I recently had a couple of hours to kill and decided to take the delightful Miss G to the new Doors photographic exhibition in Camden. Even though Jim Morrison was long gone when I was born it only took one chance hearing of Break on Through for me to be hooked on The Doors’ music. In fact I would go as far as to say that L.A Woman is my all time favourite song and many others would easily get in to an album of songs that I had to play on repeat until the end of time if I was stranded on a desert island.

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Hello dear blog readers. I’m going to let you in on a few secrets. I love the outdoors, I love the cinema, I love the film Memento, I’m a big fan of my mate Dave and I love Greenwich. So you can imagine my happiness when the wonderful pop up cinema, Nomad, came to Greenwich recently.

Apart from the fact it was a bit chilly it was a particularly great way to spend a Friday evening sat in the grand surroundings of the Trinity Music College, watching the sun go down over Canary Wharf and the Thames whilst watching Memento on a great big ruddy screen. I’d go as far as to say it was pretty flipping groovy. Nomad have been popping up all over London this summer showing damn great films. In fact I will be back in Greenwich next month to watch the wonderful Wall E, which I am unashamed to say always brings a tear to the eye. I love that little robot.

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There are without question many benefits to living in London. The bright lights, vibrancy and hustle and bustle rarely disappoint and boredom is not something that is easily found. One downside though is that at times the sheer pace of the Capital can feel suffocatingingly oppressive. I have learned that if you want to make a success of living in London you have to go at your own pace and not try and keep up with everything that is happening around you. If you wanted to it really is possible to fill every minute of every day with something different and after a year you still wouldn’t have run out of things to do.

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I’ve got a new favourite place and its London Fields lido in Hackney. This place is great and is amazingly accessible. This might not be in the easiest and appealing part of London to get to but it is worth the effort and the £4 to get in. To be fair it isn’t that hard to actually get to as you can get off the East London line on the overground at Haggerston or Dalston and then walk about a mile to the pool. Once there the pool itself is 50m and is heated, there is also a cafe and some outdoor seating should you want to sit in the sun and pretend not look at the people in their swimwear. It is a magnificent place. It looks like it has been recently renovated and is clean, which is a lot more than you can say for some London pools. It is also fantastic to be able to swim outdoors and being able to look up and see leaves on trees rather than strip lighting in an indoor pool gets a big Rockupandroll tick from me.

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Yesterday I made the short trip to Reading to speak at the Zoggs UK conference. Zoggs are supporting the Channel Swim event for the spinal injuries charity Aspire and I had been invited along to talk about life with a spinal cord injury and how Aspire can help people like me. I was made to feel really welcome by Zoggs and hopefully I got the message across about how important it is that they get behind this event. I was also pleased to find out that Paddington station is great for wheelchair access and that the staff at that station and at Reading are really helpful.

I was delighted to round the day off at BBC Television Centre as a member of the audience for a live recording of Shooting Stars. I am overjoyed to say that it is every bit as madcap, harebrained and wonderful as you would expect.

However, the day ended on a sour note when on the way home I was grilled twice by random strangers about why I am in a wheelchair.

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Some people think that heaven is a place where beautiful people, dressed in white, sit on fluffy clouds strumming away on golden harps. Well I can tell you that I’ve seen heaven and sadly there are no clouds or harps oreven a big bloke with a beard. The truth is I found heaven when I went to the Gluten Free and Allergy Show at the Kensington Olympia and its a magnificent place. Don’t believe me? Then read on and be convinced.

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Today I joined thousands of other people on the Hardest Hit demo that took place around Westminster in London. The demo was organised to protest against the coalition government’s planned welfare reform bill. If you haven’t heard about the bill then don’t feel too bad because it has had very little coverage in the media, other than in the Society Guardian, which is shameful and a damning indictment on the current news agenda. The fact that there was an estimated 8000 people on the streets of London for the demo was a firm two fingers to the uninterested media and a huge thumbs up to social media sites such as Twitter which was able to be used to galvanise some of society’s most disenfranchised people to come together and show that they can have a voice. You can find out more on the Hardest Hit campaign here http://thehardesthit.wordpress.com/.

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This is not how I thought I would finish my first marathon. After four months of training and numerous blogs, miles pushed and endless bottles of Lucozade consumed I’m devastated to have to write this update and say that yesterday I was unable to complete the marathon. As you can imagine gutted does not begin to describe how I feel and this is made worse because it was due to a problem with my chair and not due to any physical issues. In fact the exact opposite is true and for the 16 miles I completed I felt great.

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I’ve just been for my last push before the marathon and a wave of nerves has just jumped up and smacked me in the face. I was doing ok until I got up to Greenwich Park and saw the preparations for Sunday being made. Who would have known that seeing a few hundred portaloos could fill someone with such fear?

It has though been a good week in terms of sponsorship. I’ve been back to the Greenwich Rotary Club and had a very kind donation from them; I’ve held a marathon themed quiz at home which through the joys of Skype I was able to get my younger brother and his girlfriend to join in; and I’ve had some great coverage in the Greenwich Time newspaper http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=mypagesuite&refresh=w03B5xK1mL14&PBID=9643820d-2df2-4db5-b9e4-58d014e535d1&skip= and on the Aspire website http://www.aspire.org.uk/aspire-marathon-team.aspx. All of this has meant I’ve been able to smash my fundraising target. But don’t let that put you off if you still want to sponsor me as you can still go to my JustGiving page www.justgiving.com/rockupandroll1.

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A recent trip to the theatre saw me take my mum to the Criterion Theatre in London’s Piccadilly Circus to watch The 39 Steps. The play is based on the adventure novel by John Buchan. Seen as there are at least five film versions of the book there is a good chance that the story will be familiar to you as it was to my mum. Whereas I have never read the book, seen the TV mini-series or any of the films so was completely in the dark with what to expect. This meant that, unlike my mum, I wasn’t baffled when it turned out that the play was a spoof with only four actors playing over 100 characters with the book’s seriousness replaced by an abundance of over the top downright silliness.

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