Category Archives: Other Stories

Me and my pull-ups…

I’ve come a long way in the seven years since I joined my fab gym. I can run, and more than the gasping 25 metres that I might have managed when I started.  I’m somewhere between reasonably fit and pretty fit. I can deadlift 10 kgs more than my body weight, and squat a bit more again. I’ve even got my my NVQ Level 2 in Gym Instruction! But can I do a pullup? Can I buggery. And this, dear reader, is a source of GREAT irritation to me.

photo

Here’s a picture of me completely failing to do a pull-up, helped by the very patient Joe, who is probably listening to me having a go at him for helping me because I can  do it myself you know, it’s not like I need your help,  OH MY GOD DON’T LET GO WHATEVER YOU DO! (Like I said, he’s very patient).

I’m not sure why I want to be able to do pull-ups quite so much. I think it’s probably to make up for being the only kid in primary school that couldn’t climb a rope or do the monkey bars (because it is totes logical, at 42, to still be bothered about this). It’s probably also something to do with the fact that because I know I can’t do it, that automatically presses the button in my brain that says ‘should be able to do it’. And I guess a little bit because you know what? It’d be kind of cool to just knock out a few pull-ups, just like that. Vain? Moi?

Anyways, this has now become something of a mission. I even one-clicked a pull up bar from Amazon when my sister and I were a teeny bit pissed tired the other night – not that I can put the damn thing up anywhere because apparently, the Husband has an objection to inadvertently slamming his forehead against unforeseen pull-up bars appearing in doorways – who knew?

But despite this setback, and after this beer, I am on the case and while I’m at it, I thought I might try and raise a few quid for the Disasters Emergency Committee who work wherever in the world they are needed, but right now are focussing efforts on the Ebola crisis.

So here’s the deal. On January 31st I will make an absolute muppet of myself and get someone to video the one and a half pull-ups I will probably be able to do by then. And if I’ve raised, say £100, I’ll share it on the blog. Can’t say fairer than that…now, dig deep, you KNOW you want to see me doing one and a half pull ups!

https://www.justgiving.com/Michelle-Davis6

 

A face for radio…

I was up at stupid o’clock this morning for a BBC Radio Wales chat about how the St David’s development has impacted Cardiff city centre, specifically the independent shops and businesses around the arcades and the market. It’s the kind of thing I’ve done before a couple of times, either for Rules of Play or on behalf of an employer, so I knew the drill.

Everything went as usual – they fed me coffee and papers while I waited, I earwigged interestedly on the person next to me preparing the day’s newspaper review, then I went in and I did my bit (managed not to swear – phew) – and was just about to head off when one of the production team stopped me. ‘Have you done that before?’ she asked, and I explained that it wasn’t my first time but I’m not a radio regular, as it were. ‘Well, you seemed pretty comfortable – would you like to try out doing a newspaper review for us sometime?’

Wow! Exciting or what? Of course I briefly entertained delusions of adequacy and said yes…I’ve been panicking ever since that I won’t be able to think of anything clever to say, or I’ll Spoonerise entire sentences, or they’ll make me mention something in the Daily Mail, and then I probably will swear live on air…

Still, I’m a great believer in taking the chances life throws at you and I figure this one might be fun, so I’m going to give it a whirl…More news as I get it, so stay tuned!

Scottish Independence and why I cried last Friday

This time last week, the UK could talk of nothing else. From the sidelines, it seemed that the whole of Scotland was alive with possibilities, with hope, with an excitement envied by many of us. Scottish independence had become the conversation on everyone’s lips and it seemed that everyone had an opinion, one way or the other. Including me – my heart was passionately rooting for a Yes vote, and I will confess to feeling more than a little tearful when I woke up to a No.

I’m not Scottish, by the way, though I did spend five happy years at St Andrew’s. By birth I’m three quarters English and a quarter Welsh, though my great grandfather was a Scottish Watson. But it wasn’t through any tenuous sense of ancestral identity that I felt so passionate about the result.

More, it was the sense that a vote in favour of Scottish independence could change everything, for all of us, for the better. And let’s face it, that’s a pretty unusual feeling at elections. Come results day, we all know that we’re pretty much guaranteed a high proportion of self-serving, over-priveleged fuckwits around the Cabinet table, whatever the colour of their tie. While I would never not vote (too many people fought hard and long for my right to do so) I know, as I make my mark, that there is no real change imminent. I vote for the least worst outcome, that being the best I can hope for.

But Scotland – Scotland was different, somehow. Scotland seemed like it was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for all of us to choose a different path.  Scotland felt like something much bigger than labels, or heritage, or national pride – all of which of course played a part.

It felt like this was the beginning of the rejection of the current system.

And you know what, it’s absolutely not right, this ‘system’. It’s not right that people should starve to death because the state safety net has been hacked away to a tightrope. (and that only the Mirror should shout about it). It’s not right that we should watch our public services be sold to the highest bidder, with no comeback when they fail to discharge their duty. It’s not right that the rich get richer, while the poor have to rely on food banks. It’s not right that Goldman Sachs can be let off a £10million tax bill with a handshake, while we’re all encouraged to spy on each other so we can report fraudulent benefit claims (which, by the way, add up to smaller sum than that of underpaid benefits).

A ‘yes’ vote in Scotland would have actually felt like a big, healthy, No. A No, we don’t accept that this is how it must be. No, we don’t accept a world where the rich get richer and the poor are left to fester, as long as they’re out of sight, mind. A No, thank you, but we want to choose our own way, we want to build our own society, and what’s more, we have faith in ourselves and our hearts that we can do this better.

And if Scotland had led the way, in a peaceful rejection of the status quo, perhaps the rest of us could have followed.

I am sure there are those that will tell me that I’m hopelessly naive. That I’m not Scottish so I have no real understanding of the issues. That things aren’t as bad as they could be, so we should all get back to making the best of it. That I should not have pinned my hopes for a changed society on one small country’s quest for self-governance.

But I did pin my hopes on it. And now I feel as if the chance has gone, for all of us, for a generation or more.

And that’s why I cried on Friday morning.