Walk talk

I came away with more than an hour of video tonight.

I didn't even get to the end but I stopped on a nice quote when I got to 26:51.

I've had to take action to upgrade my YouTube account.

Pity I couldn't persuade my brain to accept less sleep.Its going to take a couple of hours for the video to upload.

Networking

One of those sayings that I don't like is to say that you are "networking" when you are mixing and chatting to people.

For me, networking involves a server and a number of connected computers. In the case of my home network, its called peer to peer (because there is no server and all connected devices have equal status).

If we must use the saying networking then the last few days, despite the isolation of cleaning the holiday cottage until nearly midnight on Friday, has taken me to the KMPG Relay, to Ramsey with Robbie, being interviewed for a programme about the London Marathon to be broadcast on Manx Radio, to the Peel Centenary Centre and to Port St Mary and Port Erin this morning.

The latter definitely involved networking - after all it was pier to pier.

Photo - Manannan passing Bradda Head.

No photos from this Camra

I ran past the Masonic Hall in Douglas yesterday morning and noticed that they had a marque in the grounds to supplement the hall in readiness for the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) beer festival which started in Douglas yesterday and lasts for three days.

I have a CAMRA mirror on the wall of my home office which was given to me by friends at North Stffs Polytechnic for my 21st birthday. I supported the campaign rather too much that day and after a hectic lunchtime session in the Norfolk Pub in Stoke and made several calls for Hughie in the afternoon.

The Norfolk Pub had just closed when I re-visited Stoke in November. When I returned to the Isle of Man in 1979 I remember visiting the Tholt-y-Will pub a few times - they used to have music there in the evenings at the weekend. Now, that closed long before the Nolfolk. I can't find out how long ago but I suspect its between 10 and 15 years, maybe even longer. So it has been amusing to read the daily reports from the Departure of Infrastructure making reference to the Tholt-y-Will pub!

No time for Camra today and only just time to use the camera. I'm working at our holiday cottage this evening so can't make the run at St Johns but I am hoping to take a few photos at or near the start of the KPMG relay.

230 runners are taking part in the relay - almost as many as will be at the real ale festival!

Castletown return

We've been visiting my sister and family tonight. They are staying in a holiday home in Castletown this week.

Luckily, because I left work early for a dental appointment, I had a little time, albeit a rush, to kill a couple more tasks on the websites.

I listed the Walk Talk (next Tuesday at the Manx Museum) on the Parish Walk site and started my list of London Marathon competitors. I received two more names by email whilst we were out. Keep them coming.

Only two weeks before the bananas come out! Photo of Paul Curphey and Nigel Armstrong London 2012.

Something to chill to

I've had a pretty dull night tonight attending to emails and closing off my Easter Festival coverage. I needed something to laugh at. I suppose that this one follows the theme of my blog last night. When its announced that a church is to close, everyone claims to go every week. See what Rowan Atkinson thought in 1982.

The Pickering award

I've had a few comments about the Pickering trophy although mainly because they didn't know it existed! I've sure I have published it before but here is another trip down memory lane. This is what I had to say in October 1990:

Mr Bell, Mr Pickering, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen thank you for attending our dinner tonight.

Before I go any further I think that we should show our appreciation to Mr Bell (then Minister for Tourism & Leisure) and to his Chief Executive Mr Toohey, who is also our guest tonight, for getting the Isle of Man a National sports Centre (applause, hopefully).

The athletes have long wanted a track, the public have by and large supported the need for one but it takes political will to convert that need into tartan track and sports fields.

Thank you.

And please convey the Association’s thanks to your other staff members, particularly Mike Ball. Their enthusiasm has extended way beyond a civil servant's duties.

There were calls for the track before the Berlin wall was built, and just as the events in Germany have moved so quickly recently, it is so hard to believe that the track will be laid and open just a year from Tynwald giving the go ahead.

The ball is now clearly in our court to all pull together to justify the building of the National Sports Centre.

Since the Isle of Man first organised the Island games on home soil in 1985 our teams have been enormously successful. In Guernsey and the Faroes our athletes, and in that term I include swimmers and cyclists etc, have carried all before them.

Yet despite these successes the important thing is to get there. It is a pleasure to see Mrs Holt, Chairman of Ronaldsway Aircraft Company, here tonight because her family have been more important than any other factor in making sure that our teams have made it to the games. Her family and her company have played a unique part in the development of our sport.

Their role in the Manx economy has been massive too, just as more recently has been the role of the finance sector. How nice it is to see them supporting us here tonight as well.

The banks are particularly well supported by Barclays, Lloyds, National Westminster and our good friends at the Isle of Man Bank.

GAM Administration played a crucial role in our fundraising in 1989 and they are represented here tonight together with three other finance sector representatives Nationwide Anglia Overseas, Warburg Asset Management, and Royal Life Insurance International.

Manx Telecom and Manx Airlines throughout their short histories have a fine tradition of supporting Manx Sport and it is therefore no surprise that they have come to our aid. Finally, from the world of shipping we welcome Wallem Shipmanagement. John Dorey, their managing director who is with us tonight is obviously expecting to have a good time. His company is also sponsoring the relay walk around the TT course tomorrow and they have entered their own team. But I notice that he has chosen to walk the last stage.

Before I introduce our guest speaker, I would like to thank Robbie Radcliffe and our new Treasurer, David Butterworth for their efforts in organising tonight's dinner. They are two men who look beyond club borders and are dedicated to putting the needs of the athlete first. They are not unique but we need more like them.

We also need more athletes like the gentlemen from the Manx Athletic Club over there. It’s great to see you and I know that you can see the jigsaw that is fitting together. The athlete is paramount in our sport but the best athlete cannot hope to be successful without a supportive government, outstanding sponsors, dedicated officials and sacrificial families.

Ron Pickering is an authority on sport. A former National coach for athletics, he is well known as the anchorman of the highly rated BBC athletics commentary team. We all love to find fault with the front man, David Coleman, as he generates more excitement than any sports commentator, and some of us like to listen to Paul Dickenson with his more serious descriptions of events on the field and Brendan Forster exclaiming the virtues of Steve Cram, his mate from the North East. But it is this man, Ron Pickering, who holds the team together.

Only Ron is capable of bridging the gap between track and field. There are many armchair critics here tonight and we all love to find fault. Recently a letter in an athletics magazine tore strips off the commentary on the TV. But Dr Phil Thomas concluded: "only Ron Pickering with his occasional errors and frank admissions that he had made them, came out with any credit". Those of us who have read the athletics press over the years will know that praise of that level from that man is surely equal to a knighthood!

He has always spoken his mind on drug abuse but is careful not to accuse all Eastern Europeans of being cheats. That is the easy way out. He has merely asked the question "why have standards fallen so drastically in certain events". He is president of arguably top track and field club, Haringay, a club so strong that at one time it was easier to make the Olympic finals of the 110 metre hurdles than to be selected for the A event for the club. The club has boasted such members as Seb Coe as well as the aforementioned Tony Jarrett and Jon Ridgeon, and field internationals such as Dalton Grant and John Herbert. My belief is that the club is a fine example of sport pulling people together in a deprived multi racial part of London.

Recently Ron has organised the largest club sponsorship with East Midlands Electricity, and last year he came to the aid of the International Athletes Club. Their president, David Bedford, was prepared to re-mortgage his house to raise the funds necessary to fund the club’s grand prix meeting. Ron organised an eleventh hour deal with Compaq Computers to avoid this necessity.

I must make one correction to the press stories at the time however. The deal was hailed as Compaq’s first ever sponsorship of athletics. In fact the Isle of Man is not as far behind as some people may imagine for Compaq had sponsored our Island games team in the Faroes some 12 months earlier and the team members carried the Compaq logo on their vests.

Ron is a partner in the Pickering Tolkinson team who advised the government on the site for our sports centre. He has visited the Island many times before and remembered to say hello to the fairies today.

His family have shared the limelight over the years. His wife is a former Olympic champion over 400 metres hurdles ( not sure if I had this right) and has overcome the greatest hurdle of all in the last two years, the cancer that tried to take her life. Their son Shaun is a multi talented British international is regularly throws hammer, shot and discuss.

Ladies and gentlemen - Mr Ron Pickering

Not just a joke

Its more than 22 years since I had the pleasure of entertaining the late Ron Pickering (with Robbie Radcliffe) for a day and then sitting next to him and introducing him to a dinner audience. I learned a lot from him not least that even professional speakers get nervous before they start.

He was re-booked to return to the Isle of Man within a year but he passed away in the interim. His wife travelled to the Isle of Man the following year to present a trophy to the Manx athlete who produced the best performance in the Island Games. I really hope that that trophy is still being awarded.

Jean Pickering won the European long jump championships in 1954 and was also a top sprinter and hurdler. But she became best known for establishing the Ron Pickering Memorial Fund which is estimated to have disbursed around a million pounds to young British athletes including some from the Isle of Man.

Sadly Jean Pickering passed away last week and there has been a flood of tributes for her in the media.

One of the skills Ron demonstrated so well was the use of humour to enforce a serious point. Back at the Palace Hotel in 1990 he had us falling off our chairs telling David Coleman stories before lecturing us on the ethics of sport. I often  think of him when I see "professional fouls" in football.

I wonder what he would think of a runner being paid more to run comfortably within his race pace and dropping out at half distance in a marathon than many of the world's top marathon runners will receive for finishing..I suspect that, unlike some of the current commentators who are fearful of saying what they think, he would have given an eloquent reply to a question on the subject.

For my April Fool this year I used the reverse tactic to Ron's dinner speaking. The facts I published about the Isle of Man Government's cutbacks are very real. Hopefully I grabbed your attention before leading you down the garden path, or should it be garden track, with my story about reducing the track at the National Sports Centre to three lanes.

But the cutbacks are going to be real. I predicted on my blog (it didn't require a particularly high IQ to fathom it out!) on the day the changes to the VAT agreement were announced that wherever the cutbacks occurred everyone would argue they should be somewhere else.

The sports budget lies within the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure and within that department the largest spend is on the heavily loss making bus services. We had a visit on Saturday from a friend who is the former head of the transport services. He oversaw a modernisation of the fleet and an improvement in service levels at a time when bus services were being drastically reduced in the UK.

That service provides the basis for the current frequency of buses and we cannot afford to maintain it. I was out running at 7 am this morning; I was walking the dog around Douglas an hour later and by 10 am I was walking with Marie in Laxey. On all three outings I saw buses with  no passengers at all. I never needed to use both hands to count the passengers.

No doubt if the Sunday and public holiday services were reduced or withdrawn there would be hundreds of people saying that they were on the buses that I saw. I think I can see ways of savings a few of those two million pounds required this year but when the cuts come I will visit an optician. For I am sure I will be told that the buses were all full.