Setting the scene... Did someone say "Fat Git on a bike?" (by Ian Henery)

This is the first time I have ever written a blog site.  I have heard about social networking sites like twitter (thought thats what birds did?) and facebook (a face in a book?  Unbelieveable) but never understood it.  I have been wanting to do something for a long time to tell you all about the amazing benefits I have experienced as a result of trialing the products of Freedom Forever, in particular the range of health food supplements - but how? 

At 48 my language is at odds with that of my children.  For example, I will remark, "This is a great record, I remember Legs & Co dancing to it on Top of the Pops; I had it in 7 inch". My kids will ask whether I am referring to pizza and "what`s a record?  What`s "Top of the Pops"? Their language is "I`ve ripped this off the computer" (horror!) and "I`ve just downloaded these tunes" (is that illegal?  Breach of copyright?). 

So, (as Mick Jagger famously sang on "Sympathy for the Devil) please let me introduce myself. 
I am a fat git. 
I wear a three piece suit to hide my gut.    
Or at least I used to be a fat git. 
Now I am just a git.  

Of course, it wasn`t always like that. On Tuesday 3rd July I met a client in Cafe Soya in Birmingham`s China Town.  Last year I opened up a branch office doing just private client work (immigration, conveyancing, probate, company/commercial and family) and it has fortunately paid off.  In 2008 during the credit crunch (which one, I hear you ask) I tried to start a branch office in Streetly but lost £60,000.  Ouch.

Now, I hadn`t seen this client for a while - certainly not since I had started using the Freedom Forever products.  I am a lawyer specialising in defending people in the criminal courts or at police stations.  It wasn`t that this client had been behaving himself (he runs a string of brothels in Birminghham) but it was just that the police hadn`t been able to nail him - something about his choice of solicitor.   I am always asked how can I represent guilty people?  How can I bear getting off criminals?  My answer is always the same: if the police don`t have enough evidence, then my client has a right to make no comment at the police station: and if they start answering questions against legal advice, I will kick them under the table.

I have a large client base amongst Birmingham`s brothels.  Don`t ask - I have no idea how it happened.  Some solicitors end up specialising in football hooligans, others tobacco smuggling: for me it was the sex industry.  I am the only man I know who gets paid for going to brothels.

I had got this client off twice in the last 6 months.  We meet, shake hands and sit down at the table.  He orders something involving dead animals with beansprouts and, being a spiritually aware person bound for Nirvana, order the vegetarian.  And my client looks at me and says,
"You`re not such a fat git now, are you?  What happened?"  
And I say, "Team Argi".  
He thinks.  You can see the machinery turning behind his eyes.  Is this some new adult pastime that he ought to be advertizing in what he laughingly describes as a "gentleman`s retreat?"
An oxymoron if I ever heard one - like "military intelligence" or "friendly fire".   

He knows of O-Levels, All around the world, watersports, S & M and adult babies - but Team Argi?  Is this the new name for a "Greedy Two Girl Special with A Happy Ending?"  He is puzzled as he prods his chunks of decomposing cow in black bean sauce. "No", says I, "it is an exciting raft of business owners, community leaders and artists who have come together to raise £10k by the end of September for 6th Walsall Scouts. 

The focal point is a life-saving health food supplement recommended by David Balcon called Argi and I am a member of that Team.
  It involves bunjee jumping, promoting a book of poetry by beavers, cubs and scouts, endorsed by Walsall Rotary and the Mayor of Walsall plus massive support by Walsall businesses - plus an awesome promise auction with such cool prizes as helicopter flying lessons and a limo ride to a brewery".   
My client wanted to know if it would make him look younger and whether it was an alternative to viagra. And I thought - HOW DID IT COME TO THIS!?   And that is the very same thought I had when I stood on the entertainment stage, in front of thousands of people on Saturday 30th June in Willenhall as part of a historic moment - the Olympic Torch passed through Willenhall.  I was booked by walsall Council to prov ide 45 minutes of poetry performance, reappointed Walsall Poet Laureate 2012/2013 and the Deputy Mayor and Mayoress were performing keep fit routines with the beavers, cubs and scouts from 6th Walsall alongside Sue Barker from Freedom Forever and Krissy Griffiths, black belt from Walsall School of Shotokan Karate-Do AND reading a selection of their poems. 

This is the book published, edited and collated by Jae Alexander Linsey - 2supportu.biz which is heading into its second edition a week after its publication.   How did it come to this?  Poetry workshops in Willenhall, with Jae and Krissy, on behalf of Walsall Council, less than two months after the successful conclusion of my play Harvest Home (World Citizen) which was performed in front of approx 850 people and raised approx £1,500 for an orphanage in Tanzania called Forever Angels with a cast of cubs, rainbows, scouts and guides where the average age of the cast was only 10.   And there was that ex sea scout Ian Bateman taking all of the photographs for the Walsall Council websites. 

The "Our Olympic Heroes" Book Now available from 6th Walsall Scouts and on Lulu.com

Hang on - wasn`t Ian Bateman the nice bloke who accompanied us on tour?  Didn`t he get his superb photographs in all of the regional newspapers like the Express & Star and Birmingham Mail?  Don`t I have 4 of his portraits of my children hanging on my living room walls? 

And isn`t he the bloke that ensured that the Harvest Home Band (Tim Philpott & Stephen Plant) had their portraits on the Van Gogh Gallery Website housed in St Louis, USA?      

Isn`t this the same Ian Bateman who took some brilliant photographs of me, all very dramatic, sitting on my bike on the top of Barr Beacon modelling Argi for Freedom Forever? 

 And then, because Kris from Impulse "Make It Happen" Marketing wanted a fun looking picture, had my lying on my back with my mountain bike on top of me "peddling across the clouds" like a dying fly?  

Ians Fun Picture!

    
And isn`t that Tim Philpott, folk musician and Road Safety Manager of Wolverhampton City Council, getting ready to get up on the stage and play as part of the Willenhall Olympic Celebrations? 

Didn`t he play Sutton Coldfield the night before as part of exciting new plans to turn Four Oaks into a live alternative entertainment venue?      

Isn`t that Stephen Plant, lawyer and Britain`s leading Rory Gallagher Tribute, standing in the wings?  Didn`t he also play Sutton Coldfield the night before?  And is it true that Robbie Williams asked him to play guitar on Angels?      

I had been exhausted and felt like an old man.  Although I climbed the three highest mountains of England, Scotland and Wales in 24 hours in 2007 (for Cancer Research) and 2008 (for the British Dyslexia Association), I had caught a viral infection in 2009  which paralysed my phrentic nerve so I only had the use of one lung. 

The left side of my diapram was paralysed. Overnight I had become an old man.  I had gone from being the man who could run the length of the Malvern Hills to being the man who could not run a bath - let alone run up the stairs. 

I had started a series of treatments involving acupuncture and bowen therapy and now I was in training to cycle 120 miles in 2 days across the South Downs to raise money for 6th Walsall Scouts. 

 I was part of Team Argi and I was using the products of Freedom Forever to help me regain my life.      
 This is my story.