Good For The Ego

So with no run today, no dog show and nothing else really this is becoming quite a lazy weekend. I had cleared the weekend due to Derby having a home match against Burnley which they now no longer have due to those muffins at Sky TV shifting it to Monday night at only three weeks’ notice, p***ing off the whole of Derby and Burnley in the process. Hopefully losing them at lot of subscribers from those places at the same time.

So it’s partly a rare day of TV as I juggle three World Cup Rugby matches, GB’s Davis Cup Semi-Final with Australia and the World Triathlon Final from Chicago.

Once TV-ed out L, who has been considering giving the new bike track at Harvey Hadden a go, announces we’re going. Always pleased to see a girl in cycling gear, I’m more than happy to accompany her.

We ride there and do multiple laps of the outdoor circuit which is apparently about 1500m long but doesn’t feel it. In all we do 14 miles and overtake a couple of under 12s about 30 times. Good for the ego and a good workout.

(Sunday 20^th September)

More Casualty Than Christmas

I was going to bike to work today but it’s just too windy. I take the car instead and my swimming kit.

I receive an email from the duck, he’s just left home in Burnley and is on his way to us.

L has her work's Christmas lunch, which is always somewhere posh. This year it’s at Harts. Then she heads off to a double exercise class session to wear it off.

In the pool, it's pretty much just me and my Russian. I do my 50 lengths before returning home to a street full of flashing blue lights. No there hasn’t been a siege or a major medical emergency. This blue fantasia is purely ‘festive’. What is it with blue? And flashing? It’s certainly more Casualty than Christmas.

(Monday 22^nd December)

An Historic Moment

An historic moment today, after four years Daughter is finally retiring from the newspaper industry and hanging up her delivery bag. L will so miss dragging her out of bed every morning.

She heads out on her last paper round pushing a wheelbarrow to collect all the tips and leaving gifts. Not really, I made that bit up but there’s certainly quite a lot of both coming her way.

She’s been quite astute and put notes through doors telling them of her retirement and impending departure to Uni. She doesn’t add ‘Oi I need some money for Greece’, which was probably wise. The strategy pays dividends, literally. There’s a shrewd business woman buried deep in there somewhere but then I suppose she’s been milking us for every penny for years.

Derby’s run of victories comes to an end, losing at home to Burnley. It was good while it lasted but now we can revert to being totally average again, just as we were today.

L collects me from the match in the car, with the dogs and Son. We’re off to glitzy Morecambe for the weekend. Well Son isn’t we’re lobbing him out in Stoke so that he can fraternise for the weekend.

(Saturday 27th August)

The Jury Returns

I’m momentarily delayed getting the bus over to Derby for the match today when the jury finally returns, after the longest period of deliberation in history, and Daughter picks her university. Yay. Good luck to the city of Sheffield, they’re gonna need it. I jest of course...

Derby throw a 2-1 lead away against Burnley, thanks to conceding a penalty when leading, a penalty that came parcelled up nicely with a free sending off. We go on to lose in style, 4-2.

Afterwards I meet L in Derby and we get the bus over to Burton so that she can recce the start line for the Burton 10 miler. She wants to work out whether getting to the start is achievable on a Sunday without the car, which will be with me in Newark as I attempt to get a team to Crufts. The late starting of bus services on a Sunday doesn't help but it is achievable, just. We hope.

The Burton 10 is one of the races on the L's spreadsheet for her 500 mile challenge. That’s 500 miles in her 50th year. That’s 41 miles per month. It's going to be interesting. She resists the urge to name the spreadsheet ‘going to be last.xls’ and names it ‘Fab me.xls’ instead. Love the title. This is a not very well disguised dig at Daughter’s going to University project, in which everything has been entitled ‘going to fail’. Hmmm.

As we’re now in Burton it would be rude not to drop into the Burton Bridge Inn and the Coopers Tavern.



(Saturday 23rd April)