Wish you were there

Allan Callow (above) was smiling with Roger Black at the Manx Museum yesterday.

In fact just about everyone who attended the session with Roger was smiling yesterday. But it was a shame that there were so many empty seats.

I'll take the blame.

Back in November I had a lengthly chat with the sponsorship manager at Scottish Widows at the Parish Walk and I think I formed a good relationship for the website. She mentioned that Roger was working for Scottish Widows and I suggested that, if their budget allowed it they brought him over to the island for a motivational talk midway between entries opening and closing but that the talk should only be open to people who had entered that by the date of the talk. I also suggested he could do a number of other things with different groups whilst on the island.

Well, they followed up the idea and when the entries came flooding in last week I thought it was working. But clearly they were not entering to hear the talk.

Its a shame that the empty seats were not filled by people who would have been inspired and of course it could have been open to everyone.

But he did inspire some people - twice.

One walker who attended has decided to train for the 4 x 400 metres instead of the Parish Walk! But then he had been inspired previously to beat Roger Black who (with a lot of winding up by a group of people "in on the act") thought that he really was training to go under 16 hours and that our inspired walker would have to go that fast to beat him.