SCS Relay 2013

What a week (and a half for photos)

I always say that we get good luck and bad luck in equal measure and sometimes things go wrong with my photography which is not all down to me.

And sometimes I get lucky too. How on earth did we get two fantastic days for photos on Christmas Day and Boxing Day when the weather was so awful either side? But there were so many opportunities to put my stack of cameras into action from the warmth of a house or bar.

It started at the Cave Reunion Christmas Party night at the Villa Marina when we met a few friends on the Friday before Christmas.

And continued the next evening at Mike Byrne's 70s disco at the Woodbourne Hotel. Marian and Graham Young had gained a lot of hair since I had last seen them!

We went to a private party on Christmas Eve and I got nearly as many good photos of friends as I had glasses of red wine - and that was quite a few. Although I promised not to share the photos in public, I don't see why the same rules should apply to the one taken of us.

I didn't feel like pushing it on Christmas morning but I took my compact camera with me for a run along the promenade and around Douglas Head.

I had, literally, been running late and within an hour I had collected Robbie and we went for a walk around the quay and the promenade before picking up Marie's mother (not literally this time) from the Ellan Vannin Home, into which she had moved the week before.

Our Christmas lunch photo turned into a definitive family image - except that I am not in it! We were so pleased that Mollie was able to join us in her 90th year and Robbie had bis best Christmas for some time. Jenny and Ben had a couple of days off from their work as junior doctors at Nobles Hospital and stayed in the apartment. Even Marie's dog, Alfie, gets into the photo.

We left Mollie and Alfie behind as we headed for South Barrule and gate-crashed Noel Cringle's annual Christmas walk. I even got Scottish Under 21 international rugby player, Phil Cringle, to take the photo.

I was really nervous about the photos at Manx Harriers' SCS Boxing Day Relay at Stewart Clague's Ballannette Park - the photo opportunities were beyond belief. This one is of international cyclist, and also a former Northern 10 mile winner, Christian Varley. Some of the family "hand me downs" changed hands when he was little when Marie worked with Christian's mother Mary, from an office in our old house, for a time.

And here another photo from Ballannette with someone who has visited our current house plenty of times, Ben's long term friend Adam Killip, now an advocate, with the Laxey and Maughold backdrop.

It was virtually a stay indoors day the following day but we did have a visit from Andy Garrett, home from his role as Doctor of Sports Science at Hull University.

I've been promising Robbie a walk up Greeba Mountain on Saturday for a while but although the winds had dropped a little this Saturday was not the day for that. So we headed for Langness.

Having done a 12 mile run a 7 am and a walk with Robbie before lunch I was suitably handicapped by the time Marie had completed all her tasks and was also keen to get out in the open air. A fantastic walk from Port Erin around the coast to Fleshwick and back, mainly on the roads but including a track on which I had never been before, followed.

This afternoon we had the Eairy Beg Plantation at Glen Helen to ourselves, apart from Alfie, but we didn't quite make the summit of Beary Mountain, which I had rehearsed twice recently with Robbie, as Marie's foot was too sore.

I've sorted out loads of miscellaneous photos from my cameras, charged the video camera batteries ready for the New Years Day Fell Race at St Johns, produced a video from Boxing Day and, camera wise, I'm ready for New Year's Eve, New Year's Day and my first trip off Island for more than six months from Thursday to Sunday.

You can't count friends

I've been out to post some more Christmas cards this evening . Only another 50 or so of the 180 that we send each year to go.

The people we send them to is a certainly not a chart of our best friends. Its often governed by tradition over the years. Some of the people we hardly ever see but we don't want to lose touch; some of them we see nearly every day but it is part of the relationship. But there are so many people we are close to that we don't send Christmas cards to. There are a few that we send each year regardless of whether we ever get one back.

I've made many friends through the website during the past 13 years but I don't send them all Christmas cards. A few of the people who contact me only do so to moan about some trivia or perceived hardship; others contact me to say that they appreciate the service or to share something really interesting and/or important. Others stay in the background but when I meet them it amazes me how much they have taken in from the website. "Who told you that?" I say."You wrote it on your blog" is the reply.

We entertained around 400 people in October but there were loads of people on our Christmas card list that we couldn't find room for. And since starting to use Facebook a couple of months ago I've made or revived loads of friendships with people who were neither at our party nor on our Christmas card list.

I went out with Marie to celebrate her birthday last night and whilst in 14 North we chatted to the dentists from the practice we spend too much time at. There is always a friendly face on the Isle of Man. But unlike Facebook you don't have to count them. You just know they are there.

From children's parties as in the 1999 photo to last weekend when Marie's mother moved into a residential home You don't count them, you count on them.

We are so lucky.

That car park

It's a quirk of the Manx athletics fixture list that we have three events in less than four that use the car park on the site of the old railway station for car parking. The winter league walk on Sunday is followed by the hill race this Saturday and then the New Year's Day Fell Race.

Here is a shot from our family photo collection from the early 60s. I think it must have been taken my my father, rather than my brother Mike who was into photography at a very early age, because I think it is him crouching my the level crossing gate. The train is arriving from Ramsey whilst there is another on the Peel line.

I think the building on the left must be one of the disused mart (market) buildings which I happened to photograph last Sunday (below) thinking that it will soon be gone.

I've been cleaning at our holiday cottage again tonight - we have one more family staying this year and they arrive next Thursday for a week. With some hard rock playing on the internet radio I reflected back on the great concert at the Gaiety Theatre last night when Manxman Davy Knowles and his band entertained a full house with guest guitarist Bernie Marsden formerly of Whitesnake.

In dawned on me that I am probably the only person to have used the car park at St Johns, to which I keep referring to, to attend a concert at which Davy Knowles performed.

In 2008 his band at the time, Back Door Slam, supported the Who at the Peel Bay Festival. Although we had already paid our £5 parking fee, so sure was I that traffic would be queuing half the night that I decided we should walk from St Johns.

Marie, Ben and I walked along the old Manx Northern Railway trackbed as far as Poortown Station and then walked to Peel along the Poortown Road. I think we walked back on the main road and by half distance all the traffic had disappeared.

The back route was slammed by my family!

Using past for future

How much should we dwell in the past? That's a question I often ask myself. Especially last night when I indulged with others of my vintage on Facebook recalling all the concerts we attended, and the under age drinking we did, in our youth around Douglas.

The easiest thing to have done this year with the www.parishwalk.com website would have been to have just done everything like it had been done before. But we can't just live in the past. If we just repeat everything we did the year before they will eventually become less interesting and not as good. As athletes, it would be soul destroying to do everything exactly as the year before. If we attended the same pub or went to the same concert every night after a while they would cease to stimulate.

So I looked critically at every page of the Parish Walk site and didn't reproduce it if I thought there was a chance to improve it. In some cases I did settle for what was there before but I put myself under a lot of pressure to make improvements, again just as an athlete does when trying to improve.

Getting the Manx Telecom Parish Walk, or any other event, talked about is a good part of making it successful. I believe we are doing it this year as evidenced by the high number of early entrants - 94 in the first three days.

The pressure to complete the www.parishwalk.com website left little time for this blog but hopefully I played my part in using the past to make things better in the future.

I have a critic on Facebook who thinks we should spend our future wealth on living in the past. Its got to be the other way. Enjoy the past but look forward to the future.

Easier said than done of course. When running this morning my back gave me a reminder of what I had done to it in the past and suggested there is not much future!