AS a red, blue, purple and pink sky heralded dawn on Wednesday morning I made my way towards the M62 just after 6am.
My trepidation at taking on one of Britain’s most unpredictable motorways quickly passed as the colourful dawn sky gave way to piercing, almost warm spring sunshine.
I was heading to East Yorkshire and to an event at the recently renovated and rebuilt Hotham Hall in the pretty village of Hotham near North Cave.
It is the home of David and Linda Kilburn, David is the founder of MKM Building Supplies which started with one site in Hull in 1995 and now has 124 branches across the UK.
The couple have clearly made Hotham Hall, built in 1721 and which has hosted royal visitors in the past, a labour of love and they don’t want it just as a home.
They are adding 12 suites in the former stable block and a spa and have space to host weddings of up to 140 guests at the hall, which is surrounded by 120 acres of verdant gardens and farmland.
David has been a longstanding supporter of Run With It, the Hull-based charity I have recently become a trustee of.
He and Linda opened their home this week for the charity to host key business guests at a breakfast to showcase its wonderful work.
Run With It’s unique approach is aimed at improving core educational skills in maths and English in young people and developing essential life skills that aren’t taught in schools.
It does this by hosting its sessions at stimulating venues such as Hull’s MKM Stadium, Humberside Airport and the Flemingate shopping centre in Beverley.
Lisa Dawson, the energetic and engaging chief executive of the charity, is able to list some eyebrow-raising statistics, including the fact that a large number of children on Run With It courses in Hull have never seen the Humber Bridge.
In Bridlington, where it operates at Bridlington Town Football Club, it seems shocking that a number of kids have never been to the beach.
As part of its plans to widen its essential work, Lisa and the charity’s chairman, Shaun Watts, who runs Chameleon Business Interiors in Hull, outlined to guests at the breakfast a new Patron scheme.
There are three Patron levels: Aspire, Achieve, Succeed.
The membership levels costs from £3,600 to £10,000 a year.
Lisa highlighted how £3,600 enables the charity to provide 1,080 hours of its intervention programmes, reaching 54 children or can deliver 900 enrichment hours reaching 180 children.
The Succeed level, involving a £10,000 donation, can deliver 3,000 intervention hours for 150 children or 2,500 enrichment hours reaching 500 children.
At the event we heard from two headteachers who have become enthusiastic trustees of Run With It, Mark Batty and Chris Huscroft.
Both gave examples of its transformational work and how its work can stimulate ambition and interest in children that are often not inspired by school.
As part of his thanks to guests, David Kilburn admitted he was not very interested in school work.
“Mind you, it didn’t do me too much harm!” he said, looking around his palatial home.
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I WAS sorry to read about the death of former Yorkshire Post business editor Ian Green.
His family announced last week that he had died in January aged just 60 after several months living with throat cancer.
Our paths never crossed at the YP as by the time I arrived he had moved on to become the launch editor of the Yorkshire Business Insider magazine.
But I’d met him a couple of years before in Helsinki of all places.
When I was at the Western Mail and he at the YP we were both participants on a press trip to showcase Finnish businesses.
In temperatures that reached minus 25 centigrade, we were driven in a minibus around Finland to see paper mills, steel makers and a manufacturing company called Fiskars which dates from 1649 and still makes high quality knives and garden shears which I can highly recommend.
When I eventually got to Leeds I spent plenty of time with Ian on the Yorkshire business scene at events and press conferences and most memorably around plenty of restaurant tables, and he was fun and engaging company with huge experience and great knowledge.
What I liked about Ian was that he wasn’t afraid to take a risk and try something new – not a characteristic you find in many journalists.
Born in Liverpool, after qualifying as a journalist he joined his local newspaper, the Liverpool Daily Post, then moved from its business desk to become business editor of the Northern Echo in Darlington in 1990 and three years later made the move to Leeds to take the helm of the business desk at another regional newspaper which could punch its weight with national titles.
From Insider he was headhunted in 1999 by former 3i director Stephen Ross to head up VentureDome.com, the UK’s first dedicated online venture capital/private equity news website and deal origination platform.
It was the original dot.com boom and Ian was one of the first journalists to make the leap into this bold, exciting but completely unknown new world.
He later joined Andy Green’s Wakefield-based PR operation Green PR.
Andy was no relation but they used having the same name as great leverage to announce the move and I’m sure that they also played on the fact that big Liverpool fan Ian was now in business with huge West Ham supporter Andy.
It was Andy who sent me the news about Ian’s passing.
After the two went their separate ways Ian had a series of in-house communications roles.
Ian was a really keen rower, I’m sure he was a member of Bradford Amateur Rowing Club which rows on a stretch of the River Aire at Saltaire.
He leaves a wife, Annie, also a journalist, and son Frank and daughter Mercedes.
Frank said in a Linkedin post announcing his father’s passing that the family were planning to hold a celebration of Ian’s life at the rowing club in the spring.
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DID you miss my blog last week?
No, I didn’t think so.
Only one person got in touch to check I was OK after the non-appearance of last Friday’s missive.
I went off for a week in the sun in Dubai, catching up with a few old friends and meeting some new ones.
Despite a cloudy start to our week, the break from the long, dark, cold British winter was a real tonic.
I’d not been to Dubai for 10 years and it is a place where development never stops.
At times it feels like you have landed on another planet – like Arnold Schwarzenegger experienced in Total Recall.
Ironically the one person who always called me if he didn’t receive my blog on a Friday was Rodney Dalton.
And today we hold a tribute lunch to the late, Leeds legal legend.
There will be lots of laughter, maybe a few tears, plenty of memories and more than one toast to a great man by his family and many friends.
More next week.
Have a great weekend.