good morning,
well we did it.
we now have a freaking cool bar story for the rest of our lives.
last saturday we sent a blog out to to everyone that subscribes, telling our story, with a wild dream that someone would read that story, and decide that they would commit to fundraising ten thousand pounds for bigmoose project 1million.
https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/project1million
now any way you cut it that’s a pretty whack dream, and be honest, when you read it, you probably thought the odds on achieving it were quite low?
but that’s the thing with a dream right, an awake one at least, while it is a dream it seems impossible, until it happens, and then it shows it very much is possible, very much like roger bannister who ran the first ever sub-four minute mile, at a time when it was deemed impossible, and an extremely wild dream.
however, on may 6, 1954, the announcer at the oxford university cinder track in england calmly gave the placings in the one mile race, and then started to announce the winning time, beginning with the word “three…”
the small crowd erupted in delirious excitement, the rest of the announcement went unheard, and roger bannister became an instant legend as the first man to run the one mile faster than four minutes.
his 3:59:4 that evening is often cited as one of the seminal moments in the world of sports.
it has become a symbol of human achievement on the same level as the conquest of mount everest the previous year (may 29, 1953), there he goes, bringing it back to everest again, lol.
but the really crazy thing is just six weeks after bannister's famous run, john landy became the second sub-four minute miler, six weeks, the psychological belief that it could be reality, not just a dream, allowed other runners in the world to believe this dream could be achieved.
on researching this I found out some info that i found interesting, when you become certain of something, when every part of your makeup believes it because you focus on it every single day, something “magical” happens, not new age magical, but science magical.
we have a system in our bodies called the reticular activating system (ras) that helps our brains decide what information to focus on and what to delete.
when you have a clearly defined purpose, a mission, and when you live every moment in a state of certainty that you’ll achieve it, you influence what your ras filters out and what lights it up.
as a result, you pay special attention to things that help you achieve what you’re after, things you otherwise would have never noticed.
i am so ras'd up it’s unbelievable!!!
so.
back to the ten grand blog.
i pushed myself to have the blog ready to send to people on friday, but something huge happened, which i’ll tell you about in a minute, so we only got to send it out saturday morning, which worried me as i wasn’t sure if people read emails on saturday, but thankfully it turns out they do.
within three hours, i received a thoroughly delicious email back from clare williams.
i emailed her back immediately with an idea of how together we could get her to raise ten grand to help save lives, and i gave her my phone number if she wanted to text or chat
i loved reading this, and my ras was revved up to the max!
we had a great chat, and it transpires clare is the clare from https://penylanpreserves.co.uk/ that supplies our bigmoose coffee shop with multi award winning preserves, especially her amazing chilli jam, (i am now salivating btw), and my email with the ten grand blog had piqued her interest to help, which was amazing.
as we chatted, clare referenced her bigmoose journey, and the fact that some four years or so ago she had attended a talk i did about my everest adventure, at our local david lloyd, and i reflected on that wonderful mountain expedition, and how it is still affecting my life for good, thanks russ for pushing me.
at the end of our conversation i gave clare a cooling off period, as i know i can be quite intense sometimes, and the next day clare emailed, she was 100% in, and after i read her email i felt the desire to run, to process this properly, and as i stepped out my door, i was determined to run a sub four minute mile. (i didn’t)
so, I now have a new slide for my presentations, telling the ten grand blog story, which will hopefully inspire people not be afraid of failing, and doing whatever it takes to achieve their dream, and if anybody else reading this wants to become the john landy to clare’s roger bannister, please drop me a line, we’d love you to join us on this adventure, however you think you can help, to be successful we need you on our team.
so.
the reason our blog was sent out late was because i was scammed.
by my wife.
shocking right?
so here’s the story.
last friday was very sunny, and tania says to me and chloe "shall we have a walk down the bay, and go for wagamama’s?"
the cunning vixen had us at wagamama.
the rest was white noise.
as we cruised bay bound, she also mentioned that she had tickets to a back stage tour at the welsh millennium centre.
all i could think about was noodles.
with hindsight, a backstage tour of the 'play that goes wrong' was very random, but 38 years with this woman has given her an insight into my ras that allows her complete (almost) control, and food plays a big part.
“where shall we park?” i offered.
“oh we can park at the back” red flag 1, which i completely missed.
we duly parked and headed into the back door of the theatre, red flag 2, see 1.
“are you here for the tour?" the lady behind the desk asked.
“we are” the vixens subterfuge continued.
after five long minutes of waiting, and visualising waga’s vegan ribs in front of me on that wooden bench, our tour guides arrived, and were very ’theatrical’, no flags here.
we were led backstage where a girl proceeded to drop a tray of props, which the guides responded to somewhat strangely, and my spider senses tingled, but as it was ’the play that goes wrong’ i guessed we were being entertained along a theme, and decided to roll with it.
the guides led us onto the main stage with its 2497 seats, very impressive, and the director told us about the show, with a light switch falling off the wall, and a props guy ‘accidentally’ breaking a glass when putting it down, all very unbelievable, but roll with it, not long till yakisoba I thought.
we were then shown a mocked up fire, which proceeded to explode into flames, and then from nowhere a film crew leapt on stage with the whole cast of the play, who proceeded to unfurl a banner saying 'thank you from the bcc one show.'
utter shock.
tania and a group of our friends had been planning this whole thing for weeks behind our backs, and it transpires tania was mic’d up on our car journey into the theatre, which blew my mind as i worried about what i had possibly said, as i am extremely inappropriate at the best of times.
the whole theatre were in on the prank, and there were cameras everywhere, and i think we were in shock, i am dreading seeing our reaction.
we were then introduced to the arranger of this deception, noah, who unbeknownst to us had met tania earlier in morrisons car park covertly, like some sort of friday lunchtime drug deal, to fit her ‘wire’ (i shall never trust this woman again)
noah was lovely, and said that tania had told him that she had a stage school background, so he felt comfortable that her acting experience would help her weave their web of deceit, i rolled my eyes without him seeing.
he then proceeded to tell us their was one more surprise.
i was thinking chef’s table at wags, but the one show team led us outside the grand entrance to where a gang of friends, family, and other liars were congregated.
i hate centre stage and much prefer life in the wings, and was pretty overwhelmed at the magnitude of what was going on, especially when our attention was drawn to a massive l.e.d. screen with a cinema size alex jones from the one show, saying thank you to bigmoose for helping so many people, and i was glad i was wearing sunglasses, as there seemed be some dust go in my eyes at this point, which thankfully nobody would have seen.
there were then a number of beautiful testimonials from people from our world, and dr alex george the uk youth mental health ambassador, and it was quite an emotional moment.
fortunately for me the moment was interrupted as i spotted in the distance a mini bus full of girls, hopefully on a hen do, screaming and brandishing a four foot inflatable penis out of the window, pure comedy, and the timing was perfect to blow the dust away.
after the on screen recordings, completely overwhelmed by this time, we immersed ourselves into the love and hugs from our mates, amazed that they had one kept the secret, but two travelled from all over the country to be with us, very very humbling indeed.
after all this mayhem, there was only one thing for it.
wagamama.
we ate, we laughed, and i personally reflected on how fortunate i am to live the life i live.
hopefully the show airs this thursday the 30th, and my dream is that it helps us in some way to get to our project 1million this year, and as we all know, sometimes dreams come true.
thanks for reading, and if you want to read more of my weekly jibber jabber, i’ll see you here next week.
I’ll be seeing ya,
blue skies,
jeff