The day I met Dave

We're not talking Dave of the Cam, although to give him his dues he has arrived on Cornish soil a couple of times. I wouldn't know what to say to him though, would I?

Would you Adam and Eve it, my #secretcrush David Miliband arrived in Truro last week, looking relaxed in a local pub as he met Labour member, befuddled diners and local digital editors who were very pleased they managed to put some mascara on that morning.

Firstly let's take a moment or two to look back on the last Labour government and how much Cornwall featured on their radar. Now what was his name again? Oh yes, Blair. No, he never came down. Gordon did though. Once.

Picture by Jonathan Jacobs. That's my Concentrating Face by the way...

Anyway, apparently keen to win Cornish Labourites who've been stung after a tactical vote to the yellow in order not to let the blues in (and look where that got me, I mean us), he was (rightly) shocked at the Lib-Con government’s plans to reject European Convergence funding, the majority of which would have benefited Cornwall.


Dave also told me he didn't think coalition governments would be the Way Of The Future, should there be a majority vote at election. He's hoping for a quick and decisive swing back to Labour in the next election. Aren't we all.

UPDATE: I stand duly corrected by @penzancemike and @cernyw - Mr Blair it seems DID come to Cornwall - the proof is in the hair do - I mean pictures...

Jumping for joy

Jumping 100ft from a cliff to the water seems foolhardy when you write it down. It really does. I acknowledge this and appreciate it.

But come on people, some of the most dangerous things in life are the most exhilarating. Jumping out of a plane, abseiling up a sheer rock face, catching a 20 foot wave with reef glistening just a couple of inches under the water below you - taking part in any of these pursuits can kill you. But it’s undeniable they also make you feel more alive.

The vast majority of people taking part in extreme sports do so where they know it’s ‘safe’. By safe I mean where it’s been done more than once before (successfully!) and with other people around them who are experienced.

The tombstoner most recently in the press (click on the link to vote in the poll) for jumping off a cliff in the West Cornwall did so whilst being photographed and videoed – now as much as I would love to believe this dude balanced his camera on a grassy knoll with a rock wobbling on the shutter and then set up his video cam to record his plummet, I would hazard to guess that he wasn’t in fact alone.

These guys more-than-likely scouted the location previously, checked the tides, and by doing so, the depth of the water he was jumping into. No-one wants footage of a guy jumping in to, at best a couple of legs in plaster, at worst his death.

Those who injure themselves doing extreme sports are 90% of the time rookies – people who don’t understand or take hindrance to the risks.

I recently had a long conversation with the Editor of the Cornishman about the morals of printing the picture, condemned by emergency services, on the front page of the paper. She was concerned it could be construed as encouraging copycats to either the sport or the location. My stance is picture or not, those who want to jump will jump. 100 foot is a long way down - only those who understood what they are doing would attempt it.

And as so far as encouraging children whose understanding is less, and sense of immortality increased, the answer certainly isn’t to ban. Banning simply increases curiosity and forces them to unknown, unsupervised areas. The answer, my friends, is education – always education.

So join a coasteering class and learn all about it. As for the guy in the picture – good luck to him.

More Clarkson nonsense

There's a reason I don't watch Top Gear.

It's not because I'm not a petrol head (although that would be true enough).

It's not that little-man-complex Hammond makes my skin crawl more every inch his hair drops towards his shirt collar (or that piece of leather hanging tragically around his neck).

It's Clarkson.

For starters he thinks he is the don of all gentleman kind. Which is peculiar, because this is far, far, far from the truth. Apparently his sole purpose in life is to leer at women he hasn't a hope in hell of attracting.

And no, I'm not ugly, and no, I'm not a lesbian.

Quite apart from enraging the eco-friendly by advocating fuel guzzling, environmental nightmare 4x4s and more recently losing any waning respect he might have from our Muslim friends by claiming he saw a wind-stricken burka-clad lady with a red g-string on underneath, he could be described as being a boil on the butt of male humanity.

"The most dangerous time to drive a car is round about now. Sunny skies, light breezes, girls wearing short skirts, because the thing is, you can't not look. You can't physically not look."

It's enough to make me never want to wear a skirt again. Stop it, Clarkson. You're being disgusting.

Whatever happened to the tuck shop?

When I was at school we weren’t rich enough to enjoy school dinners so off we went with our packed lunch. My older brother and I were treated to a sandwich, two pieces of fruit, a homemade yoghurt in a glass pot (which as I remembered used to roll off the table and smash about 50% of the time – health and safety nightmare) and a bottle of water – sometimes Ribeana (made so weak it simply coloured the water).

I think back to those days now and marvel at how lucky I was. Homemade yoghurt? Two of my five a day already ticked off by lunch?

Our one guilty pleasure was the tuck shop – open at morning break with it’s shiny wrappers delighting us under-10s. If we’d saved our pocket money or found the odd 20pence down the back of the sofa, we might have shared a Mars Bar. And what a treat it was. So much sugar in your mouth your taste buds felt like they were going to explode.

My parents weren’t especially strict – in fact I have one of the most un-quenchable sweet teeth of anyone I know – sweets and fizzy drinks just weren’t as readily available back then as they are now.

This food-scare picture of a little boy with the average amount of junk food a child his age will eat each year in the UK is pretty terrifying. Check out all those chips and fish fingers! And how about those party ring biscuits! I’m not au fait with what the ‘Dinosaurs’ are but even in my ignorance I’m pretty sure they’re not actually dinosaurs. I can see the E numbers form here.

Picture c/o the Daily Mail

My Grandmother was an orthodontist so I guess my brother and I are probably the only two over 30’s in the UK who don’t have a single filling. Still, had I eaten all this every year I’m pretty sure I would have a mouth full of them. Let alone considering the affects of the sugar highs and withdrawal lows that come with it all – something I only remember having at Easter after nailing all my chocolate eggs and finding and working my way through my long suffering brothers.

There’s got to be an answer. My parents both worked and still found time to make a family dinner each night – even if the dog did used to end up with all my vegetables. How will we ever beat child obesity if this is still what we’re feeding them?

Are we too reliant on Twitter?

There have been people who’ve Twitter travelled - going only where tweets tell you to go.

There have been others who partake in the Twitter diet – posting their every calorific intake in order to shame them into eating less.

But what about the Twitter diagnosis? Gone are the days when you’d struggle the overweight family medical dictionary down from the top shelf (that once correctly diagnosed me with meningitis). Or even the new and immediate NHS direct helpline.

When businessman Patrick Johnson awoke with a partially paralysed face, he tweeted ‘I feel like I've had a stroke. Half of my face doesn't work properly.’

And thank god not just media junkies and bored businessmen use the networking tool, as the response he got back was from Scottish woman Marj who replied ‘If you're truly serious, get to the doc. Bell's palsy facial symptoms mimic a stroke’.

Well thank god for Marj indeed as a few hours later and at the hospital Patrick was diagnosed with and treated for ‘Bells palsy, a condition which, if not treated immediately, can have lasting damage.

I can’t say I’m faultless. Making the hard decision to leave friends family and a good job and move to Cornwall 2 years ago was partially left up to my twitter followers. As was whether to allow myself one or two glasses of mid-week wine a couple of nights back.

But if I woke up with a face that didn’t work I’d like to think the first thing I’d do would be get to the doctors.

Has modern technology removed the responsibility we used to take for ourselves, placing our health, diet and movements into the hands of others?