Full stop

I like full stops.   I like that they signify the end of a sentence.  You know where you are with a full stop.  It tells you to breathe.  To stop mid paragraph.  You can look up when you get to the full stop.  You can even go off and make a coffee.  Put the book down in fact.   Safe in the knowledge that the full stop told you it was safe to do so.   That when you come back you know where to resume reading, just after the last full stop.   Sentences don’t just run into one another and continue on forever with full stops.  They are the natural end that can either be the end, or the temporary haitus.

This is my full stop for the Comic Relief 2015 campaign.   I didn’t really have one last year and it felt like it didn’t properly end.   It just sort of wasn’t happening anymore, and then it was again a few months later.   That in that time there hadn’t been a proper full stop.   Breathe out.  Breathe in again.

I hate the word “closure”  it’s too American for me.   But I get it.   There needs to be a bit of closure.  I guess what the military call a “de brief”.   I need there to be a full stop this year as it seems to have been harder than the other years and seems to have taken more out of me.   Which is odd because when Penny, Annie and I look back on the Land’s End to John O’Groats relay we think of that as taking it all out of us.  The logistics were monstrous, and whilst the day to day baton travelling was done by some amazing Team Honk members it felt like we were constantly having to keep on top of it to keep it going.  Ensuring it didn’t stop.  That each group knew what they were doing and when.

This year we said would be much easier as Team Honk were getting involved in an event being organised by Comic Relief themselves.   Except we did still throw ourselves into organising it.  Emails.  Meetings.  Facebook discussions.   Google Hangouts.   All with a backdrop of a full time job, teens, dog, house, day to day life.

A house and life that I now look at and feel has been hugely neglected.  The house is a mess.  Every room has piles of what can only be described as crap on every surface.    We have survived on rubbish food.   My inbox is full of emails saying “any idea when you might write about <insert object sent three months ago> or <event attended six weeks ago>”   In fact I have four over flowing inboxes.

I truly don’t know if I am coming or going.   We have been to events every weekend in between and there are more coming up.   We have tried to support Comic Relief as much as we can by going to their events:  27 hours of comedy.  Dermot Dancing.  The night of TV.   All needing their own logistics to get there.

I really don’t think I have ever been this exhausted.

But also elated that we have raised yet more money for such a fantastic cause.   We have been part of something that will change lives.  That we can look back in years to come and say we were a part of it the year Comic Relief passed the billion Pound mark.

So to mark the full stop I thought I would look back at some of the pics from the past few months in an effort to process just what has gone on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And to round off the 2015 with a proper full stop.   My new tattoo.   Exhausted after being awake for almost 40 hours I didn’t hesitate when comedian Adam Hills said he would pay £1000 to Comic Relief for everybody who had a Red Nose tattooed on their body.   I didn’t give it a second thought.   A thousand Pounds for five minutes.

Well it should have been five minutes, except when Claudia got wind of it and asked me show it to the world on stage at Wembley.   How could I resist.

A lasting reminder of Red Nose Day 2015 and a fairly appropriate full stop