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Liz ran the Potters Arf to raise money for Douglas Macmillan Hospice. Thank you to all sponsors!
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07/09/2008

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Louise's Cross-country

Louise


Cross Country Running
Louise likes winning and enjoys the challenge of racing. So far she has been remarkably successful. At the young age of 10 she achieved her first milestone which was to break the 6 minute mile, when she completed a 2Km race (certified distance) in 7' 26'' (Hanley Park, August 2006). Now she is old enough to enter more major competitions she has continued to show potential. She finished 10th in the English XC Nationals at Alton Towers (Under 13s 2008) and represented Staffordshire in the U13 Inter Counties Cross Countries championship at Wollaton Park, Nottingham on 15th March 2008, finishing a slightly disappointing 22nd. She must inherit the natural running ability from her father although the same can't be said about her increasing commitment to training. Louise used to run for her primary school, St Anne's Primary School in Brown Edge, but she has now moved up to the High School. She also run for Staffordshire Moorlands AC. For news of her performance in races and pictures of her and her running friends see Louise's cross country page. For previous years see: 2005 2006 2007

Other Sports

Louise does a lot of sport and seems to be reasonably good at most of it. One of her more spectacular performance was in the Burslem Town 60m Sprint final in 2004. Unfortunately she did not manage to repeat the same performance in the city championships. Nevertheless it is worth watching the race.

Football
Louise has taken part in a couple of football tournaments (girls 5-aside) with her school. So far they have had a lot of fun but no great success. In their most recent tournament they were knocked out in a penalty shoot out. This was a disaster as they had a novice goal keeper. Novice may be the wrong word. I think it was a first time gaol keeper. The expression on Louise's face is worth seeing.

Horse Riding
Another of Louise's passions is horse riding. She has been taking weekly lessons for many years (left most picture) and likes helping out with the horses stabled in our yard. She briefly held a part share in a pony with her school friend, but tragicly the horse became ill and died, despite the ardent attention of its two young (supervised) owners and the vet. Needless to say, she loses no opportunity to nag us for another.

At the end of April 2007 Louise entered her first show jumping competition at the Greenacres show on Stafford Common. There was only one clear round and with 4 faults (the last fence down!) Louise was in the jump off against the clock. Amazingly she came 2nd against the clock and third overall.

Most of Louise's recent sporting adventures are described on her Cross Country Page


Singing, Dancing and Acting
At the end of the Christmas term 2006, Louise, now in year six took part in the school pantomime: Snow White. Naturally she wanted what she considered to be the lead role, that of Snow White, and therefore put a reasonable amount of preperation into her audition performance. No-one else could see Louise as Snow White and it appears to have been a unanimous decision - she would make a good wicked queen. To Louise's dismay her friend and rival took the part of Snow White. Louise, ever full of confidence, claimed loudly that it was unfair because she, Louise was much better at singing. We tried to persuade her that the wicked queen was a more challenging role for a "nice little girl" to play. After all Snow White is a nice little girl and so would not pose much of an acting challenge to any of the little girls in her class. She didn't seem to agree (and her class teacher laughed and said something along the lines of "I wish") but she threw herself into developing the character. Eventually she developed an adequately aloof, arragant and inconsiderate scheeming character (apart from the evil laugh) and her singing was very good. See pictures of the Wicked Queen.
Louise attended the Stagecoach Theatre Arts school at Clayton High School on Saturday mornings for over four years where she did singing, dancing and drama. We thought we had persuaded her to keep a wide range of interests and continue with the theatre arts until she leaves the junior school. However, she has recently decided she is too busy and needs more time off. Given the number of sporting events she takes part in and the training required it is difficult to disagree. Maybe she will resume her interest in theatre in the arts when she is older and has opportunities in the High School. Louise appeared in her final performance on 15th July 2006 when the students presented a series of pieces around the theme of emotions: love and friendship, conflict, ambition. The students had written, choreographed and directed much of it themselves. Louise was in the section on conflict. See pictures below. On a couple of occasions her group has performed the poem Sammy by Willie Russell. Here is a recording of her reciting it (in her best Scouse accent) in 2002: Sammy by Willie Russell, read by Louise.


Photography and Video Making
Louise has been interested in making movies and taking photographs for a long time but unfortunately in the age of film we couldn't really let her experiment - it was too expensive and besides, the results were too slow for her. By the time the pictures were processed she had forgotten what she had done and lost interest. Success and failure didn't mean much. But now in the digital age she can experiment as much as she pleases- just so long as she looks after the camera. On a recent holiday to Northumberland (Easter 2006) she took several photographs of birds on the Farne Islands. Her favourite is shown here. Click on the picture to see more (Tony took the first few - see if you can tell which he took and which Louise took). She also made a documentary film of Hadrian's Wall. Well, she thought she did, commentary and all - but when we returned and looked for the recording there was only about 10 seconds. Could it have been she didn't press the record button? Nevermind. A good excuse to return another time.

Holidays

Louise likes holidays in warm places. She quite likes Tony's parents' place in Montpeyroux, South of France, especially now they have a swimming pool.

Pictures (left and right) are of Louise on holiday in France 2005.

Pictures below are of Louise on holiday in Ireland in 2006. It wasn't so warm as France but we still braved the cold water of the lake and the sea..
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This page was last modified: March 27 2008 16:31:33.