Chris Curtis Web Site

I have been orienteering quite a number of times over the years, almost always through my work as a teacher. We have been at an activity centre or sports event and someone has given out the maps and compasses and sent us all out to find the “control points” on the course. Good fun, but it never really hooked me.

For some reason, this year, I decided to go on a “coaching for teachers” course and spotted the orienteering one. This was a one-day course which would lead to “level 1″ accreditation to allow me to organise some school based orienteering for students. I thought this would be a good thing to do.

It was an excellent day. Julianna Grant, the SE development officer for the British Orienteering Federation, led the day. She kept things simple and practical – completely focused on how to get students involved and enjoying themselves. Her words had the ring of practical experience about them. The day was also practical, with us trying the exercises and techniques out and culminating in a small contest around the grounds of the school where the course was based. Despite being the oldest there, myself and my partner won the event – because we had the nerve to take a shortcut right through the middle of the main school buildings – because there was nothing on the map to say we couldn’t!

We were strongly urged to go to at least one “real” event and advised to try a yellow or orange course. A few weeks later there was one not too far away. I was actually quite excited about the prospect. I found out from various web sites what was likely to happen. People were friendly and helpful when I got there and they realised I had no idea. The only problem was that it was tipping down – very heavy, continuous rain. The woods were very interesting, and I loved the idea of sometimes leaving the paths and especially the mental as well as physical challenge. Despite the rain, I was soon warm and I was completely hooked. I loved it. It was even better when I checked the results and learnt that I was second – less than a minute behind the leader. Needless to say, I have gone up from orange since then, and been to about another half-dozen events.

I am a complete plodder – 46 years old, not very fit, a fairly good navigator, compared with the average member of the public, but with a very great deal to learn about orienteering. I run slow and I navigate slow. I generally come in the mid-twenties out of 30 or 40 people on the green course – taking twice as long as the leaders. This means that I am completely out of contention at this stage, and have no chance of winning a non-handicap event, but I am hooked completely by the sport – I miss it when I can’t do it and I really look forward to events.

Why? I will try to give a few clues:

• It absorbs and rewards mind and body. The fittest I have ever been is when I was running regularly, but I was so bored. Orienteering completely avoids that. You have to think very hard, under pressure
• There is a strong sense of achievement. When you finish you know you have accomplished something that most people could not do. Again, this is physical and mental
• It is brilliant being out in “terrain”. It is a real privilege to be moving through private woodland and it has already taken me to some magically beautiful places
• I love the puzzle of map reading and route choice, then making those decisions real by taking on the distance and the terrain. You just have to do it, but it is wonderful
• It is an inclusive sport. I mainly compete against me – quite often you are alone, with just some glimpses of others on the course and the main aim is to do better than last time. On the other hand, you are on the same course, meeting exactly the same challenges, as people who are at the top of the sport and as competition is often in age bands, you have very challenging targets to rise to whatever your age
• Above all it is the classic participation sport. The pleasure is in taking part

There is much more than this, but I am very glad to have taken the sport up properly. I am sure it will continue to absorb and excite me and that is no bad thing.

Today is my last day away from work after the operation.

It has been very odd being away. These two weeks are the longest absence I have ever had from anything and somehow it is not the same as a holiday.

I have been quite restricted in what I could do. Not much that you could honestly describe as pain, though a fair amount of “discomfort” – sometimes being troublesome and sometimes not at all – but no way could I have gone back to work before now. I have been very lethargic and “out of it”. Really, I have been mostly sitting around, working on the computer, but not really able to do much more than that. Attempts to break out, even just to walk a little way, have mostly backfired – with exhaustion and extra discomfort.

I attended the “new parents evening” last night – I was not really with it, but I was glad I went.

I will be very pleased to get back to work. I will have to be careful and try to control the stress and pressure, but I have not really enjoyed this “limbo” and will be very glad to be back in the land of the living.

This is the beginning, or at least a new one. Although some material will be dated before this, today is the day the site becomes “stable”.
I am just at the end of a fortnight’s convalescence following an operation and I have used a lot of the “sitting around” time to play with ICT. This has been very good for me, catching up on a lot of new ideas and technologies.
Out of that “playing” has come:

• A new domain and a new web host – put simply, I now have a permanent place to work on web development ideas and to publish things (like this)
• A new-look website – this one – made with WordPress
• My own “template” for WordPress – that shows the pages as I want them to appear
• Several school related ICT/Web projects – one to store and recall performance management records , a “content management system” to make it easy for lots of people to put information on the main school web site, my own installation of “moodle” (a learning system) so I can try things out and my own installation of “calcium” a calendar system.
• several abortive projects along the same lines. The only way to know is often to try and decide it was a bad idea!
• A lot more knowledge, especially of php and mysql

I hope you enjoy this site. I write it mainly for me, so if you find something interesting or useful here, that is a bonus!

We had a classic winter storm – only in June. We saw the sky cloud over on Tuesday evening, and the rain began overnight and lasted almost all day. More remarkable for the time of year were the winds – full gales are very unusual here in June. Below is the met chart for noon on the day of the storm. The closer the “isobars” (the thin black lines) the stronger the winds and the rain tends to be concentrated where the “fronts” (thicker lines of triangles or semicircles or both) are.

The Radar image was captured about an hour before the time of the chart. You can clearly see the circulating rain bands around the low pressure area and the heavy rain along the fronts.

The graph shows the windspeed at the school weather station through the event – peak gust was actually a little higher than the graphshows – around 55kph.

We went up to Milton Keynes to join all the family for Catherine’s First Communion Mass and then back to Joe and Janet’s amazing garden for a superb barbecue. (Joe is my brother, Janet is his wife and Catherine their daughter, my niece)

It was a thoroughly good day all round. There are some more pictures here.

In January, I discovered a softish and painless lump in my scrotum. Worrying. After the GP saw it, she sent me for an ultrasound and I was relieved to learn it was a benign cyst. These are “very common in men of your age” and harmless but this one was “unusually large”. Back to the GP who sent me to a urologist who agreed with the diagnosis, but felt it was too large to leave alone. It had to be removed. This would be a “simple” operation done as day surgery under general anaesthetic. I had to turn up at noon, having had nothing by mouth since midnight and I would be home that evening.

Just to complicate matters, one of my molars split in half, the evening before. It was extremely painful and part of it was wobbling around. It had been sensitive for days but I was hoping it would wait until after the operation. No way. It would not wait.

I went straight to the dentist this morning. Thankfully she saw me after a short wait and understood the need for a “quick fix”. She confirmed what I knew: a big crack in “upper right six”. The remaining tooth had come off the big filling already there and there was infection – a “palatial sinus”. There was also a “healed sinus” on the lower left that has been giving grief since New Year. Need for root canal all round. For today she removed the wobbly area of the cracked tooth and packed in a dressing. There was quite a lot of bleeding but things were more comfortable and the operation could go ahead.

I was at home long enough to shower before walking down to the hospital. It was very hot indeed and humid under a veil of cloud.

I had a pleasant cubicle with a view over the main entrance. I answered a few questions for the nurse, had the surgeon check my scrotum and a visit from the anaethestist and then a wait: a long wait. They came for me at two; giving me a ride in my bed along to theatre. A young chap wired me up, then the anaesthetist put in the cannula and chatted away while pumping two or three syringes in. Then came one which I could feel rushing up my arm and I heard a voice say “drifting off now”.

What felt like a moment later I felt and half saw the tube come out of my throat and I was dozily chatting to the nurse in recovery. The clock said three. I was comfortable, though with a slight feeling that I had been kicked.

Soon I was back in the room. I must have dozed. The surgeon came in to check. He was pleased. He said that “one of the structures in the scrotum” was quite twisted, which might be the cause of the problem. The cyst and the structure had been removed and I would notice a great improvement. He said that I had not been given any pain relief so far, except during the operation, but he would prescribe some, “in case”.

As soon as he had gone, the nurse arranged something to eat and drink. I was ravenous. I ate a heavenly BLT and about a gallon of coffee and then was gently bullied into a walk, which was O.K., and then was out of bed until Thom arrived in a taxi to take me home to bed.

I joined “SouthDowns Orienteers” a few weeks ago and had been to two local events since then. The main season is rapidly drawing to a close, and the operation was looming, so I decided to enter the annual club handicap. You had to enter in advance, so that your average “minutes per km” could be calculated. Start times were given out so that, if everyone ran at their season’s average time, we would all finish at around 11:20 a.m.. Fast runners would go off last, slow runners first. The winner would be someone who ran well above his/her average time for the year, not the fastest person.

The event was taking place at Knowlands Farm near Barcombe in Sussex. The place could have been out of a picture book. Just past the farm itself and a field with inquisitve calves and baby rabbits was a large, water-lillied pond which framed two pretty houses and a tidy, wooden barn. There was no registration. We simply collected the slip confirming our start time and ambled out along the edge of woodland to the start.

Being very slow – at least so far: mainly due to making mistakes and not very impressive fitness – I was one of the earlier ones to start on the Green course. There was a little nervous banter before the off. I learnt that whoever won the handicap had the “honour” of organising next year’s. People talked about the importance of coming second! The consensus was that the handicap would be won by someone who had been inconsistent this year – capable of a reasonable result but who had never quite achieved it.

Also new to me was the need to change maps. The map was 1:5000 scale, which meant that the green course people needed two to cover the ground – the longer blue course folks needed three. People were sent out to do the maps in different orders (e.g. A then B or B then A) so it would be harder to follow anyone else. After the first map you came back through the start/finish area to colelct the next, and to give “spectators” some idea who was doing well!

The woods were lovely to run in: very open and with good detail. There were a couple of runs across grassland but lots of things to use to locate yourself – for example, there were several streams and “feed troughs” marked on the map. You kept coming across a big block of “green” – very dense forest – in the centre of the map. The dense area was criss-crossed with paths so you had to do some careful map-reading to make sure you followed the right ones to get through that area.

I felt good and I was going fast, at least by my standards. Most importantly, I did not make any drastic errors. Once or twice, I had the wonderful feeling of running on a bearing and “nailing” the control. The orange and white flag appearing in front of me just when I knew it should.

After a while, there were lots of people in the woods but it was hard to tell who was where. There were “mini-races” where four or five people were converging on the same flag, but also periods when I was quite alone.

After finishing my second map I managed a dignified jog down the track to the finish. (I wanted to sprint, but after 4km, you must be joking!). People seemed surprised when I went through the finish and told me I was the first back and that I had won!

Seeing the times later, it was by far the best run I have had, ever, taking half an hour off my personal best for a green course and putting me only twice as slow (bronze standard)as the fastest people on the course. I was well pleased with that, though there is a long way to go to become a competitive orienteer. Still, I had enormous fun, which is the main point.

Next year, I get to organise the event. I will need to learn quite a lot before I can do that, which will be useful.