John Rabbetts Blog

A couple of weeks ago Lianas’ personal trainer, Karen asked Liana if she wanted to do a sponsored walk for Macmillan Cancer Research, there were 3 walks, 7 miles, 12 miles and 19.  The first from Cambridge to Waterbeach, the second from Waterbeach to ELy and the 19 miles from Cambridge to Ely.  Liana being Liana went straight for the 19 Miles and registered herself and Karen.  She went off merrily getting sponsorship as only Liana knows how and on Thursday broke the good news to me…

Karen couldn’t make the walk and Liana asked if I’d go with her (the walk was today - Sunday).  So I managed to get some sponsorship and Liana got the rest and I agreed to do the walk with her. 

Liana had also already arranged a girls night out last night and I had volunteered to pick them up from Bury, so we didnt get to bed until 01:00 and were up at o6:45 this morning.  I took the dogs out(for a very short walk), sorted my stuff and we were on the road to Ely train station at 07:35.

Parked the car at Ely and took the train to Cambridge, being organised  I had already booked the taxi in Cambridge and we were at the start for just before 09:00.

The start was a bit manic, lots of people standing around, we joined what looked like a queue and thankfully were sorted fairly quickly.  We got registered and set off at 09:05.  For any one reading this who knows us you will know we don’t mess around and so we set of at a fair pace.  We overtook a fair few people and were keeping above our 4MPH pace that we had set ourselves.  We reached Waterbeach (7 miles) within 2 hours (actually 1 1/2 hours and Im doubtful it was 7 miles) and just kept going.

We kept passing walkers and after a few hours the marshalls were getting less and at one point the people in front turned left along a road when the path seemed to go straight on.  We followed them although I think it was a bit of a detour.  We plodded on and with Ely Cathedral in site after overtaking the last of the people we could see thought we may have taken a wrong turning.  We kept going and I checked the sat nav (handy on my phone)  and we were going in the right direction.  After 3 hours and 50 minutes we could see the finish.  We pushed on and to our amazement were the first people in.  I think thier 19 miles is a bit optimistic as I measured around 16 1/2 and we completed the walk in 4 hours 1 minute.

At the finish we had a photo and a cup of coffeee and Star Radio (local Cambridge Radio) was there and they wanted us to do a bit on the radio.  Liana obliged and had a chat on air.

So 16 1/2 miles later £150 sponsorship, we came back home and had to take the dogs out for their walk….

I finally took the plunge and purchased a Garmin 196 for my flying, I’m only doing local jaunts at the moment but it gives me a bit more confidence finding my way back to Old Buckenham from wherever.  great bit of kit which I’ll review here later - can be used with FS/FSX as well which is

Ferns Alight
Originally uploaded by drinie_beanie.

Beautiful photo from our friend Sandrine - you can check out more of her photos on flickr.com: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27738346@N00/

 (and more of mine): http://www.flickr.com/photos/rabbs/

Well it’s budget day and I think most people are either confused or unhappy.  Gordon Brown made an excellent job of hiding the tax increases in the smallprint of his speech and announcing the tax cuts.  I don’t think it was unexpected, he did say it would be a neutral budget - we just hear what we want to hear.

Thankfully the tax on 4x4 hasn’t really come through and by the looks of it my Freelander will cost an additional £25 to tax next year but I’ll save a few hundred quid in Income tax and pay a hundred quid extra in National Insurance (Confused yet .  A budget calculator can be found here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/business/budget_calc/html/budget_calculator.stm

For those worried about the car tax bit - you can find details here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4834480.stm

Budget docs can be found here:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/business/2006/budget_2006/documents/default.stm

Good news for businesses, for the rest of us I don’t think there’s too much to shout about..

Hmm urban ledgend methinks - but is funny that the press took this one for face value in UK

Subject: Fw: Look out for your coworkers

Bosses of a publishing firm are trying to work out why no one noticed that one of their employees had been sitting dead at his desk for FIVE DAYS before anyone asked if he was feeling okay.

George Turklebaum, 51, who had been employed as a proof-reader at a New York firm for 30 years, had a heart attack in the open-plan office he shared with 23 other workers. He quietly passed away on Monday, but nobody noticed until Saturday morning when an office cleaner asked why he was still working during the weekend.

His boss Elliot Wachiaski said: "George was always the first guy in each morning and the last to leave at night, so no one found it unusual that he was in the same position all that time and didn’t say anything. He was always absorbed in his work and kept much to himself."

A post mortem examination revealed that he had been dead for five days after suffering a coronary. Ironically, George was proofreading manuscripts of medical textbooks when he died.

… You may want to give your co-workers a nudge occasionally.

http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/horrors/a/turklebaum.htm

Welcome to my Blog, not really sure what I will put here or if I’ll keep it running but I’ll see.  I’ll try and post something here at least once a week so come and take a look once in a while.