe and rhinos and some of South Africa’s thousands of bird species; we visited Mahela View lion camp, where the owner keeps three tame lions out in the wild while carrying out an extensive programme of educating tourists about this most magical of animals; we even enjoyed a wondrous day at the Tranquility Spa lodge (www.Tranquillityspalodge.co.za) , a new venue in a valley at the side of the Bobbejaansberg mountains with a fantastic view over the African landscape.

 The latter supplied two of the most memorable moments of the holiday. The owners, a former airline pilot and his Welsh-born wife are friends of our hosts at Sun Eden and we were invited, on just our second night in SA, to his 60th birthday party.

 As we enjoyed drinks on the terrace and watched a perfect sun gently slip below the horizon, a giraffe appeared on the other side of a fence at the end of the garden, gave us a disinterested glance and slowly bent his enormous front legs to drink from a pool of water.

 It was a breathtaking moment, a birthday party of a dozen people watching quietly as one of nature’s most extraordinary creations stood not 50 feet away in his natural habitat. At the time, I cursed myself for not bringing my camera; it was only when we got home that night that I realised it had been in Mrs W’s handbag all evening.

 The other great moment? We took advantage of one of Tranquillity’s reasonably-priced full day spa packages. If you’ve never spent a hour sitting nude and sipping cold lager with your other half in a jacuzzi in the spacious grounds of an African bush lodge before taking lunch and then undergoing an extraordinary full body massage, it is an experience I recommend wholeheartedly.

 Contradictions? This part of Gauteng is predominantly Afrikaans and although we did not discern any real sense of animosity between white and black neighbour (in fact, it was often the opposite), we didn’t have to look far to see white farmers living in opulent surroundings while their black employees went home to little more than tin shacks.

 We drove back to Johannesburg Airport down a four-lane highway which was quieter than an English country road on a summer afternoon, yet watched black workers walking miles down dirt tracks to catch one of the state-sponsored buses which ferries them to and from the big towns. And we were, of course, many miles from any of the cities where I am sure you will see a different South Africa - the one where the Minister of Justice has just been jailed for 15 years for corruption, for instance.

 Of course, this blog wouldn’t be complete without a mention of the naturist side of our holiday. For obvious historical reasons, naturism is still relatively new in South Africa; Sun Eden is one of just a handful of venues although a new British-owned resort, Vasnat, opened up in Cape Town while we were in the country.

 Strict attitudes to the human body, which were part of the religions of most South Africans for years if not centuries, are fading away and we found the members and guests at Sun Eden just as relaxed, friendly and non-judgmental as naturists all around the world; indeed, we can already count some of them as friends.

 And there is something about Africa which lends itself to naturism. Sitting in the garden in the nude, enjoying a vast breakfast, while impalas and springboks grazed in the grounds and brightly-coloured birds twittered in the trees is another great memory; South Africa’s fondness for braais (barbecues) meant we spent many an evening chatting outside into the late hours with an iced glass of wine in one hand, a barbecue pork chop in the other and not a stitch of clothing to be seen amid smiling, happy people. 

 We had no preconceptions about South Africa but now we have no doubt that we want to go back to the veld. Sun Eden, to which you can book accommodation direct without going through a British travel agent, is the perfect place to do so.

Martin goes on military manoeuvres

I’m joining five other people in staking out a white brick house where we know a group of terrorists have been hiding. We’re armed to the teeth with pistols, a machine gun, grenades and flares.

 Lying on the floor with our guns trained on a clearing below us, we can see some of the bad guys gathered about 30 yards in front of us, standing around a Land Rover, talking and smoking. As far as we know, they are oblivious to our presence.

 Suddenly, slightly to our left and about four feet in front of us, there is a rustling in the trees, a loud noise and something comes bursting into view.

 Terrorist, escaping hostage or bird? We have a split-second to decide. 

  Startled by the noise and keen to prove ourselves in military combat, my partner and I let fly several rounds from our pistols.

 It’s a good job they were blanks and the whole thing was a teambuilding exercise, or the pheasant which we shot would have been on the main course of that evening’s menu at our hotel.

 Welcome to Blackdown UK Corporate Training. The house is not in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else where Her Majesty’s Forces have been doing business in the past 20 years. It’s in a forest in the East Midlands where Blackdown, a company formed by a group of ex-Army veterans and business professionals, has its’ base.

 Blackdown, as their training brochure puts it ‘provide quality training products and services by taking the military way of thinking and applying it to business scenarios.’

 In other words, they train people to expect the very unexpected and how to cope when it happens.

 I’m on a media day which is giving a group of journalists a taste of Blackdown’s itinerary. The really adventurous can take their survival expeditions to Sweden and France, but we will stay in this forest for a day which will prove unforgettable enough.

 The first thing to know is how to survive in the open. How long can you last without air, shelter, food or water? Our instructor Phil, the epitome of an Army man standing well over 6ft tall and with the archetypal military haircut, tells us the first thing we will need is shelter, so our two two-person teams are sent out into the forest with a tent sheet, bungee clips and pegs and told we have five minutes to construct our own shelter.

 I’m afraid to say your blogger’s team was still working out what was what when the whistle blew. As Phil pointed out, in a real scenario, it could have been snowing or raining sideways, we could have been caught in a sandstorm...we could have been dead.

 Having learnt how to use a short-wave radio (got that bit!), we moved on to orienteering, finding our way round what seemed a vast expanse of forest with nothing more than a map and compass. Given time, I’m sure I would have worked it out but as Phil’s colleague Ben (a pocket battleship of a man) pointed out, in real life time is the thing you may not have.

 After lunch came the bit we had secretly all been waiting for - pistol training and close-quarter battle. I quickly got the hang of handling and firing the pistols so, with paintball weapons taking the place of machine guns, it was on to close-quarter battle and into the ‘kill house.’

 This is a converted two-storey cattle shed with life-size pictures of the bad guys (and their hostages) scattered throughout. Can you tell the difference between terrorist and hostage in the dark, with a split-second’s notice, with guns and grenades going off all around you?

 I did surprisingly well, even managing to get off a couple of rounds while sprawled on the floor in the dark after stumbling over my own shoelaces. Unfortunately, when the lights went on and we debriefed, we discovered that in my adrenalin-fuelled enthusiasm to shoot at something, anything, I’d killed the hostage as well as the terrorist.

 Never again will I ask how something like that happens.

 Finally, on to what Blackdown call ‘Vehicle Contact Drills’; in other words, what to do when your car is ambushed. With Phil and Ben driving the cars and doing most of the firing, we learnt that priority No 1 for a VIP in this case (think Wills and Kate suddenly being collared by Al Qaeda) is to get the heck out of the car, roll away as fast as you can and let the security experts do their jobs.

 We had taken in an enormous amount of information in the last five hours but now came the finale - the bit we’d all been waiting for, the simulated battle.

 I won’t give away any secrets, in case this piece tempts you to get in touch with Blackdown and try it for yourself but highlights included running away from an ambushed car and heading straight into a bush full of thorns; gathering our group together following the ambush and realising the spot we had chosen was a bog two feet deep in mud; stumbling down a bank and falling over (again) after a tree branch broke off in my hand and, of course, the unfortunate incident with the pheasant.

 I couldn’t walk for two days afterwards but it was worth it for an unforgettable experience which I highly recommend. Blackdown is not cheap but for companies looking for teambuilding days with a difference, I can’t imagine anything better. 

BlackdownUK can be contacted via www.blackdown-uk.com.

Real ale, real football and some really friendly welcomes

So there we were, 16 real ale-drinking Tamworth FC fans sitting in a pub deep in the Leicestershire countryside at 11am on Saturday, just about to tackle our opening pints of Wychwood Dogs’ B******s, when a white horse appeared in the road outside.

 We should have known it was going to be that kind of day.

 We were on our way to the FA Cup first-round tie between Tamworth and Hinckley United at the Greene King Stadium. The name gives you a clue as to why we were also on a meticulously-planned pub crawl.

 We wanted proper local beer in proper local pubs, offering a friendly welcome, either side of what was always going to be a testing 90 minutes against our neighbours from the league below Tamworth in the football pyramid.

 I had just raised the first glass to my lips at our opening venue when the horse and its’ owner appeared. I put down my pint, wandered outside and found that horse and owner were deep in conversation with a large brown spaniel and his owner - right in the middle of the road. ‘You don’t see that too often on the A5,” I mused, while becoming engaged in fascinating conversation with everyone involved.

 Eventually, the mare wandered off to her stables, I returned to finish my pint and the party headed for one of the highlights of the day - the new pub which Church End Brewery owns in......oh, I’m not telling you; if you’re interested, it’s not too hard to find.

 We found a wonderful welcome, some of the best beer in the Midlands and food that clearly had not come out of the microwave. Church End deserve enormous credit for this - even as the nights draw in, I urge you to venture into the countryside and give it a go.

 Our final pre-match venue had been warned in advance that we were coming and, rather than banning us or ordering up a contingent of Leicestershire’s finest to monitor us, had got in an extra barrel of beer. Should Hinckley win promotion this season, we’ll remember that gesture when planning next year’s trip.

 Which brings us to the match - and if I told you everything, I’d still be writing this time next week. So, in brief - Hinckley’s goalkeeper is sent off in the first half for kicking a Tamworth forward (who kicked him back and wasn’t punished); the referee tried to award a penalty to Tamworth for the above incident, having already given the hosts a free-kick because the Tamworth player had originally fouled the goalkeeper; Hinckley’s replacement No 1 played a blinder; all four goals came in the last 12 minutes with Tamworth equalising twice, the first time via a highly questionable penalty given for a ‘foul’ in the area by a referee who lost control early on; there was a minor brawl in the stands involving some teenage idiots; a fight broke out in the dugouts when some water was ‘allegedly’ thrown - and the winners of the replay on November 22 have to haul it all the way up the A1 to Gateshead in the second round.

 Your blogger will be on holiday in South Africa on that day......

 Pub Crawl, part two - We recovered from the game in an Everards’ pub which seems to be the highlight of its’ native village in the Leicestershire countryside. After games such as that, it often takes an hour or more to get rid of all the adrenalin and we could have happily stayed all night - but the man with the satnav and the schedule had other plans.

And so we were off to another pub which I will only refer to here as ‘The D&H in D.’ It didn’t look the sort of place that would greet 16 scruffy and fairly well-oiled oiks in Tamworth scarves and shirts and big coats but once again, I’ll remember it for the warmth of the welcome. Mrs W and I will certainly be paying a return visit to sample the menu. 

 There aren’t many places, even the finest CAMRA-recommended pubs, where the landlord collects empty glasses from your table and asks you if the beer was acceptable.

 Our day ended in the finest possible fashion, in the gentle care of Church End Brewery. First it was back to the country pub, then to the brewery tap, which I am happy to reveal is in Ridge Lane, near Atherstone. 

 If you can’t find the former, you should certainly visit the latter, where every one of the Church End range is on tap and you can look from the bar through large glass windows into the brewery plant itself.

 The replay of the football is on November 22 at The Lamb - sadly, there won’t be a replay of the crawl as your blogger lives five minutes from the ground.

 And as for Gateshead? Some of us will be at Sun Eden Naturist Resort in South Africa on that day - and with a game reserve next door, I suspect I might be watching something even more remarkable than white horses in the middle of the road. 

A week in the life

Any blogger or columnist will tell you that there are times when the words just flow from the brain.

 Then, there are times when you sit for hours staring at the computer, trying to dredge up a new topic or put a new twist on something you wrote about three weeks previously.

 Then, there are weeks when so much is going on that trying to put a structure to it all seems pointless.... such as the week your blogger is having.

 Here then, are a few random thoughts from six days in the life of a hard-working, positive- (and negative-) thinking, freelance journalist full of hope for the future, looking for a break and realising that the world is either a bitch or full of good, caring, people - depending on the moment.

Sunday - Thank the Lord for James Dyson, inventor of the eponymous vacuum cleaner. Pre-Dyson, seeing a nine-inch piece of string disappear through the front of the machine and up into the mechanism meant taking the machine apart to extract the string and hoping it all fitted together again thereafter. Post-Dyson, even I can unscrew a couple of fasteners, unclip the front, remove the offending item and resume vacuuming within 15 minutes.

 Monday - a thought, please, for a previous subject of this blog. In September, I wrote about the talking book group I attend and, in particular, the indefatigable 85-year-old lady who is a crucial part of the social glue which holds it together. As I write, she is making a 40-mile round trip to hospital for daily radiography sessions and, from all accounts, feeling extremely fed up about it. Some people deserve the prayers of all of us. She is one.

Tuesday - with two weeks to get the remaining contents of the winter edition of British Naturism to the typesetter, I suddenly remember the Radcliffe and Maconie show. Once a crucial part of my evenings when on Radio 2, it has somehow escaped me since decamping to the afternoons on Radio 6. Seeking a lift during my journalistic labours, I turn  on the digital radio - and find Craig b****** Charles filling in while they are on holiday.

 Wednesday - meet up with three former colleagues for a (very expensive and not very good) pint at one of our local hostelries. There is more than 100 years of journalistic experience around the table and I am the youngest of the quartet by a few years. For two hours, we have a laugh, share memories, talk about the collapse of the regional newspaper business..and ponder on the irony of rumours that our former employer is considering moving back into the city centre from which it decamped, with nary a thought for its’ staff, not much more than three years ago.

 Leave there for a meeting with the Tamworth FC Heritage Project Committee and the vice-chairman of Tamworth FC. We’re discussing how the mass of detail about the club’s history which we gathered can be used for the benefit of the next generation of TFC supporters. 

 For a few days after the Hall of Fame evening (discussed here in September), we were all exhausted by our labours - now, it seems that our enthusiasm has been refuelled.

 Thursday - A meeting of the Tamworth and District Tourism Association, a body designed to promote the interests of Tamworth and its’ businesses and draw more visitors into the town. We’ve just finished building a website which, if I may say so, is probably one of the best tourism websites around (but which I can’t tell you more about just yet!)

 A two-hour meeting leaves me enthused about the many good things Tamworth has to offer, yet infuriated that too many local businesses and people don’t seem equally inspired. From now, I will spend one day a week touring the town and promoting this website.

And today? Work on the magazine this morning, then a meeting this afternoon with a fascinating lady I met at my business breakfast group. She’s one of those sparky people who lights up a room just by walking in (being Irish probably has something to do with it!).

 I’m hoping she’ll help me continue the positive vibe I’ve felt for much of this week. I’m sure my friend from the book group wouldn’t want it any other way.

My kind of game.....

High Wycombe railway station, 3pm on a sun-lit Sunday afternoon in late-October. It can only mean one thing - your blogger and his father are on their way to London for the annual National Football League game at Wembley Stadium.

 He flies over from his home in Spain, we meet up at Warrillow Towers, drive down to High Wycombe (he drives and his driving still terrifies me; he used to be a sales rep/manager/director for several steel stockholding companies in the Black Country in his working days and probably travelled more miles along the country’s motorways at 85mph than I will do in a lifetime), then park the car and take the train down to the new Wembley Stadium station.

 We’ve been doing this since 1986 when American Football, the USA’s favourite sport, first came to the UK. Then, it was the Chicago Bears and the Dallas Cowboys in a pre-season game. Now, the Bears are back to meet the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a proper game that actually counts in the regular-season schedule.

  We never get tired of this. As I’ve explained here before, my love of American Football comes from the finest schoolteacher I ever had, Dr Ken Thomas of King Charles I Grammar School in Kidderminster. When I was there in the late-1970s, ‘Doc Thomas’ used to liven up dull chemistry lessons with tapes of football games he’d garnered from his time in the States studying for his doctorate.

 My dad quickly picked up on my interest and is now just as keen an NFL-watcher as his son, except that he has the advantage of owning a Sky subscription.....

 The NFL has been holding one regular-season game in London for the past five years, although this one nearly didn’t happen. A dispute between players and team owners during the summer (millionaires vs billionaires, as the American press billed it) had the entire season in doubt at one stage and the argument was only resolved late in July, at the 59th minute of the 23rd hour in terms of time left to arrange the London game.

 Nonetheless, 76,981 fans turned out and, as always, it was an amazing spectacle. Fans of all ages dressed in the shirts of the vast majority of the NFL’s 32 teams and there was an atmosphere that the FA would kill for at any of the pointless friendlies it has to stage in order to pay for a stadium with less than a tenth of the atmosphere of the venue they bulldozed to create this place.

 The game lived up to the atmosphere, which hasn’t always been the case. The Bears ran out into an early lead against a young Bucs roster that still seems to be finding its feet. But the team from the Windy City, who didn’t fly in to London until Thursday having played on the previous Sunday night back home, seemed to lose their energy in the fourth quarter. 

 Two touchdowns engineered by Buccaneers quarterback Josh Freeman brought the Floridians back into it and gave an excited crowd a finish to remember, with the game not resolved until Freeman threw an interception with 18 seconds left, giving the Bears a 24-18 victory.

 It was then that we saw one of the very few benefits that the new Wembley has over its predecessor. Less than 20 minutes after leaving our seats and calling in at the gentlemens’ facilities which are no longer a serious health hazard, we were on a train from Wembley Stadium station and on our way back to High Wycombe. We were back home in Tamworth, thanks in no small part to Himself’s astonishing driving, in time to watch the game highlights on the BBC.

 I’m already looking forward to the 2012 game and hoping that we don’t have to wait until August for confirmation that the game will take place. In a couple of years’ time, I’ll have one of those round-numbered birthdays and my dream is to take in an NFL game in the States. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could take my dad with me?

A sharp scratch on the road to South Africa

Did I mention our trip to South Africa later this year? No, I didn't think I had.  

 It seems remiss not to, as it will be the longest trip the Warrillows have undertaken since our honeymoon in Jamaica - and that was in the days when Paul Gascoigne was a highly-talented footballer, the United States had not yet invaded Iraq and Sky TV was still two years away from dominating televised sport in the UK.

 The holiday is in honour of a round-numbered birthday, one of those which come along every so often to mark the passing of another decade and remind us that Father Time is creeping up behind us with an ever-quickening step. 

 Whose birthday? Mind your own business, other than to say that Mrs W and I decided several years ago that one of us was taking a baseball road trip around North America for their ??th and the other was having a safari - and the road trip is still three years away.

 Being the Warrillows, of course, this is a safari with a difference; we’re stopping at a well-known naturist venue which has a game reserve close at hand, allowing us to enjoy the weather as nature intended and see some of the wildlife which most of us only ever get to see on television.

 Preparations are already underway. The holiday is fully paid for, travel arrangements to various airports are lined up (it’s a 12-hour flight, with a stop-off in Northern Europe before going on to Johannesburg) and last week saw the moment which I've been dreading about the whole thing - the inoculations.

 I don’t do needles. Despite being married to a phlebotomist and regularly having donated blood before my epilepsy put me on the ‘banned for life’ list, needles still needle me.

 I still hate blood tests (and as a practising epileptic, I’ve had a few); the soothing phrase ‘it’s just a sharp scratch’ really isn’t convincing and although I don’t scream the place down  as I used to when I was a child, I still have to look the other way and count to ten when the needle goes in the vein.

 It’s why I have such enormous respect for those who practice phlebotomy for a living, especially those who carry out phlebotomy on children and especially babies with tiny veins.

 Nevertheless, it had to be done; three injections to stave off the various life-threatening diseases which lurk in southern African climes  - two needles in one arm and one in the other.

 It’s fair to say I wasn’t in the best state of mind. Various business appointments had taken me to Solihull and Burton-on-Trent earlier in the day and I was feeling fairly frazzled by the time I got to the surgery.

 In some ways, that was a good thing as I didn’t have much time to think about it; in some ways, it was a bad thing as the shock when I walked into the treatment room and saw three needles, each the length of my middle finger, was all the greater.

 And suddenly I recalled that Mrs W, who had already been given her inoculations a week earlier, had mentioned how one of the needles in particular, ‘had made my arm ache really badly’. Thanks, dear........

 In the end, of course, it all went smoothly. The aching arm was only a mild irritation for a couple of days, there were no adverse reactions and it turns out that we don’t need yellow fever inoculations, which come at a hefty fee.

 So here we are, counting down the days. Having got the inoculations out of the way, I’m now worrying about driving in South Africa, so if anyone has been there, done it and has any advice, I’d be grateful.

 Otherwise - ??th birthday celebration, here we come...

Housework and a load of balls

I’ve become worryingly domesticated over the last few Saturday and Sunday mornings.  I’ve emptied, scrubbed and cleaned the cat’s litter tray; I’ve dismantled and washed his water fountain (and put it back together without losing a crucial small plastic part down the sink); I’ve swept the kitchen floor; I’ve hung out the washing without getting myself too tangled up in the airer and the damp clothes; I’ve put the powder and softener in the washing machine and loaded it; I’ve even been to the supermarket for milk and bread before the crowds started to arrive.

 Usually, I’ve done all this before 10.30am and before Mrs W and the cat had roused themselves from their beds.

  I’ll only be doing it for three more weekends, though; it’s not a habit I intend to fall into.

 Even those of you with only a passing interest in sport have probably realised that this is all tied in with the Rugby World Cup, currently taking place in New Zealand.

 I would describe myself as a rugby fan from a moderate distance. I played at school, but only when I really had to and before my dodgy knees ended any hope of a sporting career; I took an interest during 15 years on the sports desk of The Birmingham Post, when specialist knowledge of Worcester, Moseley, Coventry, Birmingham & Solihull et al was a crucial part of the sub-editor’s job. 

 I was a regular follower of the club game on television, before the Rugby Football Union dived into the money pit which is Sky Sports and deprived a huge proportion of the population of proper coverage.

 I watch the Six Nations on the BBC every year and promise myself that I will visit at least one West Midlands ground each season, something which I signally failed to do in 2010-11.

 But the 2011 World Cup has reignited my serious interest as, of course, the rugby authorities want it to.

 I determined before the start of the campaign to watch every England game, then developed a sort of vicarious Irish-ness as I realised what a decent team they were (something which I can entirely justify through Mrs W’s roots in Counties Leitrim and Donegal).

 I have yet to rise at 4am or 6am to watch Wales but, as the tournament reaches its’ business end this Saturday and Sunday, I plan to watch both quarter-finals on both days, with any luck leaving the other residents of the house sound asleep.

 How do I think the four matches will go? England have developed that priceless habit of playing desperately poorly at times yet still winning, while an equally disjointed France squad seem to be enjoying themselves about as much as the England football team at their World Cup last year.

 It should be a win for Martin Johnson’s men, then, but their inability to play convincing attacking rugby is going to tell at some stage and Jonny Wilkinson is a shadow of his former self; I don’t believe the ball he’s kicking is to blame.

 Of course, if England do win, then there’s the possibility of a semi-final against Ireland, something which would stretch domestic relations at Warrillow Towers close to breaking point. ‘Herself’ might even join me in front of the television for that one.

 I think Ireland will see off Wales, something which will not endear me to at least three close friends while Argentina, who face the hosts, have surely gone as far as they can and South Africa should beat Australia.

 Here we go, then; the alarm is set for 5.45am, the tea, coffee and toast is on hand and, all being well, I will be sufficiently awake to complete domestic business at half-time and between games. 

 If I don’t, getting out to see Tamworth v Lincoln City tomorrow afternoon could require some delicate negotiations.....

Dressing up a top-quality magazine

The reappearance of the Sun and blue skies across much of the United Kingdom this week is coinciding nicely with the start of the production process for the winter edition of British Naturism magazine.

 I wouldn’t say it’s more difficult to edit a naturist magazine while wearing four layers of clothing and with the central heating turned up to max, but sunshine certainly puts me in a better mindset to do the job.

 British Naturism is, you’ll not be astonished to learn, the official magazine of British Naturism, the organisation which promotes naturism in the UK and looks after the interests of British naturists.

 I produce four editions per year, usually of between 80 and 90 A4 pages. The magazine is distributed to BN’s members in March, June, September and December as part of their subscription benefits.

 I’ve been sole editor since January 2011, although I worked as part of a jobshare in 2010 and had been involved in editing the travel section for 18 months before that.

 Like a cricket-lover editing The Cricketer or a real ale drinker editing What’s Brewing, it’s one of those jobs that is best done (should that be ‘can only be done’?) by someone with a passionate interest in the subject. As a naturist for most of my adult life, I certainly qualify and I don’t know that I could do the job properly if I wasn’t willing to visit naturist beaches, go to naturist swims and events, go on naturist holidays and be passionate about promoting the benefits of naturism.

 That makes it huge fun and meeting readers at events is an important part of the job; and although putting the magazine together can be tense, time-consuming and frustrating at times, the fact that I am doing something I really enjoy, rather than subbing three-paragraph stories on the business pages of The Trumpington Gazette, makes a huge difference.

 The magazine is made up of four sections - news, features, travel and the clubs pages.

 The clubs pages, the first to be put together, go at the back of the magazine. This is where BN’s 100-plus clubs get the chance to publicise themselves. Some are the traditional sun clubs with their own grounds in the countryside, others hire venues for saunas and swimming nights.

 I rely on club secretaries and press officers for information and I’ve tried to encourage more clubs to send in pictures to brighten up the pages. You may not be surprised that plenty of people are unwilling to be pictured in the mag, for fear of being ‘outed’ as naturists - even though we only distribute to BN members with a very few copies going to media outlets. However, the situation is improving and I hope a look at editions from 2011 compared to, say, 2005, will make that clear.

 Then, it’s the travel section, a crucial part of the magazine. A big percentage of our advertising revenue comes from naturist holiday operators, be they campsites in Cornwall or 2,000-capacity cruise ships.

 Much of the content comes from readers’ accounts of their experiences; recently, we’ve had cruises in the Caribbean; details of a new venue in Greece; holidays in Florida, South Africa, New Zealand. Subject matter such as that certainly helps to relax me if the pressure is on!

 As with all good magazines, the features section is crucial. A couple of BN’s lady members enjoy writing on naturist topics while we recently had a piece on the relationship between naturism and tantra - a field which, like naturism, suffers from the false idea that because some practitioners have no clothes on, sex must be involved.

 We also heavily promote BN’s nationally-organised events - the big summer specials such as Nudefest, the winter weekends in Blackpool and at Alton Towers, the summer beach days, our bi-annual sports events when our petanque players and swimmers are in action - as well as other naturist events such as the clothes-optional days at Abbey House Gardens, the nude night at York Maze and events which BN’s regional organisations stage during the summer.

 We call that section ‘Big Days Out’ and that’s how we promote it - somewhere to come and be nude among fellow naturists while doing something other than just lying on a beach or on the club lawn reading a book.

 At the front of each edition is the news section; this can feature stories from the world of naturism or ‘news’ stories with a naturist slant - perhaps the star actress who reveals her liking for naturism, the latest nude calendar etc.

 All in all, it’s a pretty crowded package and I’m always proud when I see the final version arrive on computer from the typesetter and when the blue envelope carrying my paper copy drops through the front door.

 If I’ve heightened your interest, BN is always keen to welcome new members; as autumn and winter approach, why not try out a naturist swim or sauna near you? Contact details for BN clubs can be found on the website at http://www.british-naturism.org.uk/clubs/. Perhaps we’ll see you on the beach, or out camping or at one of our events, when the sun reappears next spring.

We are Tamworth, from The Lamb

For someone who hates hearing their own voice through a microphone, I’ve done some pretty amazing public speaking feats.

 I’ve been on the readers’ rota at church since I became a Catholic ten years ago; I’ve twice hosted a quiz night in front of 300 naturists (on the second occasion, the microphone didn’t work so I had to run up and down the room, repeating the questions); and now I can add something to that list about which I am just as proud.

 For the past nine months, I’ve been a committee member of the Tamworth FC Supporters Club Heritage Project.

  Begun during the 75th anniversary of the club in 2008 and backed by money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the project was designed to tell the story of the club, its’ players, managers, officials and most importantly, the fans.

 Volunteers toured Tamworth recording the memories of fans young and old, collecting memorabilia and organising a poll of supporters which resulted in the unveiling of a series of 30 cards recording ‘The Lambs’ Legends’, the club’s all-time greats.

 The scheme ended this week with two spectacular events; first, there was the launch of a free commemorative 60-page full-colour book ‘We are Tamworth, from The Lamb,’ compiled by project leader Dave Clayton and featuring contributions from supporters, club officials and a number of former Tamworth Herald sports reporters (including yours truly).

 The book, of which 4,000 copies have been printed, was enough of an achievement in itself. But the project committee wanted to do something more; to seek out past players, officials, managers and supporters and bring them together again.

 Our initial ideas seemed daunting enough; but after nine months of hard work, countless meetings, phone calls and emails and, yes, a fair amount of teacup-throwing, what we ended up with was beyond our wildest dreams.

 Last Sunday, 300 people - former players, officials and managers, relatives of former players who are no longer with us, as well as modern-day fans - came to the Assembly Rooms in Tamworth for a three-hour festival of football nostalgia.

 We had screens showing rare pictures from the club’s past and television footage of the historic days in 1989 when Tamworth won the FA Vase, beating Sudbury Town in a replay after a 1-1 draw at the old Wembley; we had presentations to the Lambs Legends who were able to attend and we had bucketfuls of memories.

 Originally, I wasn’t due to compere the event, but after the starting line-up was hit by late availability problems, I came off the bench to join former Herald sports editor Rob Tanner at the microphone - and we had an absolute ball.

 We interviewed Jean Tregaskis, who was the Supporters Club secretary back in the 1950s while still in her teens and who could have talked all night about her memories; we met the daughter of the late Percy Vials, No 1 on our Legends list from his days playing for the club in the 1930s; we met Charlie Coggins, John Bayliss, Dave Seedhouse - all names synonymous with the ups and downs of Tamworth through the years.

 And we met the Wembley Eight - the eight members of the FA Vase-winning team who were voted into our Legends line-up and who looked ready to turn the clock back 20 years as they came forward to collect their awards and looked as proud as they had done that spring day in 1989.

 Yet it wasn’t just the formal part of the event that was fun. We deliberately left 45 minutes after opening the doors before we began the show and 30 minutes at half-time for people to share their memories - and to walk through a seething, smiling, mass of people talking football was to feel a real sense of achievement about what we had done.

 The book will be widely available throughout Tamworth and it is hoped to show DVD recordings of the event in the near future - details to follow.

 I wouldn’t have missed it for the world and it’s one of those things I will always say I was proud to be involved in.

100 barrels of fun and laughter

Well, I said it would hurt. 

 When you sit in front of a computer all day, doing nothing more energetic than lifting a cup of coffee every few minutes, there is nothing quite like being surrounded by 100 nine-gallon barrels of beer and knowing that most of them need hoisting three feet into the air.

 This was the scene that faced the dozen or so volunteers setting up the 18th Tamworth CAMRA Beer Festival at about 2pm last Monday afternoon.

 Ale had arrived on time from breweries as far apart as Newcastle and Devon, as Herefordshire and London; now, it needed lifting on to our three-storey stillage as soon as possible so that it could rest under our hi-tech chilling system and be just at the right temperature and in the right condition when we flung open the doors to expectant customers for the first of three days at 11am on Thursday.

 And we were almost there. Two-thirds of the barrels were in their rightful place and we had just wheeled in the mechanical lifter to raise the final 30 on to the third floor, so to speak.

 It was just a matter of pushing a few of the remaining barrels a few inches across the floor to create some extra space to bring in the lifter.

 And so, I steadied myself to shift one barrel no more than six inches; I bent down, grabbed both ends of the barrel, got it roughly three inches off the ground and suddenly felt my back lock up in a manner I haven’t felt since........oh, ever.

 I dropped the barrel, managed to prevent myself from swearing too loudly (there were, after all, ladies present) and stood there frozen.

 I should, of course, say that this was entirely my own fault. I had signed the regulation elf’n’safety documents exempting the venue from any blame, I knew I should have enlisted some help, I knew I was being over-confident.

 And yet, something told me that Martin Warrillow, who had a desk job for 24 years and who has spent the last 18 months sitting on a less-than-comfortable wooden bench in front of the computer in his ‘office’ could lift a nine-gallon beer barrel on his own.

 There’s a word for that.

  I’m glad to say that, thanks to several hot baths and lots of massage, the pain eased off through the week although an offer to sit down all day and run the bottled beer/CAMRA memberships/T-shirt stall proved much more attractive than stretching up and down behind the bar for seven hours a day.

 And the Festival itself was a triumph. We signed up more new members for the Lichfield/Sutton Coldfield/Tamworth/Atherstone branch of CAMRA than we have for many years, the venue was busy during daytime and evening sessions on all three days, the beer was of a standard which lived up to the quality expected by our late, great, festival supremo Chris Fudge and even the real ciders and perries seemed to go down smoothly.

 Our ‘chocolate lady’ Emily Flanagan of Merry Berry Truffles, proved a popular edition to the menu (if you have never tried chilli and orange chocolate, you really should - Emily is becoming a regular at CAMRA beer festivals across the Midlands and always does well) and everyone went away feeling that this year’s festival was as good as any we’ve ever done.

 It’s hard work (even the beer-tasting on Wednesday afternoon, just to make sure everything is in order...) and you always ache at the end of it, some more than others, but it’s a week I wouldn’t miss for the world and if it encourages people to try real ale for the first time, rather than the bland national brews, it must be doing the right thing.

 See you there in September 2012. By which time, I will have taken up weightlifting classes.

Ain't nothing like the real (ale) thing

 This time next week, my thighs will be burning, the backs of my legs will feel as if they’ve been on a rack and my shoulders will feel as if I’ve been in an Olympic weightlifting competition. All this will be the result of what is arguably the most serious physical exercise I take all year.

 At the time, it feels like madness but it’s one of the most enjoyable weeks of my year. It’s the week I spend working at Tamworth Beer Festival (brought to you by the Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield and Tamworth branch of the Campaign for Real Ale).

 It’s the 18th edition of the annual Tamworth Beer Festival this year, starting at the Assembly Rooms at 11am on Thursday and running from 11am-11pm on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. 

 While I was still in what Mrs W insists on calling ‘a proper job’, I was only able to help out on Thursday and Friday, serving behind the bar during the morning and lunchtime sessions before dashing off to work.

 For the last two years, though, I have been available all week and have seen just how much effort it takes to put on a moderately-sized and always successful beer festival. 

 The action will start at 9am on Monday when a team of scaffolders arrives to assemble the wooden structure on which 100 barrels of real ale will rest for the next week. At the same time, brewers from all over the United Kingdom start arriving. It might be one 72-pint barrel in the back of a car, or ten barrels on the back of a lorry. It all gets the same careful treatment, lifted gently on to the scaffolding, or hauled up there by two beefy men (and me), then tapped and left to settle until the Festival opens on Thursday morning. 

 Last year, a dedicated team of volunteers had everything ready by Wednesday lunchtime, giving us time to raise a glass and a nargis kebab in honour of the late, great Chris Fudge, supremo of our beer festival for so many years who was tragically taken from us far too young by a brain tumour in the summer of 2010.

 Last year, we really felt we were doing it for Fudgy. I’m sure the same mindset will spur us on this year.

 There are always last-minute panics, though. It would help if the glasses were delivered a little earlier this year, while the moment when the lorry containing the cooling system almost reversed into the side wall of the Assembly Rooms will stay in my mind for a while.

 Nevertheless, there’s nothing like walking out of the side door of the venue at 10.30 on Thursday morning and seeing a queue of 50 people waiting outside. Invariably, these are the ‘tickers’, familiar faces from beer festivals across the country who will drink their fair share but also pour a decent amount into plastic bottles to be taken away and tested at a later date. I don’t ‘get’ that myself but if it helps promote real ale and our festival, then it’s fine by me.

 Their arrival heralds the start of two days of bending up and down at the bar, reaching into the farthest corner of the highest rack or kneeling down into the lowest corner of the lowest rack to serve a half of Church End's latest off-the-wall creation or something new and unheard-of from Devon, Manchester or Scotland.   

 As a serious supporter of Tamworth FC, one of my favourite times is Saturday lunchtime; thanks to the sainted Dennis Strudwick, who draws up the Conference National fixture list by hand, Tamworth almost invariably have a home game on the afternoon of our festival. This year, that means we’ll be greeting real ale drinkers and supporters of York FC. Given that York are managed by Gary Mills and Darron Gee, who left Tamworth last autumn to move to KitKat Crescent, there should be some lively banter. But it won’t be any more than that - non-league fans and real ale drinkers know how to have a laugh and a drink without going overboard.

  As I said, it’s one of the highlights of my year - even if my thighs won’t thank me for it next week. 

 I hope to see you there at some point over the three days.

Where books can open our eyes to the world

I think I know a fair bit about coping with physical health problems. I was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus, two nasty and related conditions which are less common than they used to be but which still mean paralysis and physical deformity for plenty of children born with them.

 When I was born in the 1960s, they were often fatal and I count myself incredibly lucky that of all the children with spina bifida whom I knew when I was growing up, I was the only one to be able to walk unaided.

  In my more morbid moments, then, I feel fortunate to be here at all, never mind to have reached an age when I am closer to retirement than university.

 But once a month I’m reminded that my problems, which still raise their ugly heads and give me a nasty nip on occasions, are as nothing compared to those suffered by some. 

 Once a month, I am honoured to attend my local library’s Talking Book Group. Talking books, that is to say books read aloud and transferred on to CD, cassette, Kindle and an increasing variety of specialist machines, are not just for able-bodied people facing long train journeys or looking for something to listen to while our other half is engrossed in the soaps; no, they are an essential tool for those suffering from varying degrees of blindness and who wish to keep their brains as active as possible.

 To say that some of the people I meet at this group are awe-inspiring is to do no justice to that word. There is the lady in her mid-80s who lost her sight over 30 years ago yet is determined to live life to its’ very fullest. She’s not too keen on ‘blood and guts’ murder stories but enjoys most other genres and will happily express the strongest of views during our monthly dissections of the books we’ve read since our last meeting.

 Then, there’s the lady who has been suffering degenerative eye problems since her teens and now, as a grandmother, can see almost nothing other than shadows. Yet to hear this lady talk of her life is to realise that those of us who are relatively healthy should stand in awe of those who, every day, defy physical disability.

 And there is the man who fights as hard as anyone against intransigent local authorities for the rights of the disabled. He loves ‘blood and guts’ novels and can listen to more of them in a month than most sighted people read in a year.

I joined this group several years ago, when I was working evening shifts and realised that there were only so many post-midnight radio phone-in programmes one could listen to on the journey home. I found that talking books kept the brain alive after a long shift and kept the mind alert for prowling police cars armed with breathalyser kits and mobile speed cameras. 

 There are others among our group who suffer from different forms of disability than blindness and to spend an hour once a month with them all is to be reminded of the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

 Yet talking books are expensive, often costing up to £35 a copy; With local authority libraries always under pressure to cut costs, the range of books available is limited and becoming more so.

 We aren’t yet at a point where Talking Book groups are being axed but local authorities across the country must surely have considered it. At a time when ‘proper’ literature seems to be fighting an ever-increasing battle to get noticed, surely we can’t allow that - especially when these groups are such a lifeline for people who desperately need them.

My clean little secret

My wife mustn’t see this column. Given that she doesn’t know how to turn on the computer, this may not be too difficult but I’m going to put something into the blogosphere which she isn’t going to like; there may be consequences at Warrillow Towers.

 My female readers, on the other hand, do seem to approve; when I posted a Facebook status on this subject at the weekend, I had five keen admirers within a couple of hours.

 The response didn’t exactly amount to offers of much-needed paid work, but you never know...even the biggest businesses have to start somewhere.

 What am I rambling on about? Well......(takes deep breath....) I quite like doing housework.

 There you are, I’ve said it. Mrs W will be appalled, dismayed, outraged. Ever since a certain well-known media conglomerate decided, in December 2009, that it could do without my journalistic skills, she has hoped that I would become a full-time house-husband.

 As she still commutes to work every morning, she has hoped that I would spend my days filling the washing machine with baskets-full of dirty clothing, hanging clean clothes out on the line, doing the ironing, vacuuming, cooking; generally making sure that Warrillow Towers is spotless when she gets home at night.

 Sadly, it hasn’t worked out like that. There are features to be sourced, reports to be written, contributors to be chased for copy, work opportunities to be pursued; in short, a living to be made.

 So the dream of turning me into a full-time house-husband hasn’t happened and probably never will, with the result that a percentage of our weekend time has to be spent getting the house into good order before she goes back to work on Monday morning.

 And that’s the bit that I will tentatively admit to ‘quite’ liking. 

 Let’s say, before we get into this, that I can’t iron. Some men will say it’s the only part of housework that they get on with but I’ve never got the hang of it. I’ve tried, but the incident where I accidentally left a hot iron on the ironing board and almost burnt the house down has probably put the skids under it for good.

 I’m quite nifty with a vacuum cleaner, though; I can get right up to the floorboards and behind the settee and I do know how to move the beds to vacuum up the collected dust and cat hair (an essential skill in a house containing a very large long-haired cat).

 I can polish furniture, as well. I don’t just polish around ornaments, I move them, while I’m fully conversant with the 14 different sorts of dusters on the market these days.

 I thoroughly enjoy using the steam mop on our tiled kitchen and bathroom floors; pouring the boiling water into the machine and then mopping energetically as the machine offers up a satisfactory hissing sound.

 All these things I can do in the manner of a proper husband. Mrs W and I regularly differ as to the frequency with which they have to be done, but I can and do play my part when the time comes.

 After 20 years of marriage, we have housework worked out into the kind of game plan that would impress Sir Alex Ferguson. I know the bits that I can help with; there are areas of the field into which I wouldn’t dare to stray, for fear of getting the hairdryer treatment.

 But the end result is usually success.

 Warrillow Towers is never going to look like Buckingham Palace; as Arsene Wenger might bemoan, we don’t have the budget to bring in the big cleaners to achieve that. But we do what we can with the resources available and the sense of teamwork which results from a good session of housework is one of the things which should be at the bedrock of a good marriage.

 Before I get assailed by angry parents I will, of course, say that the residents of Warrillow Towers are a husband and wife and a large cat. Things may be entirely different if we had two trouble-making children to contend with. But we are where we are and, unlike some men, I can admit that housework doesn’t fill me with dread. You can even do it in your natural state and, as keen naturists, we often have - after all, why get clothes covered in sweat, dust and furniture polish?

 So there we are....my vacuuming secret is out. I shall await the consequences.

Statistical heaven - all for 3p per page

For many cricket-lovers, the best day of the year is when Wisden thuds on to the bookshelves.

 Quite a few football experts feel the same way about the Playfair Football Annual. 

 Me? I get the same feeling about Phil Steele’s American Football preview magazines.

 It’s a fair bet that you haven’t heard of Mr Steele. He’s a 46-year-old award-winning sportswriter, whose Cleveland-based company produces annual preview magazines for the top two levels of college football, as well as the professional National Football League.

 Each magazine averages roughly 250-300 A3 pages so that when they land on your doormat, as the two college previews did at Warrillow Towers this morning, you know about it.

 Phil Steele magazines are not for the casual fan. If you’re the kind of supporter who tunes in once a year for the TV coverage of the Super Bowl and thinks Joe Montana is still the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, forget it.

 Even if you see NFL coverage as a useful add-on to your Sky Sports subscription, this may not be for you.

 But if you want schedules, results going back six years, offensive and defensive individual team statistics, lists of potential NFL draft picks, pages of analysis of every offensive and defensive unit of every one of the 300-plus colleges in the Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision (don’t ask......) plus the 32 NFL teams, this is for you.

 There is so much information here that a fair bit of it isn’t even in English, or even American English. To get everything he wants to say into those 300-plus pages, Mr Steele has to resort to abbreviating some of the more obvious words and football phrases; so much so, in fact, that the list of abbreviations covers half of an A3 page.

 As you’d expect, then, the layout isn’t pretty. But if you want to know who was the second-leading tackler in the 2010 season for the Jacksonville State Gamecocks of the Ohio Valley Conference, you’ll find it here (on page 135 of the FCS magazine).

 Mr Steele and his 28 statisticians spend 365 days a year compiling this information (yes, there are college and NFL games on Christmas and/or New Years’ Day). Yet the finished magazines are astoundingly cheap. It cost me £32.94 to get all three shipped to Tamworth from Cleveland. At just under 1,000 pages of information, that’s a tad over 3p per page; considerably cheaper than Wisden.

 So why American football? Why am I so in love with a sport which is essentially straightforward, but which most of the world finds completely incomprehensible?

 My interest (you may call it an obsession) goes back to my schooldays and a chemistry teacher called Dr Ken Thomas. He had studied in the US in the 1960s and came back determined to spread the gospel of this terrific sport he had seen. 

 It was Ken who hounded ITV into showing brief highlights of the Super Bowl on World of Sport in the mid-70s. It was Ken who advised Channel 4 when they first broadcast the NFL in the early-1980s. It was Ken who wrote the first British guidebook to the sport, the nattily-titled A Guide to American Football (available now on Amazon for, er, 1p).

 And it was Ken who decided that the best way to get us interested in his subject was to show us American Football videos in our lunchbreaks after chemistry lessons.

 You’d be surprised how many young fans turned up. 

 Ken was the only teacher about whom I can say that I got an O-Level in his subject purely  because of his enthusiasm and drive.

 I remember him for that; but every time I look at a Phil Steele magazine, I remember him for something which has brought far greater enjoyment to my life than chemistry ever did.

 Go to www.philsteele.com for more information about Phil's magazines and to order copies. 

Bagpipes, blues and bright sunshine

When you tell people you’re going to a music festival at a naturist club, some people can’t resist the obvious: “They haven’t got any G-strings on their guitars, then?” inquired a former work colleague.

 Actually, they had; the three-day Merryhill Music Festival, held at the hugely popular and high-quality Merryhill Naturist Club just outside Norwich, features the finest local bands from the Norfolk area - and while the audience is made up of Merryhill members and hundreds of naturist visitors from around the country, the bands are resolutely clothed (or textile, as we say in naturist circles).

 Last weekend’s event was a corker. The sun, so notable by its’ absence throughout much of this summer, put in an appearance on all three days and by the time the festival hit its’ peak, late on Sunday afternoon, the temperature was in the 80s, the swimming pool was packed, the sunbathing lawns were crammed and the marquee where the bands played was full of the good vibe that only music can bring. Oh....and Mrs W and I were nicely sunburnt. 

 This was the tenth staging of an event which is the brainchild of Alan and Sylvia Avery and Jenny Thurston, the owners of Merryhill. From tentative beginnings, it has now become a mainstay of the British summer naturist calendar, with caravan and tent pitches booked out months in advance.

 The names of the bands won’t mean much to my readers but let’s just say that with 1960s and 70s tribute bands on the Friday and Saturday evenings (along with a fancy dress party theme to the audience on both nights), the atmosphere was never less than lively.

 Saturday afternoon, though, was a particular highlight. The action kicked off with a performance by the City of Norwich Pipe Band, one of whose musicians is a Merryhill member; it was quite a sight to see 16 men in kilts, sporrans and full Scottish musical uniform marching across the park playing traditional bagpipe music in front of hundreds of naturists. At first, they got a tentative reception but after two more sets punctuated the afternoon, ending with a storming rendition of Scotland the Brave, they were resoundingly cheered out of the marquee.

 Ska and blues were the remaining ingredients of a wonderful afternoon. There can be nothing better than lying in the sun, bottle of cider in hand, listening to some storming music - a big cheer to ska boys Monkey Spanner and the Paul Tinkler Blues Band for their efforts.

 This was our first visit to the Merryhill Music Festival but we’ll definitely be going back. Merryhill’s clothes-optional ethos means first-time visitors don’t have to jump in at the deep end, as it were, while there is enough going on as well as the music to keep people entertained even if the weather doesn’t play its’ part. 

 See you there in 2012?

We just aren't built for Olympic gold

As you may have noticed, the London Olympic Games start a year from today. Given the Football Association’s inability to organise a party in a brewery, it is probably the only occasion in my lifetime when a sporting event of this magnitude will be held in the United Kingdom.

 Therefore, as a sports fan since childhood, I should be posting wallcharts and calendars in my office, noting the date and time of the womens’ volleyball quarter-finals and in particular, looking forward to the football at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, the only event for which I got tickets in the public ballot.

 And I am. In a year’s time, I’ll be camped in front of my HD television, monitoring what could be scores of broadcast streams from the BBC and existing on coffee and chocolate digestives.

 What I’m not looking forward to is 364 days of increasingly ludicrous public expectation stoked up by the BBC and the tabloids and 364 days of psychobabble from the British teams and their coaches.

 It’s happening already. Yesterday, a ‘shock report’ revealed that Britain is in danger of missing our target for gold medals. 

 Today, athletics head coach Charles van Commenee (a Dutchman imported due to the lack of capable domestic coaches) warned that his team was not ready and would need every bit of the time left before the opening ceremony.

 Responding to claims that his team might find it hard to live up to the hopes of an over-excited nation, van Commenee then said this. 

 "Athletes who are nervous are simply not focused enough. They have to upskill themselves by focusing better. If you are not focused, there is brain space to be nervous. You shouldn't have that. I find it unprofessional when athletes are nervous."

 I don’t know about you, but I feel myself reaching for my shotgun whenever anyone utters the words ‘upskill themselves’.

 Aside from that, this sounds like yet another example of a foreign coach being brought to Britain to produce silk purses from sows’ ears, then looking for an exit strategy as soon as he realises it’s all going wrong. 

 Van Commenee prides himself on not getting too close to his athletes (sound familiar, Fabio?), then complains that they aren’t focused and ready. Excuse me, but isn’t that what a (presumably well-remunerated) coach is supposed to do? Agreed, a certain amount is up to the athlete but don’t good coaches help them deliver that extra one per cent? 

 To continue the football analogy, Chelsea won the Premier League in consecutive seasons under Jose Mourinho. Andre Villas-Boas will be their sixth manager in the four years since he left, during which time they’ve won it once. You don’t suppose that has anything to do with The Special One’s ability to get the best out of his charges, do you?

 Public abuse of your athletes as nervous, unprofessional and unfocused hardly seems the way forward to me.

 And here are a few facts. Great Britain is a less than average-sized group of nations in Western Europe, vastly smaller than the traditional Olympic powers. The traditional Olympic sports, including athletics, have nothing like the level of interest from supporters and participants as in the other major Olympic nations.

 Most are the kind of sports which the BBC will exile to the Red Button for all but two weeks every four years, while giving us almost no live sport on BBC1 and paying Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen fortunes to watch football on television in a studio.

 It should be a miracle if we win one gold medal; the fact that we usually do better is often down to the individual determination of the athletes themselves - the likes of Sir Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton and possibly the greatest British Olympian of them all, Daley Thompson.

 It is certainly no thanks to successive Governments who starve sport of funds and then come out of the woodwork to join the standing ovations when we win something.

 Fly-by-night foreigners here to polish their CVs, who do nothing to lay foundations for better participation, a better level of domestic coaching and better facilities, should claim even less credit.