Mutterings for the Minority

Down the bay

Having not been to Rhossili Bay (Llangennith beach in particular) for donkey’s years and given that my family has never been there, today was an ideal opportunity to change all that. But before getting to Rhossili we made a flying visit to Broughton Bay and the very quaint village of Llanmadoc.

Now not being a regular to north Gower, I was struck by the natural unfound beauty of it all - probably because the majority of visitors seem to head for the more popular (better advertised?) southern area of Gower.

When we arrived at Llangennith beach and parted with our £2 parking fee for Hillend Caravan Park (no plug intended!), the family weren’t disappointed with the view that met them. Despite the overcast and somewhat breezy conditions, the beach was as I remember it - vast and glouriously sandy. The majority of people on the beach were either sand sailors (I think that’s what they’re called!) or young families - such as ours.

We decided to make our way home via the Mumbles and ended up getting some chips from ‘Yallops’ on Mumbles road and munching them in the car park at Bracelet Bay - with the lighthouse in full view.

Did my usual weighing scale trick today with the end result showing 17st 1lb - so I’ve gained a 1lb on last week. Not bad considering the lack of rhedeg (that’s running in Welsh) this week.

Short back and sides

Congratulations to the Shrimpers of Southend who booked their place in the Championship next season after a pulsating and highly entertaining 2 all draw at the Liberty Stadium today. It was a cracking game with the Swans playing better than I’ve seen them do for a while, perhaps the crowd helped as the atmosphere was electric. Unfortunately though, the Swans couldn’t hold on despite taking the lead twice - which now means we must beat the Spirites of Chesterfield next Saturday to guarantee a play-off place. All roads now lead to north Derbyshire!

One other thing worth a mention from today were the two women (I won’t call them ladies) who decided to have a blow-for-blow argument (blood noses to the fore) behind the East Stand during the half time interval, much to the amazement and amusement of hundreds of other people.

We decided to take an evening drive up Mynydd Gellionen, in light of the lovely evening sunset and we weren’t disappointed with the views over the lower Swansea Valley right down to Swansea Bay. DDWT Junior was also immensely impressed with the number (and variety) of ‘moo cows’ as he calls them that were wondering about the mountain road - much to our amusement!

Here are a few snaps of the colourful evening sky which I took at the top of Mynydd Gellionen.

Popped into the local hairdressers this morning a quick ’short back and sides’ and was amazed that it cost me £7 for the privilege. Now not being a regular, I was just curious if anyone else out there knows if this is the ‘going’ rate? It was a nice haircut though, so I’m not whingeing too much *smile*

Dodgy knee

I’m afraid that my training has suffered a major setback this week, with me developing what can be best described as arthritic pain in my right knee joint. It’s been playing me up a few weeks, but on Tuesday it got to the stage whereby it was even uncomfortable to walk, let alone run.

I suppose it’s partly due to my rugby playing days and also the fact that I have a pin (from knee to ankle) in my leg after suffering a nasty leg injury some 8 years ago. Having said that, I’m still perplexed as to why it’s started to play up now. Mrs DDWT insists that I go to the docs, but I’m not a big fan of that idea, usually because you get the feeling of being ‘fobbed off’ with some “Ah, yes that’s probably it” kind of response when discussing the symptoms.

So off to Google I went in search of an answer and believe it or not I found one - which probably isn’t surprisingly given diversity of the web. My symptoms seem to match what is described as ‘Runners Knee‘ - now there’s a surprise not!

Anyway, with the bank holiday weekend ahead of me I’m going to remain positive and look forward to watching the Swans play the Shrimpers of Southend tomorrow in what can only be described as a MASSIVE game for both teams. The Swans have a play-off place to fight for, whilst a win for Southend will see them promoted to the Championship. With a near 20,000 crowd roaring the teams on it’ll be a cracking day I’m sure.

35th birthday party

Today was the lovely Mrs. DDWT’s 35th birthday and believe me she looks damn good for her age. In fact, she looks more like a 28 year old (I know I’m biased) because she’s blessed with a young face, unlike muggins here. To celebrate the occasion, we had the family around and do what you do on most birthday parties - eat and drink, oh and blow out the candles on the cake of course.

A visit to Next is also now planned in order to alleviate Mrs. DDWT’s now bulging voucher wallet.

As for me, well I attended day 2 of my ‘Leadership and Motivation’ course and once again found the whole experience rather interesting and though provoking. We spent a lot of time going over the VAK (Visual - Auditory - Kinesthetic) learning styles and NLP (Neural Linguistic Programming) during the day and I must say both topics were very interesting and indeed useful.

I have taken a lot away from the last two days and shall look to use some of the principles and ideas I have picked up from the various theories and put them into practice in my current role as a web manager. It’s certainly opened my eyes to a lot of stuff which previously taken fro granted, so a positive start has already been made.

Leadership and motivation

Today saw me attend a ‘leadership and motivation’ course and I must confess that by 4:30 this afternoon I’d lost all of my motivation and would happily be a follower rather than a leader!! It’s not that the course wasn’t interesting - in fact it was - but I simply couldn’t take any more theory.

For those of you ‘into’ that sort of thing, we looked closely at the traits and attributes of good leaders and as you can imagine various names cropped up. For me personally, I was more interested in the traits of a good leader (as opposed to actual leaders) and came up with the following as being essential - communication, honesty, flexible, optimistic, motivated and understanding. Ultimately, I guess everyone’s perception of what makes a good leader is different and that was very apparent today.

The ‘motivation’ aspect was a completely different kettle of fish and arguably more interesting - in terms of concept. This part of the course covered Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ theory and David Kolb’s ‘Learning Styles’ theory. It certainly proved very thought provoking stuff, but I suppose you could always argue the use and benefits for/against such theories in any organisation however big or small.

One other web site worth noting in ‘Business Balls’ which will no doubt provide me with some useful anecdotes for any future meetings I might organise/chair!

Knock knock

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that everyone has to earn a living, but one of my pet hates at the moment is door-to-door salesmen. These predominantly young and often very arrogant people seem to be constantly ringing the doorbell with great savings on telephone calls, electricity, gas, double glazing and you name it we’ve got it.

There was a time when I’d happily listen to them wax lyrical for 20 minutes - from a sales script - on my doorstep before taking great pleasure in informing them “no thanks”. Even that isn’t fun anymore. I mean let’s face it, we get hassled by post, by telephone, by txt message and even in the high street sometimes - so I’ll be damned if I’, going to get hassled on my own doorstep as well.

I’m a massive fan of self service, which is why I love the internet so much and loathe the “in your face” sales approach so much. I understand that not everyone’s an anorak like me, but it’s about choice at the end of the day, and who asks for salesmen to come knocking on the door?

Well now that I’ve had a rant, I’ll just put a signpost here about my 29 minute run today. Why the signpost, well it’s just so that I can look back over my blog in days/months/years to come and think - it’s no wonder my bloody knees are knackered!

Gower explorer

We continued our tour around the Gower beaches today with a visit to Caswell Bay. It had been a good number of years since I last visited Caswell, but on returning I could instantly remember why it was always one of my favourite Gower beaches. The soft golden sand makes it an ideal destination for families and no doubt the DDWT family shall be returning again in the not too distant future. Of course no visit to the beach or anywhere for that matter, would be complete without my usual snapshots.

Seeing as the promised rain never materialised in these parts, I decided to go for a bike ride after we got back from Caswell. Given that I’d done my exploring for the day, I opted to do the same 14 mile ride I did the other week and take in Route 43 up to Ystalyfera. It certainly blew away any cobwebs I might have had left!

The tale of the tape was once again in my favour this week with another 2lb weight loss - which has now set me tumbling down to 17st exactly. Maybe getting to my target weight of 16st 7lbs isn’t as impossible as I thought it was going to be when I started all this fitness stuff back in January.

What’s your role?

I’ve been doing some work recently that involved looking at Belbin’s team roles and team building methodologies - obviously this also involved an assessment of my team role and profile. It was at this stage I thought it would be interesting to make a comparison with the last Belbin assessment I had back in 1993 whilst at university (studying a maths and computing degree I hasten to add).

It was weird to find out - although perhaps not totally unexpected - that I’d moved from being a Shaper (SH) to a Co-ordinator (CO). What me made chuckle more though was that in terms of negativity, I’m now manipulative as opposed to being provocative!

With the weather being a warm and sunny 16 degrees today, we decided to take a stroll down to Blackpill Lido and make the most the weather. DDWT Junior was particulary impressed with the variety of play stations at his disposal and we were also fortunate enough to see a rather nice sunset over Blackpill later in the evening.

Nicknames

Being a glutton for punishment and somewhat vain in terms of my physical appearance (aren’t we all?) I went running along the beach again today. In order to satisfy my statistical nature and for the purpose of maintaining my training record, I note that I only managed a 24 minute session today.

Nicknames are funny things aren’t they. I mean they can be highly flattering in some respects and immensely hurtful in others - at this point I seem to recall many from my younger days which fall into both categories, especially the latter! However during the last 15 months of employment, I can recall several nicknames that I have affectionately been called by my office colleague (whom is known simply as JR). I mean to be called ‘Shrek‘, ‘Johnny Cash‘, ‘Greg Rusedski‘, ‘Licorice Man’, ‘Big D’ and ‘The Bouncer’ during this time has been very amusing, if somewhat bizarrely confusing - as to why I’ve been attributed with some of these titles. JR tells me it’s to do with a variety of things - my appearance, my dress sense and my attitude. Yikes, my sort of pciture does that present! Anyway, I’m sure there’ll be more nicknames over time and if I’m honest, they’re far nicer than some of the things I can imagine I’ve been called!

I watched ‘Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason‘ tonight with Mrs. DDWT and although I usually keep an open mind when it comes to chick flicks, I’m afraid I found this one rather annoying on the whole. Perhaps it is becuase I tend to lack patience when it comes to way over the top dizzy people (such as Bridget Jones (played by Renée Zellweger) or maybe it’s because film sequels are usually crap anyway.

Whilst on the subject of the movies, those film buffs amongt you might want to check out the Internet Movies Database Goofs Section - i.e. errors that shouldn’t have made it into a movie, but somehow got by the editors. There are some classics in there believe me!

Back on track

Well I finally got my arse in gear today and started back with the running - having done nothing in terms of physical fitness since last Monday (April 10th) tut tut.

In retrospect, I’d missed my lunchtime trot along the beach and surprisingly the 38 minute jaunt was a lot easier than I’d anticipated. Perhaps the break had helped me recharge my batteries, even if it didn’t feel like it had.

Whilst on the theme of exercise, perhaps you’d kindly like to sponsor me for the 29 mile Gower Bike Ride and raise money for the British Heart Foundation in due course.

Please visit my personal sponsorship page and make a donation - it’s for a very worthy cause and in return I’ll keep you all updated with my preparation for the bike ride - saddle soreness and all!