All the time,
I could deny,
But I'll never realise,
I've been chasing rainbows,
All my life.
"Shed Seven" 1996.
I-pods are a great thing. Not only do they drown out the mind numbing dullness of the bus trip to work, but they have the ability to transport you to any place, time or event in your life or in someone else's. On this sunny Wednesday morning though it didn't transport me to anywhere but to my present location, what it did do though was open a door in my mind that hand been closed for a long long time. The sign hanging on the front of the door that the boys from York hand just opened by singing the lyrics above to me read....
"contentment"
My name is David Boon, I am a 30 year old golf pro who is currently the director of his own retail business in the heart of the Edinburgh, the greatest city i have ever lived in (and there has been a few). I am married to a beautiful girl who is everything that I had wished for in a woman and then some. I own my own house and I drive a very nice car.
Now before you reach for the big X in top right hand corner because you think this is going to be a blog about my perfect life I will let you in on my dirty secret........... my so called perfect life ended in February and in the next few weeks it will be ripped away from me in total with the force and pain of a child losing her favourite toy!
My wife and I suffered in the beginning of the year the greatest high followed by the greatest low I have ever felt in my life. Within the space of 5 weeks I went from holding my wife, both with tears of joy in our eyes, trying to avoid the smell of urine coming from the stick in front of us screaming at the top of it's voice the fact that we where going to have our first child. 5 weeks later I was holding my wife even closer, with even more tears in our eyes, as we left hospital after having the aforementioned addition to our perfect life removed from her body after the babies heart had stopped beating, the result being we joined the statistic that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in mis-carrage! In the proceeding weeks we have realised that getting pregnant again isn't as easy as it was first time and also that we feel that the world basically hates us!
Which brings me back to the bus trip and my i-pod. It is a sunny Wednesday morning and i am on the bus heading into work to continue with the closing down sale of our business. The banks refuse to help us, our creditors can't wait any longer and due to the economic crisis that has gripped the world we are again going to become a very unwanted statistic of businesses closing due to the "credit crunch". Damn those statistics!!!!
Which brought me to my door opening moment. I am not sure how long I have been searching for this key subconsciously but it appeared to me just as we drove past the beautiful Botanical Gardens.
I won't lie to you when I say that I have had a bloody good life. I turned pro at golf and subsequently played all round the world. I have lived in some great places with some great people and I have done many things that i would never tell you in front of any ones parents! But one thing throughout my life has always been at the back of my mind, or the front shining as bright as the sun as my sunglasses wearing friends will tell you.
I am never happy with what i have got and i always want more!!
Which brings me to the rainbows and the key. I have always wanted to better myself with anything in my life. Job, house, car, wealth. If I don't have the best or the most then I strive to get it. I am sure most millionaires will tell you is the only way to live but I am not a millionaire. I have tried, my god I have tried but as I write this I am closer to be a homeless man with a dog and a imaginary friend than living the lap of luxury I have long dreamed of.
Cars, houses etc. They are all very good and shiny but the loss of our first child and the impending doom of my business has lead me to realise that the rainbow is not the shiny materials that i crave but it is the personal contentment that i have never had, although i thought. The prospect of being Jobless, moneyless and homeless has been hanging over my head now for 6 months. These fears and feelings though pale into insignificance compared to what I felt leaving the hospital that rainy February day. Bizarrely I actually feel something completely different. I feel like my life might actually be starting.
My wife is perfect, I have a very generous skitzefrenic family (if you knew them you would know what i mean) that I wouldn't be without, and a group of very old friends that I consider myself very lucky to have. Yes I have lost my business but there are far more important things in life than money and procession's. Things could be a lot worse.
So to my new chapter in my lives. We will soon be moving 'home' to Nottingham and once again we will be surrounded by the people we hold dearest. I will find work, I don't yet know what but I know I will. I will never stop though, my wife has said this and I have to agree. Until I am holding that rainbow, or driving along it in a Mario Brothers style then I will never be happy. My rainbows now have nothing to do with the previously mentioned posessions. I need to be able to support my family, rainbow 1! We need to make our family grow, Rainbow 2! And we must make sure that every day we are happy and grateful, rainbow 3! This I feel I can achieve because I am a very lucky man to have what i have.
Which brings me to my blog and to my final rainbow........my personal rainbow that i might never reach but at least I have to try. Over the years this rainbow will change, it will morph from one challenge to the next, each one though I am determined to finish, not for money, power or adulation. but for me! simple as that!
I have never been jealous of anyone in my life because although jealously can act as a driving force I believe that it is a unhealthy Passion to have. That is until on Monday evening when I spoke to my friend who I must now admit I am jealous of him. Not because he has a nice job, kids or a house. It is because after hearing the pride and the passion in his voice, after reading the hundreds of messages of good will and support for him and everyone else. and after looking at myself in the mirror and realising that i am 30 year old with a body that is closer to my overweight father than the very fit and strong 18 year old memory that unfortunately has disappeared in a haze of beer, wine, restaurants and way too much good living, This needs to change! I now realise that changing this is the final rainbow I need to chase. and fingers crossed, I chase it in less than 3 hours and 43 minutes. On Tuesday morning i paid my entry fee to the London Marathon!
My god that is going to be the most painful press of the 'Enter' button ever!!
If you have read this far then thank you. You will no doubt have realised that I am no Shakespeare. If you want some iambic pentameter then trust me you are in the wrong place. I am me and I will write like I talk and think. I will be honest, sometimes too honest and I will never shy away from my feelings. I will give you a run by run, fall by fall and pasta meal by bloody blister record of my training from the very few steps out the house to the finishing line in 12 months time. I will hopefully make you laugh and maybe even make you cry but what I will do is to give you a 100% honest appraisal of what it take for a normal family guy to run the London marathon
I am currently 14 1/2 stone and the most exercise I get at the moment is when I drag my fat ass onto the golf course. I know this is going to be hard, possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. 26 miles of what could be pain and agony, but from what my friend has told, the result, or the rainbow as I will be thinking of it, is one of the greatest prizes you can achieve.
So it's time to set my alarm, buy those trainers, load up my I-pod because my friends, it time to Run Fat Boy, Run!
