Dartmoor Weekend 30Jan-1st Feb

As BJ, Kirt and I progressed smoothly down the tarmac gateway that is the M4 I knew that it was going to be a mirth filled weekend. Not just because of the company but because BJ handed me a piece of paper with the Bloomberg top 25 funniest names in the world: my personal favourites are Donna Bumgardener, David Moron and Dario Diklik. Incidentally I'm not swearing, I'm simply quoting people's names. If you consider these to be swear words then you are in fact deriding the innocent people who live with these names every day of their silly named lives.




We arrived in Dartmoor late Friday night despite the Sat Nav's best efforts to thwart us by sending us to a field. Just a field. Luckily we bumped into Kiwi and Glenn who were also lost but had the foresight to bring printed instructions of how to find the Dartmoor centre we were staying at. Without them we would have genuinely had to drive into a patch of vegetation and shout the names of our team mates and hope for the best.

The weekend was a real cliched male team bonding experience. It turns out that no matter whether you're 22 or 32 it is inevitable that somebody backside will try and show off in front of a room of other males and generally your audience will oblige by giggling like little school boys. We seemed to only talk about hackneyed male experiences, which I can't really divulge over the Internet as it would possibly lead to me being locked up or at least cautioned by the cyber police. Let's just say we joked about rambling and walking!

Between all of the churlish behaviour we managed to do some walking...actually walking. I managed to 'break mine boots in', which is the technical term for wearing some boots. It's a needly aggressive and euphemistic expression: I prefer to tell people that 'I popped their cherry'. We ambled around the moors and tors for most of Saturday, which must have been just under 20 miles.I would have loved to have taken in the picturesque Dartmoor scenery but for some meteorological reason which I don't fully comprehend, the land was caked in mist. The range of conversation during 8 hours of walking with different people is phenomenal: you go from one conversation to someone about their job to anopther one with someone else about the funniest name for a pornographic video. Eclectic, best describes the day; maybe smutty.

Sunday was also great fun as we split into 3 teams and got ruthlessly competitive like greyhounds chasing a stuffed rabbit around the baron moors of Devon. The challenges involved carrying 20kg fertilizer bags up a hill, carrying cooking equipment then making fried eggs up a hill, running up a hill dressed as a gorilla (I pulled the short straw on that) and carrying buckets of water from ages away...over a hill. The general theme was doing tiring stuff on hills. Having been comfortably in the lead after the first 3 challenges we choked like all British athletes and ended up tied with the other teams. I guess you could say the overall winner was team Hillary! You could then also say that I'm a cheesy man who needs somebody to dip some bread on my fondue like body to remove that stench of melted Jarlsberg.

No ranting this week. Just thought I would thank James Peterson for his organisation of the weekend, although he could have done something about the mist; at least we missed the snow storm, so well done for that. On that note, I think it's hilarious how in the current economic climate where 90% of the population are desperately grasping onto their jobs and trying their up most to save their pennies, that that same percentage of people looked out their windows and thought, 'I definitely can't go to work today because it's a bit snowy'. Special thanks go to London's bus drives for legitimizing everyones' excuses for bunking off. My faith is restored in humanity.

Peace, Love, Save the children

General Training and Fundraising

In about 3 days I'm taking part in the Grim Challenge. This is something I only have a vague knowledge of. From what I can gather it consists of 8miles of running in off road army terrain including big puddles/ rivers, which is pretty handy because luckily on December the 7Th it should be really warm so a quick dip will be really refreshing. I am of course being sarcastic, it's going to be fat and shit!

I have no idea how I will fair fitness wise. I've started using the cross trainer. Despite previously hating any mechanical indoor aerobic machine I've been favouring the Cross trainer as it's indoors and warm, which is really good preparation for what is essentially an outdoor expedition.

I have also been doing some serious weight session with the people at the school I work at. I don't really like lifting weights as it is the most cliched male thing to do. The good thing about it is the 30 minutes afterwards where you genuinely feel like the Incredible Hulk. Sometimes I go out starting fights on people because of all the adrenalin and the 0.1mm larger pecs I have sculpted. I think I can beat up a bear but in reality I can barely take down a Chinese door mouse.

I also have severely cut down on drinking so now after about 3 pints I'm an absolute shambles. After 5 I want to fight people, which never happens. I worked out that the worst scenario would be if I have 5 pints whilst doing the bench press; I would start trying to smash everyone up and fail miserably.

Last thought for the day why do people make waistcoats for their pet dogs? Utterly pointless.

Back to the beginning again...almost

I remember getting the call from Joe/Jewy/Jewbacker/Jewnipper berry/Jewson/Jewseph/ Shabadoo saying that me and him were selected for the expedition and BJ and Charlie were on the reserve list. There was a feeling of excitement, which was unfortunately tainted by the fact that two out of four of us were not initially part of the trip. The team members were chosen on an anonymous basis so there were no big favours for people; so apparently BJ's proximity to Claire Balding was not quite enough to get him in the initial party. I was, however, quietly confident that BJ and Charlie would get in because they were first 2 on the reserve list and the probability of 2 people dropping out of such a time consuming expedition was pretty high.

Despite the slight downside I was fucking over the moon that I would be a record breaker and at the very least be joined by my pal the Jewish Bear. I should probably explain who this mystical Hasidic character is. Joe is one of my best pals. I met him in 2005 in New Zealand when me and Charlie were following the British Lions team get anally shattered by the All Blacks. He liked rugby, he was funny, and he was studying English at Newcastle University later that year, which I was also doing therefore the rest is history.

One quick anecdote about Joe Williams (he does have a real name!) so you can get an idea about him. He is a very primitive human being he likes sport, eating and sleeping. I think his Great Great Great Great Grandad was in fact half man, half Grizzly Bear. Everyday for 2 years at university he made his dinner like this. Step 1: cook some chicken fillets and put them on a plate. Step 2: Open a can of sweetcorn and add it to plate. Step 3: Put some mayo on the plate. Done!

He is obsessed by my overweight swearing father. So much so that at my 21st birthday party at my house whilst my Dad was asleep he and my friend Anish got completely naked and hugged him: photos can be found on my facebook. This story doesn't illustrate much but it makes me laugh thinking about it. And in a way is poster for religious harmony. A middle class pompous white man being embraced by a Jew and an Indian- Unicef eat your heart out!

So now me and Joe waited to see if BJ and Charlie would get onto the expedition. Watch this space if you want to find out....most of you reading this are on the trip so the suspense for you will be slim to none.

I've decided to write a book about Everest Cricket- all of you are extremely lucky

This is not a nonsense idea that I have thought of after 10 pints, which I will never back up, I genuinely want to do this.

One of my colleagues asked if I was writing a book on the trip and I said, 'I'm too busy'. Which does seem reasonable as I have a day job and gig around the country in the evenings including Northampton- lucky me! (seriously never go there, it smells of regret). I, however, realised that I do in fact spend on average 1-2 hours a day checking and re-checking my emails, going on facebook, tidying out my balls, tidying out my balls over people on facebook and finally- drinking tea (my drug of choice, after the drug of LIFE!, which I'm already high on, only joking: only wankers say that). Therefore, If I minimise doing the above for 2 hours or even combine some of them whilst writing this blog I reckon I can be well on my way...obviously drinking tea and writing is far easier than playing with yourself whilst trying to punctuate correctly.

So the plan is to write a little something everyday in this blog by going back to the very beginnings of signing up to this trip, whilst sprinkling in bits of what's currently going on re: fundraising, fitness, anecdotes about Everest test. There will be a 6 month time shift for the first few weeks of this but as I only just thought writing a book was a good idea today, November 7Th, it will be a bit hap-hazard. I want to reiterate that I never decided to do this expedition just to write a book. The reasons I want to do this trip are these, in no particular order:

1. Raise lots of money for international and domestic causes, which need it
2. Break a world record and so make Kris Akabusi finally proud of me
3. Test myself, on a physical and mental level
4. Something to talk about at dinner parties and a great device to snaffle beatches (can I say that?!)


These blog entries will form the basis of the book and help me write a final copy before I forget everything. So now all of you (sing./plural) know whats going on relax your flaps and enjoy the ride. It's OK to laugh at the phrase 'relax your flaps', I will not tell anyone, If anyone hears you laughing and says 'what you laughing about?', just say 'exquisite political satire', however we both know it's the phrase 'relax your flaps'- If you don't appreciate the immaturity of it, I hope you appreciate how resonant the assonance of the wording is.

long story short, buckle up!

any feedback duly appreciated.

Touching each other for Charity

Any new readers out their put on some protective goggles because otherwise you might get some of the gold dust below in your peepers.

Me and BJ's touch rugby tournament has just finished. The slightly self indulgently titled Jarman-Martin Invitational.

The day seemed to go really well. Everyone seemed to have a smashing day out and me and BJ's 100 odd sandwiches ranging from marmite, ham, cheese and ham&cheese seemed to be much appreciated.

In terms of results the teacher's team beat by old friend mat and nick's team in the final after a questionable decision by the referee (me). I have a new found respect for refs as it is really hard especially when your adjudicating your friends. I was respected about as much as a Russell Brand giving a speech on phone etiquette (topical? not funny. but topical). I did receive a volley of verbal abuse so when I played in a couple of matches I thought that I would not question any of the ref's decisions, however, I still complained the most showing what a hypocritical Henry I really am.

Also something I always knew about men which got reaffirmed in my mind that no matter what the occasion if there is a trophy to be won they will always be over-competitive and take everything too seriously. It's in a our nature. I genuinely think you could have a £5 trophy up for grabs at funeral for the most upset person and men would rub onions into their retinas, stab themselves in the chops, burn money just so they can win.


anyway me and BJ should have raised about 200 snakes each (you can say almost any word and it means money) e.g. droplets, pies, sheets, boys, badboys, snickers, twigs, knuckles etc

special mention to The Sherpas (Kirt, Tom, Neil, JC, Jules, Blinky). Also to Jules for helping by kindly giving us such wonderful prizes. Steely and Gemma for representing the females in the tournament. Is that patronising and sexist? probably