Two Thousand and Great – Week 30

Dear all,

I think finally someone’s challenge might finish me off…

A lovely week, although somewhat tempered by the news that Carol Vorderman is being forced to leave Countdown and I might be the bastard son of Radovan Karadzic (all will be revealed later).

Tuesday was one of those strange natural phenomena which lead to a horrific new use for the beard. As it was lovely weather, I decided to go swimming at the Lido in Tooting instead of my usual trip to the club in London. I’d rather hoped a day of sunny rays would have warmed the water above its near freezing norm but somehow the water felt even colder than normal. The pool was full of people, in wetsuits except one idiotic soul. (Those of a weak constitution might wish to skip the next few paragraphs)

There’s two ways of getting into the pool when it’s that cold, jump in and feel your testicles retract so quickly into your body that you look like you’ve got mumps, or edge in inch by inch and experience a strange fountain of eternal youth style transformation as shrinkage makes you bioregenerate to the physique of an infant. I’ve calculated you lose about a year per inch (i’m now only 29). That aside, Tuesday also happened to be one of London’s flying ant days – they were everywhere, on tubes, as you walked along the pavements, but also crucially in and around outdoor swimming pools. 

To try and combat the aerial invasion several swimming pool attendants were scooping ants from the surface of the pool wioth big nets in the deep end but essentially, they were fighting a losing battle, there were ants everywhere on the top of the water. The water tension was too strong for them to take off again but they were light enough to sit on the top of the water.

Swimming along I discovered to my horror that ants also follow the adage ‘any port in a storm’ and started to cling to my beard for refuge. Getting to the end of a length I had to swim the last few metres underwater as otherwise I ended up with a face full of creepy crawlies.

The capture of  Radovan Karadzic provided many people with the chance to have some fun at my bearded expense but it did raise an eerie prospect, when I dye my beard white in December, i’m going to look just like that – does it mean I will have to take up a job as a faith healer? 

Aside from that, this spell of hot weather is doing me in, I can’t sleep. Thankfully I have found out that at  4:30am they repeat countdown on Channel 4. I’m not sure whether to admit this but last week I got aroused whilst watching Carol Vorderman…  I know, seven letters, I was quite proud of myself.

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A very different excerpt herel, but I thought I’d share with you all, if you feel the need to vent your spleen at anyone in the next couple of weeks – can I suggest sending all spite to murrayinahurry@gmail.com - a friend of mine was looking for a place to live and in response to her advert on gumtree he offered to help towards her rent by paying her to look at her in underwear – claiming it would just be like her going to the beach in a bikini where men look at you for nothing! If it puts anyone at ease he also claims to be a handsome professional business man… So generally feel free to unload any vehemence on this character, people like this make my skin crawl and deserve neutering.

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Back to the almost normality of my life and challenges now, earlier in the year it appeared that everyone was trying to kill me by setting more and more dangerous challenges. i mentioned this in a bar and someone has come up with a great idea. They want me to die – well sort of. The challenge is for me to die on film – they suggested a horror movie and it sounds brilliant, and a lot more fun than there other idea which involved artificially inseminating a cow – trust me it was quite late and a few drinks had been drunk.

More news soon, I have to run.

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Keep on challenging me and I’ll keep on accepting

Rob / Devani

Two Thousand and Great – Week 29 (AKA he didn’t lose it, it was just mislaid)

Dear all

To best appreciate this email you should read it with a big grin on your face, I have had one for the last five days and there looks like no sign of it shifting….

I started the week with my third and final strange day of July, Cow Appreciation Day. After meeting some cows recently at the farm where I completed the sheep shearing challenge I wasn’t quite as scared of them as I used to be, that said I still felt nervous knowing that my aim for the afternoon was to go and befriend a cow. 

I was stuck on how you are supposed to actually appreciate a cow; I am a big fan of beef and a visit to a butcher was an essential, but is it really appreciating it to just eat it? I had to do a little research and find out what else they are used for – cows are brilliant for so many other things – like leather for sofas and ill fitting trousers. 

I also learnt how to say Cow in a number of languages my faves being Japanese “Ushi” and Korean “So”. The one thing I thought would be universal is the how to say moo, but it appears it differs from country to country – in Finnish it’s Ammuu, German Muh, Portuguese Muuu and Norwegian Mo, these all kind of make sense as the have the M sound in which is why I was thrown by Hebrew Go’eh – can anyone figure that out? To see some pictures of the cows I visited look here - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=61653&id=660945790

On Wednesday I made contact with a really nice bloke from Southwell Racecourse who I had been told was the best person to talk to about getting a horse race named after me / my charity. To sponsor a race usually cost upwards of £250, but this being a charity effort he was willing to try and help me out. He is responsible for selling the races to sponsors, but has said that if he finds a night where he has already made his budgets and there is a spare race on the card, I will be able to get it named after my charity for free so fingers crossed. The races are usually named about 6 weeks in advance but as soon as I know when and where it is I’ll let you all know, it would be a great idea for an outing.

On Wednesday it was also confirmed that I definitely had a place in the meet and greets with Girls Aloud on Thursday night. The girls management had been given warning of my intentions, but I was told it would totally be at the Nicola’s discretion whether she would agree to kiss me. Following last weeks loss of Mojo with the failed cousin kiss and the deflating failure of Cheer Up The Lonely Day, I wasn’t feeling 100% confident. The girls were due to perform at around 9pm and I was asked to meet up with the organisers an hour early. there were about 20 people who were to meet the band, these included small children, some competition winners and a few special needs kids, I was conspicuous by the fact I didn’t have any merchandise for the girls to sign or didn’t appear to know every word of every song. I spent the time waiting chatting to the parents and the carers, trying to hide the very conspicuous yellow wristband that marked me out as going through to meet the band.

We were lead out to the backstage area where we were told to wait as the girls were just finishing putting their make up on, alarm bells should have started ringing at this point as I know from former girlfriends just how long this can take… 5 minutes became ten, which became 20,30, 40 then 45 minutes. 

The girls were due on stage in less than 5 minutes and they still hadn’t allowed any of the groups in to meet them. The girls finally appeared wearing odd dressing gown type outfits, I watched the first group go in and out all inside about 60 seconds. I had to work out where Nicola was as I would only have 30 seconds to explain everything and try and get a kiss…  I know from experience my elevator pitch to explain the challenges and charity usually takes about 45 seconds – I just hoped I could condense it all, not get nervous and make some sense.

Walking through I found myself placed at the end of a row next to the lovely Sarah Harding, the first thing that struck me was how small and skinny they all were – I now had to try and get past Sarah to talk to Nicola. As someone commented, I might be the first and only person ever to have been in the position where I am asking Sarah Harding to get out of the way so I could kiss Ginger Aloud, but I did manage to garble out a few words. The girls management (camera nazi’s) informed us we wouldn’t be able to take photos with our own cameras but official photographers would be on hand to take shots.. On Friday I was sent an email with the subject line Nicola is slightly blocked – and the attached photo

 You see the thing is, when I leant across to kiss the girl second to my left I could have sworn it was Nicola Roberts, looking at this I am now not so sure.

So far this mail out seems to be very horsey based, and it’s about to continue on that theme – one of my challenges this year involves mascots, the original challenge involved a football mascot but I am slightly adapting it. In September there is a famous Mascot’s race at Huntingdon Racecourse and I was talking to one of the racecourse owners at Sandown. I explained to him how Macmillans don’t have a mascot and what a shame it was I couldn’t enter the race as I didn’t have a costume. (I had also pitched my running the race to the internet betting firm based above my office a few months back and they weren’t interested and then let it drop down my list of challenges.) Anyway, the fellow I was talking to seemed quite taken with the idea and mentioned Kicking Kenny the Kempton mascot to me as a possible costume. I gave him my card and he said he’d try and sort it and drop me a line – which could be great fun If you have no idea what it’s all about watch this - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki3FXJQoFrI

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I think I need to give a few updates at this point..

So far I have had about 6 people say they are up for joining the Monopoly pub crawl and strangely the majority of them are girls. If you fancy it the date is August 9th and we’ll be drinking through the day…

I had a few good suggestions for Air guitar songs – most votes went for ZZ Top’s Sharp Dressed Man although I am very tempted to go with Girls Aloud’s No Good Advice, maybe I can mash them together?

I did get another response from OKCupid this week, it said bored, single, 34 looking for hot action, so I’ve sent her some ironing, it should keep her busy.

I’m still looking for people to go swimming with – if the weather holds the lido by the Serpentine looks a must.

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Finally I have been set a challenge this week that I can’t decide whether to accept or not. It revolves around the Dorset Naga chilli, which has officially been rated the hottest chilli in the world blitzing the normal scovilles scales. to give some reasons why I’m not sure watch this video – he tastes chillis professionally and well the pictures say it all - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR7jvw9W-TQ

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Keep on challenging me and I’ll keep on accepting

Rob / Devani

Two thousand and Great – Week 28

Dear all

Another week another strange day, and a fun new challenge inspired by the cock rock magnificence of US Independence Day.

I started the week trying to organise a piss up in a boardgame – one of my challenges is to do a Monopoly Pub Crawl which is looking increasingly like being on Saturday 9th August (should you be free and want to join me). I spent a little while researching routes and it looks possible to do it in a day with a 2 zone travelcard, to fit it all in it’ll need to be a bit regimented like allowing a maximum of about 25 minutes in each pub. That said every pub crawl I have ever been on starts with a great deal of planning then becomes a drunken mess about 10 pubs in – the person who set the challenge also encouraged me to try and get donations from drinkers in the bars, which means I am also going to try and get some tee-shirts made with my new logo (see below) and various monopoly pieces on them (following the Abraham Lincoln outfit I should be the Top Hat but every other piece is up for grabs) so if you want to join in let me know and I’ll try to get a tee shirt in your size with a playing piece on the back so respond with sizes and what you’d like to be whether a dog, boot, Iron, Wheelbarrow, thimble, cannon, racecar etc..

Friday was an odd strange day and one I didn’t really know how to approach. At the beginning of the month Cheer Up The Lonely Day sounded a lovely idea, but I had no clue how to do this. I mentioned in last weeks mailshot about my company’s away day, well, at the dinner table on the Friday night we were joined by the brilliant Guy Browning – some of you may know him from his How to… columns in the Guardian magazine on Saturday – If you haven’t seen them go on Amazon and buy some of the compilations of his writing – Never hit a jellyfish with a spade or never push when it says pull they are excellent and make superb presents for people… Anyway he joined us for dinner and in his words was going to attempt to break the JLA curse (historically at my company pretty much everyone is single or if they’re not when they join they become so quite quickly) to do this he decided to write us all a classifieds style ad by getting everyone at the table to write something about each other eg. Rob is wonderful because… and then he collected the pieces of paper and took them off to write an opus (in 30 words) about each of us.  After receiving the words on Wednesday I knew how to complete the Cheer Up the Lonely Day challenge – I would create a profile (on OKCupid if you want to look it up)  and respond to various lonely hearts ads with niceties and a joke from a famous comedian which should in the least raise a smile – I stole jokes for the likes of Demetri Martin, Tim Vine, Emo Philips, Alex Horne comics who can all produce hilarious one liners. 

Before I tell you what response(s) my ad and messages received I feel I should share the profile written for me with you - Stubborn, bloody-minded, force for good, aka bald headed freebird, is the ultimate challenge for fearless bear tamers. Unchain me and let me dance. Aside from the bear taming bit which would probably guarantee me a date down the Vauxhall Tavern (for those unsure look it up on the interweb) the rest sort of sells me. Anyway I contacted around 30 people from around the uk – receiving precisely one reply! and she wasn’t amused by the joke I sent. So in effect not sure I really managed to cheer up the lonely that much. I talked to various lonely looking people on tubes and in a couple of bars (think the fellow passengers on the tube were scared witless as bearded man was doing something which is against the unwritten rules of London by socialising on public transport) so thus far scared people and been blanked by others –  good to know I’ve still got it.

On that theme Saturday night I attended a friends birthday which was supposed to be taking place at a Polish disco (if they ask I can tell them what is was like as they did have the honour of being carried home before 12 to try and sleep it off) – amongst the guests was a girl who had only been mentioned in hushed awe since the start of the red head challenge – this girl is a cousin of the birthday girl and truth be told stunning. I think I lost the ability to speak properly for a few minutes when she first arrived call it Carol Dekker syndrome –  but feel possibly my my chances of getting a kiss might have been scuppered before I even had the chance to talk to her – unbeknownst to me before making it into the bar she spoke the birthday girl who amongst pirate impressions intimated that I would try and kiss her but doubtless didn’t mention the charity side of things – which automatically made the bearded paedo looking one persona non grata. Once I regained the power of speech I offered to buy the table a round of drinks to which I got the cold shoulder, rebuffed when I tried to join in a conversation with her and a mutual friend, then when someone else tried to explain the whole charity thing to her at the end she claimed not to be a red head! I’ve so still got it.

But getting away from my obvious short comings as a potential date, on Sunday I heard that one of the spas a friend contacted on my behalf seems to be up for the challenge of ripping off all my body hair – I just have a strange fear that he has somehow negotiated to be responsible for ripping some of that hair out too in a mascohistic way.

Tomorrow is my third and last strange day of July and a chance to face one of my biggest fears – it’s Cow Appreciation Day and along with furry fruit, cows are one of the few things that I’m scared of. To try and get around the whole live scary cow thing I made a call to the Tate to see if Damien Hirst’s Mother and Child Divided (aka two cow halves in Formaldehyde) were on display. According to the very helpful man at the gallery it is in storage somewhere but not logged as it is a new acquisition (the original 1993 version had deterioirated and Hirst remade the piece a couple of years ago for a Turner Prize retrospective which he subsequently donated) It has been shipped back from Japan they just don’t know where it is and even if I asked really nicely they wouldn’t know exactly where it is for me to go and see. I guess this means I have to go and find a real cow.

Almost finally, wish me luck on Thursday, I am off to Sandown racecourse where I am 1st reserve on the list for meet and greets with Girls Aloud – this means I might finally get one of my famous redheads who are worth the little extra for the redhead challenge.

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This week I have been set a couple of corking challenges - 

Here’s a date for you all to put in your diaries on the 14th September the London heats of the UK Air Guitar Championships are being held at the Tooting Tram and Social http://www.ukairguitar.com/ I have been challenged to enter and the donation is on a sliding scale – the better I do the more I will raise. Looking at the rules I have to put together a routine which lasts about 3 minutes – suggestions welcomed for tracks to perform to (you all know I would choose Freebird but at 9.06 it’s a little over my time limit, especially as the magic starts about 6 minutes in). I need to fill in the application form pretty soon so get your ideas in fast.

One other challenge that has been mentioned includes a bit more design as someone wants me to design a tee shirt which must be worn everyday on my way to and from work for a month which advertises my fundraising this year to try and get some strangers to make donations. I think the premise was they would match all donations made by people seeing the shirt and giving. 

Anyway I have to go and swim, hope the weather holds as the Lido much nicer when it’s sunny.

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Keep on challenging me and I’ll keep on accepting

Rob / Devani

Two Thousand and Great – Week 27

Dear all

A rather eccentric week with the first strange day in July and some movement on existing challenges.

I forgot to mention something last week, whilst away at my company’s planning weekend – I managed to start on the ‘find someone to go swimming with’ add on to the original swim twice a week challenge. The spa where we had gone to had a couple of pools and as one of my work colleagues pointed out all I had to do was ask them to swim and I had made a start on catching up the missed swims from the ride. After initially making a fool of myself by falling into the pool via a rather hazardous slip / splits routine it transpired that the pool had underwater piped music which was incredible off putting. Swimming is supposed to be serene and fun but by dipping your head underwater it became a strange Enya based water torture.

Friday was one of my monthly club nights, as it fell on the 4th July we decided to have an American Independence Day theme… The decision was made to have a purely US based playlist. I would be in charge of Cock rock / soft rock and the like (Not soft cock rock which is something entirely different) and the other DJs would cover things like Soul, motown, hip hop etc… We decided fancy dress was a good idea (when is it ever a bad idea) and set about finding outfits. I spent a little time trying to think of US celebrities with beards and ended up plumping for Abraham Lincoln, we had cheerleaders Waynes World Characters and a remarkably accurate villain number 2 (Marv) from Home Alone.

 

To help everyone get in the mood we also decided to dress the bar out with whatever Americana we could find, so my housemate offered to go to the fancy dress shop in Colliers Wood to grab some US flags and streamers, the shop had no carrier bags so he rolled up the flags and put them over his shoulder and filled his pockets with USA themed streamers…  Being a lovely day he decided to walk back to our house through Tooting. For those unaware of the geo political make up of South London, Tooting has a very high asian population and one of the largest mosques / Islamic centres in London. His journey managed to coincide exactly with the end of prayers, when hundreds of muslims leave the centre stopping traffic and making pavements impassable. Dead centre in the middle of this throng was my housemate trying desperately to shrink away from the fact he’s standing there looking more American than apple pie.

The night itself was great fun, I managed to find a use for the beard at last by dressing as Abraham Lincoln… this did however throw up a new challenge – someone wants me to dress as Abraham Lincoln for a week (they also mentioned having to do the Abe speech* from Bill & Ted on demand, but I don’t think we discussed donations so I will have to let you know what happens on this one.) 

On Saturday I helped a friend move his boat to a new set of moorings. He lives on a canal boat which was based at Limehouse and needed to move to his next stop in Paddington, unfortunately this meant he had to go through 12 locks to reach it. He sent an email around during the week and I said i’d help as I love water and had been thinking a bit about canal boats since going across the Llangollen Canal earlier this year. Getting to Limehouse at about 1:30 with a steaming headache (Fresh Air’s after party seemed to finish about 4am) we set off on our modern day Swallows and Amazons style adventure.

It had been a few years since I had been on a canal but quickly remembered how to use the locks, that said every single winch clank reverberated through my skull, my boating companion said canals were supposed to be good for clearing the head - though I felt berocca, sleep and nurofen could have done it better, that said at first the locks came thick and fast and it was exciting to be leaping off the boat and running ahead on the tow path to set the locks ready for the skipper to glide into, it was a welcome distraction to the American cock rock still going through my head… (how did I forget to play Crazy Nights by Kiss and or Steppenwolf’s Born to Be Wild?)

Some of the parks alongside the canal were beautiful, several people were taking advantage of the sunshine having BBQs and picnics. We fell into synch with another boat and this made the locks even quicker to get through. We formed a formidable partnership with three people working in conjunction to open and fill the locks smoothly. The skill of both skippers was clearly evident as they squeezed the boats alongside each other in the locks with barely a couple of feet clearance between them.

I’ve been to Camden loads of times and seen canal trips advertised but never really understood where they went and what you’d see. I must admit having travelled alongside one of these pleasure boats for a while, I can’t work out why anyone would ever do it? The sheer number of locks meant that their journey was pretty slow going,the canal also ran through some of London’s more industrial areas, by Kings Cross and Islington, I overhead some of the commentary that their guide was giving but there’s only so many ways you can say, beyond that wall, behind that industrial estate is…

After stopping for a late lunch we reached Camden Lock at about 8 o’clock which is where I left the boat. The boat owners had no more locks to go through and the trip down to Paddington looked easy enough. My highlight of the journey was the stretch through the Islington Tunnel The boat we were on had no headlights and taking on a 800+ metre tunnel in the semi-dark was lots of fun.

Sunday saw my first Strange Day in July with the Build a Scarecrow day, being a city boy I had never built a scarecrow and my main reference points were the Wizard of Oz or Bonfire night ‘Guys’ I set off to the shops on Sunday morning in search of some wood to fashion a cross from, some packing material (I hoped for Straw but the pet shop was shut) and if possible one of those heads that were popular in the eighties for girls to practice putting make up on (http://www.growingtreetoys.com/product/6211). I had considered ripping a few Estate Agents signs up for the wood, but with house prices already in free fall I didn’t want to be responsible for turning Tooting into a property blackhole so instead I found a hardware store to purchase some broom handles.

Sadly my attempts to find a make up head were failing, I visited a number of charity shops but toys which are now 20 years out of date surprisingly aren’t on the shelves. There were no big traks, Mr Frostys, Simple Simons or space hoppers. My next thought was to try and source a broken mannequin from a shop which had a head I could cannibalise for my scarecrow (I had a very definite design in mind which may or may not have resembled a Hollywood star mentioned earlier in this email which meant a head with hair was all important). 

It’s strange but i’d never noticed how few mannequins have heads, I went into around 8 shops and all of their mannequins were headless. I asked if they had any old versions out back and everyone said no. At this stage I was really starting to struggle, I went into Woolworths and managed to find some masks so if the worse came to the worst I would be able to fashion a head from a stuffed pop sock and then put a mask over it. There was also a garth wig left over from the Americana night on Friday so I could fashion hair if necessary…

On my way home I went past one last charity shop where I saw a pair of slippers which were the answer to all my problems. Without giving too much away I designed a city kids guide to building a scarecrow which can be seen here. 

I’m stupidly proud of my scarecrow but now have no idea what to do with it. Living in a flat on the first floor means I have no garden to put it in; my window box full of herbs is able protected from scavengers and birds by the aforementioned window and whilst we could hoover more in the flat there’s no seedlings growing in the carpets or rugs which could attract crows or other birds. If anyone wants the scarecrow let me know, and I’ll deliver it….

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As for progress I have made contact again with The Troubadour about using their Garret room for the John & Yoko Challenge and they’re still up for it. Hopefully I’ll finally get around to fixing a date for the challenge and then we can set the wheels in motion to auction me off on Ebay and get a little TV / press publicity for Twothousandandgreat.

Work has been going on behind the scenes by friends and their connections to try and help sort out a kiss from Nicola Robert from Girls Aloud at a forthcoming performance. ( I am ridiculously excited about the prospect of this happening)

I have also written to a number of London based spas about losing every inch of body hair apart from on my head and face that exists, I’m hoping that one of them will agree to do this for free as it is for charity…

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Finally I have been set a new challenge – I need to get a horse race named after me and present the trophy to the winning connections – current thinking is to get a race called the - Sponsor Rob at justgiving.com/twothousandandgreat Stakes This way I get my charity page in all of the major newspapers and can hopefully get a few more donations to the cause.

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Keep on challenging me and I’ll keep on accepting

Rob / Devani

www.justgiving.com/twothousandandgreat

*

Abraham Lincoln: Fourscore and… 
[looks at his pocket watch] 

Abraham Lincoln: seven minutes ago… we, your forefathers, were brought forth upon a most excellent adventure conceived by our new friends, Bill… and Ted. These two great gentlemen are dedicated to a proposition which was true in my time, just as it’s true today. Be excellent to each other. And… PARTY ON, DUDES!