Photograph Quiz:
Photo no. 98:- So who is this lookalike? Or is it a lookalike? Is it my bruv??
Dear Blog,
And today we have no track meeting!!! I did introduce a ‘MayDay 5’ a few years ago to be held on May Day. It was a 5 mile race around the War Memorial Park in Coventry at a time when no one used the paths for running races; on the Jubilee Anniversary of the opening of the War Memorial Park, the Council offered a small sum in sponsorship and gave medals and certificates for a Fun Run for kids. The War Memorial Park has the large War Memorial in the formally laid out section of the park, and most trees have a plaque at the base of the trunk dedicated to the fallen in the two World Wars, including more than one Godiva member. Latterly, this exclusivity to the fallen of the two great wars has given way to plaques commemorating particular ex-service men in general; the club member who help reform the Ladies Section of Godiva harriers and who was instrumental in organising the Warwickshire Track activities for a number of years, has a tree dedicated to his memory; his ashes are scattered at the start of the 100m straight at the running track, a fitting place considering the time he spent coaching the sprinters at the club at the Butts Stadium. The May Day race was not held this year, partly as a consequence of the never ending weekly series of 5 kilometre fun runs held every Saturday around the War Memorial Park …. and of course, not to forget the free entry the fun run offers.
Saturday was the first Midland Counties Track League for men and women at Stoke-on-Trent. Freezing cold, but there was the consolation of the Stoke club having the use of a grandstand; needless to say, it was built mainly for the local amateur football club that plays their games inside the track arena. A sign of the times when the local athletics club has just had its yearly rent increased 300%. THREE HUNDRED PERCENT; which is slightly more than that nice Mr Cameroon’s rate of inflation? It is a good job that Stoke is a city of high wages and full employment; otherwise the club might find it difficult to pay. Sunday was the occasion of the Young Athletes League at Coventry; I changed into kit there before I went for a trudge in the sunshine. It was worth noting that (1) the changing rooms were filthy following a football match from the previous afternoon. What is it about footballers? Run round any park after a game and you see piles of litter; contrast that with the leagues at both Stoke and Coventry where there was the minimum amount of debris left, certainly nothing excessive. (2) At Coventry the parking was chaotic; on the roadside verges, on the pavement and worst of all, in the dedicated reserved spaces for ‘Disable Parking’. Now that is plain rude; downright inconsiderate. I could manage by using the car park at the back of the track for my grandson who uses a chair; but supposing I couldn’t? Suppose I was disabled? This car park was free to everyone, plenty of spaces and about 100m from the track, certainly a shorter walk than the idle individuals who were double parked at the bottom of the car park adjacent to the track, or those parked out on the public highway. (3) The number of kids who were filling in events ‘just for a point’ seemed considerable. I could see the kids were keen on their competition and did it for their club as a club event and some didn’t mind filling in; other clearly did, and I regarded that as a mild form of bullying. The day before, the same thing happened. For adults I cannot condone ‘filling in for a point’ when the time /distance / height achieved is pathetic; pathetic Blog, with a capital ‘P’. How can someone justify their endeavour as an athletic performance when they just manage to get the hammer onto the grass to record a distance, or someone who has to ask for the high jump bar to be lowered at the start of competition so that a height can be recorded, is beyond me. Take for example when I have filled in for the hammer, the high jump, the javelin, the shot in Midland Leagues …. obviously I was the ‘B’ string (but only just, sometimes), but ironically although I was only ‘doing it for a point’, I was achieving more points than a good class track runner, so poor was my opposition; how can this be considered to be valid league competition?? I was embarrassed to perform at such a level and be rewarded for so doing. Pathetic. And it goes on in every league competition at every age group up and down the country. Is this really what athletics should be about? UK Athletics or whoever is in charge, (England Athletics?) should grasp the nettle for a change, show a bit of leadership and introduce a minimum standard for a point(s) scored to be valid; it need not be Olympic Qualifying Standard, but at least it would make competition more meaningful than at present. I went to a committee meeting sometime back, full of important people … and me. A motion was passed giving a grant of £9000, I am pretty sure that that was the amount granted though I stand to be corrected, for a handicap system to be developed and run out across the country.(no pun intended Blog.) I assumed it was to be based on the old fashioned handicap racing system f yesteryear, the one used when I started. But it looks as if it metamorphosed into this strange hybrid that is ‘runbritain’ which fails to inspire? Ok if you are interested, but it is impassive, not a handicap on the ground in real time that inspires competitive competition as it happens. What a wasted opportunity????
I saw a case of adult bullying at the running club a few weeks ago and when intervention took place, the person doing the bullying was clearly oblivious of what was being done, was a real case of bullying and certainly not just a case of micky taking. It was cruel, pure and simple. Did you see the conclusion of the case concerning the old people who were harassed into selling their mobile homes for £1 in the newspaper reports of last week? With no home, the pensioners had to be rehoused by the local authority because the old people had no money left, having been swindled out of their life savings and sole investment. The perpetrators were jailed after a two year long investigation by the police. I thought that sort of criminal activity had ceased long ago. In another life, a long time ago, when I lived in a caravan, I was involved with the activities which site owners employed to get rid of tenants. (N.B. I lived in a caravan not a mobile home; in a caravan you froze to death in winter and suffered heat stroke in summer; you didn’t in a mobile home which enjoyed the benefits of a ‘normal’ house!!) The mobile home owners of the late 60s still suffered from Rachmanism. Legislation had been passed in Parliament earlier in the decade which purported to curb the worst excesses of landlords of the Peter Rachman ilk, but the act did not include anyone who lived on a mobile home site. An attempt (a private members bill?) was made to broaden the legislation to include mobile home dwellers, but the only way to ensure success was to adopt a Liberal Party amendment which included a clause to provide added security for travellers and the need for local authorities to provide sites where travellers could camp. Because the parliamentary majority was wafer thin for the ruling party, the backing of the Liberals was a requirement for the Bill to pass through both Houses of Parliament. The fact that people who lived in mobile homes paid their taxes, paid their rates and obeyed the law of the land while travellers might not do any of these three, did not seem to matter to our political masters. The law was enacted but the owners of mobile parks did exactly what Rachman did to his tenants; found new subtle ways of harassing and in some cases terrorising them. The National Mobile Homes Residents Association did what it could to protect vulnerable tenants, but the tenants lived on private sites and were more than reluctant to put their head above the parapet for fear of further victimisation. Many site owners retailed electricity at an inflated price (illegal), they made tenants pay local rates (illegal until 1973), they made tenants pay excessive ground rent which increased uncontrollably year on year eventually forcing tenants to sell up when fees exceeded income; and because second hand homes had little actual value as new sites were unavailable for resiting, the homes fetched a paltry amount, scrap value. The vacated site was soon filled with a brand new home, the site owner receiving a fat fee from the manufacturer as well as another substantial payment from the new gullible tenant. If an old home was sold on site a huge percentage was demanded from the seller to facilitate the deal to go through. Gas had to be bought from the site owner, again at an inflated price (illegal). Although against the law, the tenants were at the mercy of the site owners who were nearly all members of an Association, the name of which escapes me. They policed themselves and went through the motions of legal operation!! I was a member of the executive which tried to sort problems of site tenants. Our hands were tied. Tenants were too scared to complain for fear of reprisals and we couldn’t act without their backing. Meetings could not be held on site as it was private owed land. If a local hall was hired for a meeting for tenants to discuss their predicament near one of the troublesome sites, the sight of the site-security guard seated with a clip board recording names of residents attending, did nothing to boost attendance. When an individual or group complaint came in, an increase in site membership of the NMHRA was a requirement if any meaningful action was to be attempted. A successful outcome of that action meant solidarity amongst site residents. To gain more members on a site, we had to try a recruitment campaign, achieved by means of a leaflet drop; the sites were privately owned, our presence on site would be deemed as trespass. So a Sunday morning was always chosen for obvious reasons. Early on a Sunday morning, usually with the aid of a member living on site, a group would enter the site and target as many homes as possible, posting information on leaflets shoved as fast as possible into as many letterboxes as possible before the site guard with his dogs invariably came on the scene. No mobile phones in those days, so, being a Sunday morning, the guard had to cope on his own until reinforcements had time to assemble. And my job? A decoy who had to coax the guard into believing he could catch me, leaving the others free for a few more valuable minutes to get rid of more leaflets. It was never too long before the guard got fed up and released the dogs. It was common knowledge that the doge had to be well trained to be released otherwise the site owners would have been in serious trouble if injury was caused by the dogs, trespass or not. Once the dogs were unleashed, you had to stop still, put your arms by your sides and not look at the dogs. Was that scary, Blog, or was that scary Blog??? S**t scary, believe you me Blog, with a capital ‘S’. In fact, two capital ‘S’s!!!! We were escorted off the site. Not once was action pursued in the courts against us for trespass, as it was not in the site owners’ interest to arouse public interest into what was taking place on their sites, what tricks they were up to. I was the decoy because I was the fittest and perhaps could maintain the guard’s interest longest!!! With hind sight, we achieved very little in the time I was involved. When such events did get into the press, everything was watered down and interest focused on the travelling communities who took over the agenda. And just think Blog, if I was stuck in the rates scam, the gas scam and the electricity scam, what chance had a poor old lady have who was terrorised by the agents of an unscrupulous site owner?
I did meet an old friend yesterday who I had not seen for some time … he reminded me of the race on cinders at Nuneaton when he just beat me on the dip in a half mile race; the race he said had been won by my son in law …. But he has no recollection of the event when I asked him when the family came to dinner tonight; it was pleasing because, not keeping a record of my own times, he was able to tell me the finishing time, which was notably quicker than I thought I had ever run a half mile!!! Then I was reminded of a half mile run the Butts Stadium in Coventry in a ‘bob-a-nob’, again on cinders, when I was just beaten by another fellow club mate in an even faster time. The way my times were coming down, I was wishing it hadn’t been a club reunion ….
Colin
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