This bank holiday weekend has seen 8 Miles walked, 6.2 Miles Run, a friend in need supported, support from a friend for me, an understanding of the strength of a Mother’s love and the importance of communication, strategic decisions reinforced, and a resolve strengthened.
Friday saw me change my plans for a hill walk when I heard of a friend in need of company as she battled through her PhD with the additional workloads created as deadlines for submissions, on which she had worked so tirelessly for many months, loomed. These submissions were in a sense the make or break for her successfully completing her first year of her course so the pressure was intense. Allie was working on her own and living on her own and having submitted her final draft of her submission badly needed a change of scene, some fresh air and some company. But no hills this time. Just a gentle walk. So we met up and walked the 3 miles around Abbey Craig and the Wallace Monument to enjoy the views, chat and let off steam. It was a great day which ended with me cooking another Jamie Oliver Chicken Tikka recipe with all the goodness of mushrooms and the curry spices combined with a salad and dressing packed full of spring onions, red chilli, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, Puy lentils, tomatoes, red wine vinegar, fresh coriander, lemon, natural yoghurt, cashew nuts, mango chutney, turmeric, baby spinach, cucumber, carrot and feta cheese accompanied by a Garlic Naan. It was delicious and saw Allie return home on Friday evening feeling much happier and steadier. Allie had been my sea anchor on many occasions after meeting on this journey so I was thrilled to be able to return the kindnesses she had shown me so often.
Saturday saw me determined to try and nail down my email intray around a wonderful meeting I was having with another friend, this time to offer me help and support, but started with a concerning visit to St Modocs for morning prayer and a little organ practice. I arrived feeling on good form but as I sat and tried to play a tune that I had previously learned properly my brain had stopped working completely. I couldn’t work out where my fingers were supposed to go and when I did manage to work it out it was as if the fingers were then forgetting to move and tripping over each other on the keyboard. The result was a complete mess. My cognitive and motor function were completely disengaged. I could feel the pressure of time weighing heavy on my shoulders as I thought of all the work I had to try and catch up on but equally, I could hear the rapid ticking, tickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick like an old 1970s egg shell blue Bakelite plastic egg timer of the buzzer in my head. I knew that the only way to stop the timer before the buzzer went off and tried to switch me off was not to pack it in and go home in the hope that it would be better tomorrow but to hold firm and keep trying, keep trying and keep trying to force the brain to function, to talk to the body, talk to the hands and coordinate that conversation well enough, to allow me to play a recogniseable tune. Do that and I can stop the ticking of the buzzer and reset it to zero. Perhaps even stop it ticking completely. So I sat and tried and tried and tried again and slowly, very very slowly, it all started to come back and then bingo!! I could play it again. So I moved on to the new tune that I was learning and managed to get back to the point at which I had left it yesterday. I was feeling more in tune. Certainly the music was now in tune but it was time for breakfast before the meeting.
This meeting came about as a result of my drive to try and speed up the rate of growth for the challenge. Could I find and then convince some large commercial organisations to get behind the challenge in ways such as donating their 5p carrier bag charge to the challenge. After all it made sense to me. Since the week in which I was told that I had a brain tumour and given a prognosis and after some initial research fuelled by information given to me by friends I decided that I needed to eat as fresh as possible and as organically as I could afford. I now have a powerful and very positive story to tell in which I would be more than happy for a large organisation to link the story of the challenge into a commercial campaign if the campaign was for the greater good such as healthy eating because it would equally lead to increased awareness of the challenge. They could have boards in their shops tracking my challenge in numbers in all sorts of imaginative ways and would certainly have the team that could come up with the ideas and make it happen but I had little idea as to how to make it happen and little time to action it. More time in the office means less time delivering the challenge and therefore no story. This led to the thoughts that I would need a PR professional to help and certainly I thought this a great idea because one thing that I am not is media savvy.
So a dear friend, with whom I had worked very closely as my mentor and guide wanted to meet. We set up, just after I left the Army, and before I was given the diagnosis of the Brain Tumour and subsequent prognosis, a Not For Profit organisation, The Future Nation Foundation, whose very aim was and remains to this day to remove the element of chance that too often permeates the lives and life chances of our vulnerable, disadvantaged and disengaged young people. This friend’s years of experience in the political and commercial world of civilian life was invaluable to me then and invaluable to me now so she stepped in to advise and guide me. She did so brilliantly reiterating many of the points that the wonderful Caroline Barrowman on Day 43 had given me when she came to see me in Doune after work one evening. Many of these points are due to be actioned once the website is live and are very exciting. My friend also left with a number of action points and ideas involving people that she could speak to to try and secure some help for the challenge which had some very exciting potential and she also gave me brilliant advice on things to look out for when planning for my future care and welfare. But one thing she said left me troubled. In fact left me feeling a little discouraged. That I needed to tone down the moral tone of the posts. That I shouldn’t perhaps express a view on contentious issues. That I should have a little less religion in my posts as it can switch people off to the challenge. Certainly this was a very valid observation as I have seen the occasional unlike after a post in which I expressed how my faith helped me through a particular day or even spoke through me. Certainly an unlike can be frustrating in that you feel that you are taking 3 steps forward and then 1 or 2 steps backwards making progress appear to be very slow or even static; So there is an initial attraction to what was being suggested. Tone down the moral tone and do a little less faith and we should be able to help you grow faster. Very attractive.
Back home and many emails answered I made tea and was lucky enough to catch my elderly neighbour downstairs in time, before she had put tea in the oven, so that I could cook for her at the same time as cooking for myself. Thai Seafood Curry today with coriander, cumin, coconut milk, tamarind paste, a green pepper, a courgette, cherry tomatoes, salmon, prawns, scallops, muscles, fish sauce and basil served with Jasmine rice and more of the delicious salad and salad dressing from yesterday. I rushed it downstairs for her and was invited to eat with her so rushed back upstairs, grabbed my plate and came down, apron still on to eat with her. We talked as we ate but as we did I became acutely aware of the pain suffered by a mother watching her son fighting a horrible illness and getting weaker and weaker. As the tears quietly trickled down her cheek I could only think of Mum and how hard it must have been for her when she heard of my diagnosis and prognosis. Yet I heard not a word of how hard it was for her. Just what she could do for me. I was witnessing and experiencing just how extraordinarily powerful a mother’s love can be. But then this wonderful woman suffering in silence smiled so very happily when she told of the joy of receiving a phone call from her son. This was a very poignant lesson for me. That although Mum can and does keep track of me through these posts she must feel my pain at the bad times more than I do. I must phone her more often.
So I washed up and ready for church tomorrow I went to bed and slept on the results of my earlier meeting but as I slept on it I became troubled by the attraction of the suggestion that if I was to tone down the moral tone and do a little less faith that we should be able to help you grow faster.
Firstly, we have all seen world leading commercial organisations and even states implode or suffer significant set backs as a result of abandoning certain fundamental principles upon which the organisation or state was so patiently built in order to pursue rapid growth. But while I am most certainly not a world leading organisation or a state I do have 5 pillars of my strategy for success in beating the beast: Food, Friends & Family, Focus, Physical Training and of course Faith.
Faith is the central pillar of my strategy to beat the beast but I had never intended the reports on the challenge to be a vehicle on which to proclaim my faith, or to try and draw others to the faith. Indeed I only started writing reports as just that. Like an ex soldier I needed to produce daily reports so that those who choose to sponsor me could see that I was fulfilling my promise to them to undertake activity designed to help me beat the beast 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month.
But what I have found , even on days in which I left the flat concerned that I may have nothing to write that day, that the wonderful story of the challenge, of the wonderful society in which we live, of the extraordinarily courageous people I meet nearly every day and the beauty of the natural world around me unfolds in front of me. And as I have said before. The truth is so often far stranger than fiction. That if I had made this journey up as a book people would poo poo it because it would be or probably is statistically impossible. But it is completely true. Not embellished in any way as can be substantiated by the hundreds of people that I am meeting and then forming part of my story. It is true. Nothing but the unedited truth. All the good bits and the bad bits as I see it with my eyes, ears and mind open, engaged with life, as it happens, around me.
This story has provided and continues to provide much hope, inspiration and encouragement to so many people, many of whom I have never met or even heard of before but who have been drawn to the challenge and it is they, who are far more important to me than my own healing or the occasional unlike by a person who might dislike the use of a passage of scripture given to me to encourage me. But if it helped me, surely it might help others. So I will continue to use it.
This story has become so extraordinary and perhaps statistically impossible that there can perhaps be only one hand at work on this. The hand of God. So powerfully felt through the presence of the holy spirit that I have twice heard a definite voice and half a dozen times felt a physical force steadying me or turning me towards someone who on meeting nearly every single time has delivered a person who either needed hope, inspiration or encouragement themselves or whose very close friend or family member needed hope, inspiration or encouragement or who was to deliver a very clear message of support and encouragement to me such as the chance meeting with Hilary on Friday.
So to omit any acknowledgement of God’s work, either through his scriptures given to me or by his very physical presence through the holy spirit is to lie through omission. A step that I am not prepared to take.
In today’s sermon by Alison in St Modoc’s we heard of Jesus’ amazement by the faith shown by the Roman Centurion when he asked Jesus to heal his servant. Alison suggested that we should all be more ready to be amazed by the wonderful manifestations of faith as it unfolds in front of us.
I am already amazed, as you know, by what has unfolded in front of me and was in fact slightly frightened or perhaps more accurately unsettled by the incredible things that were happening as I set out on the journey each and every day. I was calmed and reassured by a friend, the Pastor Jon Cluett who informed me quite matter of factly that it was just the holy spirit at work. That it was a good thing to be embraced rather than be unsettled by and today we were encouraged to be amazed by and encouraged by what we see rather than turn away from it because we don’t understand it. I have no idea how my story is going to unfold every day. I have no idea for how long I will be able to go out and find the story each day and I have no idea how the story is going to end. But I do know that I want to keep living life to ‘Beat the Beast’ and help improve the lives and life chances of so many more people through your sponsorship and to be amazed, not switched off by the story as it unfolds in front of me.
I sat and talked through my thoughts with Alison after the service and she showed me a passage from Galatians Chapter 1 verses 10 – 12:
‘Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.
Dear Brothers and sisters, I want you to understand that the gospel message I preach is not based on mere human reasoning. I received my message from no human source, and no one taught me. Instead, I received it by direct revelation from Jesus Christ.’
While I do not for a second believe that I am or should be preaching a gospel message the lesson I was being taught here is very clear.
I must continue to tell the story as it unfolds in front of me because it is that which is helping so many people. I must not and will not buckle and abandon my key strategies for success in beating the beast in order to pursue rapid growth as it will only lead to eventual failure with the risk that the ‘Beast’ suddenly wakes up leading to catastrophic failure.
Before going for a run, my dear friend who came to advise and guide me, reassured me that I had completely misunderstood her and that she fully supports and respects my stance on the moral component and my faith. But my misunderstanding was in a sense a blessing as it made me explore and think deeply about these key issues that may become hugely relevant in future approaches should they ever materialise.
The run was tough but brilliant. 6.2 miles ran up into the Braes of Doune climbing 500 feet in bright sunshine but my speed had shot right back down to 10 minutes and 28 seconds per mile as it took me 1 hour and 4 minutes to complete the run. But I had good reason. I was taking a new route that had been deforested and so there was the most enormous elephants graveyard of branches laid out looking like a sort of a path but more as a sort of obstacle course. Each branch, bleached white by the weather was brittle and also had other branches sticking out of it so every foot step had to be carefully selected to ensure I didn’t trip and fall over. That slowed me down as I hopped and looked. hopped and looked, hopped and looked. Then I was off and away around the Doune Hill Climb track before turning back up towards East Brae. I bumped into the farmer who asked my route and warned me of his bull that was particularly bad tempered and one to be watched. He was content with my route but warned me that the bull was free range so be careful. Be very careful. I grew up in the country so was not unduly concerned but also knew that when a farmer warns you to be very careful. You should be very careful. I was on red alert as I ran on. The farmer followed for a short while which reassured me a little but as I ran I was scanning the fields and running through my head some old training tips. Why are things seen? Shape, shine, shadow, silhouette, smoke, movement. Well unless the bull had taken up smoking hamlet cigars I was looking for shape, shine, shadow, silhouette and if it was movement that caught my eye I was likely running for it. I was scanning up and down, left and right, covering all my arcs and checking my rear as I scanned the ground looking for likely protection such as fences and walls should the bull come running. I was nervous but buzzing full of adrenaline. Could I get through without being spotted? I decided to move onto a ridge line so that I could see better in to the dead ground and therefore be less likely to be surprised but it did of course also make me more visible to the bull. I had to see the bull first. Whenever I had to stop to check my map I was using the cover from view and from being run over by the bull of ditches next to fences and the dry stone walls whenever I could. And then there in the shadow of some trees next to the cooling water of the burn running through was some tan and white cattle. I could not positively identify the bull but I wasn’t staying up here to find out. I dropped immediately off of the ridge reasonably content that I had seen them before they saw me and that if I was a bull on such a warm day that I wouldn’t be patrolling my patch. I would be dozing in the shade with my heffers. That was my hope anyway but until I was out of the danger zone I would never be sure. Another two fields to cross to safety and I got there with no problem. I had made it. With a huge smile of relief I strode out down the track back towards the burn of cambus lodge and as I bounded down the hill my mind turned back to the song I had doctored from the wonderful poem, ‘Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen on Day 146. Then I crossed the A84 and onto the home straight along the disused railway track now lost under a farmers fields but still a navigable route. Then I hit a huge patch of nettles. I was in shorts and trainers!
I’m going on a healing run,
The tumour’s quite a big one,
But I’m not scared.
What a beautiful day,
for beating the beast.
Uh-Uh
A Bull!
He is very very angry.
But I can’t even see him.
He could be anywhere.
But I’ve got to go through here.
At least I am not wearing red!
Use the cover, use the high ground, use the low ground, move quietly!
I’m going on a healing run,
The tumour’s quite a big one,
But I’m not scared.
What a beautiful day,
for beating the beast.
Uh-Uh!
Nettles!
A huge patch of nettles.
I can’t go over them.
I can’t go under them.
Oh no I’m wearing shorts and trainers!
But I’ve got to go through them!
Hop Ow! Hop Ow! Bigger Hop bigger Ow!
I’m going on a healing run,
The tumour’s quite a big one,
But I’m not scared.
What a beautiful day,
for beating the beast.
But for tonight my prayer is that someone with a sizeable readership or viewership or customer base or all three can see the excitement and potential of this journey and help me tell the story to help me improve the lives and life chance of as many people as I can for as long as ever I can by raising as much money as possible for the 5 wonderful charities I support and by just simply helping me tell the story to as many people as possible.
Yours aye
Archie.