Things To Do Before My Knees Collapse

I’m not running this weekend, too injured. L has been hinting about the Dovedale Dash. It is on the list of things to do before my knees collapse, that is if they haven’t already. Although actually I have no idea why it’s on my list. The thought of the mud, the stepping stones and the river sends shivers down my spine. I don’t do mud, other than at dog training.

So instead of running we go out and buy a heated towel rail, why not.

Then somehow we pack Daughter’s bike in the car, cramming the two dogs in around it and head up to Sheffield. Doggo looks put out to have a bike chain in his face, whereas MD just curls up, rests his chin on a mudguard and goes to sleep. I’m not sure Daughter will use the bike but at least it’s now blocking up someone else’s house.

While there we go for lunch at the Lescar in Hunters Bar which was ok last time and is ok again, only that everything, pretty much, is off. The Sunday Roasts have all sold out, there are no lentils to put in L’s lentil salad, no strawberries for the strawberry crumble and even the coffee machine is bust. Someone heads off to find a kettle. Still they give us a free round of drinks and what we do manage to order is fine. So all’s good.

(Sunday 4th November)

Magpie Tendencies

Daughter moves house today, moving a couple of miles down the road in Sheffield. We moved Son the other week and got all his stuff on one half of the back seat, managing to transport both him, his girlfriend and the two dogs all at the same time. We’re not expecting this to be as easy but one car load should be enough I assume? Wrong.

We seem to be taking all the fixtures and fittings from the old house with us, as advised by the new owners of that property. Which would actually be in direct contravention of the tenancy agreement and so allowing them to keep the deposit... I’m sure they’re not that sneaky and are just using the students as a means to gut the house.

Daughter and I have a lively discussion on the merits of this strategy before we leave some of it behind. The less clutter the better, we are still administering therapy to her bedroom at home, which has suffered from many years of her magpie tendencies.

Her new area of Sheffield, Hunters Bar, is really rather nice, too nice for students. We find a really nice pub, The Lescar, after only a bit of walking around in random directions.

The papers were full of it today. The Sunday Times had him on the front page and then had three full broadsheet pages of coverage inside. What’s going on? Bandwagon jumping of the highest order but not before time. It took a while for the press to wake up to what was happening over in France but they got there in the end.

So today, Bradley Wiggins rolls in to Paris in yellow having become the first Briton to win the Tour de France, in oddly one of the dullest races for some time... no complaints though. Wiggins was the favourite from the off and never looked like not winning. It’s a massive achievement for him, for Team Sky and for Great Britain with Chris Froome second overall and British riders accounting for seven stage wins out of twenty-one.

Mark Cavendish won on the Champs Élysées for the fourth year in a row, with Wiggins leading him out, and won two other stages even without the lead out train that he’s accustomed to having.

The highlight for me though, apart from Wiggins winning and then getting up on the podium to announce he’s ‘going to start drawing the raffle numbers’, had nothing to do with Team Sky. David Millar’s win on stage nine was just superb and I was so pleased for him. Eight years, a drug ban and a reinvention (as a spokesperson for drug free cycling) on from his last Tour victory he tasted victory again and I bet it tasted real good.

(Sunday 22nd July)