Something Less Intimidating

On the bus today and I pick myself up the new Robin Hood travel card from the machine at the QMC stop this morning. This is supposed to be Nottingham’s ‘Oyster’ card but I’m not really sure how it's supposed to work as you only touch on and not off. So it always charges you the same fee no matter how far you go. 

They have chosen to use the current Nottingham City Transport scheme rather than the more advanced 'Mango' scheme operated by Trent Barton which charges you based on distance when you touch off, like ‘Oyster’ does. It seems to me that Trent Barton will lose out if someone gets on one of their many out of Nottingham bound buses, touches on, but doesn’t get off inside the Nottingham boundaries and therefore gets a cheap ride all the way to Derby, Mansfield, Cotmanhay, Ripley, etc etc. A wrong call which I’m sure will have to be corrected at some point.

Apparently there’s a photo of me on Facebook wearing a mortar board. Can’t imagine where that came from.

I go for a Watt Bike session after work and the same athletic looking chap again gets on the bike next to me, clips in his proper shoes (I could have brought mine you know) and then dials his way up to 300 Watts. The girl in front of me is maintaining a steady 200, I think it’s best if I slot in somewhere between them at least on my warm up. That’s a 5k warm up, with another 5k as a cool down and a ramp session to 315 Watts in between. Five of the six bikes are taken tonight and when a chap decides to do a session on the shopper bikes next to us he only keeps it up for a couple of minutes. After looking at the five of us trying to out-die each other, he aborts and opts to do something less intimidating instead.

L walks the boys up to meet my bus. Anything to get out of ball chucking.

Tonight we finish series three of The Bridge

(Tuesday 22^nd December)

A Worrying Precedent

A worrying day and a worrying precedent set.

After doing the park, L and go out to look at some flooring. Only we can’t find anywhere in Nottingham that is open on a Sunday, so we end up in Mansfield. Nottingham’s loss is Mansfield’s gain and hopefully we have found someone who will fit us a wooden floor in our lounge, to complete the scruffy, I mean rustic, look started with the slate tiles we have pretty much everywhere else.

Then oddly we end up buying a settee, which we only saw this morning, plastered across an advert that fell out of the paper. Then we add a footstool and coffee table to it. All on the never never.

I’m off to lie down. I feel faint.

Thankfully L takes me for an evening pint at the Wheelhouse; clearly she can see I need it.

(Sunday 21st October)

Voyage Of Discovery

L’s off jet setting again. This time on a voyage of discovery by bus to Mansfield. It’ll be interesting to see if she discovers anything there.

I’m on the park, trying to teach MD to carry his ball in a straight line, preferably a sort of forwards direction, to save myself some shoe leather. I’m supposed to be exercising him, not the other way around. I’m not sure I have much success.

Then I’m off to watch the flypast and perhaps some of the match. As Derby lose 2-0 to Hull, the flypast is obviously the highlight. This is the flypast trailing the ‘We only had ten men’ banner that many fans have clubbed together to raise money for.

It refers to when we beat Forest last month 2-1 after being a goal down and a man down from the 3rd minute. It flies over the City Ground before circling Pride Park at around 3:15.

It’s good to see that the Forest fans haven’t trumped us and clubbed together for an anti-aircraft gun.

We stay in, bloody half marathon tomorrow.

(Saturday 19th November)

Goose Fair

I continue my half marathon training by bike.

L has the day off with the boys and has the ordeal of taking them on the park for the first time this week. Which entails much sniffing and weeing to catch up on.

Interesting news in Mansfield with them planning to reopen the Mansfield Brewery. Bet they wish now that they hadn’t demolished it three years ago. It sounds like a good idea though. I don't think there's even a micro brewery in Mansfield. I was going to say what they really need to do is get the Mansfield name back from Marstons, the ones who stole it, but it appears they've already thought of that.

The vet calls with Doggo's test results. His lump was benign, just a mass of overgrowth of collagen and fatty cells. Which means little to me but it's obviously excellent news. Now who’s going to tell him he didn’t need to have the operation.

We celebrate by leaving him at home, still convalescing obviously, and going to the Goose Fair because L says she’s never been. 717 goose fairs and she’s never been? I can’t believe I’ve never taken her but I’m happy to oblige tonight. I went a few times in my younger days but it wasn’t me then, less so now.

One thing’s for sure, it’s got bigger. It now takes over the whole of the Forest Fields site and even spills over into the local streets, which didn’t used to be the case. It's actually nice, in a ‘it’s nice to have a big festival’ sort of way but it’s still not for me.

There are certainly more rides than ever before, over 500 apparently, and even more evil ones than before. Were they really swinging people around in a ball thing on a piece of elastic, fifty plus metres above the ground? Although what seems to account for most of the size increase though is the increase in food outlets from which the smell is not that appetising at all. A kind of burgered candy floss aroma prevails.

It’s also all terribly terribly expensive but this doesn’t appear to be stopping people. Recession? What recession? It stops us though, that and fear. We move on through the attractions onto Mansfield Road and the bars.

First the Forest Tavern and then the Lincolnshire Poacher where Woods Wonderful from Shropshire is accordingly wonderful and much cheaper than a ride in a bungee ball.

(Friday 7th October)