My week has been much the same as every other week so I’ll
try not to talk you through all the boring details. Many lectures happened and I went to
the majority of them which was good of me. They were actually ok again, I think
I like the endocrine system.
I came home on Friday and played cricket on Saturday. We won
again and are now top of the league. Go us. I didn’t do anything particularly
remarkable though this week. Here is a picture of my friend’s thumb from earlier this week, he tried
to catch a cricket ball and did not succeed. He had to have an operation to
relocate and realign his bones and now can’t play anymore cricket for the rest
of the season. That white stuff is his tendons. Cricket is hardcore.
On Saturday night I hung out with Emma, Sarah, David, Chris and Joe
and we saw Jim Lockey and the Solemn Sun at The Vic. I’m not sure what it was
but I think this was one of the best sets I’ve seen them play. There was a rather
creepy old man there who took a liking to Sarah and pretty much every other
girl there; he was definitely going to get laid. We also talked to Ben Marwood’s
mum for ages, she is a lovely lady and I think her name is Marilyn. Ben is
recording his new album RIGHT NOW and it will be out some time in the Autumn
which is exciting news. We went back to Tom's after and watched cool youtube videos until the early hours.
Miranda I am extremely sorry I forgot you challenge. I hope
this late entry will make up for it. This is hands down my favourite cat
picture:
Now, I wrote this next bit at about 2 in the morning last
Wednesday following an extremely boring afternoon/evening where I essentially
sat at my desk for 8 hours straight attempting but not succeeding at doing work.
I had had enough of how mundane my day to day life was becoming. With this in
mind, I thought that what follows was a really excellent idea but looking back
now it just seems a little bit crazy. Maybe it is crazy in a good way though, I’ll
let you be the judges of that.
Dear Mongooses (and anyone else reading). I come to you with
probably the biggest, toughest, most real world challenge yet.
I want to have an adventure. I’m talking a real adventure,
something that is genuinely hard and challenging and not just fun the whole
time. Something that won’t have guaranteed success and might suck some of the time
and might not even end up the way it was planned. I want to do something that
will leave me with a sense of achievement whether it ends in success or not, I
want something that will make me feel like I have pushed and tested myself. I
want to do something with the people I really care about that will give us something
to look back and be proud of, to say “yeah, I did that”.
Firstly some background on where this desire to do something
hard has come from. A few days ago a guy who did the Mongol Rally did an AMA on reddit and they also made a video diary of their journey which I watched when I should
have been working.
Their experience looked really tough but just imagining the sense of
accomplishment they must have felt at the end made the whole thing seem
extremely appealing to me. I want to do something a cool challenge like this too.
So, onwards to my vague plan. I would not be surprised if,
like me you do not have £2500 lying around to spend on driving to Mongolia. I
also wouldn’t be surprised if you did not have 6 weeks of free time to spend on
an adventure. With this in mind I turned my thoughts to shorter term and more affordable
adventures. Whilst trawling through Facebook recently I saw that a friend of
mind had done something called the Three Peaks Challenge.
Essentially you climb the highest mountain in Scotland, England and Wales within
24 hours. Looking into it, it seems that with a reasonable level of fitness
(not any crazy gym training or running or anything, just being ok at walking)
most people would not have too much of a problem completing it. I think this could be the
perfect level of challenging, reward and cost effectiveness. Now this is only a
very vague idea as of yet and really I am just testing the water to see if any
of you would be interested in even entertaining the idea for a while.
Personally I think it would be a lovely thing to do together and would provide
us with stories for years to come. So I now open the floor to questions,
thoughts and opinions. GO.
