Oooh. Nice. Not.

L is going into work most days while I’m splitting my time between work and home as I await confirmation of my ‘working from home’ status. When at home I can amble the dogs up to meet her from work partly because anything to delay the Lad’s teatime is good.

On Tuesday, as has become the ritual and at her own request, I metaphorically shove L out of bed for her 7:30am gym class. It’s not really the done thing to kick a girl out of your bed but I like to be helpful.

I prefer to lounge in bed and then do my fitness bit later. Which is another training run, although it’s cold out, and I run 20km through Trowell and Stapleford. L meanwhile attempts to restart her running by having an injection in her sore heel. Oooh. Nice. Not.

On Wednesday I go into work and sit in my little office in Derby on my own. Which is a bit like being at home just without dogs. It does at least give me chance to do my fortnightly gym session.

On Wednesday it’s dog training and on Thursday I have a Committee Meeting. I also go into work again on the Thursday, this time by bike which was tough. When I got on my bike I realised that I didn’t get new brake blocks for Christmas. I must get some, just in case I have to stop for anything.

Word comes back from my assorted bosses that I can now, actually, work from home as much as I want. So I’ll definitely be taking that on board.

On Saturday we have a dog show, the Ogre and I, while L who is still not quite fit to run is marshalling at Wollaton Parkrun.

To be fair to the Ogre his first run wasn’t bad but it was still an E. His second run though was bad, a total horror show in fact. Afterwards I head off to the refreshments van to see if they have any whiskey. If they have I wonder whether I should be administering it to the Lad rather than me.

Our third run is also an E but our fourth, lo and behold, is a victory of sorts e.g. not an E but a mere 25 faults.

In the evening we go out for a meal to somewhere we haven’t been before and didn’t even knew existed, the Corinthian Restaurant on Goldsmith Street, and very nice it is too.

On Sunday Derby come back from 2-0 down to draw 2-2 with Birmingham as they endeavour to stay up despite the 21 point deduction. A draw doesn’t really help but it’s better than nothing.

They badly need a takeover to be completed but I think they’ll still be arguing about that come the end of the season. There was a protest and a march before the game to highlight this fact. Which actually made it easier for us to get there because I think everyone else marched to the match.

Funnily enough on the pitch this is the most enjoyable season we’re had in years. The players are totally committed, with the supporters totally behind them, and playing good football too.

Someone else who’s loving this season is my Dad. He loves the trip out to the match and also the post-match pint in The Yard. 

(Sunday 30^th January)

Sniff Sniff Bloody Sniff

Perhaps luckily, because it was icy, Monday morning’s dog walk was painfully slow. Sniff sniff bloody sniff. It’s not just MD either, I think the Lad was getting his revenge for me not taking him on my run yesterday.

If that was his tactic then it doesn’t work. On Tuesday I run without him again but only 8k around the University.

My gig on Wednesday, Blood Red Shoes at Rescue Rooms, is cancelled. I’m not doing terribly well with gigs at the moment.

While at work my old PC appears to be terminally broken but my new company laptop hasn't arrived yet. I’m not doing terribly well with computers at the moment.

Thankfully it does arrive on Thursday. So I make a flying visit to work, collect it and then bring it home to configure it.

L has a cough which everyone probably thinks is Covid but it’s not keeping her from her morning swim where the pool is often close to empty anyway. Of course that could be because they’ve heard her coming.

On Friday the legend that is (or now sadly was) Meatloaf dies. I knew he hadn’t been well for a while but it had, I thought, mainly been back problems and he was supposed to have a new album coming out.

Sadly also L’s Mother’s cat has gone but to be rehomed. So hopefully that will have a happy ending.

In the afternoon we head over to Rugby where we are holding our Winter Agility Show having been kicked out (sort of) of our old venue in Newark.

We had originally been told we could set up from 5pm but during the course of the day that morphs into 6:30pm. The show is actually at Onley and on the way I drop L off at the Holiday Inn close to the motorway where she intends to have a swim and a gym session probably followed by some reading with a glass of wine in her hand while I’m lugging agility equipment around.

I eventually make it back to her after completing setting up just before the hotel’s food curfew at 10pm.

The next day, the show itself goes well although it isn’t as popular with our own members as it’s further for them to go. The Lad has a wild time competing and even occasionally does something I ask him to.

On Sunday I run again, 10k around the University.

(Sunday 23^rd January)

Capricious Collie

On Monday I take a trip into work which doesn’t go well as the main purposes of my trip - to nick a monitor for home working and to bring home my beer don’t look likely to happen as neither are at work.

Luckily a few hours later things improve when my beer arrived. Only a week after I got the email saying it had been delivered. Hopefully a monitor will materialise next.

I did try to set up our old TV as an additional monitor at home, which worked well for a few days until it packed up completely.

The world’s most famous anti-vaxxer aka Novak Djokovic turns up for the Australian Tennis Open unvaccinated and to everyone amusement they lock him up in a detention centre.

On Tuesday I am back to working from home. After ‘work’ I go for a 16k to Stapleford and back. I even take an audiobook to keep me company. Slow Horses by Mick Herron. I pop the run on my running spreadsheet. As for the book... I don’t have a reading spreadsheet. Not that they’d be much on it if I did.

On Wednesday I have an online meeting with my new boss who is based in Huddersfield. He tells me that I could work from home as much as I wanted to. Yippee. He says he’s only been into the office, which granted is a long way south in Loughborough, once since he joined the company eight months ago.

By Friday the weather has turned really cold again and our morning walk is treacherous underfoot for those attached to a capricious collie.

On Saturday it’s Parkrun at Wollaton and then later Derby beat Sheffield United but with no progress on the takeover front several players are let go which will make picking up future wins more difficult.

I run again on Sunday extending my Stapleford route slightly to 18k.

(Sunday 16^th January)

Lights

Tuesday is the first day back at work after the New Year Bank Holiday. That is if I get there as I have been summoned to the dentist first thing. He had advised me that I needed a wisdom tooth removed not that I was even aware I had a problem with it.

Twenty minutes after my 8:30 appointment I’m back home and still have my tooth. He did an x-ray and decided the tooth was too difficult for him to remove. He therefore needed to refer me to get it done in hospital which will apparently take months. Then he asked me whether it is giving me any trouble, to which the answer is no. So he said if I wanted to I could leave it in, see how it goes and then we’ll review at my next check-up. So it was all a damp squid really.

L is back at proper work, in an office, where she says it’s cold as the heating has been off throughout the Christmas break. A bit like having the kitchen door open at home where ironically we have it shut.

Sadly the Christmas Lights at Wollaton Hall are about to come to an end. 

 

Not that we actually attended as such but it meant the park was open in the evenings and we could walk the dogs up there and see some of the lights anyway.

Talking of Christmas lights, my Dad finally gets his working just as Twelfth Night arrives.

Our milkman who has been coming at increasing weird times, anything from 11pm at night to 8am in the morning, now seems to have disappeared completely e.g. absconded with his Christmas tips. We currently have a different chap in a different van.

On Thursday is snows or something that could have been snow... but was more like sleet... that then turned to rain... Sadly I didn’t get to have a snowball fight with the boys. L got all excited and went for a lunchtime walk in it but just got wet. That’s probably our lot now for the year.

On Saturday I run Wollaton Parkrun which, with L not running at the moment, MD gets a damn good bark out of while the Lad gets a damn lead biting session. MD also gets a new food bowl after he somehow put his foot in his old one and snapped it in two.

Then on Sunday it’s the New Year 10k at Sherwood Pines that L and I ran when I was last marathon training two years ago, for the same race I’m now training for e.g. Brighton. Only last time she was training for it too but now she isn’t. She would have done this 10k though if she’d not had her foot injury.

It’s a two lap course which this time they seem to have measured properly as last time it was well short. This time it may actually be slightly long. It’s a two lap course and last time we did an extra training loop with the Lad but I was younger then. So I don’t do that this time. 

(Sunday 9^th January)

New Year

We are back at my parents’ again on Monday as the traditional Boxing Day football match arrives, as now appears to be the tradition, a day late. At least the game is on after the last one was covid-ed off.

For the first time we are asked to show Covid passports which necessitates the club providing extra staff, which they can barely afford, to check them. Not that they were really reading them, you could probably have flashed your library card and got in.

Anyhow Derby beat West Brom and my Dad enjoys his post-match pint as much as usual, if not more. Overall he’s having a really good Christmas.

On Tuesday I get out on a run and do 9k but on Wednesday I’m back at work, well WFH, and L has my cold/flu/dog allergy but is also testing negative on LFT.

This means that she is free to be coerced into going into Nottingham for New Year’s Eve where we have a few drinks around Canning Circus in the Good Fellow George and the Organ Grinder before I drag her down to the Market Square to see what’s happening there. No one is clear whether the council has banned New Year and cancelled the fireworks in the Market Square due to Covid or because they’ve got no money or just because that's the sort of thing councils do but plenty of people turn up to find out anyway.

There are still fireworks but no one seems to know where they came from or who was responsible for them.

On Saturday I do the New Year's Day Parkrun at Wollaton Park but L doesn't as she is once again struggling with an injury. Then the next day I put in a 14k run around my nice and boring old faithful of a route out to Stapleford.

(Saturday 1^st January)