as the euphoria turns to fear

i must be out of my tiny little mind!

there is a charity called st. lukes hospice which care for people with incurable illness'. a really worthy cause, they sent out feelers recently to get support and to encourage people to scale down the walls of a local hospital and get sponsorship.

i have been working for a community radio station and their event organiser was hoping i would mention it on the radio for them. now, i know i hadn't been drinking at the time, but still, i was filled with a delirium usually associated with chronic fatigue or drug taking. sober as a judge i was and yet within a day i had volunteered myself to go over the wall.

i created a just giving page, got the relevant application forms, wrote and article on it with the strap-line "during the many years [i] worked at [said] hospital, i was often tempted to jump off of the roof - and now i finally get the chance!".  yea, bloody hilarious!

3 days later and now it's "what on earth was i thinking!?!"  i'm not even that keen on heights. i certainly have never dangled my weedy body from the end of a 100ft rope before.

now i've got to get together £250 in sponsorship and a further £20 to enter.

i think in future i should ensure i have been drinking - hopefully then i will be too incoherent to make such a rash decision.

god bless america

returning from the new years day parade (london 2011) it got me thinking.

the americans really know how to do a parade.

they're probably all geared up for it back home, with the regular sports/games/events where these marching bands and cheerleaders can keep their skills up to speed. the're probably obliged to join as part of the school curriculum, with inter-school competitions etc.

i got talking to a group from holland in the salisbury afterwards and asked if they had stuff like that over there. they said no, the same as us really. they said you might get a child to march/cheer-lead up to the age of around 10, but after that don't bother to even ask them. i was saying that you'd never get our teenagers to put on that uniform in baby-blue or other pastel colour, with tassels, and feathers on their heads, marching to numbers by the beetles.

having said all that, the parade would not have been worth going to without the american marching bands. i'm sad to have to report on the miserable looking british groups with their half-hearted attempts at a costume and a bit tinsel stuck on their heads. with badly choreographed dancing to the sound of a blown speaker pumping out some too-loud sounds, having been all a couple of london boroughs could seem to manage. but they weren't all that bad, some where alright, some were even quite good, but they paled into insignificance when followed by a 200 strong marching, cheering extravaganza, flown in from a number of states in the USA. one group had even got stuck in the airport for 3 days on the way over. bless.

all in all a good parade - the let down was that westminster council did not ensure the safety of the participants. there was a reasonably big hole right on the route of the parade, where the marchers were passing. one cheer-leader appeared to twist her ankle because of it. bad form for westminster i felt. a bit of sand down it in the morning would have probably made the event accident free.