We Might Well Be Going National!

Today has been a pretty awful day with regards to the weather here in Chester so I have been confined to the house pretty much all day. My younger brother, Jamie, stayed over last night so it wasn’t too bad – like most teenagers, he’s happy as long as he can play on the Xbox! I have spent most of my day sat at the computer but, for once, I used the time recreationally and caught up on a game of Football Manager that I had not played for quite some time.

It’s funny how your usual everyday life changes so much when you are planning something like I am. Things that I used to do on a regular, if not daily, basis no longer feature in the list of things that I do. I have not watched the TV for about two months now – I have a good mind to cancel my TV licence! It’d be just my luck though that they would try and prosecute me!

Simon, the guy who wrote a comment on my blog the other day, was back in touch today to advise me that he thinks he might have got a national to run with my story. It won’t be a story focussing solely on me, more a feature to go alongside one of their main stories – the Help For Heroes campaign. He advised me that he has passed my number on to somebody called Ben and I should expect a call pretty soon from him to arrange to take some pictures!

On another positive note, a while ago I tried to get in touch with a guy called Benedict Protheroe who, last year, also walked to Rome – he walked from Canterbury and took a more direct route than I will be taking. Having looked at the route he took I reckon I will probably be walking an extra 500 miles on top of what he did! I managed to establish contact with him yesterday as I located his personal email address and have been speaking across email with him today.

He seemed genuinely excited for me and I could tell there were memories flooding back to him of when he did it. He has said that he will be happy to provide as much advice as he can and allow me to draw on his experiences. It will be really nice to have someone to speak to about this that actually has experience at this specific challenge.

He seems like a really nice bloke and I have the utmost respect for what he did. I am sure that his experiences will be invaluable to me and, hopefully, I will have made a good friend by the end of it all – even if I never meet him! Thinking about it, I reckon it would actually be nice to meet him at some point as there would be a lot of common ground there and I am sure the conversation would be endless.

I took Roman for a walk this evening, just under 4 miles again. He seems to be getting much better now and I am going to try him on a 5 mile walk in the morning. I am sure he will come through that with no problems but I will be careful not to overexert him in the coming days.

I had to get Roman some more dog food tonight so, whilst I was at Pets At Home, I asked about the possibility of putting a poster up and they seemed more than happy to help. I got the email address from the deputy manager there so I will be sending a copy over tomorrow morning. I will need to go through the store list for Pets At Home ringing each store up to see if they would be prepared to do the same. It would be a real help if they could.