Hello, you probably don’t know me: I’m Stuart, an ex-colleague and friend of John (not all Johns, just this one). Before I start, let’s get some things straight: I am not Scottish, I don’t live in Yorkshire and after reading this post, you’ll realise that my adventures are not the same.

I’ve read John’s blog since he began - I know the person behind the sense and the nonsense that you read here, and I can tell you that what you read is what you get - there are no hidden, nasty traits to John (lots of haircuts, but only one face).

You may or may not know that John is off on holiday next week and, strangely, he deemed me capable enough to be able to fill in for him during his absence. Did you notice that child-like naivety was one of his personality traits?

It will become evident that I’m new to the blogging world. However, I started my own blog a few weeks ago and John has become my most devoted, actually, my only, reader.

I never really understood blogging; mostly it’s inane drivel (like this post), with a few odd gems that have helped me in my professional and personal life. However, following John’s latest visit to see us, with his beloved wife and Mac in tow, I got hooked and have started writing.

In general, blogs are just diaries and I hate diaries, but strangely enough, I have kept the only diary I ever wrote. It’s purple (in case you wanted to know), and dates from 1982. I must have written it because I thought I should have a diary, because, judging by the content, there can be no other reason. There are many riveting entries early in the year, some of the classics being:

• “Rained today” (I come from the north of England so this seems self-evident, although I haven’t cross-checked this entry with the Met Office for accuracy).
• “Played football. Won 2-1. Didn’t score“. A single reference to a long-forgotten football match, rather than two references: one to the result of a football match followed by one to the result of trying to find a girlfriend and/or illicit drugs at the under-16 disco.
• However, there is one small delve into the personal arena (I couldn’t be too explicit in case my mum found it). “Pam’s tonight“. She was a long-term girlfriend at the time - 3 weeks - I presume the entry is a reference to a visit to her house that evening, rather than a revelation that tonight did, in fact, belong to Pam.

Like a British summer, the diary entries fizzled out in mid-April, so we will never know what happened for the rest of the year. Maybe such summer gems as “Sunny Today, 21°C” or the autumnal, “Leaves falling, getting damper” are lost forever. Sad, indeed.

The last person that John invited to write on his blog persuaded him to go out and buy a Mac as a result. I’m hoping (and I strongly suspect) that this post won’t persuade him to go out and buy a cheap 2007 diary - keeping his thoughts to himself would be a sad loss to the blogosphere.

If not, John will be back soon to regale us with holiday stories and no doubt some excellent photos of Arran.

In the meantime, if you want to read more of my (unfortunately, diary-like) thoughts about France, epilepsy, music and life in general, feel free to visit me…

I hope I haven’t decimated your audience base too much in your absence John!

Picture this. Myself and a couple of friends are hiking up a 3000ft mountain in the Lake District. It's raining. I don't mean it's just a shower, I mean it's torrentially raining. It has been all morning. We're all wearing full waterproofs and we're still soaked. Visibility (since we're in the middle of a cloud) is down to around 20m, maybe less. It's windy, which when combined with the rain could make it a cold day indeed. Without the waterproofs we'd have never even set off from the car.

We were several miles from the start, several miles from anywhere in fact. I was leading at this point and out from the mist ahead a bedraggled woman appeared. She was looking at her feet, her long hair was soaking wet and as she got closer I realised that she was wearing a fleece, a pair of jeans, some not-very-solid shoes and a very miserable expression on her face. She was followed by 3 guys in their late teens who were similarly under-dressed in jeans, sweaters and trainers. One of them was actually carrying a bag but I imagine nothing useful was contained within it (probably some cans of Special Brew).

When they passed us my friends and I stopped and exchanged incredulous glances. The kids we had just seen were a complete bunch of idiots. All it would take was one of them going over an ankle and within a short period of time they'd have hypothermia and then be in real trouble. I can't imagine what possessed them to hike up a mountain in such terrible conditions so ill-prepared. It's not as if it was a nice morning where it looked like it was going to clear up - the day started grim and it was always going to stay grim. Not one of them had a waterproof jacket and it was a fine line they were treading.

Whenever I read about people getting stuck on mountains who had no right being there I feel like their miserable situation served them right (of course plenty of experienced people get caught out but that's a different thing altogether). These idiots then put others at risk who have to go and rescue them. It makes my blood boil.

The kids we saw no doubt got back in one piece but it wouldn't have taken much for them to have been in real trouble and I wouldn't have had the slightest bit of sympathy for them. At least the miserable day they had should have put them off for life and that's a good thing. Mountains should be treated with respect and are not the place for the unprepared.

As a young lad my dad would drag me out walking and when I was tired, or I'd stubbed my toe, or I'd skinned my knee, or I'd tripped up and fallen on my face, or anything that generally hurt he'd comfort me by saying "pain proves you're alive son!". I used to find that no comfort at all of course because I was quite the wuss when I was a kid. When you're young and something hurts, you stop doing it. There's no concept of pushing through the pain barrier, you just burst into tears and wait for mummy to come to the rescue.

But when I got older I found that pain is really just a state of mind. One thing I learned with the Marines was that even when you're absolutely knackered and feel like you're going to collapse in heap on the ground, if you put your mind to it you can keep going well past what you thought your limits were. Once you've pushed yourself beyond your perceived limits you realise you can do it again whenever you want to.

The trouble is I'm one of these people who likes pushing myself for the sense of achievement afterwards. It's one of the reasons I like climbing mountains, mountain biking and running. If something is easy it just doesn't seem as worthwhile to me when I've done it. And when I look back at all the things I remember that I'm proud of, most are the ones where I've had to graft and dig deep. For me it's not a competition against anyone else - plenty of people climb more mountains in a much more hardcore way than me, loads of people are faster and more crazy on a mountain bike than me and a boatload of people are faster runners than me. But that doesn't matter, it's just me pushing myself - me against my will.

Over the last couple of years I've been doing these sorts of things less and less and it's only since I started hiking again that I've remembered the sense of achievement I get from pushing my body and keeping going when I'm knackered and just want to stop. My good lady isn't like that at all and can't understand why I actually like making myself suffer. I guess our brains are just wired up differently. I always like to jest that "I'm the risk taker, she's the home-maker"!

I just think that a life without ever taking any risks, without pushing yourself is a life without highlights. I wouldn't want to look back on my life from my deathbed and think of all the hours I spent watching Eastenders and sitting in the comfort zone while the world outside the door passed me by. In the words of the great 20th century philosopher Ferris Bueller: "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it".

I though it was time for another photo casebook, so here you go:

Don't worry if you can't make it to my desk to get a cake, next time you see me get me to buy you one. But you'd better like it! [Editor's note: my good lady actually had to buy hair rollers because she didn't have any and I wanted her to have that downtrodden wife look!]. Oh, and happy birthday Anne (whose birthday it actually is today)!