Regime Change in the Harrop/Greenwood Household

We went to see a nutritionist on Saturday, because we've been exercising regularly and eating relatively healthily for quite a few months now but over the past couple of months we haven't lost any weight or, more importantly, body fat. The nutritionist said we need to regulate our blood sugar levels by eating more regularly - three smaller meals and two snacks a day, rather than three full meals - and by eating protein with complex carbohydrates, which helps break down the sugars more slowly so you have energy for longer and the sugar doesn't just turn straight into fat (one of the principles of a low-GI diet). She isn't at all keen on low-fat foods because she says they tend to have a high sugar content (which, having looked at the labels of the low-fat foods I've been eating, is absolutely right), and she's all for raw ingredients, so you know exactly what you're eating. So we've been out and bought muesli, natural yoghurt, sunflower and pumpkin seeds, oat cakes, brown rice... Rob's looking forward to the new eating plan; he gets to eat more porridge and nuts, which he loves. I'm not sure how I'm going to fare, though, but I'll give it a go. And of course, if it all goes well, we'll get to shift some of that stubborn weight around our middles (this is where the sugar-turned- to-fat settles, apparently).

So, it all starts tomorrow - well, we couldn't start it on a bank holiday weekend! We had our last few days of eating up all the naughty food in the house this weekend (I'm eating the last of the wine gums as I type) then the big weigh-in and measure-up is tomorrow morning. We're going back to the nutritionist in a couple of weeks to check on our progress. Wish us luck!

PS: On a not entirely unrelated note, if you haven't seen the advert for the Skoda Fabia yet, check it out here - click 'Baking of' documentary then click View the TV ad. Genius!

Shiny New Car

Rob picked up his new car yesterday - he's very pleased with it, and spent an hour or so sitting in it last night on the driveway working out what all the buttons do... It drives really well, and it's so quiet, particularly given that it's a diesel. Having a bigger car will make long journeys much more comfortable - once we move, Rob's parents will be 230 miles away and mine will be 300 miles away, so we'll be doing much longer journeys to visit them. Last year we took our Austrian friends Juergen and Eva on a tour of Northern Britain (York, Edinburgh, Lake District) in our 3-door Peugeot 206, and they had to sit in the back surrounded by all the pieces of luggage that wouldn't fit in the boot while we drove 550 miles. The new car also has a socket to plug in an iPod, and dual climate control, so Rob can have his side set to 'freezing cold', just the way he likes it, while I can have my side set to 'nice and warm'...

Race Day

Rob and Rick ran the Great Manchester Run this morning - Rob hasn't been able to train for about 7 weeks because of his various injuries and still managed to finish in 1:09:13, and Rick, who spent the last 2 days getting back from Chile, arriving at Manchester Airport 2 hours before the race started, put in a blinder and finished in 53:48. They both really enjoyed themselves, as did the 27,998 other people who ran, including Marjorie, an 89-year-old who has run in all five Great Manchester Runs... Thanks to everyone who sponsored Rob - he raised over £600 for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

My exercise ticker hasn't moved on much in the past week - my right foot started to hurt quite badly and by Tuesday I was limping a lot. I went to the doctor on Friday and I've got tendonitis, which is slowly getting better, but I don't think I'll be able to hit my target of 100km by the end of the month. Still, I guess that means I don't have to increase the target for next month now...

Did you know I had 5 children?

In honour of World Vision Week, I thought I'd take the opportunity to tell you about my children. All of them are sponsored via World Vision, but there are lots of other child sponsorship schemes around, including Plan-UK, Action Aid and EveryChild.

I first agreed to sponsor Sinqobile over 10 years ago, when she was 5 years old and I was still at university. She's an AIDS orphan and lives in Zimbabwe, in World Vision's Sanzukwi Area Development Programme. She is currently in high school and enjoys maths and science. Last year World Vision opened a health centre in the area where Sinqobile lives. The regime in Zimbabwe, as you know, is appalling, to the extent that contact with other countries is strictly monitored. Every time I receive correspondence from Sinqobile or from World Vision Zimbabwe, it is postmarked South Africa.


In 2003, I started sponsoring Drilon when he was almost 3. He lives with his parents, grandmother and older brother in a 2-room flat in the village of Balldren, which is in Lezha, a fairly remote mountain region in north- western Albania, near the Adriatic coast. The area is the poorest in Albania and unemployment and crime rates are high. Drilon started school last year in the newly renovated local primary school, and when he's not at school he likes playing with toy cars and riding his bike. He is now 6½ years old and from his photos, looks very mischievous...

I took on two children in 2005 - the first was Thi My Le, from Hiep Duc, a small village in the Quang Nam province of central Vietnam, where roads are poor and travelling is difficult. World Vision is helping to improve transportation links in the area, to allow people easier access to schools and hospitals. Thi My Le is now 11 and goes to Kim Dong school where she enjoys maths and singing. Last year World Vision gave her a school bag for starting secondary school, which included a uniform, pencils and notebooks. This meant that her family could spend the money they would have spent on school supplies on something else. She is in good health, enjoys playing badminton and would like to be a teacher when she grows up.

The second child I took on in 2005 was Christhian, from Bolivia, which is South America's poorest country, but Christhian's family moved away from the World Vision project a few months after I started sponsoring him, so my sponsorship was switched to another Bolivian boy, Damian, last year. He lives with his parents in Tacopaya, a mountainous region in Bolivia, where 12,000 people live in poverty. Damian's parents graze animals and keep donkeys, and Damian goes to a local school and likes playing with his friends. He is now 12 and helps out at home by running errands for his family.

Early this year, World Vision gave me Mmatsole, a 5-year-old girl from South Africa. She lives with her mother in Kodumela, a village in the north of the country at the foot of the Drakensburg Mountains, near the border with Mozambique. She is of school age, but there are no schools in the area - one of World Vision's first priorities here is to open a school - so she helps her mother with the shopping and enjoys playing with toys.




I love sponsoring my children - a relatively small amount of money can help so much. Every year I receive updates from the Area Development Programmes that cover the areas where my children live, and it's great to see health centres, schools and community creches being built, and to read about the provision of training in more effective farming methods, sewing, carpentry and brick making. If you don't sponsor a child and can spare £18 a month (or even if you already do sponsor a child and can afford to take on another one), visit World Vision UK or World Vision USA for more information.

Oh What a Circus, Oh What a Show...

For the past year I've spent a couple of days a month in London, working from our Greenwich office. Every time I go, I resolve to see something at the theatre while I'm there, and I never get round to it. Then last month I noticed that the adverts on the Underground for Evita said 'only until 26th May', and that was one of the shows I really wanted to see, so I booked to see it last night at the Adelphi. I had to go on my own because Rob hates musicals - he'll see plays, quite enjoys them, in fact, but can't stand it when people burst into song - but I wasn't really bothered about going by myself, particularly as the alternative was not seeing it at all.

Elena Roger, who plays Eva, has had great reviews and she really was excellent. The role of Peron was played by one of my favourite theatre actors, Philip Quast, who played Javert in at least two of the performances of Les Misérables that I've seen (the current count is five - twice in Manchester and once each in London, Chicago and San Francisco). Matt Rawle played Che, the narrator, and was also brilliant.

The show itself was really well done - they didn't have much in the way of sets; they just used the same building/balcony set and brought in other props to highlight the scene changes - but this wasn't a bad thing; it just showed how much you can do with a relatively sparse stage set. Also the ending didn't seem nearly so drawn out and laboured as it did in the 1996 film - I really enjoyed the film, but when I watch it on DVD now I tend to stop it before the end because Madonna's at-death's-door-yet-must-carry-on-singing voice annoys me. All in all, this was a great performance and I'm really glad I saw it before it closed.

G'Day Mate & Ciao Amico!

Natalie, my housemate from university, went to Australia in 2003 with a backpacker's visa and a 12-month open return flight ticket. But then she got a job, a work visa, a flat and a boyfriend and has been there ever since... She does come back from time to time for a visit, although when she does, I'm usually in Manchester and most of her family and friends are in the South East, so I haven't seen her since October 2001. This time, however, she and I were both in London at the same time, so we met up for a drink last night - and of all the bars in London she could have picked, she chose one that was 5 minutes' walk from my hotel, so it was really easy to get to. It was great to catch up with her again - she looks exactly the same, hasn't changed a bit; except she says she has more grey hairs than she used to :) - and she even said she was thinking of moving back to the UK, if she can persuade Brendan to come with her.

Even more weird than seeing Natalie after nearly 6 years, though, was seeing Sean, a guy I made friends with when we were both living in Florence - I was on my year abroad from university and he was taking a gap year before starting uni. We both went to Italian language lessons at the University for Foreigners, then at the end of the year I went back to uni in Hull and he started uni in London. I hadn't seen him for over 8 years, and there he was, sitting at the next table! He said he never goes into that pub during the week and he was only there because his friend from Sweden was in London for a couple of days, so they met up there as it was about half-distance for them both to travel. We talked for a few minutes and he told me to look him up on Facebook, which is apparently what all the kids are using these days, so I will... What are the chances??!!

Goodbye Old Car, Hello New Car

Rob bought a new car last month - a BMW 318; he's picking it up on 23 May. He has very kindly given me his car, a 6-year-old Peugeot 206, so I have sold my car, a 10-year-old Peugeot 106. There are lots of things I love about my little car, like the fact that it's a 5-door (Rob's is only 3) and it does 55 miles to the gallon. But there are also things I definitely won't miss about it - like the amount of noise it makes (it's a diesel, and not one of those new, super-quiet diesels either - it sounds like a tank) and the fact that there is no power steering, making a 3-point turn a better workout for my arms than 50 bicep curls. But to say it cost me nothing (thanks Mum!) and I've had it for 5 years, it has served me very well. Plus the road tax and MOT are both due at the end of this month, and it needs a service soon, so that's £250 that I don't need to spend on it in the next few weeks...

Finito!

I've just finished reading 'Harry Potter e la Pietra Filosofale' which, as you've no doubt guessed, is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (or Sorcerer's Stone in the US; apparently you don't know what a Philosopher is so they changed the title???), the first book in the Harry Potter series, translated into Italian. My sister was in Milan last November, visiting a friend. She figured as I've read the English books and know the story, this would be a good way to keep up with my Italian, seeing as I'm always complaining about how little I use it these days and how much I've forgotten since I graduated in 1999 with a languages degree. It took me a long time to get through it - I started it mid-March - but then I only read about 6 pages a night because that's usually all I can manage before I fall asleep, and that's the same whether the book's in Italian or English. But despite the fact that it took me two months to finish a book that I've already read twice, I really enjoyed it - plus I learned loads of new words. I now know the Italian for cauldron, magic wand, owl, broomstick and spell, not to mention Muggle, Quidditch and Golden Snitch... I think they'll come in really handy. Roll on 'Harry Potter e la Camera dei Segreti'!

Keep on Running...

In case you didn't know, Rob is taking part in the 10km Great Manchester Run on Sunday 20 May. He decided at the end of last year that he needed a goal to work towards in his quest to get fit, and this is it. Except he's been really hampered by injuries - knee, neck and lower back, at one time or another - and his back injury has meant he's hardly spent any time at the gym in the last month, but he'll still take part in the race, even if he has to walk all the way round. He is raising money for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, and doesn't want to let down all the people who have sponsored him so far. If you haven't, and would like to, he'd be very grateful - his sponsorship page is here.

I, on the other hand, am just keeping on at my cross-training. I've been concentrating on my stamina for the last couple of months, and have gone from almost collapsing after 10 minutes on level 2 to completing 50 minutes relatively comfortably on level 7. Recently I've started doing a 50-minute stint one day then a 20-minute interval stint the next day - the interval one is just as hard, if not harder. I do 45 seconds at an average pace then 15 seconds as fast as I can go. And 'as fast as I can go' gets slower and slower with every minute that passes... My goal for this month is to do 100km on the cross-trainer - check out my progress below.

I do...

Last Saturday we went to the wedding of Helen, a friend of mine from a former workplace, and her boyfriend of 5 years, David. It was held at a golf club outside Wigan and was a really lovely day. The invitation we received was the nicest I've ever seen - a box containing a scroll - and it turned out Dave's Mum made them all by hand. She also made the table decorations, orders of service (also scrolls in the same style, tied with ribbon), favours (scented candles for the girls, individual whisky bottles for the boys, wrapped in gold organza) and even the cake. Helen looked fantastic, and Sam, their 10-month-old who has managed to be missing from all the photos I took, was dressed the same as his dad, which looked very cute indeed. She had a fairly small wedding - about 50 people - and decided not to have any bridesmaids, but she asked me to sign the register, which I was very pleased to do. Not that I did a good job of it... I know, how can you screw up signing your own name, right? Well, when the register was opened out to the page where the marriage was recorded, the page I had to write on was about 2cm higher than the table it was sitting on, and I had to sign right at the bottom of the page so there was nothing to rest my wrist on. Plus the pen I had to use was a fountain pen, and the first stroke I made on the page, no ink came out, so I had to try again. In the end, it looked like a 5-year-old had written it, but never mind... We had a really good day; the weather was great, and I spent a lot of time getting my outfit right so I'm glad it all came together in the end. And I was perfectly colour co-ordinated with the bride!

One Step Closer to Moving

Rob's company is more than tripling the size of its UK operation over the course of the next few months - there are currently 11 employees and they'll be hiring 25 or so new people. Rob and his colleague Adrian are going to be responsible for managing these new recruits into the product development division, and they decided that this job would be far easier if they didn't live 250 miles apart and could actually work from the same office. So we're moving to the south coast.

We put our house on the market on 19 March and the closest we came to a viewing was someone arranging an appointment then cancelling and saying she would re-schedule, but she never did. On 19 April, 4.5 weeks after we instructed the estate agents, I decided to call them the following Monday and ask why no one had come round to view the property and if there was anything I could do to make it more saleable. Then I got a call from the agent that afternoon arranging a viewing for Sunday, which went very well. Then on Monday the agent rang to arrange another viewing for that evening, and on Tuesday morning we got a full asking price offer from the second couple!

Now all we need to do is find somewhere to live in Southampton... It's not very easy to do that, being up here, so we think we might rent somewhere for a while until we get a feel for the area. Also, we don't actually have an office down there yet - it is likely to be in Chilworth, but it's not 100% yet, so it wouldn't be wise to buy somewhere just yet, in case it turns out to be a long way from the office.

We're working towards a moving date of end of June/early July. The date for getting the new office up and running is 1 August.

A Night at the Opera (well, the theatre actually)

My sister Jenny came to stay last weekend. We met up with Catherine, a friend of mine, and went to the Palace Theatre in Manchester to see The Producers, starring John Gordon Sinclair as Leo Bloom, Cory English as Max Bialystock and the brilliant Peter Kay as Roger DeBris.

I had an idea of the story before I saw it, although I hadn't seen the film (had been warned off it). I thoroughly enjoyed it - very funny, but I think this particular run of the show gets more laughs than others simply because Mr Kay is in the cast; he kept coming out of character and reverting to his Bolton accent, which just made it even funnier. I have to say, I think the ending is only OK, but the show is definitely worth a watch if you haven't seen it. All three of the guys mentioned above were excellent.