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Skipper's Corner ... Whacky William is back from 'Nam - November 16, 2006
It’s good to be back in England after somewhat unsuccessfully trying to pull off the stunt of returning from Vietnam, going home for eight hours and then going back to the airport to fly to the Algarve for a running tour. As long as my flight to London before the Portugal trip was delayed by less than eleven hours I would catch the next. But we were delayed my 19 hours and 19 minutes. Sometimes it really is better to leave the crazy stunts to Austin Powers.
We were five hours into the flight from Bangkok to London when we developed an oil leak and had to turn around and go back. I can’t quite put a finger on it, but there is something psychologically soul destroying about flying for 10 hours and going precisely nowhere. When we arrived back at Bangkok the stewardess said over the intercom: “Welcome to Suvarnabhumi Airport, thank you for flying Thai, and we hope to see you again soon.” All the Brits on the plane burst out laughing – that’s just the sort of sick, twisted humour we enjoy.
"Barefoot Billy" is born
I highly recommend the running tour to the Algarve put together by Track and Field Tours. Four races in five days of varying lengths and scenery. There was a spectacular 6.5k beach race in which I’d jokingly said to Bruce Tulloh that I would follow his lead from his ‘60s heyday and race barefoot. But two minutes before the start Bruce was shaking his head at me, as he saw me all laced up in flats… “I’m very disappointed in you, William,” he muttered in disgust. I felt like a Marlborough College schoolboy [where he used to teach], who had been busted for smoking behind the bike shed. Bruce went on to note: “you’ll take 30 seconds off your time barefoot.” Well that did it! And “Barefoot Billy” was born. At the end of the race (in which I ran well in to place third), my feet felt a little confused and as if they’d had quite a pummelling, but there were no after effects, and you could well be seeing me going au naturel at a race near you soon (feet-wise that is).
Fried crickets and bee larvae
On my last day in ‘Nam’ I decided to risk going for a few of the local cuisine, and opted for two large dishes of fried crickets and bee larvae. Eck! Yuk! They agreed with me even less than I did with them, and I consequently had acute stomach issues all throughout my time in Portugal. My 83:58 time for the 10-mile race on the last day is admittedly flawed, but let me tell I was in a baaaad way; it could just go down as the gutsiest run of my career. (Excuse the pun). My case wasn’t helped by the officials starting the race over three minutes early. I am never on a start line with such a ludicrous time as that to wait – but on this occasion I paid the penalty and had to weave through 600 bodies during the first mile. Grumble grumble.
Man of the match awards
On the domestic front some man-of-the-match awards to catch up on. Jonesy and Phil are a dead heat for the National ‘6’ for their brilliant returns, and Speighty gets the nod for Mansfield. More please Neil, and welcome to the show! And what a great effort by our scoring debutantes Rob Norville and Matthew Taylor at Coulsdon. Another coin flip for man-of-match, so I’ve compared their performances to Brockwell. Rob’s up eight places, but Matthew’s up 15 so he gets it – heroic stuff, many thanks. We could have had a perfectly good day if not for the late withdrawal of Dave Anderson and Mal Byansi. Lady luck isn’t quite going our way at the moment – but it won’t take much for the tide to turn in our favour, with the business end of the winter still very much to come. The mighty Belles are showing us how it’s done – come on guys, we can’t let them steal our thunder like this!
