Now what? - In the name of Thiago - Day 266

 

If this is how I feel on a non-walking day, then I'm not really looking forward to three weeks today when this whole thing's over. I've been swapping a few text messages with the good lady today and she predicted this would happen. She's a smart lady, Angelica. I've been lolloping around in a relatively unfocussed away spending some time with Camilla and her son, my godson Harry, but wishing I could be with my girls. It's started to hit me today that I wasn't able to spend the day with Elisa on her birthday on Thursday and that made me feel sad.

I never got to spend a single birthday with the little man that gave this blog its name, so missing birthdays is a particularly painful thing. I've had so much to do this week that I didn't write about Elisa's birthday on the day, even though I did at least manage to speak to her before she went to school and while she was enjoying a lovely Italian meal at her favourite restaurant on Thursday.


Instead today, I've been spending time with this little monkey. Harry is without doubt a right handful but he's also very smart and funny. I like being around him but at the same time I'm more than happy to hand him back over to Camilla when I'm done. He has seemingly inexhaustible levels of energy, which I know is fairly typical of a six-year-old boy but even so, crikes it's draining!

Camilla took Harry to a swimming lesson this morning, while I used the time to do another live interview with BBC Radio Sussex - they're following my progress along the route with weekly Saturday updates - and also caught up with some walk admin and emailed a friend, who is a teacher at Elisa's school to see if they might be able to help with raising a few quid for the cause.


Now I had planned to have a nice relaxing day where I would just put my feet up and generally not get up to much. But as I said before, the energy ball that is Harry Costa Calisto does not entertain such chilled out behaviour. So instead we walked to the park and I let these three fire a few potshots at me for a bit. Unfortunately my wingspan wasn't enough to keep out too many defending this oddly-shaped goal. I think I might have been better off just laying down and hoping the shots crashed into my generous underbelly.


Little Indi here managed to squeeze one beyond my despairing dive and wheeled away in triumph. I love the gleeful look on her face as she proved the boys wrong and watched me beat the ground in frustration as the ball rolled into the net. Good on yer girl!

It's an interesting place Colliers Wood, just on the outskirts of Wimbledon. I like coming here for a visit but honestly I'm glad I don't live here. It's not so much Colliers Wood, more London as a whole I suppose. Everything just seems so hard and people seem to be striving so hard to achieve something, without necessarily knowing what it is. Maybe that's me as well but at least I'm not having to do it at 100 miles per hour.


In between charging around and letting off steam, Harry has also been doing a fair bit of work today; certainly a lot more than Elisa used to when she was his age. As I write this, he's doing some spelling work and before that he was taking on some numeracy challenges involving some big piles of change that were in the collection bucket. I knew they'd come in useful!

I'm going to head out and grab us all a chippy tea in a bit, which is a bit less glamorous than the magnificent roast that Camilla's husband Jorge is threatening to bring back from the Michelin star restaurant he works in tomorrow. Now that is something I am definitely looking forward to!

I'm glad I've made it through the first week of the walk, just the three more to go now and after that, well we'll see. Keep the shares and the donations coming folks, every one makes a difference.



Comments

  1. Mathew HolmesSeptember 26, 2020 at 11:09 PM

    Hi Chris, first very well done and everything you have done so far, you have inspired me to get off my arse and start getting myself moving abit more. We lost our son, Bobby at Royal Stoke after 33 days in April. He is my hero too, like Thiago is yours.

    I also wanted to say that Bobby is just across the gravel path from Thiago at Keele, so I hope that they are playing well together, they sound like they were both absolute warriors from what I have read.

    I noticed Thiago’s head stone go up as I visit Bobby most days! It looks great too.

    PS they had matching Blue dragon flies but we now keep Bobby’s in our garden.

    Keep up the good work and I hope to bump into you there one day mate.

    All the best, Mat Holmes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ChrisSeptember 27, 2020 at 2:16 AM

      Thank you Mat, it's lovely to hear from you. Reading your message naturally brought the tears back but it is such a beautiful thought thinking of the two of them playing. I like that idea very much. The Bobby and Thiago playground sounds a lot more fun than Keele Cemetery! Please look after yourself mate and I'd be very happy to meet if you felt like doing that. If it helps you can find me on Facebook or I'm chrisgibbs76 on Twitter.

      Delete

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