Storm Francis

Storm Francis scuppers Tennis while L trudgers to work in the heavy rain and even the dogs won’t go outside but they still insist on having the back door wide open. In revenge I force them out on a wild and windy walk when it calms down a bit.

More things are opening up post-lockdown and John Carroll release their swimming guidelines which require you to shower before you swim but they’re not providing the shower. I think they mean you’re supposed to shower at home before you arrive. If you go after work, as L is, does the shower you had in the morning count?

With everybody else seeming to be having a holiday I start looking at cottages for us to have a break once the schools go back, if they do go back, and things are a bit quieter.

Brighton confirm the cancellation of September’s Marathon and I roll my entry over to April, even though I strongly suspect that won't go ahead either.

On Wednesday I do a 'Eat Out To Help Out' with my old school chum. We have drinks in the Alexandra then a meal in the Exeter.

On Friday I go in to work again but as the weather is still so foul I opt to go in the car.

Saturday sees the start of the Tour de France that has been postponed from July. It starts in Nice and it’s anybody’s guess whether it will make it all the way to Paris in three weeks’ time given the current Covid situation in France. L’s boss is still in France and has now decided to stay even longer because the race goes through his village on Monday.

We go to a pub in the centre of Nottingham on Saturday night for the first time since they reopened. We visit the Six Barrel Drafthouse at Victoria where they aren’t doing table service and they make you queue at the bar. It's old fashioned and not terribly sensible, so I'm not sure we’ll revisit. We have a couple then pop in at the Borlase on the way back home.

We start another ‘boxset’ and watch the first of the 26 episodes that make up The Killing. We plump for the US version which is probably a mistake, as we should probably have opted for the original Danish series Forbrydelsen, but we’ll stick with it.

Probably more to our liking is Lethal White, which is just four parts over this weekend and next.

 (Sunday 30^th August)