Like many young boys, the most upsetting thing I could hear as a child wasn’t that my mother was angry with me, but that she was “disappointed”. Thankfully, it’s been a while since I felt that particular kind of upset. Or I should say it was a while – despite..
Tag Archives: sport
Ordinarily it would have been golden eagles on the gopher’s mind, but on a sunny afternoon in early September, there was something else to worry about. As it emerged from its burrow in the Kyrchyn Valley in central Kyrgyzstan, the rodent sniffed the dusty air blowing north towards the border..
On a cool, clear evening in Buenos Aires, San Martín de San Juan, a small team from western Argentina, arrives to meet its fate at La Bombonera. Home of Boca Juniors, the largest and most successful team in the country, the stadium is the beating blue-and-gold heart of the colourful,..
Robert Charles McInroy and I have been playing a game together for half our lives. The setting may change, so may the conditions, but the result is always the same: he wins. This is bad news for me as our standard wager is GBP 1 million; I owe him roughly..
It’s 1998 in Mrs Stafford’s biology class and I’m feeling pretty good about myself. Our class has been asked to test our lung capacities. The sporty types have higher scores; that Italian kid who can’t find a big enough blazer does not. What? Jodie only got 1.9L? Boo! She’s a..
The first time I met Gary Player he gave me a little cuddle in front of a big crowd. It was in early 2010, shortly before the official opening of Saadiyat Beach Golf Club, the Abu Dhabi course designed by the South African. I was there with a dozen or..
Granddad was a deep-sea diver – that’s the first thing I knew about him. Come to think of it, that’s one of the first things I knew about anything. That, and being in the water. I don’t remember the trauma of swimming for the first time because I’ve been doing..
I am sitting in a restaurant, in coastal resort of El Gouna, Egypt, watching a flock of huge tropical birds hovering over the Red Sea. Most of them have enormous, multi-coloured wings that droop only slightly at the tips, harnessing as much of the wind as possible. Their flight paths..
Day One “The last Ice Age moved quicker…” That’s the verdict of Scott Allaway, an overly honest bobsleigh brakeman, having witnessed my sluggish 30m sprint trial. Bobsleigh training starts with this assessment of speed and though I have some excuses (cruciate ligament surgery for one; zero natural pace for another)..
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A big thank you for writing this. For so many months now, I haven't had a lot of things to say yes to either and […]
Just an honest Scotsman on tour! Well written mate and looking forward to following you on your next journey. At this stage and I am
You have to own your achievements as much as your failures... https://davidwalsh.name/impostor-syndrome