Why?

Spent some time properly back on the coal face recently, potential sponsor meetings, admin central, but also two great experiences one seeing the impact one of our charities is having and the other being the impact we can have on school children.

Yesterday I was lucky to visit the Lords Taverners Table Cricket at the Oval. Children with a range of disabilities playing a game that puts cricket in a table tennis environment. It struck me how much excitement that these children were having, and that is the same experience we will hopefully be getting on the mountain. How the world and expectations are relative. It is always a tough question what comes first helping charity or the event? It is a strange one to answer, they kind of come hand in hand. The event is taking advantage of what opportunities we have but in doing so we can create similar opportunities. Ultimately it is an awareness thing, getting the story out there. I spoke with a girl today on MSN Messenger, I'd worked with like 2 years ago, for a few months, I was able to talk about the charity and it's work. The next second £20 in the Lords Taverners account. She through me knows where it is going and that is will bring a smile to someones face the sort of smile she doesn't get too often because she isn't taking advantage of her opportunities, she said that not me.

Today was possibly my highlight so far, holding a talk / Q&A session and Avon House school in East London. They have spent the previous week making prayer flags which we will take to Nepal.

Basically nepali prayer flags are hung outside near everest, a prayer is written on them, every gust of wind takes the dream to the mountain and when the ink has worn off the dream/prayer is said to have happened.

The number of questions, hands up, and so on was phenomenal, as was the in unison 'good morning' response everytime one of use stepped up to speak.

Highlights would be:
Wes: Does anyone know who holds the world record for the 100m?
Year 7 pupil: Yes, my dad
Wes: Guess you win the my dad is better than your dad competition.

James: So does anyone have any wishes
Answer number 3: I wish that there wasn't knife crime
Answer 5: I wish that smokers lungs would get better
Answer number 7 or 8: Yes, I wish that Amy Whinehouse would have to take drugs

Glen: Doing stars jumps with 5 school children on stage

I will write some of the prayers on the flags at a later date, suffice to say they are phenomenally moving.

What I really took away from this morning was how global the issues were on these childrens radars, and how they were issues that dominated their wishes not too many wishes for being Nadal or Hamilton. It shows how much filters through to them at this age. Also how they enjoyed us being there, it is something I remembered from school having people come and talk, and I did love being on the other side of the fence. Their enthusiasm for all things Nepal, Everest and adventure was outstanding, and it was a girl who knew who Andrew Strauss was too!!!

Back to where I was brought up

Haben't blogged for a while, been using Twitter!!!

Had a great weekend at Boconnoc which meant I was able spend some time in Cornwall, where I grew up, before I headed off. Also stoked some of the guys like Glen and Tooves were able to see the stunning cornish coast for the first time.

A small article in the local press

Other peoples comments

I just loved this so much I wanted it on my blog, from JC's recent blog on general progress:
'Other than the usual medical precautions you take on board when doing an adventure like this, we where also informed we better take a test for 'Sudden Death Syndrome'. I think the clue is in the title and it makes you think that if it is so sudden, how do you test for it but I will no doubt find out soon.'

Intergration

I've managed to get my twitter embedded into my blog, quite chuffed, and got it integrated with my blackberry, amd now fully connected and going to be much easier to bore people with progress of the project!

I know this still isn't twitter but...

loved Jamo's 'how to get a west indian cricket name' game today, where you were born + middle name.

I know this isn't twitter but...

pretty gutted my friendly fire blog didn't make January's top 5.

Pulling my head out of the sand

For the first time in my life I put my hand up the other day and said ‘I can’t go on like this’. It was a weird experience. There is no doubt that I’ve been doing a lot these past few months and that combined with having suffered an true illness, not some pokey bug, for the first time in my life it was a bit much. It really hit me that I might not get to the start line at Kathmandu, and that was just plain stupid.

I’ve wanted to ignore the fact I was ill, because as per the text on our website it sounds like some piffy PR spin, and with justified banter I get from certain parts of the gang it re-enforced that attitude. However it was and is real and I needed to reassess where we were going and what I was doing. I couldn’t go on like this. Being ill, then better for a week, then ill, better for a week etc and this had gone on for two months. I’ve acknowledged this and delegated more Everest work and asked my 9-6 work to go to four days a week. That was a bold, and some say ballsy, call but I felt the right one deep down. I got lots of grief from my family but it paid off as work agreed. It is funny the relief I felt instantly after I asked them was huge, and the excitement when the said yes was pretty sweet too…

It was nice to have that time at home with the family questioning my priorities, though it didn’t seem that way at the time, but when you get too close to something it is hard to see the wood from the trees. Some people question being so open with parents, I guess I am lucky, I’ve always been able to be open with mine especially at times of making big life decisions, and doing so ensures that I keep perspective.

At the end of the day we are just a bunch of people trying to go up a mountain and do something that in our eyes is special and raise a decent amount of money for charity. But it takes the support of others to make even this small challenge happen and to my family and work I will be grateful for all their differing ways of delivering this.