On being a northerner abroad

It's been eighteen months since I decided to accept a job in London, moving away from Newcastle after living, working and studying in the north east for about ten years.  Before that, I spent much of my childhood in Bradford and I'm definitely a Yorkshireman, even though I've always had a slightly nomadic life after being born in Australia.

It's still a bit strange, truth be told.  For most of my time growing up, London was a place we went to twice a year and it was a big exciting day out.  No sleep the night before- too excited- and then the first train south in the morning.  I'd usually be spark out on the late train back, with dad enjoying his beer from the buffet car.  It's weird to be working in that city I always came to as a kid.  It was even weirder when I lived in London too, although now I'm living out in the Home Counties it's a bit different.

There are things about London that I love.  Decent shops and decent coffee for one thing.  The view of the river from Waterloo bridge, and from the south bank, for another.

Swimming on Hampstead Heath is something I'd tell anyone to try once (though maybe not in winter, like some weirdoes do).  Everyone should go up Parliament Hill once

There's obviously all the good museums and art galleries and theatres (well, maybe- I can't stand shitty musicals and that's all that seems to be on now) too.

Where I live now is not London, but it has it's perks too

But you know what?  I actually really miss the North, and really don't see myself staying down here forever.  I miss being able to afford to own my home, for one thing.  Renting sucks, and I deeply resent handing over a huge chunk of my wage every month to someone else, to pay their mortgage.  My partner and I both have good jobs, yet buying down here is pretty much out of the question.  It is utterly ridiculous.  Living outside of London has the benefit of cheaper rent, but then the train company will charge obscene prices to make up for it.  My train commute, for the same distance, would be half the cost if I lived back in Yorkshire.

But even leaving the finances out of it, there's something about the northern hills that gets me.  I miss them.  I miss the different colours, the cloud, the way the hills don't look the same each hour, never mind each day.  I miss the big skies.  I sometimes- but only occasionally- miss that bitter Baltic wind that cuts you in half.

The southern rolling hills just don't have the same effect.  

Really, I miss all this:

One day I'll be going home.

Le Tour de Yorkshire

Going to watch the Tour de France has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember, right back from when I first started watching cycling back in 1996.  I never thought I would see it in Yorkshire and, two weeks after the event, I still can't quite believe I have seen it in Yorkshire.

I think the thing that stood out for me was the way everyone has taken the cycling to heart, and really got involved.  Many- probably most- people who came out to see it probably didn't really understand what was going on.  But they were still out putting up the bunting, dressing up the trees, cheering and clapping and waving.  It was the same with the Olympics, people gamely trying to discuss the minutiae of a sport they've never seen before and really probably never will again.  I think that's the real Olympic legacy, to be totally honest: the desire to watch different minority sports rather than dismiss them out of hand.

Yorkshire was truly beautiful for the two days of the Tour's visit, and the secondary events really were pretty special.  I've never seen Huddersfield look so green

and nor, for that matter, have I ever seen Leeds so yellow.

One thing the Tour organisers do understand is that standing around for several hours waiting for the peloton is a bit boring, and that people are a captive audience.  I can think of no other reason for the Publicity Caravan, a train of novelty cars from which pretty young things in PR throw cheap plastic tat.  It brings out the desire to grab something, anything, because they don't throw things out constantly.  I know it did in me, and I was really quite chuffed with my fridge magnet, packet of seeds, cheap Gendarmerie biro and plastic Festina gym bag.  I was moderately annoyed I just missed out on the cheap cycling caps from Carrefour.  

I was even more chuffed at seeing a giant four-pack of Fruit Shoots career past me at 40mph

Not to mention the giant inflatable Miffys

and a London taxi with a bottle of wine booted to the roof.

After the novelty cars had gone, it was back to standing by the side of a road.  Luckily, the view from the "Cote de Oxenhope Moor", as the French organisers renamed the hill above Keighley, was pretty impressive

Eventually, though, the riders did arrive.  You could hear the cheers come before them, a small breakaway of a handful of riders, before the motorcycle outriders.  And then, finally, what we'd all come to see

The rider making a break for it as he came past us was just the cherry on the cake.

Two minutes later the rest of the peloton came though, riding six abreast at 20mph and shouting at people who dared stand too close to the side of the road.  And that was that.  Eighteen months in the planning, weeks in the preparation, hours in the getting there and waiting, and seconds in the passing.  

And with that they were gone, onwards towards Paris, taking the long way round.

Thieving Politicians

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.

Having a debate over a beer, as one does, my friend (who works in politics) firmly believes that people enter politics with a desire to do good in the world.  I, well, don't.

Their argument was that most MPs try their best to do good, it is just that there are different ideologies about what is good and what should be done to achieve it.  They argued that the disgust at the MPs' expenses scandal may well do more harm than good, as only the rich and powerful will be able to afford to be MPs. Not so much the housing expenses, I should add, but the office and staffing expenses which seem to get lumped in with the duckhouse nonsense.  I can very much empathise with the argument, I just think it is wrong.

My view has always been that those who have a desire to go into politics should be prevented from doing so.  Really, when all is said and done, politics is just showbusiness for ugly people.  And just like Liza Minelli or Elizabeth Taylor seem to have a diva-desire to own all the shiny-shiny for themselves, the same seems to be true for the fine upstanding people in the House of Commons.

The typical way into the Houses of Parliament now seems to be:

1. Go to public school
2. Go read PPE at Oxbridge or LSE
3. Go work as a researcher at a "think tank" favourable to the party you wish to join.
4. Become an MP.

Political parties have centralised candidate lists, and if you don't get on those lists you don't even get to stand as a candidate.  You don't get onto those lists if you're not already in the political circle, and you don't get into the political circle if you don't network like hell at university.  So you get the kids straight from university going to some think tank like Policy Exchange, lecturing us all on why we're wrong WRONG I TELL YOU, then coming into Government with exactly the same attitude.

 I know things have always been like this, but I'm not so sure politics ever used to be seen as a career aim in itself.  Politics was something you did when you'd achieved something in your life, it wasn't something you did when you'd just left school.  And I think this is what is causing the rest of us to disengage from politics, to dismiss them all as just thieving liars out for themselves.

These people now, supposedly the brightest brains in Britain, enter politics for their own self-aggrandizement.  It's not a way of giving something back to the country, it's not a matter of civic pride, it is a career like any other.  It's a matter of doing as well as you can for yourself and your employer and not a great deal else. And like most graduate trainees, to say they have seen nothing of the real world is something of an understatement.  

I think it is this which is causing the corruption and incompetence in Parliament to escalate beyond all control.  The Houses are full of people who've done and known nothing else, and want everything to be about them.  This means you get the myriad MPs claiming expense after expense without thinking it is wrong; this means that you get them demanding an extra £20k a year because they are "underpaid".  Perhaps if more of the bastards had spent five years living in London on the minimum wage they'd actually understand what underpaid really meant.  This means you get the likes of Iain Duncan-Smith, who reckons he shouldn't have to pay for his own £39 breakfast, claiming that he could live on £50 a week "if he had to".  If we didn't have the political structure that excludes everyone who didn't do PPE at Oxbridge and didn't get a job at the Adam Smith Institute through nepotism, perhaps he would actually understand just how hard it is to live on so little.  He lectures on rewarding failure without having enough self-awareness to understand that he was the one who was the most resounding failure when he attempted to lead the Conservatives.

I really don't have a coherent idea about how to resolve this problem given that nepotism and self-protection is so prevalent in the UK now.  It isn't just Parliament; look how many MPs are dating journalists.  Look how many BBC directors play at the same golf clubs as the senior Party officials.  And then wonder why the BBC never quite get around to outing the Government (of whichever hue) as the thieving stealing scum that they are.  Essentially the political class are now all as one, with no scrutiny and no way of making them accountable.  It is precious little wonder that most people no longer want anything to do with politics or politicians, that they are all dismissed as liars and thieves and cheats.  It is precious little wonder that all MPs are despised, that they constantly get verbally abused by people in the street.  They have created this climate so they can deal with it.


Plato's quote at the start of the blogpost says it all, really.  We are all governed by people who are inferior; not inferior intellectually, but certainly inferior morally.  The solution is to take back control for ourselves, rather than disengage from the process entirely.  But that's a difficult thing to achieve.  I've always been interested in politics and even I can really no longer even be bothered to get angry about the corrupt cabal of scum that are in Parliament these days.  If the choice is between Gideon Osborne and Ed Balls, I'd rather go to the pub and drown my sorrows in gin.

On welfare benefits

I don't specifically work within welfare benefits law anymore, and haven't done for a few years, but I know enough to understand how it all works.  And I have to say I'm getting rather frustrated with the way the debate on welfare reform is going.  It pains me to say it, given that I think Iain Duncan-Smith has absolutely no moral compass whatsoever, but many of the reforms actually make quite a bit of sense.

My view is that the welfare state should be a safety net, and what that safety net should provide you with depends on your circumstances.  Those too ill to work should get enough to support themselves comfortably.  Those who have usually worked damn hard, but have fallen on a brief spell of unemployment, should be supported in a similar fashion, maybe for about eighteen months or so.  Those who've never worked meaningfully should get enough to stop them starving, and that's about it.

The system as Labour left it was extremely wasteful.  Tax credits were paid out based solely on income.  Have a low income, e.g. through self-employment, but have massive savings and you still got the support.  Get off your arse and earn a bit more, even if you're living hand-to-mouth every week with nothing to spare, and you got nothing.  Income support was paid to single parents until the youngest child was 16, even though parents would have precious little to do during school hours.  Housing benefit for local authority tenants was pegged to the rent you paid; live in a four-bed council house by yourself and it's paid for in full.  Housing benefit for private tenants was far more restrictive, effectively meaning that council tax payers in private houses were subsidising those in council houses.  Nobody can put their hand on their heart and say that is fair.  And if you were lucky enough to get a job you'd have 4-6 weeks with no money until your first wage cheque came through, even though you'd have no money to start as all benefits were paid weekly.

Universal Credit is supposed to change some of this.  Savings will be treated as income, which is entirely fair- people save for a rainy day, and being unemployed is such a day.  It'll be paid in the same way you'd get wages, so you won't have the gaps in income if you find work.  Housing benefit will be capped, the so called "bedroom tax", where people in massive council houses will have to pay for the privilege or move.  All this is entirely fair and proper and reasonable.

 In my time at various advice centres I saw my fill of people gaming the system, of people who have never worked and have no intention of doing so.  Earning their own crust seemed too much like hard work, affecting their ability to go to the bookies or the pub, so they didn't.  It pissed me off then, and it pisses me off now.  I loved helping people who'd been screwed over- usually the honest ones who didn't want to grumble about their illnesses and poverty- and hated helping the ones with the massive sense of entitlement.  I especially hated anyone who called their benefit payments "pay day" or "their wages", as though they'd somehow earned it and deserved it.

But even with all that, I have grave misgivings about the way so much is being implemented.  We can all name a scrounger or ten, but we can also all name ten people who have been shafted.  I hate the way that anyone who needs to be supported is labelled as a scrounger.  I hate the way they're trying to muddy the water between the can't works and the won't works.  I hate the way they're putting the most honest people through hell.  Above all, I hate the way they're encouraging people to lie.  If you're someone who gets on with life and says "mustn't grumble" a lot, even when faced with severe disability, then you get nothing.  Whinge and whine like Jim bleedin' Royale and you'll get your benefits still.

I can't decide whether the people doing these changes understand this or not, and I can't decide whether malice or incompetence is worse.  I'm generally siding with the view that it probably is malicious; if you don't have poor people you can't have rich people.  The gap between rich and poor is shocking.  Working no longer pays because it isn't in their interests for it to pay.  But they need people to work to continue to fund the corporate junkyism; if nobody works, there's no tax income to spend on filth like Serco, Atos and Crapita.

I know I am angry about the fact that I am on a very good wage yet I can only afford a flatshare in London.  I am angry about the fact that nearly 50% of my wages goes on various taxes every month, and I am angry about the fact that I get piss all back for it.  I am angry that there are people being paid to live in houses far bigger than what they need, when I have to share a small flat.  I am angry at freeloaders.

But I'm also angry at the way the Government are only trying to present one group of people as freeloaders.  MPs are apparently not freeloaders, despite the fact they've all made £50k profit from the housing bubble by getting me to pay their mortgages for them.  Private landlords are apparently not freeloaders, despite the fact they get someone else to pay their mortgages for them and then use the profits to inflate the property bubble, making sure more people are forced to pay their mortgages for them.  The big corporate conglomerates are apparently not freeloaders, despite not paying tax and demanding massive incentives to build new factories.  The CEOs of these conglomerates are apparently not freeloaders, despite awarding themselves 30% pay rises after sacking 30% of their workforce.

The baby boomer pensioners are protected through all of this too.  Welfare cuts don't apply to them, tax increases don't apply to them, above-inflation bus fare increases don't apply to them.  Throughout their entire lives they've had everything for free- free NHS, free University education, free care homes, free bus passes- yet we're supposed to believe that they somehow deserve it all as they "worked all their life".  Newsflash: so have I.  And I'll have piss all to show for it, mostly because my Travelcard is so expensive to pay for your bloody Freedom Pass, a card most of you can afford to pay for more than I can.

I don't like the way the welfare system currently operates as there's not enough incentive to work, and there's not a suitable way of punishing the lazy without making the vulnerable and disabled destitute.  I really don't like the way the Government try to use this to distract from the real truth though: that the baby boomer CEOs and MPs have stolen everything from us and that is why we're destitute.  The current political system has been described as a "kleptocracy", and that hits the nail on the head.  Everything about this country is essentially stealing from the defenceless to pay for the fat cats to pamper themselves.

And yes, that beeping you can hear is my high blood pressure alarm.

The way of the world

I normally have little time for the whackjob conspiracy theorists.  Knowing as many civil servants as I do I fully believe that the Government's power for cockup knows no bounds (sorry civil servant friends!).  But when you start to see the decisions being made that have been made in recent times, or that have come to light in recent times, it makes me wonder just what on earth is going on.

We have a person who stole a bottle of water from Aldi.  Sent to prison.  We have a person who made a nasty joke about a footballer on the internet.  Sent to prison.  We have a person who made a nasty joke about a (presumed) dead little girl on the internet.  Sent to prison.  We have a man who liked looking at pictures of gay men performing kinky sex acts on each other.  Thankfully was in front of a sensible jury, but he had his whole private life splashed across every single newspaper.

And then on the other hand we have a man who has allegedly sexually abused tens, if not hundreds, of little girls.  No further action taken against him.  Everything hushed up.  We have a man who called his partner every name under the sun and systematically beat her and abused her for seven months.  Punished by spending a little over one working week picking up litter.  A senior public official who stole £30,000 in fraudulent expenses.  He was asked to pay it back and no more was said about it.

Either these people have been protected because of who they know (or what they know about who they know), or they have been protected because raping little girls, or stealing taxpayers money, or beating the living crap out of your girlfriend doesn't matter.  And I honestly can't decide what's worse.  In some ways I hope the whackjob conspiracy theorists are right about funny handshakes, because the alternative- that the people who have appointed themselves as protectors of society- don't give a monkey's about the poor, the weak, the vulnerable.  The alternative quite simply is that the self-appointed guardians don't care about guarding those who cannot defend themselves.

The depressing truth is that I don't believe in the conspiracy theories, I believe that the vulnerable are simply ignored in this "democratic" country of ours.  They are dismissed when they allege they've been abused, sent packing with a flea in their ear and stories of how they must have liked it really.  They have what little income and possessions they have taken from them.  And if they lash out in the only way they know how- a bit of petty theft here, a tasteless joke there- then they're locked in a cage in the blinking of an eye.  It doesn't matter, they're not really people.  Or so say our all-knowing masters.

Maybe I'm getting softer now I'm a father, maybe I've always been a wet lefty liberal (much to the chagrin of my Thatcher-loving mother).  But I see what is happening in this country and I really don't like it.  Not one little bit.  The question is, what do we do about it?

It's easy to slate the Tories- and I do, all the time- but Labour are just as bad, if not worse.  It was a Labour government that gave ATOS the contracts with demands to kick people off benefits.  It was a Labour government who "reformed" disability benefits by making it harder to get any.  It was a Labour government that privatised our hospitals.  It was a Labour government who locked people in cages for months despite having no evidence they'd done anything wrong.  It was a Labour government who taxed the poor more and the rich less.  Labour, the party set up to protect the vulnerable, just carried on the Thatcherite kicking spree.  Bizarrely enough, in a lot of ways we can trust the Conservatives more: at least they're honest about screwing the poor and lining their own pockets instead. 

So politics is clearly not the solution.  I don't just mean votes either.  I mean protesting, demonstrating.  Labour ignored a million people and turned Iraq into glass anyway.  We can't trust them. 

Answers on a postcard I think.  I'd leave the country and move somewhere else if a) I had a job I could take with me and b) the countries I could move to were any better.

Gone Swimming

It's been a funny week or two, all in all.

Nothing- absolutely nothing- ever happens in the village on the outskirts of Newcastle where I live.  It's the sort of place where a broken down bus brings a crowd.  So when it was a little bit soggy last week I didn't think much of it.  I was away in Yorkshire visiting my parents and it was moderately moist, and that was about it.

Imagine my surprise to come back to the village to this:

My house is about a quarter of a mile away from here, possibly even closer to the river Tyne than these flats are.  Luckily my house wasn't built on top of a culvert by a disused mine, but still.  It's been a strange week for where I live; the only way from one side of the village to the other has been on the old railway line, now a cycle path.

So that's what I've been doing.

I live in Newcastle and work in Durham and normally the commute is a joy to behold: a smelly unreliable Stagecoach bus, a crappy CrossCountry train and then a walk in the rain to work.  It beats trying to drive along the A1 Gateshead Bypass along with the rest of Tyneside, but not by much (at least on the train I can drown my sorrows in gin).  The buses can't get through the village and whatever semblance of a timetable they once had has completely gone out of the window.  So after taking 90 minutes to get from my house to Newcastle station, a distance of about six miles, I decided it was time for a change.  And to finally use that bike properly.

And well, commuting by bike is better than I thought it would be.  Riding from work to the station in Durham is a traffic snarled nightmare, and I can only take a bike on EastCoast if I book a fortnight in advance, but the ride along the river home is splendid.  So much nicer than sitting on that bus, full of farting sixth form schoolboys drenched in Lynx, and if I'm going to be in the rain I'd rather be moving than standing around swearing about Brian Souter.  It's been a genuine pleasure to be doing it and I know that it's a good way of turning back into a normal shape after a few weeks of too many beers and pies.  Even if I did "accidentally" stop off at the Free Trade Inn during a ride last weekend:

And then also accidentally go and see the Smoke Fairies as well:

The only flaw in my plan so far has been Freshers' Fair.  It's too busy to be able to lounge around with a nice healthy lunch (or indeed any lunch at all) but this year was slightly better than most.  Domino's Pizza had a stall, as did Krispy Kreme donuts, and despite liking neither they beat having nothing to eat at all.  And yes, I didn't have to take an entire box of donuts back to the office (even if the sabbs nicked most of them), but they were offering them.  I'm from Yorkshire and can't say no to freebies or bargains.

So the "change back from being a blimp" plan isn't going quite as well as anticipated.  And I'm off to meet my dad tonight to consume a few hop-based beverages too, so there goes that plan for another week.

Just remind me I'm supposed to be training for a marathon, yeah? 

The times they are a-changing

It's been a little while since I've blogged here. Really blogging has been the last thing on my mind. Everything has gone a little bit weird really.

The running has ground to a halt. I did the Great North 10k and did it in a pretty good time of 67 minutes. I was aiming for doing it in less than 70 minutes and was really proud to have beat that target. I also raised £250 for the Children's Heart Unit Fund at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle, a charity close to my heart (excuse the pun) for saving my sister in law's life. All in all it was a good day's work.

But since then I've been seriously struggling for motivation.  I've completely ground to a halt and lost quite a bit of my fitness, which is extremely irritating. This has really been due to my personal life, which is the real subject of this blogpost.

I'm effectively no longer married. My wife has moved out and gone back to her parents. This is somewhat of a cliche. She's been away more than she's been home since march as she took a job away, near where her parents live. So half the week she was here with my daughter and the other half of the week she, er, wasn't. This wasn't exactly an ideal living arrangement but there we go.

However since my last post she's now decided she doesn't want to live with me at all. It's all very amicable and theres nobody else but still. We've been together for over 11 years, since before we both started at university  (indeed I travelled to see her most weekends in my fresher year whilst she was still in sixth form...). I don't quite know how to be single, it's all a teensy bit of a culture shock. Playing on the Xbox undisturbed has its advantages but after about two evenings it loses its sparkle. Just a bit.

I don't think things will be resolved. That's ok. However I don't quite know where to move on from here. Neither of us are from the north east and our lives have been very intertwined. We both have a few friends from work and a few mutual friends, but I certainly don't have a massive social circle up here. That's never been an issue, between work and Rosie and rebuilding the house I've not had the time for a large social circle. I've had enough to do. Its always been last buses and quiet nights in the pub and home with a chip supper. Nightclubs are no fun when youre not interested in the cattle market and either your mates are (evenings spent holding their drinks) or dancing round your handbag as a bloke looks plain stupid. I've never been on the leash but meeting new people is tough if you've not done it for so long.

Firstly, adjusting to being a non resident parent where my daughter is 70 miles away is going to be really tough. My in laws are both being really supportive which helps, but without a car it's tough to really pop over (its about three hours on a bus and similar on a train). That's a big disadvantage. But even worse is being home alone when I've been used to a full house, because Rosie has a certain presence, shall we say. The cats are pining which makes them more irritating than normal. The rest of the house is just too damn quiet. And why is cooking for one more expensive than cooking for three? It makes no bloody sense.

And secondly, tied in with the rest, is wondering where and how I'm going to meet someone else. I'm 29, I'm too young to sit on a shelf gathering dust. My friend has charmingly said I'm a bizarre mix between a teenager (appearance is king) and an old duffer who just wants a quiet glass of port and some cheese. A colleague suggested I should be more like Christian Grey, which quite frankly I think is an insult. I wouldn't use cable ties. Ahem. Though I'd happily hit anyone who talks about their inner goddess. Again, ahem.

It's not that I don't know how to flirt, it's that I don't know how to flirt when it actually has some risk. Flirting as sport is one thing, flirting to attract is quite another. I've tried a couple of times with people who seemed cool and made a right dog's dinner of it all. Hopefully practice makes pretty, though I'd rather not get too practised. A friend of a friend talks about going on "fanny hunts" when he's had too much beer and basically he's a tit. He looks ridiculous and we all laugh at him, so at least I have the self awareness not to do that. But hey. It's tough. I'm all rusty.

My best qualities generally are all a bit "boring". I'm honest and practical and a good ear and faithful. Something you'd like in a spaniel. My sense of humour is dry enough to mop spills and often comes across as simply plain tactless to strangers. I try and tone it down and just end up banal instead. Offensive or dull? Tough choice.

Hmm this has been a bit introspective for an open blog post. An well. This is who I am, and I think it's what makes me good at my job and good as a father. Even if they irritate me sometimes (my kid and the kids at work) I understand the same things. It helps, at least sometimes. 

Does anyone have any hot single friends? ;0)

Training

I wish I could say that training has been going well since my last post.  I'm not entirely sure I can, which is a pity.  I've had a few cold sores which always leave me shattered and I've been able to get out or get to the gym a few times, but it has been a real struggle.

However, I should really look on the positives of what I have achieved so far.  I've now knocked about six minutes off my seven mile round trip from here to Wylam and back, down to about 1h20.  It's still really too slow for a marathon pace, as 5mph (about 11min30 per mile) won't get me round very quickly at all, but it's a distance and a speed I could have only dreamed about two or three years ago.  I now know and feel comfortable with the distance and, rather than going into my Great North 10k race next weekend with trepidation, I'm rather looking forward to it.  I'll be slow, and be overtaken by pretty much everyone, but I know I'm going to make it.

Speaking of the Great North 10k, my runner's pack came this morning.  It's quite exciting really, my first proper race.  I nearly had kittens when I saw the "sweeper" car will mop up anyone who runs at less than 12 minutes per km, until I read it properly, but as a kilometre is quite a lot shorter than a mile I think I might just manage it. 

The thing I've been enjoying about my running at the minute is just being outside, looking at things I'd normally tear past in the car or on the bus.  I'm lucky where I live in that there are loads of lovely riverside footpaths to run along, but I'm having more fun running along the footpaths in the areas reclaimed after 100 years of heavy industry.  Just down the road from me there used to be a massive coal-fired power station and a coalmine.  It's such a pleasure to run round the old coal mine, the paths are quite good, the terrain is interesting and there's never anybody about.  It's the same running around the site of the old power station, it's interesting to see the old and the new meeting in such a way.  Even the run from here to Wylam takes me past the cottage where George Stephenson was born, there's so much history and it's really actually quite fascinating to see it up close, on foot.

Having looked on a map to see where is 26 miles from here- essentially the boundaries are Rothbury and the Durham Dales- I think I may well be seeing slightly more of this history between now and April.

There's just one last thing*: does having fish and chips for tea count as a healthy balanced diet for a run?

* I lied.  The absolutely last thing is some begging for money.  You can sponsor me for the Great North 10k or the London Marathon at virginmoneygiving.com/arctictroll.  I'm running the Great North 10k in aid of the Children's Heart Unit Fund at the Freeman Hospital, and the London Marathon in aid of YouthNet and Age UK.

Running. And running

I've gradually been getting more interested in running.  I started off going to the gym to lose a bit of weight and get a bit fitter for when R made an appearance.  I didn't see the point of the treadmill.  I tried the treadmill one day, could barely run five minutes, didn't see the point.  I tried it again another day, could barely run ten minutes, started to vaguely see the point.  But didn't want to go anywhere outside where I could be seen.

Now a charity I've done a lot of work with in the past are one of the official charities of the 2013 Virgin London Marathon.  I was approached to run for them and I volunteered.  So now I've got the challenge of running a marathon.

Actually, this is pretty exciting.

I'm having to take training a bit more seriously.  From the stage where I was massively overweight and unfit I can now run 11k.  I'm slow- very slow- but I can do it.  It is such a buzz to be able to do something I couldn't ever do before.  I want to do more, more, more.  I'm still overweight and unfit but I can do things other people can't do.  People seem genuinely impressed at me managing the distance.

I still think that I am very possibly completely mad for agreeing to do this, although bizarrely I now find the fundraising target more intimidating than the distance.  I know I can do a quarter marathon a full nine months before the event.  If I keep training I'll be fine, I'm sure I will.  Extremely slow, no doubt, but that's not my target.  My target is to get round the course, I don't care too much about the time, I know I'm not at the level of the good amateur runners who can run it in less than four hours.  If I get round in five I'll be ecstatic.

My first challenge now is to run the Great North 10k next month.  I'm doing it for me but asking for sponsorship for a fantastic charity- the Freeman Hospital's Childrens Heart Unit Fund- as an excuse to get some cash for them as much as anything.  I'm running for my own pleasure- something I never thought I would do a year ago- but want to make some money for a deserving cause too.  That place saved my sister-in-law's life on more than one occasion, it means so much to my family.

The obligatory sponsorship link for that is here:  http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/arctictroll
As for the big event, the London Marathon, I'm running it as part of a team.  The charity is YouthNet, an online charity supporting young people, and I've done work with them for 12 years now.  Both working with them in terms of raising money and awareness, or just sharing my knowledge, but also as that dreaded term "service user".  The community helped me when I was at my lowest, it probably kept me alive, and now with my family it's time to repay the favour.  They're developing a new project to help people- young and old- combat loneliness using social and online tools in conjuction with Age UK and I just think the whole thing is fantastic.  I'm running the marathon as a team of "young runners" (flattery gets one everywhere, I've not been called young for years now!) who have used the service in the same way as I have.

Again, anything you might be able to spare would be wonderful.  I'll be asking several thousand times more in the next nine months, don't you worry (and don't you DARE block me either), but the link's here: www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/TheSiteRunsForIt.

In the meantime, this blog I think will mostly become a whingefest about how hard the training is.  I want to keep the optimism for posterity; well, for a 20 mile run in the snow in November, anyway.

Hippy or just old-fashioned?

I'm never sure whether people see my wife and I as hippies or old fashioned oddballs or what. I don't care, we just do still get odd looks sometimes for the way we do things.

Take R's birth, and the preceding pregnancy. R was born at home, E didn't want to be in hospital unless it was necessary. E didn't use much in the way of painkillers during labour; a bit of gas and air and paracetamol. None of it was especially planned or deliberate, but when we mention the home birth we get such weird looks. Our friends find it utterly bizarre we did it.

With R, we used a big old Silver Cross pram. Again, people thought it odd we didn't buy new ( especially the bus drivers when we got on the bus with that thing..,) but we didn't see the point.

I think the thing that gets me most is the odd reactions people give because we do our shopping in the market, rather than in Tesco. I go to the greengrocer for the veg, the butcher for the meat, the deli for the cheese and ham and eggs. It's seen as such an odd thing to do now, even though the market is cheaper, better quality and everyone we use regularly know us by name. Now I know we're lucky in Newcastle, the Grainger Market is one of the best and oldest indoor markets in the country, but still. It makes me sad to see the queues of people in Tesco, all waiting to buy overpriced shite, whilst the local and independent market sits waiting for them over the road.

I'm not sure what these things really make me. A Yorkshireman probably. I prefer to recycle, shop local, use the bus. I like the routine of going to the market with R then getting tea and cake. She's such good company. Ok, i also loved the attention that the Silver Cross brought (though R loved it more). But I find it quite sad that more people don't share in this pleasure anymore, it's all self service checkouts admonishing you for scanning too quickly or not quickly enough.

I think others see us as old fashioned hippies for this, which is the biggest shame of all. I don't want to see the world turn into one giant Tesco, everything disposable with no style or substance.

Now then, where's me flat cap and whippet?