Nigel Holland - The 50 List – A Father’s Heartfelt Message to his Daughter - Anything Is Possible

Nikki’s arrival caused disruption in other ways as well. Unplanned, she came under the banner of ‘unexpected gifts from heaven’, but for me and my brothers she was anything but. We had wanted a dog. We had been promised a dog. Well, if not exactly promised, certainly given to believe that having a dog was not entirely out of the question. So for the duration of the pregnancy, we were miffed (though in my case, possibly still hopeful she might turn out to be a dog) and according to my mother, we spent the first six months of her life demanding that she be called Rover.

‘Just as well you were a girl,’ I recall my mother telling her later, ‘or that might actually have turned out to be your name.’

The house the family lived in when I was born was in Britannia Square in Worcester. I have only a few memories of my time there. The house stood very tall, with three storeys, and was painted bright white. In my mind’s eye, it was very grand looking, our family residence, though as a small child I naturally had a small child’s perspective, so perhaps it wasn’t quite as grand as it seemed.

Either way, it was home, and it was a happy home as well. Though my memories of it are no more than snapshots, I recall a wind-up mouse, which I wound and launched accidentally into my potty – the potty into which I’d just peed. I also have a clear early memory of my dad stepping out onto the roof of the house to sort out some tiling that had come loose. He was a jack of all trades, Dad – a builder, decorator and, at that time, a bus driver, and I can still recall how incredible it felt to look up and see him, high above my head, fixing the roof.

But then everything my dad did seemed incredible to me. I remember walking down the road with my mum, brothers and baby sister, and how we watched as a double-decker bus drove past us into the depot. Minutes later we had followed it – Mum had to deliver Dad’s packed lunch to him – and I recall how thrilling it was to see my father climbing down from the cab of that very bus.

We didn’t stay in Worcester for long. According to another piece of family folklore, my dad could drive anything – cars and buses, coaches and trucks, huge articulated lorries. If it had wheels and an engine, he was fine with it. As a result, within a couple of years of my sister’s birth, Dad had found a new job. A better-paid one – which was key, given that he had a young and growing family – as a driver for BEA at Heathrow Airport.

We moved into a big sprawling semi in Hayes and Harlington, which was obviously convenient for Dad’s work at the nearby airport, but was also elderly and in need of tarting up. Which Dad of course did. Once again I have an enormous sense of pride in my father; he really did seem able to turn his hand to anything. Replacing windows, making furniture, painting walls, creosoting fences: there never seemed to be a day when he wasn’t busy doing something. In the meantime, we kids played in the garden. This had an Anderson shelter, a relic of the Second World War, which, though it had long since been filled in with earth, provided us with our very own adventure playground: a grassy hummock to scramble over, a launch pad for our bikes, a backdrop for whatever games our young imaginations could conjure up.

* * *

Having sent in the entry form for the Silverstone half marathon, there is no turning back, and even if there were, I decide to seal the deal by announcing that I am taking part in it on Facebook, for good measure. As with telling all your mates you plan to give up smoking, putting it out there means there is NO WAY I can back out of it now.

For all my efficiency in telling the world what I’m up to, though, it’s still going to be quite a leap of imagination to actually see myself completing a half marathon. And if my plan is to have any sort of credibility – not least with me – it’s a leap I’d better start getting fit for.

Which means training. And training means several things must happen: hours of training itself, yes, but I must also cultivate a mindset of self-discipline and a big stock of dedication. Though in reality, I don’t have a clue what I need to do to prepare. Note to self: so hurry up and find out!

Number of shopping days till Christmas: 19.

Number of days till my 49th birthday: 3.

Ergo, number of days till my 50th birthday: 368.

Number of challenges that need to be completed per day, therefore, on average: 0.137741.

Number of challenges that have actually been completed per day, on average: 0.000000.

Well, I’ve been busy training, haven’t I? I have just, in fact, returned from a 5-mile training lap around the town. And I have decided upon a new motivational slogan: if I can make it around Wellingborough, I can make it anywhere. (Which will obviously, of necessity, include Silverstone.) No, it doesn’t have quite the same ring as the lyric from ‘New York, New York’, but it is what I believe to be true.

It’s all about motivation, obviously. The way the weather is looking right now, I might not get another chance to get out and train till after Christmas, so it feels good to have got the laps I have done in the bag. Admittedly, a half marathon is 13 miles, not 5, but in terms of conditions there’s no contest. What with the state of the roads and pavements, pot holes, broken kerbs – not to mention countless badly parked cars – just negotiating the route of my training lap is a major challenge. It’s also pretty hilly, which, in a wheelchair, is hard on the arms, so all things considered (and wheeling round, I’ve had plenty of time to consider) 13 miles on a perfectly smooth, level racetrack doesn’t daunt me quite so much now.

I Skype my brother Gary, who lives just outside Frankfurt in Germany. He studied performance sports at school and still plays squash at a high level, so is the ideal person to give me training tips and encouragement. He tells me to eat carbs, drink plenty of water, practise having a positive mental attitude and generally live a life of such wholesome sobriety till March that as soon as we’re done I feel a compulsion to crack open a large beer.

Number of years on the planet now: 49. And I don’t feel a day older than 77 (post-training complications – i.e. I hurt).

Number of challenges completed: Erm … still have not quite done any yet.

However, bottles of good Merlot consumed: 1.

I was 49 yesterday, and the thing that most sticks in my mind is that I now have just 364 days to complete all 50 challenges, or else I am going to look something of an idiot. It was a nice birthday – though we dubbed it something different. As Lisa and I dined from the Christmas lunchtime menu at the Beckworth Garden Emporium (and why not? They have a cracking restaurant) we decided we’d call it the Mantisweb staff Christmas party, Mantisweb being the name I’ve given my new business. Which of course gave us licence to misbehave generally, though neither of us actually photocopied our bottoms.

My birthday over – Christmas isn’t allowed to begin until it is – the festivities are coming around super-fast now, and Lisa and I still don’t know what to get the kids. With all my redundancy pay already allocated to pay the mortgage, money’s tight, so it’s not going to be an extravagant affair this year. I find I don’t see that as a bad thing, particularly. Perhaps it’s good to keep things a little simpler – more like the Christmases of my own youth, when there were only three TV channels, there was no 24/7 scheduling, and a snowball wasn’t just something you lobbed at your mates but some foul, yellow, frothy thing your mum drank. Well, my mum did, anyway, and whichever way you look at it, I can’t help but look back at Christmases past and wish Christmases present were just a little more like them.