Taking part in the Bath Half Marathon - well, sort of

As I have said in this blog before, I am touched and humbled at the number of things you get asked to do as the editor of a newspaper.

To have the role of the newspaper recognised is something for which all of us involved are extremely grateful as it shows that the community appreciates the commitment we have to local life.

As such, over my years as an editor I have had the privilege of judging everything from a dog competition to a beauty contest, from hosting political debates to rock concerts and from opening everything from a fete to an Oxfam shop. All of these things, crucially, have not been about me but about the papers I represent – and I never take any of these kind invitations for granted.

However, I think on Sunday, March 6, I will top the lot.

For I am honoured to have been asked to start Bath’s biggest community event of the year – the half marathon with anything up top 15,000 competitors.

As far as I can tell, this merely involves getting the race going and making the shortest speech of my editorial career (here’s a sneak preview of it, it is ‘Good luck everyone!’) but I am genuinely moved that the paper has been asked to be involved in this way.

It will be particularly pleasing for me as I know a lot of the people who are taking part, all of whom are doing so for a wide variety of excellent charities. Indeed, my two most senior colleagues on the Bath Chronicle editorial team – deputy editor Paul Wiltshire and chief sub/assistant editor Graham Holburn – will be among those lining up at the start of the race, probably wondering how I got to do the easy, cushy job while they have to do all the running.

The truth is, and it seems a terrible admission considering the role I’ve been asked to perform, running and me have never been great bedfellows. During my occasional “gym’ll fix it” periods I find I am pretty good on the rowing machines and other cardiovascular equipment but when it comes to the treadmills, I walk very well, but the moment I start to run something weird happens.

I stop.

Quite quickly.

I’m hoping therefore that from my position on Sunday I will be inspired to maybe see if I could get back on that running track again. I know so many people who have said that, like me, they never thought they could run but have then set themselves goals such as a half marathon and achieved it that it proves that no one should give up in this direction.

I’m sure Sunday will help to convince me that half marathons really are for everyone.

Of course, although I will know a number of people in the race I know that with so many others coming from outside the Chronicle circulation area, the vast majority won’t have a clue who that chap is setting them on their way. I fear, therefore, that as I am often compared to my “lookie-likies” that there will be people who will leave Bath thinking that the race had been started by Adrian Chiles, Boris Johnson or even Keith Chegwin.

So, I look forward to seeing a few of you on Sunday – I’ll be the one without the trainers.

Stourhead - the best of British

Although the appeal of going abroad is something that many people find irresistible, one of the biggest arguments against it is that we don’t realise the beauty to be found on our own doorstep.

In the midst of what has to be one of our sunniest summers for decades, it has been easier to get out and about and truly appreciate what we’ve got to offer. And when you take the time to look you suddenly realise why there are millions of people flying in to visit Britain while millions of us are flying out at the same time.

As an example, at the weekend I popped down the road to Stourhead. For those who know it I can almost guarantee you love it and for those who don’t, it is a wonderful stately home in Wiltshire with the most glorious and awe-inspiring gardens for you to lose yourself in for a few dreamy hours.

Stourhead is one of our most precious National Trust properties and it is a reminder of the beauty that surrounds us which we find easy to forget as we plough through our glossy holiday brochures under the often deluded concept that other countries have so much more to offer than “dear old Blighty”.

What makes Stourhead such a treat is that it has maintained its original and dazzling style while still feeling modern and alive. As all of us who live and work in Bath know, there’s a real tension in this city about trying to preserve what makes us truly unique and special while still developing in a way that reflects our changing needs. Stourhead seems to have got this balance perfect. Yes, there is a shop and a pub and retail units but they are all subtly and deliberately placed out of sight of the main attractions so when you first set eyes on the sweeping vista of the gardens, you just can’t help but be stunned into silence.

Stourhead truly represents the green and pleasant land of Jerusalem. And long may it continue to do so.

The comparison with Bath is also evident in the way Stourhead represents a sort of ideal for foreign visitors. I often wonder how people around the rest of the world see us and I can still recall with a smile the way a charming American I met viewed the UK as a big series of villages. Standing in a queue in Florida this gentleman heard my accent and asked if I knew the city of Sheffield. I said I lived about 80 miles from it at that time, and after a slight pause he said “really – well you must know the Jones’s then”.

I don’t know what other perceptions there are from our foreign cousins about this country although I suspect these days they think we have two royal families (the Windsors and the Beckhams), that we all worship at the altar of Simon Cowell and that it rains a lot here. But beyond that I bet many imagine lovely green gardens and delightful countryside. And they are right – we have both in abundance.

And if you still don’t believe me about how beautiful and green our country really can be then just pop to Stourhead this weekend.

It’s a living, breathing idyll.

Winning the Brain of Bath - by a nose

As a generally quite amiable chap I definitely subscribe to the theory that it is not the winning that counts it is the taking part. However, I have to admit that winning is, on the whole, rather better.

I certainly felt that last Thursday at about 10.15pm in the Assembly Rooms when The Bath Chronicle stormed to victory in the always hugely enjoyable Brain of Bath quiz to raise funds for Julian House.

When I first arrived on these shores nearly five years ago, I was quickly made aware that The Brain of Bath was the big one. The quiz of quizzes in this city. The one to win. And, crucially, one we had never won before – even with the huge advantage of having my fellow blogger Hugh Dixon as our not-so-secret weapon. Hugh, as I opined in a column the first year I tested my brain at the Brain, knows things that no one else knows. He can come up with answers when mere mortals don’t even understand the question, and he is worth his weight in the wine he consumes on the night to help him ‘think’.

And yet even with him and fellow boffin-esque quiz addicts Graham Holburn and Paul Wiltshire in the team, the Chronicle had been continually forced to settle for the ‘it’s not the winning that counts...’ line as we trooped out sadly from yet another defeat.

Well, it all changed in 2008 when we won for the first time. Winning definitely felt rather good and so even though we weren’t able to defend our title in 2009 we went for this year’s event quietly hoping for a repeat success. It was tough stuff though because, if you have ever tasted one of Julian House’s quizzes, you will know they don’t make it easy. Indeed, when a question seems a bit too easy you pause before writing down the answer because you can’t believe Cecil Weir and his Julian House team would give such ‘gifts’.

How many I wonder have not put the obvious answer down because it seems too easy and suffered accordingly. Oh, he’s a tricky one that Cecil.

This year we had the usual rounds such as a picture one (who the heck was that Todd Stephens fella anyway)? a fiendishly difficult science round, a testing sport one and the quiz’s undoubted highlight – the ‘smells round’. This is where you are all given little pouches with smells embedded in cotton wool and you have to let your nostrils do the work. This year we had Chanel Number 5, coconut, Brut and banana, for example, and this provoked some fierce sniffing and often fiercer debate. I think I must have had a bit of a cold to be honest because everything smelt to me like apple or Vim. Weird, I know.

By the end of the night, as Cecil tantalisingly counted down the top places, we realised we had won it – albeit by a tiny margin. As a team we trooped up to receive our prize but tried not to look too smug because we all knew everyone else watching was already thinking either ‘damn them’ and ‘oh well, it’s the taking part that counts...’ depending on their mood.

So, here’s to defending our hard-earned title in 2011. And here’s hoping that next year Cecil will save my blushes by putting both apple and Vim into the smells round.

Nicolas Cage, Alcatraz and hard-to-please Bathonians!

I have come to the (somewhat belated) conclusion that it takes an awful lot to impress some people in the fine city of Bath.

Maybe it’s because Bath has always punched above its weight and attracted major events and famous people but it seems some Bathonians refuse to get excited about anything.

Take the event taking place in Bath tonight (Thursday, November 26) . For here in Bath we have Hollywood A-Lister Nicolas Cage switching on our city-centre Christmas lights. This is a role normally (and very adequately) performed by the mayor or another worthy citizen in most cities of Bath's size. But Bath (being Bath) doesn't think of itself as a small city so they wanted something different this year.

So the ad director at the Bath Chronicle newspaper (Paul Wiltshire) and a few others on the Bath Christmas marketing team drew up a ‘hit list’ of possible canddiates to do the honours with the emphasis on who could bring the most people onto the streets to kick off the Christmas celebrations.

Top of the list was a recent Bath resident Nicolas Cage but I bet next to his name there was brackets around the phrase “nice idea but no chance”.

Well, it seems there was every chance.

One of our enterprising young ladies here at the Chronicle, Emma Samways, did the really radical thing of asking simply asking Mr Cage via a polite letter if he would mind switching on the lights. And the rest, as they say, is history.

The news that a genuine Hollywood superstar would, quite literally, be lighting up the city, has caused a mixture of shock and awe in many circles. In our office alone a kind of minor hysteria has set in!

I sometimes think, however, you have to go out of Bath to get a perspective on things because when I’ve mentioned this news to people who live beyond our borders, they have said ‘how on earth did you pull that one off’?

In Bath, however, not everyone is so convinced.

We ran a letter a couple of weeks ago from someone asking us to stop putting Mr Cage in the paper, and there’s been a number of similarly ‘sniffy’ remarks on our website (http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/) too.

Some aren’t impressed with Mr Cage, others are worried about not being able to park and many are just a few words away from saying ‘bah humbug’.

So, in the interest of balance, can I just say publicly that the visit of Nicolas Cage is a GREAT thing for our city. As I say, if our office is anything to go by it has caused a wave of excitement among those who live and work in our community and all the shops and market stalls must be rubbing their hands with glee at the thousands of potential new customers who will hit the streets tonight and see what Bath has to offer.

Talking of shops brings me to another example of some Bath people finding it hard to appreciate what’s around them.

Bath has just opened a pretty stylish new shopping centre called SouthGate. I am more than happy to say that I really like the centre. I think it is an elegantly put together building which blends into Bath very well . And it is a million times better than the 60s monstrosity it has replaced.

But, again, not everyone is convinced.

This week, someone on a website has (wittily I think) compared it to Alcatraz, and although this did make me smile which is why I’ve reprinted the image here (SouthGate is below by the way!!!), we’ve already seen evidence in our letters pages and online that a lot of people just aren’t as convinced by the new centre as we are

Some people, for example, have criticised it for being ‘faux Georgian’ but sadly that’s the best we can do as we’re a couple of hundred years late to do the real thing! But equally, had it been more modern (and further away from Bath's Georgain roots) , I suspect the critics would have been lining up at the postboxes to write letters about how this betrayed the city’s heritage.

You just can’t win!

Ah well, maybe such debate is why we all love the city so much.

Right, better go, rumour has it there’s a Hollywood superstar in town...

Local newspapers are not biased lackeys. Honest!

Every editor of every local newspaper ever will at some point, (and usually quite frequently), be accused of being biased.

Because we live in a world where everybody has an opinion on everything, a lot of people assume that local newspapers (and their editors) are equally one-sided in their views and will do everything in their power to persuade others to follow it.

Well, guess what, – you are half right.

Yes, we journalists are as opinionated and passionate about causes as the next man but we are also a pretty professional bunch in the local media and we all subscribe to the view that the only bias we can ever exhibit is to our readers.

Opinions can be made in columns, blogs like this or in our Comment piece (and we are not shy of launching campaigns on issues we care about) but the news is 100 per cent untainted and totally free of bias.
Period.

I say this today because last Friday Bath (and the Bath Chronicle offices) had a visit from David Cameron.

The visit of the Tory leader provoked a lively debate on our website, www.thisisbath.co.uk, and it didn’t take long for someone to accuse my erstwhile opinion-free deputy Paul Wiltshire for being akin to a Tory lackey.

This, we found particularly amsuing, as a few weeks ago he had been called a Lib-Dem lackey as well. He is clearly therefore a lackey – albeit one who is awfully confused about his politics

I suffered the same at a previous newspaper I worked at in Tamworth, in the Midlands. That was a very tight Labour/Tory marginal seat and I was frequently told by the Labour lot that they knew that I was a Tory while the Tories equally said that they knew I was a Labour man. This to be proved that I was doing my job right – if all politicians think you’re against them, then you’re probably putting the interests of the readers above the parties. And that’s how it should be.

Returning to Mr Cameron, I can’t deny that I was very grateful to our local Conservative hopeful, Fabian Richter, for bringing his party leader into our office where I was able to chat to him about issues of concern in our industry and our community. He was kind, generous with his time and tried to meet and talk to as many of our staff as possible.

Even one or two dyed-in-the-wool Labourites (for yes, shock horror, our office is the same as every other in covering all political persuasions!) were quietly impressed I think.

I then went to hear Mr Cameron address the people of Bath at his very interesting and informative public meeting. He was put on the spot by local people on a wide variety of important issues and he handled himself extremely well to my eyes.

It says a lot, I think, about how politics has become so centerist that I mentioned to my colleague Paul (he’s the Tory/Lib-Dem lackey remember) that I think if you analysed what was said , you would not have heard anything from David Cameron that Tony Blair would not have said. I’m sure both Mr Blair and Mr Cameron would be pretty aghast by that comparison but the truth is there is a consensus in our politics today that means that sometimes it is different suit, different party – but the same words, themes and ideals.

Friday’s visit also showed that Bath is very much in the Tory’s sights. We already have a very good sitting MP I think (oh my God I’m being biased again!) but we also have a very strong Tory challenger too now (oh my God more bias!) and so next May/June's elections suddenly looks very interesting indeed ...

Please send all your accusations of bias in this article to s.holliday@bathchron.co.uk.

The winners - including TWO men called Paul Wiltshire!

This is the Chronicle staff today celebrating our recent win as the best weekly newspaper in Britain. It is a challenging time at the mo for all newspapers so to be able to all have a smile is good news all round.
I say 'smile' but I have a decidely strange look on my face (I am seated second left). They say the camera doesn't lie but perhaps it can be economical with the truth?
Failing that I just look odd.
Incidentally I am in what can only be described as a 'Paul Wiltshire sandwich'. Due to very bad planning both our ad director and our deputy editor are called Paul Wiltshire which makes life very confusing.
Paul Wiltshire is pictured left.
And right.
Also seated is our MD Sarah Irvine. Rumours she is planning to change her name to Paul Wiltshire are being hotly denied......