Coventry Schools Cross Ciountry Races September 2014

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 239:- Tonight’s cross country start … my granddaughter ran over the same course as her mum did 25 years ago!! But where is it Blog???

Dear Blog,

                 It is that time of year again when all the heavy digging has to be done in preparation for next year’s crops. So I decided a week ago that it was time to commence the dig-dig, so I told the gardener’s assistant to start turning over the acreage where the potatoes had been. It was a bit on the heavy side. She said her back was bad and she thought she wouldn’t be able to manage. To keep her sweet, I said she could use the light spade ….then she came the old kick about having to keep stopping her digging to cook my lunch, and to do the baking, and to do the washing and to get the weekly house cleaning done and so on and so forth. I said to her ‘Look here, I just didn’t marry you for my good looks you know’. She grunted something inaudible in reply which I didn’t quite catch. Sounded like I should take the peas off which I could not understand as she picked the peas last week and then shelled them and put them in the freezer. I pretended not to hear – I do so hate to have an argument when I know I am right.

After she had made my lunch I did compliment her on the neatness of her furrow and how much she had done. My heart melted and I told her I would come down the estate with her and we would find a Roman artefact like we did last year and like we did the year before and the year before that. I said I could feel it in my waters.

So I went down the estate road with her to the potato patch and before she could say ‘Ooooooooooo me back’ I spotted a Roman coin. Last year it was a bit of a villa’s roof tile, the year before a piece of pottery and the year before that a piece of leather which must have come from a Roman soldier’s sandal. The procedure then is that every year I get in touch with the local History Society and the Antiquities Departments at the Council and the University and before you can say ‘Julius Caesar’ their teams of experts arrive with their shovels and spades and sieves and they carefully dig the whole of the estate in the hope of finding other relics. They never do, bless them, but I must say they do a first class job in saving my wife’s back from further aches and pains. I do feel sorry when they are so disappointed in finding not a Roman fig but I think they should be pleased that my wife can get on with her wifely duties being relieved of her dig-dig. So what was so special about the coin in this year’s find I hear you ask Blog. Well it had a clear date stamped on it which was rather exciting. And the year Blog, I hear you ask. It was 250 B.C.! Two hundred and fifty years before Christ was born; the date was as clear as day. The archaeologists will be flocking up here in their droves spades, sieves and forks all of a quiver; I only hope they don’t dig the annual weeds in! There it was 250 B.C.. They will have the gardens turned over in no time. 250 B.C.. And I can make a few quids on the side by providing them and the media with refreshments. All profits will be given to Tiny Tim’s Children’s Centre in Coventry which provides physiotherapy for disable children.

And if they find anything, I will let you know Blog, but don’t hold your breath!!!! They never have before, which is a bit puzzling. INNIT?

                                                               Colin

Out of the mouths of babes and .........

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 238:- Why did this pub in Earlsdon, Coventry cause so much heartache to the Godiva Harriers before WW1?

Dear Blog,

           My 11 year old granddaughter had her first ever schools’ cross country league race on Tuesday. When she finished I said ‘Well done, my hero’. ‘Granddad, that’s masculine’. ‘Sorry, well done my heroine’. ‘Don’t say that either Granddad, people will think I am on drugs’. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      Colin 

Midland Road Relays September 2014 revisited

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 237:- So what is the connection with my running club, Coventry Godiva Harriers?

O.K. Blog …… well done. You spotted my mistake in my last letter to you. Easily done. I could claim that it was deliberate but it wasn’t. No way Jose! Mind you anyone with a modicum of education would know the facts, especially those clever enough to have studied mathematics and science to any level. So apologies all round. My letter to you should, of course, have read 236 not 235.

Back to the Midland Road Relays. Now I have mentioned the sports’ rules to you before and how the governing body could really give a toss about rule breaking at the humble at club level. They cannot be bothered. I know I tend to bang on about it, but it rubs me up somewhat. As an athlete who was disqualified for cheating in a National Championship, I was never exonerated although EVERYONE accepted that I was totally innocent, the powers that be couldn’t be arsed to apologise.. they mustn’t lose face. It was a long time ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth, but there is still a hitch that needs scratching when I see the antics of last Saturday ... athletes with the connivance of their team managers ran in other people’s numbers. Everyone knows it goes on but officialdom turns a blind eye as to implement the sport’s rules; like the wearing of earphones, it would need a rather large amount of firm handling which the authorities cannot face. Theres now tint fer t’lads. As long as the talented end of the sport behaves itself, the little people can get on with running around breaking whatever rule they want as long as there is no conflict. Warn everyone at the race briefing and put the blindfold on. Keep your heads down lads. Don’t stir the s**t, too much trouble. Things don’t change. Many years ago the notice ‘Strictly no Betting’ were posted at races and in programmes. But the book makers couldn’t read!! And the paying punters expected a flutter. The bookies ran two books. One for the athletes as they were in on the fiddle and a different set of odds for the punters so that what the bookies lost to the athletes roping, they recouped tenfold from the gullible spectators. True Blog, I kid you not. There was a bookie in the family and many athletes interviewed openly acknowledged that fiddling was part of the sport!!

                                     Colin

Midland Counties Road Relay results 2014

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 235:- Who’s hand might I have shaken who shook the hand of the bloke above?? Wrong answers gets you a one way trip to the local Gulag Blog.

Dear Blog,

               Saturday saw the annual Midland Road Relays at Sutton Park over the short legs, 6 for men and four for women. My granddaughter has just started secondary school and on Friday the P.E. teacher approached her and asked her if she ran .. she thinks one of her friends must have told him that she trudges like her granddad. After a bit of quizzing he was reassured that she was capable and told her that there was a schools’ race on Tuesday evening. She doesn’t train but enthused at the prospect of turning out for her new school, she was encouraged to run (she calls it skipping) around watching the seniors compete including mum and auntie … who won a bronze team medal!!! Any ways we got round slowly and she told me when we arrived back at the start / change over that when I talk I spit. Now she has been polite enough tell me this distasteful fact on several previous occasions. That’s the bad news Blog … the good news:-  that same night when I went onto the lap top my younger daughter has lent me, I noticed that the screen is heavily splattered with the remnants of droplets which I take to be my spit particles when I talk. Closer examination revealed that some must have been there many moons and are showing signs of healthy growth … when the lid of the machine is closed I suppose the germs are free to breed in comfort especially as the fan on her lap top is bust and when used for more than a couple of minutes, you start to suffer with blistering from the red hot machine if it has been used on your lap. It is the cooling when the machine is closed down and returned to its case that I presume provides the suitable environment for breeding purposes.  

           Sunday morning I was up bright and breezy and telephoned one of the more famous pharmaceutical companies with the offer of a fully development new strain of antibiotics. I have to report to you Blog that they were most interested; I think they will be popping round to collect the breeding ground sometime soon, no doubt with a fat financial contract for me. The downside however is that I will have no laptop (hot or cold) so I will have to use the typewriter for our little on going correspondence. Eat your heart out Ian Flemming!!

                                                         Colin   

Independence

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 235:- Why was this pub in Earlsdon Coventry so important to not only Coventry Godiva Harriers but to Small Heath Harriers as well??

Oh dear me Blog … Today is the big day – the declaration of the final result which will affect me and my wife for years to come. It is all over at last. Yes or No. No or Yes. I was sick of it. Six weeks ago the pressure started to mount. My wife and I could not agree; first we argued amiably but of late, the debate became fierce and in the interests of saving my marriage and my sanity, I submitted. A victory for female emancipation. She won. No contest in the end. The curtains arrived, made up and ready to hang. I may have said before, that the cost was stratospheric. – a set of curtains for the living room  or a second hand car. When I wrote you some weeks ago, I foolishly claimed that the car has won. Boy was she angry when she saw that! She didn’t seem to believe me that it was just my little joke. It took her a couple of weeks for her to stop burning my faggots and gravy but at least I can eat my dry toast in the kitchen in a smoke free environment. She says that if I promise to get the curtain rail up before Christmas, she will start cooking proper meals for me again. I promised I would.

                       Colin

p.s. She did not say which Christmas and I had my fingers crossed anyway!!

Justice is done ... almost.

Photograph Quiz.

Photo no 234:

Question:- This lady musical star took part in my 1908 ‘Tour of Coventry and Warwickshire’, a marathon race in five stages in five days to recreate the First Marathon run in England in 1908 [according to the book ‘Marathon’ by Roger Gynn for Guinness Publications]. The original was a trial for the 1908 Olympic Marathon and ran from Coventry to the West Bromwich Football Ground. In my race each stage race was close to the course of the original 1908 race. So, who is the lady? What was her marathon time? Why is she famous? What group did she perform with?

Dear Blog,

                  On many occasions during the last month or so, I have rattled on about my scarecrow display in July and the injustice of my not getting first place or of not getting second place or even of not getting third place in the scarecrow competition in the annual Allesley Village Festival scarecrow competition. I refer you dear Blog to this month’s Allesley Parish Magazine which included the report of the success of the Allesley Village Festival 2014. It contains the following sentence ‘… BUT the wit, humour, effort and sheer Yorkshire arrogance of “God’s Own Country” (Colin Kirkham) was ingenious and cannot be ignored’. Need I say more Blog?? I rest my case! I was simply the best, Better than all the rest. Better than any ‘crow’, Any crow you ever saw. The Best. Yes I was the Best.

For a few quids, I will send you a signed copy of the appropriate page in the Allesley Parish Magazine [page 40]. All proceeds to the Tiny Tims Children’s Centre which provides support for disable children. Cough up Blog, you know you can afford a few quids.

This week I will be raising a few quids for the Tiny Tims Children’s Centre by giving another talk on ‘The History of Coventry Godiva Harriers and other clubs in the city during the last 140 years’. I thought I would try a variation of my usual talk by showing many random shots of athletes /cyclists / walkers with a distinctive Coventry backdrop and involve the audience by inviting them to try to spot where the back ground was. On each photo I can hang a bit of history about athletics in the city. Is that exciting Blog, or is that exciting??

                                                    Colin

Loom Bands

Photographic Quiz.

Photo no 233:

Question:- 5 points if you can spot yours truly, with ten points for any other named runner. A bonus of 10 for the venue, and 15 for the date.

Dear Blog,

                   The news that the Ebola outbreak is still out of control in parts of Africa is dreadful news. Having no cure is worrying on a global scale. Similarly, in the middle ages the Black Death had terrible consequences, ravaging its way across the country, killing thousands. Nature took its course and the disease petered out eventually. This may have been a long time ago, but in more recent times we have had less high profile health epidemic problems in this country.  Do you remember Blog, about twenty years ago we had the brown rubber band outbreak, spread around the country by the Postmen delivering letters from door to door. Thousands of the little blighters were left as a health hazard in the pathways, drives and road sides by the inconsiderate postmen who did not bother to take any precautions to stop the spread. They appeared to breed out of control of the local authorities, whose road sweepers could not compete with the rapidity of their spread in the urban areas. A wet rubber band caused falls as they became slippery. And worse; a brown half perished band on the bottom of a shoe, trod into the carpets of this country following a shopping expedition. It was not a pleasant prospect to clean up the mess! Luckily the outbreak seemed to be confined to city areas. Unfortunately, the brown bands mutated and we had a worse outbreak of red rubber bands, which seem to last for years and again was uncontrollable.

And now it has mutated again. This mutation is much smaller in size and seems to have happened, very suddenly. And what is most worrying is that it appears to only affect youngsters. The adult population seems immune. And because it is rife amongst this young age group, it has spread like wild fire between school age children, especially the girls. The infestation started a couple of months ago, with small individually coloured rubber bands. I assume the small size was Nature’s way of avoiding all known cures, the new mutant being surprisingly very addictive. The new virus is called the Loom, or the Lune or something similar. It seems to be a particularly western phenomenon, prevalent amongst the wealthier nations, the African and South American continents appear unaffected from what I have read in the press. Unless it is contained, it will no doubt spread there and become a global problem.  The rapid change of subtle design and the availability of multi coloured, or rainbow shades, make it hard for parents to counter act the desperate desire for ownership among their off spring. Once the Loom takes hold, it is very infectious, especially the ‘starburst’ variant.

Perhaps as winter approaches, the effects of the Loom will fade and resistance to the virus amongst the young population will build. The more virulent forms, the fishtail, the dragon’s scale will become less powerful as a new variant appears in time for the Christmas Solstice. No doubt it will be electronic based as social scientists believe, and much more expensive to resist by brow beaten parents. The Loom might not have cost too much financially, but a differently designed outbreak at Yule Tide will bound to be more costly as it will be fed by the media and no immunisation will be put in place. The design will probably appear very desirable to the young and the parents will have a severe struggle with their plastic cards to douse the addiction. I predict the outbreak of such a new virus will be almost unstoppable; the only consolation being that by the Boxing Day the viral strength will have faded extremely rapidly as have many types in the past years about this time of year. It will be contained satisfactorily within cupboards, wardrobes, outdoor sheds etc.. We can but prey.

                              Colin

Kenilworth Half Marathon result 2014

Photo no 232:

Question:- Is this the little blighter from the Brazilian rain forest that causes all the trouble?

Dear Blog,

         Yesterday was the annual Kenilworth Half Marathon, an event organised by the local Kenilworth Runners. Well organised – excellent information – plenty of marshals at junction, being club members they were amply able to deal with any situation which might have arisen during the race – all officials being unpaid volunteers – pleasant quiet roads -plenty of refreshments, drink, sandwiches and home-made cakes … all priced very cheaply – prize giving for the race and the Warwickshire County Championship awards were reasonably quickly produced with an efficient presentation. Now for a bit of fun contrast the above comments with all those posted about commercially organised events. Where to start?? It matters not a jot which race you choose. Take the Coventry Half Marathon for example; if you have kept my letters from previous races in Coventry, you will appreciate the points I am trying to make. Very often these commercial ventures are an embarrassment, sloppy and expensive with hardly a volunteer in sight!! What a lot any club organised event can teach there money grabbing counterparts.

        Talking about money grabbing, did you read about the shenanigans in Newcastle on Sunday, where it has been suggested that Farah’s win was a few pennies short of a quid. Some athletic pundits are showing signs of discontent. To win or not to win, that is the question, especially if some runners have the same commercial manager who might possibly be more interested in the quids, present and future, rather than actual true competitive race – funny how the organiser is always banging on about ‘a truly run race’ when he is giving forth his words of wisdom when commenting on the television set! But then, what do I know? I do know that drugs cheats are heralded and praised for their endeavours in televised races. Some of those cheats have even been banned more than once!! You scratch my back and I will fill your pockets with filthy lucre; after all what do the general public know??? As long as we get their bums on our seats and get a few quids off them, we can pay the drugs cheats for competing. Goody, goody. So we can keep the media and the sponsors happy, which is what is really important. In other sports like motor racing for example, it would never be fixed for a team mate to throttle back to allow his college to cross the finishing line first and collect all the plaudits.

     Mind you Blog, if you look at grass roots road racing for club athletes, they happily pay their quids to enter, some of the entry fee is paid to a course measurer to certify that the road race is an accurate distance …. so that the runner can be satisfied that his / her time is a personal best time if that is achieved. All well and good. Racing and p.b.s is what road racing is all about for many joggers. …… … then why do so many runners try to cut corners, why do so many runners run on the pavements to clip a few yards (metres to you Blog) off the distance??? I wonder if they record their personal best for 9.92 Km or record a personal best for 4.95 km??? But then I suppose they are only cheating themselves, so that is O.K..

                                                                                      Colin

Magic Number

Photograph:- As mentioned in passing in the tribute to Davenport, the Cyclists Memorial Opening Ceremony.

Dear Blog,

                 Some long time ago if you check your mail, I pose a little puzzle for you and then in my next missive I explained how important it was and called the new number, 2321, Kirkham’s Constant or some such.

To remind you I asked what the next line in the sequence was

Viz:-

1

11

21

1112

And I explained that the rest of this wonderful set of numbers was

3112

211213

312213

212223

And I explained the pattern was produced by stating the amount of numbers which appeared in the preceding line (the line above)

114213

31121314

31122314*

31222314

21322314

And then a wonderful thing happens

Viz:- the next line is then

21322314

And the next and the next and the next ..... ->∞

If the numbers you are listing are then stripped out, you are left with 2321.

And with certain provisos which I detailed in my last letter to you, no matter what you start with, you always end with 2321!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Read my previous letter to you for all the procedures with more complex repeats.

Now a couple of years may have elapse since my original message to you, during which time I have consulted a couple of eminent mathematics and a philosopher because .....

Go to line eleven, say [which you chose does not matter] and instead of  31122314 you make a mistake and write 31322314 say [the mistake does not matter] but then carry on

Viz:-

31322314

21223314

21322314

21322314

    .................strip out the numbers you are listing as before and => 2321 arrives!!!!

Now, the problem arises ...If you make a mistake but end up at the same place anyhow, how do you know that you have ever made a mistake? And if you write a programme to check or do a manual check, you have to pose the question of yourself, ‘Why bother’ because you get the same answer whether you are accurate or not!! Just think how useful the procedure would be for genetic engineers and social control. We would not know about any mistake, would they?

... and I have had no satisfactory answer as to why 2321 and more importantly, why, it is ‘self correcting’ [an inaccurate use of a bad term really] i.e. if you make an error you always end up with the same answer (which logically you must do if every starting pattern ends up with 2321, the error made is just a pseudo starting place!)

                                                                Colin