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LOCK DOWN GARDENING FOR THE SOUL

Most times in my weekly routine of work home life I had to fit in gardening while working around the British weather. You would have to cut your grass on a day off, when it was dry, and as fast as you can so you didn’t get rained on half way through; lockdown changed all that. When lockdown happened there was a frenzy of activity, doing DIY and all the odd jobs you were leaving until you had time and the garden seemed to be on this list. As we got further into the lockdown we realised that if we could not do the garden today due to rain you could do it tomorrow or the next day; it was very odd that we could do this as we were always scheduled in time for the grass cutting or weeding and if you couldn’t do it that day you would properly had to wait a week or so until you got the chance to do it again, so it could be up to two weeks or more for cutting the grass which made it a much harder task. I love being outside in the fresh air so myself and my little sidekick Nev would go for a w
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Friday morning spelling test

I loved school, but had some bad experiences in primary school. My worst memory of primary school was waking up on a seat in the yard in the rain after cutting my finger with a balsa knife and passing out! What made matters worse was, the ‘trained’ first aider thought it would be best to put me in a seat in the middle of the yard in the rain to get me to pull around! No wonder I’ve had a problem with needles and passing out ever since. The one that stays with me to this day was the barbaric Friday morning spelling test. It had been building up all week, I was and still am terrible at spellings and it all stems from this poorly organised and executed exercise in humiliation. I have a stutter, I have some degree of control on it now but I suffered badly when I was younger and whenever I had to do a reading exercise I would always be marked down because of this, the problem went hand in hand with my spellings. I love to read and have hundreds of books but it always looked like I couldn’
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Youth Conference

Late last year, I was introduced to a lovely lady by the name of Theresa Cave. Sadly, Therea’s son Chris was killed due to knife crime, which prompted her to start a campaign to educate people about the dangers of knives and how we can help the communities of today. She asked me to be part of the First Youth Conference which was held in Redcar; I jumped at the chance to help. The day came and I woke up at 7.15am (damn bladder) sorted out my bag, got petrol and set off for Redcar. It was very windy on the drive down with a massive crosswind, I had just had my jeep fixed so I was crossing my fingers to make it in one piece. I made it down in good time despite the wind and arrived at 9.10am. Once I arrived, I grabbed some coffee, and decided to sit and watch all the people arrive. The conference was held within a community centre, each room dedicated to a workshop which would uniquely inspire and educate young adults. It began in the conference suite, with a panel of guests. The audie
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Nights on the door

The best mask I have is what I look like , a lot of people can’t guess what I do for a living and are very surprised when I tell them I am a full-time Martial Arts Coach; they are even more surprised that I worked the doors of Tynemouth and Whitley Bay for over 13 years. When I started working the doors I was about 10 ½ stone so everyone wanted to fight me lol I fell into door work by accident because I was training and teaching. I was asked to work in Tynemouth by a fellow martial artist called Phil Toby, a monster of a grappler and a seasoned fighter. Before starting working the door I had worked some venues that had parties, but even when I was not working whenever I was at a party people would say “ John will sort it out if there is trouble” So I had done a lot of voluntary work stopping fights at weddings, birthday parties and nights out. I was out drinking one Sunday night and had just getting my first pint of Guinness when Phil came into the pub and said would I start working
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Saturdays at the AFC…. Organised chaos

The Alarm goes off and little Nev licks my feet just in case I fall back to sleep, I get up put some clothes on and take him for his morning walk full of sniffing things, weeing and a poop bag full of last nights tea, then meet Kerry at the car so she can drive me to work with Nev on my knee. As I get dropped off with Nev wondering where I am going and why he is not allowed to come I go to Gregg’s for a sausage sandwich and a full fat coffee (naughty) and head to the gym. In the meantime Kerry drives home to wake the girls up, feed them breakfast and heads to the gym to work their magic behind the desk for the day. When I get to the gym I check the toilets and fill the water boiler so all the coaches can be kept hydrated with coffee and tea so they can teach effectively. I teach a couple of private classes which are like gold dust (as most of them are) some classes have trained at the same time on the same day for over 10-15 years and for this I am truly humbled and honoured that they
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IRONMAN

“I still don’t feel great!” I kept saying a few weeks after I had what I thought was a viral infection. I need to get this sorted. A few weeks earlier on the Tuesday morning I was walking over the bridge coming from Manors car park like I had done a million times before, but this time it was different, I felt like I could not walk well my body just didn’t want to respond; I felt so ill. I made it to the gym and taught a couple of classes then my current class said I should go home. I looked that bad,I had to agree, so I made the call to Kerry. It is so hard to be self employed and not go to work, your body just seems like it goes into your trained response of I am fine, keep working until you fall over. Most times I have Christmas, Easter weekend and one holiday, the same thing year in year out, the only other time is when I injure myself so I can’t physically work or get the flu or viral infection. This is what I thought this was. I had been working hard and trying to hold out unti
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Virus or reset?

I am sitting here on a Tuesday afternoon after a week and a half of lockdown due to the Coronavirus that has swept from China across the world, and created a worldwide pandemic. Planes are grounded, travel is banned, you have to queue 2 metres apart when you go shopping, people are panic buying food like we are going to war! We are in a way. Some things are getting hard to get, we are restricted on our movements with the government telling us to stay indoors and stay safe. We can only go out for essential food and medication, only one walk per day. I have not seen this in my lifetime ( I am a half century now), people have to stay at home there is no work unless you work for the NHS or food supplies or environmental workers. Being a gym owner we closed on the Wednesday night after both Kerry and I discussed the health risks that would expose people coming to train. We had been washing everything at the gym for about 2 weeks before we closed, but we felt it was safer to close until we
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