Back On It

It’s not cold although it is a bit damp on the bike this morning but it was very good to get back on it. L’s in the pool proclaiming it’s good to get back in it.

Daughter meanwhile is on the train and heading over to Nottingham for two interviews, one today and one tomorrow before heading back to Manchester for another one on Friday. She seems to be packing the interviews in again which is good. Fingers crossed again.

We have a Tuesday lunchtime pub trip today as my colleague is off the rest of the week and he doesn’t work Monday’s either, so it’s a very short week for him. Unfortunately the kitchen was closed at the Brunswick for a two week refurbishment. Nice of them to tell us. Instead they had a big vat of beef stew on the bar which was very good but more of a child portion than a proper meal.

Having switched back to my old computer at home, that one now doesn’t work either. Is this some kind of curse?

It’s took me a while to work what week we’re on at dog training as each week has a different trainer and different attendees. Oddly today is week five and tomorrow is week one. This means I do not officially have a session this week but have two the following week. However I manage to bring next Tuesday’s one forwards as there was a cancellation this week. If even I’m confused then it’s going to be carnage at training with people turning up in the wrong week.

Afterwards it’s good old Wainwrights in Masons. Meanwhile Derby win 3-0 at Ipswich.

(Tuesday 31^st January)

Termite Attack

On the bike again but its jolly windy and totally against me this morning. Hopefully it’ll be going my way later when I head home. Fingers crossed.

L heads off to pump and possibly bites off more than she bargained for as she asks to be pushed home in a wheelbarrow. Unfortunately we don’t have one.

By contrast, the wind is with me and I cruise home. Where I yet again find the boys the wrong side of the stair gate with the gate itself now starting to look like it’s been under prolonged termite attack. It won’t be long before MD won’t even have to open it, he’ll just be able to climb through the hole he’s gnawed in it. 

(Wednesday 3^rd August)

The Unexpected Happens

On the bike today despite the foul weather which seems to be almost every day at the moment. I almost get the lycra dry at work before it’s time to put it all back on again and pedal home.

It rains all day so the lycra is going to very wet by the time I get home but then, the unexpected happens, it stops and the fines up. I'm almost disappointed. Particularly as L had been rushing home especially to see the spectacle, she can at times be overcome with passion at the sign of wet lycra. Fingers crossed.

Never mind, tonight is Friday anyway. Happy Friday.

(Tuesday 24^th November)

I Need One Of These

I need one of these.

The wetsuit, not the girl, I already have one of those. I try on L’s, which is a bit too small for me, which means I’m going to have to purchase one.

L gets physio on her wonky knees and a pile of exercises to do. I wonder if they’ll benefit my knees too. Problem is that such frivolity always freaks the dogs out.

Son invites us to his Graduation. L immediately says yes and vows to start looking at new dresses, but... Isn’t this tempting fate a touch, at the start of the week when he takes his final exams? Of course we’ll be there, fingers crossed.

L’s not allowed to sob. She’s very maudlin at the moment as it is, watching the children move on in life. Of course it’s all supposed to come crashing down around their ears and they’re supposed to move back in with us until they’re well into their 30’s but hopefully not...We can always change the locks.

I offer to get her puppy, of which there’s one being flaunted at tonight’s dog training. Then again we have enough to cope with the 11 and 5 year old puppies we already have.

(Monday 20^th May)

One Page Is Often Enough

L thinks I’m abandoning her tonight. Leaving her all alone in the house with my prize winning ex-favourite author. She’s struggling her way through Ian McEwan’s ‘Solar’, winner of Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2010. Although L hates prize winning books, they usually turn out to be rubbish. She reckons she has 19 pages to do tonight, whilst throwing someone's plastic bone and remaining AF. I’m sure that, as usual, I’ll come home and find her asleep with Ian strewn across her lap muttering that one page was enough.

I’m out with a couple of old school friends tonight. We have a few beers in the Brunswick and the Alex before going for a Mexican. A Mexican meal which is ok and a Mexican beer ‘Desperados’ that isn’t. The waiter does try and persuade us not to have one, he says he wouldn’t touch it himself but we didn’t listen. It’s ‘a taste of liberty’ you know, comes flavoured with tequila and is 5.9% ABV. Yes, we should have known better.



It doesn’t help that it is served just in its bottle with a slice of lime in the top. The lime is always a bad sign, a sign that they’re trying to hide something, like the taste. The bottle doesn’t help either; you simply don’t get the taste of a beer straight out the neck of a bottle. So, we have to apologise for not being ‘cool’ and ask for a glass each. Once we get it into a glass, we realise why the manufacturers don’t wish you to get the taste of the thing and why they serve it with lime too. It also turns out to be made in France... so it wasn't very Mexican either.

I get home to find L awake, although not with her hands on Ian but watching TV instead. Clearly avoiding her reading duties but about to pour herself a very large whisky, so perhaps she’s not got round to it yet.

As I’m slightly sloshed, despite the attempts of the ‘Desperados’ to keep me sober, she waves a Langdale 10K entry form my way and asks for a signature. This is our usual technique for talking each other into races, although I’m quite keen to do this one. It’s only a fiver, as compensation for them cancelling the Christmas one on us.

Our race packs for Sunday have finally arrived, which is a relief, but it still all seems a bit ‘last minute’. It says on Facebook that the t-shirts were late arriving from Germany which is why they were late being sent off. A British t-shirt next year perhaps? We are still, however, waiting for our car parking pass which apparently was only sent out this morning, first class but first class sometimes takes several days... so fingers crossed.

(Wednesday 16th March)