Skip to main content

THE 'BRIAN CLOUGH' WALK

"I wanted to raise a few quid ..."


(This is a copy of a recent round-robin e-mail from my nephew Jamie Berry of Sheffield - with my red ink superimposed.)


'Hi all,
I’m doing a spot of fundraising for the Sheffield Children’s Hospital.

Eliza Megan Berry

My daughter Eliza was born in September with a cataract in her right eye. We were referred to the Eye Department at the Sheffield Children's Hospital and they acted quickly to operate to successfully remove the lens from her eye at five weeks to save the sight in the eye. We have to patch her other eye to encourage sight and have had to learn how to insert a contact lens. With the Children's Hospitals support, the sight in the eye is really improving and is showing encouraging signs that she might end up with reasonable vision in the eye.
I wanted to raise a few quid to say thanks to the Eye Department at Sheffield Children's Hospital for everything they've done for us and to help them carry on the brilliant things they do. I also wanted to help honour my friend Ryan, who we sadly lost last year, by doing something I know he would have approved of, being a big Forest and Cloughie fan.  So I'm putting the name of his fundraising group, The Ryan Keene FUNdation, to this escapade.
On Saturday the 13th April 2013, a few of us are embarking on a 22 mile walk from the site of the Old Baseball Ground in Derby, via the Cloughie statue at Pride Park, following the National Cycle Route 6 to Nottingham, visiting the Cloughie statue in the Market Square, finishing at the Cloughie’s spiritual home, the City Ground. Before limping home to the Stratford Haven Pub in West Bridgford (Cloughie would have approved).

If you’d like to sponsor me, I’d be absolutely honoured and will aim to raise as much as I can for a brilliant cause.'

To Donate

Just Giving: http://www.justgiving.com/James-Berry5

Text: to 70070, inserting the code; JBCH56  £* ( entering the amount you wish to sponsor)



And the Happy Parents ...  Jamie and Sarah.



.... All gone !

Two pints please ....


HE WHO WALKED ON WATER

("Stand up straight, get your shoulders back and get your hair cut!")

For those of my readers who are spread far and wide in the world and not necessarily inside the weirder wiles of these East Midlanders, I perhaps need to explain that there are earnest and compulsive connotations which relate to Jamie's nostalgic choice of route and hallowed venues to support his chosen Charity; for those local to the Nottingham area it could perhaps be termed a 'sentimental journey'.  At the outset I can only suggest that there is not even the tiniest whiff of personal nostalgia when I contemplate the idea of walking 22 miles! but it won't prevent me from contributing.

B.H. Clough, O.B.E.
(1935-2004)
Statue paid for by fans of
Nottingham Forest 

The man to whom Jamie and pals pay all homage in this little corner of the world, is the iconic legend of football past and who died in September 2004: Greatly missed, Brian Howard Clough O.B.E. was one of the greatest managers ever to grace a dug-out.  A devastating striker in his playing career and who represented England, he was sadly to retire due to injury far earlier than he and others might have wished.  Fondly known as 'Old Bighead', Clough spent the next 28 years in management sharing his commitment mainly to the two neighbouring clubs of Nottingham Forest and Derby County.  Apart from great notoriety, he achieved some remarkable feats - notably guiding Nottingham Forest to back-to-back European Cups in 1979 and 1980. The true stuff of schoolboy legends: just Google the name!

"On occasions I have been big headed. I think most people are when they get in the limelight. I call myself Big Head just to remind myself not to be." 


So, good luck Jamie and to the 'few of you', let's hope you achieve your targets - the miles and the money; to those of us who will only be curious observers, dig deep and cough up, its a brilliant cause. 


LATE EXTRA:    See here



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

TALE OF A TUMOUR

13th October, 2016: Update. I  have this day visited the Leicester General Hospital for my annual check-up. After a long absence, I was again to meet up with my Consultant, Mr Roger Kockelbergh, the very clever man who was to finally remove my bladder by Cystectomy)  in 2009.  He was there today to inform me that being satisfied with my progress, he was was to impart the wonderful news that I was now medically all-clear of my days of turmoil; I was not needed to attend hospital any longer on a continuing basis.   In passing, as a great thank-you to this skilled surgeon who carried me through my intermittent disruptions over the long months, I would draw readers' attentions to his website in aid of  his fundraising efforts ,  in addition to my presentation of the following article _______________ ANYONE FOR CLARET? F rom many quarters I am frequently asked to write about my recent experience of dealing with cancer following a ‘successful’...
Post a Comment
Read more

A POLICEMAN'S LOT ...

A Figure of Fun? When Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan sat down to write the 'Pirates of Penzance', the comic aspect of the British policeman - or 'bobby' - as a figure of fun was to be cruelly exposed on the public stage  in an effort to show off the less serious side of law enforcement in Queen Victoria's often stodgy England. Premiered, surprisingly, in New York on New Years Eve 1879, it presented, in the true tradition of the now famous couple, it served to poke yet more fun at so-called respectable civilisation and to take away the rigidity and solemnity of people in authority. I present this musical aside as an adjunct to an amusing newspaper article I recently unearthed in an old local newspaper and which, as a former police officer, entertained me wonderfully for a while.  In 1893 in England, each and every one of the small villages in all the counties had their local constables who would totally rule the roost from sunrise to sunset, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE TERRIBLE GALE OF 1927

FOREWORD     Tucked away in the grounds of St Peters C of E church at Kirby Bellars in Leicestershire stands a headstone which is a memorial to the tragic passing of three young men all from the same family some 85 years ago; each was in his youthful twenties and all three had apparently died within a matter of weeks of one another: The now-fading inscription poignantly records the sad testimony of what must have been an awful period in the life of their family: IN LOVING MEMORY OF THREE DEAR SONS OF  CHARLES AND ELIZABETH LITTLEWOOD OF THIS PARISH. HORACE, DIED AUGUST 9, 1927, AGED 29 YEARS. SIDNEY THOMAS , DEARLY LOVED HUSBAND OF  BEATRICE MAY LITTLEWOOD,  DIED OCTOBER 28, 1927 AGED 26 YEARS. CHARLES BERTRAM , DIED OCTOBER 28, 1927 AGED 21 YEARS. _________ ‘IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH’ _________ ‘God knows the way he holds the key He guides us with unerring hand. Sometime with tireless eyes ...
10 comments
Read more