I think, ergo I am?

I am going off subject now for a rant. I know. Another one. It’s GCSE day today, and we should all be very excited and proud that our teenagers are getting so intelligent that they are producing record results. Our education system is clearly delivering superb quality, and our industry leaders are bound to have excellent candidates to choose from as and when they flood into the workplace.

I’m sorry, but it just doesn’t compute. How is it possible that, against the time when O-levels were the standard, our teens have suddenly become genii, or what would appear to be genii in comparison with their counterparts 30 years ago, if these results are to be believed? I was talking to the wonderful boy about it this lunchtime. His was the last year to sit O-levels, and they were given – as an experiment – the proposed GCSE paper for the following year. By all accounts the O-level candidates couldn’t believe how easy it was – and it would seem that the difficulty has not increased since then!

Anyway, to quote Mr Gump, that’s all I have to say about that. On to the next subject...building a mosque two streets away from the site of Ground Zero. My main question is, “HAVE WE LOST ALL COMMON SENSE”?

Come on, people, this is madness. I really cannot see how it can be argued that it is a good idea, just from a human sensitivity point of view, let alone the wider political implications. There must surely be a more suitable, alternative site for the proposed mosque and cultural centre. Now, I don’t agree with certain opponents of the project, who say that it would be tantamount to plastering a Swastika next to the Holocaust Museum, and that it is a breeding ground for terrorism. That is seriously over-egging the pudding in my opinion (for what it’s worth – not much, I know). However, I do believe that, even though the United States embraces all religions and prides itself on freedom of expression, there should also be consideration for the non-Muslim citizens of NYC and families who lost so many loved ones on 9/11. Admittedly I haven’t gone into the background of this in great detail, but why has this particular, hugely emotive location been chosen? Whose bright idea was it in the first place, and did he take his exams in the UK? Sorry, couldn’t resist that one!

OK, before I get lynched, I’ll leave this topic and get onto less provocative material. Like my 2k test this weekend. Ze German and I have been doing some NLP work on a range of aspects of my personal and sporting life, one of which is my “relationship” with the erg. It has never been a happy one, to be honest, and I know that I am not alone in this! For some reason, what I can produce on the water and in the gym does not reflect in my erg times and I seem to have stagnated at one level for the past few tests. It is almost like I have imagined the erg to be this big nasty monster that looms above me and I sort of apologetically clamber onto it and let it dominate me and my mental state. Well, we’ve changed all of that, and let my subconscious satnav take me to the score I wish to produce this weekend. I feel that I have needed to make some fundamental changes to the way I approach the erg (and don’t just say “walk up to it and sit down”!), for as the cliché goes, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’re going to get what you’ve always got”.

Watch this space!

Bobbing along, on the bottom of the beautiful briny sea....

How remiss of me. It’s been well over a week since I last blogged, and I’m sure people’s lives are very empty without my wafflings. Actually, I don’t really expect anyone to read my rambling missives, but it serves quite a good purpose for me as a sort of ongoing diary of what’s going on training and racing-wise. And I get to stand on my soapbox and bang on about things that make me cross. Like cruisers whose “skippers” go too fast on the Thames. I mean, honestly, some people are complete a-holes on the river. I was out training the other day and this absolutely massive vessel (OK, it wasn’t as big as The Waterman, but still....) was steaming by, creating this enormous wash that broke over the sides of my boat, over my back up to my bra and pretty nearly tipped me in. Of course, I requested politely and sweetly in delectable language that he “cool his jets”, and his reply was: “I can’t control the boat when it’s going slowly, it’s too big”. To which my response was, “In that case, sir, I suggest that if you are unable to steer a boat that size, you should not be in charge of it at all”. I appreciate that larger vessels rely on forward thrust for steering and therefore ARE very hard to steer at low speed, but then my argument would be that such a large boat should not be allowed on inland waterways in the first place.

See? Rant over.

So, we’re nearing the end of week three, and I’m getting used to the new training regime, with pre-breakfast runs, and spreading the sessions over the day rather than doing the whole lot in the morning to get them over and done with. We’re trying to find a suitable programme of racing this winter, and have got some exciting things in mind. We decided not to race the Wingfields in the end, and will focus on the early races such as Wallingford Long Distance Sculls, Pairs’ Head and the Silver Skiff in Turin, Italy. We were thinking about doing the Armada Cup in Bern, but looking at the pros versus the cons, we seem to be heavily weighted in favour of the latter! With a mass start in waves of scullers, and new entries (i.e. me) starting near the back, the likelihood of me coming back with a very damaged boat, and potentially a damaged body to boot, was too great to risk going. I think it would be a fun thing to do one day, but perhaps not right for me, right now!!

So there is a lot to look forward to, and with the Zambian National Constitution Committee winding up at the end of August, things are looking exciting. I believe that they are hoping to have the Constitution in place fairly quickly, and I know that they definitely want it in before the elections in 2011. I am obviously hoping that there will be a green booklet in my paws well before the racing season starts in earnest in 2011!!

On another note completely, my poor little ginger mog has finally been emasculated. He has come home feeling very sorry for himself, and I am sure that he won’t be scaling the garden trellis for a few days yet while things, err, settle down. However I don’t feel so sorry for him that I am relieved to have pre-empted the inevitable spraying antics of the territorial feline in full masculinity mode!! He’s getting his chops around a bit of tuna as a treat (hoping he won’t barf it up from the anaesthetic) and he’ll be right as rain very soon I’m sure!

He would have loved our little school holiday trip the other day. We took Tabby (the wonderful boy’s little girl) to the Sea Life Centre in London...I could honestly spend endless hours in a place like that. I love anything nature-orientated and was fascinated by the weird and wonderful shapes and colours the sea has to offer. The oddest thing though, was the influence that Hollywood has had in there. Of course, there were the resident Clown Fish and co, and the entire section was named after Nemo and his scaly pals.

Funny, really, how popular culture permeates every aspect of our lives....I see that the New Oxford English dictionary has a new entry in the form of the word “vuvuzela”.

'Nuff said.

Lordy lardy!!

I’m so happy to be back on the water! Even if it’s only for fairly short outings at the moment, I’m going to be on day five tomorrow and I’m looking forward to the next, err, couple of years! Obviously this is broken up into manageable chunks and short term goals and targets along the way. I have a tendency to look at the top of the ladder and only think about the top, and not the individual rungs I have to climb to get there. So, each training block is a step towards where I’m going, and I have had to bear all of this in mind when making some pretty tough decisions.

I’ve done the maths, worked out the time scales and it has become clear that between financial constraints and the issues surrounding the passport situation, New Zealand isn’t going to come off. It’s an awfully long way, and even without the stress of whether or not the new Zambian constitution is in place in time for the passport application to go through, we’re looking at multiple thousands of pounds to get both Julia and I over there, with flights, accommodation and food, not to mention the boat transport and so on as well. At best I would have four races, and potentially only three depending on how things go, which equates to over £1500 per race! When you self fund, you have to ask yourself whether that sort of sum would be best spent elsewhere, such as on camps, more “local” races in Europe and on the main goal for 2011 - the All Africa Games in July which is the Olympic Qualification event for Africa. I think that if I had realistic chance of knocking on the door of a medal on the limited amount of training and preparation I’ve been able to do, then perhaps the Worlds this year would be a goer, but we just don’t have that luxury, and certainly not the luxury of a national federation who have a lot of resources to send athletes that far.

So, in some ways, I will have had to miss out on so much this year, but in comparison to last year where I wasn’t able to do anything at all, I have also achieved quite a bit too. I need to keep the perspective and keep my eyeses on the prizes, focus in and use the time that I have between now and the AAGs intelligently and to my best benefit.

On another, quite unrelated note, I’m going to have a moan. I was out walking the other day and I saw a couple walking their golden Labrador. So far all OK. However, this animal was so hugely fat that the poor thing could barely waddle faster than a crawl, and there was certainly no way the butterball could have jumped to catch a ball!

It then brought to mind parents who allow their children to become obese. We would berate a pet owner for not treating their animals in the right way by overfeeding them and not exercising them correctly. Why then do we not take parents to task for essentially sending their whelps into bad health, social exclusion and an inability to partake of the things that normal children can do, such as running around the park and so on? It all makes me very cross.

And before anyone comes back at me for being fattist, I have been obese myself and managed to drag myself out of it; I have been on the receiving end of bullies, snide comments and exclusion from activities. I remember going to St Gilgen with friends while I was studying in Salzburg, and we all went waterskiing. Well, I should say, my friends went waterskiing and when I asked if there was time for me to go (admittedly I was about 80kilos at the time!), the woman looked me up and down with a sneer on her face and said, “For you?” I still suffer from loose skin on my thighs and stomach, which I will never get rid of, and I still look in the mirror and dislike what I see there. When you are used to seeing yourself a certain way, and when the messages you have heard for years are ones of negativity and derision, it is that mentality that sticks the most. The below was taken on the way to my worst....I think I started avoiding the camera after this!!

Phew. Rant over.