I hope that you enjoy the dime

I hope you enjoy the dime.

Well, well. Today I ran a marathon. Who would have thought it – and like so many things in my life, once again I have discovered just how much is possible if you set your mind to it. I’d love to say that it was a breeze, that it was tough but fair, that it was anything other than what it was – possibly the most physical thing I’ve ever done in my life. But that’s the reality. If childbirth is worse, I’m surprised the human race has survived as long as it has.

So many memories…

- the marvellous sticky toffee pudding the night before – thanks Bola and Chris!
- the hack into Hove to pick up Mark at 7AM
- the serendipitous arrival at the train station, to find a taxi siting there like it had been specially laid on
- the chance meeting of one of Mark’s mates Jake, a total gent who gave me my own personal tour of the sights for the first 15 miles
- the genuine pleasure of running on a beautiful day until about mile 17
- the delight at seeing Liz and Mum along the way
- the uneasy feeling that all those small pains were joining into one big pain
- the absolute agony of the final 8 miles, and my gratefulness to all those who called out the name I had printed on my shirt
- the complete inability to climb the steps back up to the front, after the finish
- the taxi, shower, tea and cake

As for times, Mark came in at 4.19, and me at 4.45. It’ll do – while I was hoping for a better time, I had underestimated how much pleasure I would get from just finishing.

Above all, the whole thing raised £3,000 for Water Aid, which is just fantastic. Thanks so much to all who contributed, friends, work colleagues, Marillion fans, you kept me going on more than one occasion. Thanks (really) to Mark for the whole idea, and the biggest thanks to Liz for all her help and support, not to mention driving home two folks who probably should have known better!

You can only imagine my surprise when… OK, that’s a lie. Here’s a little something I was writing last summer, based on the few snippets suggested by the liner notes to what was to become Porcupine Tree’s earliest releases Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory.

It’s also given me the opportunity to have a first foray into e-books. This one is in ePub format.

If you missed the link, here’s Beyond the Seaweed Farm.

The full http is http://www.joncollins.net/wordpress/wp-content/BTSF.epub

And you can also read it online here.

Enjoy!

The cover is William Hogarth’s The Cockpit. It seemed appropriate.

Well I never. In a moment of spring madness, I agreed to join Marillion’s Mark Kelly to run the Brighton Marathon in April. The chosen charity is Water Aid, which has a pretty straightforward remit – access to clean, safe water should be a right, not a privilege. If you feel like sponsoring us pop over to our Justgiving page.

It’s also worth highlighting a Marillion song, the last line is “A tap with clean water”… Full lyrics here (selection below)

And here’s the song.

Common cold. Dirty water. HIV.
Common apathy. Common crime.
Perfect nonsense to the next generation

Have we caught up yet?
Is it time? Well I say it is. I say it is.
Deaf and dumbed-down
Enough is enough

Gimme a smile. Hold out your hand.
I don’t want your money
I don’t want your land
I want you to wake up and do
something strange
I want you to listen
I want you to feel someone else’s pain

A tap with clean water

Hurrah for Green and Blacks to announce that all of their chocolate was going to be fair trade by the end of the year, I thought to myself as I munched a bar of Maya Gold and read the Guardian article to find out it was the first chocolate bar to be certified Fair Trade. Perhaps is was the cocoa but I couldn’t help wondering about the timing – G&B’s is owned by Cadburys, that has announced a similar move (Dairy Milk already, others to follow) – and the latter has of course just been betrothed to Kraft foods.

Now, I’m no politician but I can almost imagine the board room conversation where either or both brands decided it was now or never to go fair trade, given that the big nasty conglomerate would be unlikely to take such a bold step. It would also be difficult to unravel without adverse PR and loss of sales. So, we have the public announcement, whether Kraft likes it or not.

A little bit of browsing later and it seems that the nasty conglomerate has already made a start. Suchard hot chocolate and Kenco coffee already boast rainforest certification. Now, all we need is for Toblerone, Terry’s, Cote D’Or and Daim to do the same, and we’d really be cooking.

I was having an issue with Bridge CS3 in Mac OSX Snow Leopard – it was using half the CPU (i.e. 100% of one core) but didn’t appear to be doing much else – before eventually crashing. Having browsed around a bit last night and this morning to little avail, I thought I’d share the solution I eventually stumbled upon – to delete the cache. The official link is here, which includes information for both Windows and OSX users.

Thanks also to Planet Neil for the tip-off.

After a long delay, due to factors beyond anyone’s control, a paperback version of Rush-Chemistry in the works. Please note that this is not a full update, it still ends when it ends (at the end of the R30 tour in October 2004). All reported errors and typos should now be fixed, as listed here: RC Addendum v0.3b.doc

Update: this is now available for pre-order at Amazon UK.

Continuing in the ‘exotic places I have jogged’ series, here’s three laps round the lake at Disney World in Florida. Glad I went out at 5.45AM as it’s warming up already (or was that just me!) 21′49″, roughly 8.6 minute miles.

Thank you very much for the parking fine I found on my car as I departed from Kemble Station this Monday evening. I would like to explain the circumstances around this fine, in the hope that you might reconsider.

As is quite common for me, I was planning to catch the 09:19 train to London Paddington. I left home with plenty of time, so much in fact that I arrived at the station shortly after Nine O’Clock. As I saw I had time on my hands, I chose to buy my parking ticket at the same time as my train ticket – in this way, I thought, I would save having to file two expense forms.

So, I drew up outside the station and popped inside to queue. The line was quite short, to the extent that I was not in the slightest bit worried. At first anyway – until I realised that the person at the front of the queue was buying an old person’s railcard.

Starting to fret slightly, I sighed with relief as that person was dealt with – and then the next, who was also very slow. My nerves were further agitated at the sight of a car park attendant out of the window.

The next person in line was about to be treated when I heard the announcement for the 0907 to Cheltenham. To my horror by this point, the ticket officer gave his apologies and left the booth, to deal with the train. The car park attendant was still outside, and I did start to go speak with him but before long (though it seemed an age) the ticket attendant returned.

I calmed down somewhat as the next person was dealt with and the attendant (having changed into a summer jacket) drove away. There was then one or two people in the queue, which were dealt with before me – but by now the time was approaching 0915 and the speakers were announcing the arrival of the London train.

Arriving at the counter I asked for a return ticket to London but I was so flustered I completely overlooked asking for car parking as well. Having got my ticket I ran out, got in my car, drove to an appropriate parking space (fortunately there was one nearby) and then ran back to catch the train. Admittedly by this point the parking charge was the last thing on my mind.

I hope you understand that it was certainly not in my interests to park without a ticket, nor would I ever intend to. However I also hope you will take these mitigating circumstances into consideration.

All the best, Jon Collins

We found this fist-sized blobby thing in the pond over the weekend. If anyone has any idea what it is, please do share!

A bigger version is on Flickr.