The Ryder Cup - Greed & Sport.

An impromptu vlog about the Ryder Cup golf tournament and how money is ruining the sports we love.

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Running Free - A Jog Blog.

I posted a blog the other day, "New Years Resolutions - Why?", all about, guess what, New Years resolutions & the fact that i don't make them. Amongst other observations.

One of the aspects of that i talked about, was how many people at this time of year will be thinking about getting fit, or at least trying to lose weight. That is one of the most popular New Years resolutions that i hear & it's the same every year.
I suppose this is only to be expected, after the excesses of the Christmas period.

What made me think of this again, was that this morning i went out for a run. It was my first run of the new year & the first of the new decade for that matter.
As i've mentioned before, either here, on in my vlogs on YouTube, i have been running for over twenty years now.

I first started running when i gave up smoking, which was rather ironically around the New Year of 1985/86. I had tried to give up smoking on a number of occasions before. But, had always started again. I was only what could be termed a "social smoker", but a smoker nonetheless. For example, i never smoked at work. Maybe, for this reason, i found it easier to give up?

I gave up smoking, more or less, on a whim. It wasn't planned at all. I just woke up on the morning of New Years Day in 1986 & never smoked again.
Well, you know how it is on New Years Day morning? The last thing you want is a cigarette! So, i didn't have one. This went on for a fair part of the day & suddenly i thought to myself "why not use this as an opportunity to try & give up smoking for good?"

As mentioned in that recent blog, i didn't tell anybody i was giving up, or at least trying to. I just did it quietly on my own.
For me, this was the best method & it's a method i've stuck with when i've ever wanted to change anything about myself ever since.

A friend of mine had decided to give up around the same time & he suggested that maybe we should try running? To help us get a bit fitter & also to help us combat the evil weed.
I can still remember that very first run & i'm pretty sure my friend can too!
As is usually the case, you never feel that you are actually as unfit as you really are. So, that first run, even though it was for only approx 20 miuntes, was not easy. But, then what did we expect?

We continued these runs for a while & then my friend decided that he was going to stop. I can't remember why.
I now had a decision to make. Do i stop, or do i carry on on my own? Thankfully, i decided to carry on. This was partly because i had come to realise that i was actually enjoying running.
I realise that i am quite lucky to feel this way. So many people i know, who do run, don't really enjoy it & find it a real chore. I am one of the lucky ones who loves to be out there, running free.

I carried on running, gradually increasing the distances, for a few months & then an opportunity to run a real race came up.
On Sunday, May 25th 1986, myself along with millions of others across the world, ran the world for Sport Aid, an offshoot of Band Aid & Live Aid. It was only a 10k "race", but it set the ball rolling for me, as far as running races was concerned.

Since that day, in May 1986, i have run 7 full marathons, including 4 London Marathons, 23 half marathons & many more races of varying distances.
Those races are something that i am very proud of, especially the marathons.

I tend not to run races nowadays & haven't run a full marathon for over 10 years now. I always have good intentions of running races, but those good intentions are usually as far as it goes.
I do still "tick over" as far as running is concerned. I don't run as much as i could, or probably should. But, i still enjoy it when i do & that's the main thing.

I often look back very favourably to that New Years day in 1986, when i decided to give up smoking & also to that day when i forced myself & my friend out of the front door, to go for that first, life changing, run.

I fully intend to keep on running free, for as long as my body, or my heart, will let me.
Here's hoping that will be for quite some time yet.

Last night i dreamt of cats...

Last night i dreamt of cats.

But, as with most dreams, by the time i'd woken up i couldn't really remember exactly what had happened in the dream itself. However, it did get me thinking about another aspect of cats that i do know & have experience about.

I live in an urban area & in my small patch i have noticed a major change over the past year.

Up until approx a year ago we used to have a number of garden birds that populated the area. That's apart from the obvious seagulls that you would expect, due to the close proximity of the sea.
Now, these garden birds were not exactly exotic. Just sparrows, blackbirds, blue tits, thrushes etc. Although we did get the occasional more interesting species. But, it was good to see & hear them anyway.
We used to have a big family group of sparrows that lived in a honeysuckle bush out the back of our house. You could hear them frolicking in & around the bush & in a strange way it was comforting to hear them.

As a birthday present, a year ago, i was even bought a nice, new bird box to fix on our wall. In the hope that the birds might be tempted to use it to build a nest in there. This had happened in the past, before the old box fell apart that is!

That box has never been put up. Why?....

Well, approx a year ago, some new people moved in down the road from us & brought with them their two cats. At around the same time, more cats arrived with another family.
Within a matter of weeks, all the garden birds had disappeared. Frightened off presumably?

Now, i have absolutely nothing against cats & actually like them & for some strange reason, they seem to like me too. My wife thinks it's because i tend not to make too much of a fuss about them. Maybe they consider me a challenge? Who knows?

Domestic cats kill millions of birds every year in the UK.
Now, if they were wild animals & killed them for food, as a means of survival, i wouldn't have a problem with that. But, domestic cats are, generally, very well cared for & have no real need to kill for food.
They tend to kill birds because it is in their nature & you can't really blame then for that i guess. They also kill them as a weird kind of present for their owners.
How often have cat owners been presented with a dead bird, or animal? I've seen it happen on a number of occasions.
I vividly remember being at my in-laws house when their cat caught a garden bird. The noise from the bird as it was being played with before it was killed was distressing & upsetting for all who heard it. Including the cats owners.
But, if you own a cat, what do you expect?
It's a bit like us humans killing for sport & we all know how that is generally viewed don't we!

Now, i don't blame the cats for this garden carnage. As i said, it's in the cats nature to do this.
So what can be done?

As with any pet, the owners should give careful consideration of what owning the pet will actually mean for themselves & for their life as a whole.
For example, what will it really mean to your valued garden bird population when you get a cat?
These things are so often not thought of before acquiring any pet. And the blame for that can be laid fairly & squarely at the door of the pet owner, nobody else.
This is obviously part of a much bigger discussion & one i don't intend to go into here.

So, please give some consideration for what you are potentially doing when you think about getting that pet. That decision can often have far bigger implcations than you might imagine.

All i know is that in my garden there are now no birds, or birdsong & i have a brand new bird box sitting idle in a cupboard.

Here's hoping i'll be able to put that bird box in it's rightful place one day.