Obsessions

I'm back into my training in a big way today. I cycle to work and then do a 5.5k run at lunch time. So I’m not feeling quite so untrained now. Even the run went well. Oddly.

More dogging tonight, while L visits her folks, and then we meet up afterwards in the Masons (it's a pub) for a quickie.

L reveals that the book she is currently reading is about a woman whose husband is divorcing her because of her gym obsession and her obsession with her figure. L's worried now. The book doesn’t mention anything about parkruns though.

(Wednesday 30^th September)

Many Moons Ago

To say that our Visa applications for our trip to Russia for the Sochi Olympics are proving a headache would be an understatement. They want full education details since school, details of your last three employers, even though I haven’t moved jobs in 18 years. Along with details of your parents and in L’s case of her ex-husband, who she divorced approximately 100 years ago. Bizarre. It’s enough to put you off going and I guess it normally does but are they likely to turn anyone down for the Olympics? Doubt it, as long as we don’t mention that bank job we did.

We also need new photos for it and L goes out to get hers in the howling gale that seems to have been forever and that has prevented me cycling at all over Christmas. Her photos will therefore be a bit windswept but I’m all for that.

We've had the usual debate about where to spend New Year’s Eve which we usually spend having a meal with my parents. After a few failed enquiries we settle on a place in Sandiacre that we went to many moons ago when Daughter had a thing about one of her infant school teachers. Yes it was a while ago. It’s had two name changes since then and has now metamorphasised from a Chinese into a Thai or should I say upgraded.

We go there via the Horse and Jockey in Stapleford. I head there straight from work and meet L there. It is packed. After probably too many pints but not actually an outstanding one, we wobble up the road to the Thai Legend where we meet my parents.

After an excellent meal, more beer/wine and a complementary liquor coffee we wobble out again, flag down one of the rare buses and head home to see in midnight with the dogs and a Sandemans port.

(Tuesday 31^st December)

Lynch Mob

I run into work, it was tolerable. Well, I didn’t have to walk any of it, so perhaps things aren’t as bad as I thought.

MD is a pain for L. Sometimes I think she takes out a different dog to the one I walk but then she does seem to have appalling luck. I mean, I haven’t seen any deer on the park for months, I thought they’d got rid of them all. Yet she runs into a lynch mob of deer and they aren’t even on the park. They were simply walking along the road parallel to it. MD, quite understandably, can’t abide the deer goading him through the fence.

There’s a Cricket World Cup going on you know, and going on and on, in the longest drawn out format you could possibly imagine, doubled.



Still it is a useful distraction at work. England have been in all the highlights so far. A thrilling dead head with hosts India and of course the now legendary loss to the mighty Ireland. Today I catch a bit of Canada on the radio. Their first eleven consists of, and I think I’ve got this right, six chaps who were born in India, one from the West Indies, one from Sri Lanka, one from Pakistan, one for Uganda and oh a chap from Toronto called Zubin Eruch Surkari... All very suspicious. They do have a genuine Canadian in their squad called surprisingly John Davison but he wasn’t picked...

15 years today. That’s how long L and I have been together. If she’d murdered me on our first date she’d be up for parole now. Unfortunately she’s still not 100% on our anniversary.

She asks ‘Would you divorce me if I bought a Glee album?’ Probably. She’d have to hide it at the bottom of drawer somewhere and covertly play it when I’m out. Then again I suppose we already have Mika CD’s in the house. I knew it was a slippery slope.

I celebrate our anniversary in style on the squash court, in one of the most entertaining games I’ve ever played in. My partner implodes in the first game after amassing a healthy lead of half a dozen points or so and only needing a couple more to take the game. I reckon some good play from me contributes to it but he assures me it was just luck.

Then almost the same thing happens again in the second game. 2-0. Well I never. I’m really on form tonight or rather, I’m told, being very very lucky. I lose the third game, unluckily I would say but my opponent say not. Then half way through the fourth game, time is called. What a shame, no chance for him to level it. Unlucky that.

A 2-1 win, nice. My second win this year.

(Thursday 3rd March)