I Wouldn’t Even Know Where To Start

We had a bit more snow last night. I had to scrape it off the car. Nothing too exciting though.

Pardew? Well that’s that then. All bets are off. I won't be able to get any decent odds on Newcastle’s relegation now.



At lunchtime I start my Christmas shopping. Click, click, click, click. Done. Gosh that was stressful.

After work I finally bite the bullet and go to the leisure centre. My intention is to attempt both a gym and a swim session but with my track record the pool will be probably shut and the gym full. Amazingly though, neither is the case. I pedal an uncomfortable 15km on the bike, their bikes are the most uncomfortable ever devised. Then I run 2km on the dreadmill, which was all I had time for before heading into the pool for a brisk 750 metres (30 lengths).

I can proudly report that I trounced absolutely everybody in the gym. Macho blokes, Lycra girlies, the whole lot of 'em and especially the Chinese girl doing a workout in jeans and a woolly jumper. She was unsurprisingly sweating buckets. Maybe that was the idea.

Then... everybody trounced me in the pool. Especially one girl who dived into my lane and opened with two lengths of butterfly. We all go 'wow'. A chap says to me, ‘I used to be able to do that’. Brag. I wouldn’t even know where to start. After that though she just poddles up and down doing breaststroke and backstroke. Presumably creased after those first two lengths.

I get home, expecting to have half an hour to relax but L tells me I’ve had a call and dog training has been brought forward half an hour to 8:30. So I head off again. At least with the earlier start I should be back earlier.

Hmmm. So much for finishing early. Got an extended session but not a very good one. We did an hour and a half of start line waits. Which basically means a lot of standing, both for dogs and humans. On one of the coldest evenings of the year (-6 it was). We could have done with doing a lot of running around but no. Absolutely frozen. I can’t feel my hands. What’s worst was this was Doggo’s once a month session and he can do ‘waits’ for England. If it had been MD’s night it might have been more useful.

(Wednesday 8th December)

Shopping Challenge Number 56

I arrive into work to be met by a virus warning on my computer. Nice, and I’ve not even been downloading anything dodgy. Well, not for ages. Turns out to be not serious for once. Phew.

Shopping challenge number 56. OMG. What does a fennel look like? L says a fennel bulb is green and ugly like stumpy celery with hairy bits on the end. So that’s crystal clear then.



What a brain meltingly stupid decision by Newcastle United Football Club to sack Chris Hughton. A man who has earned the admiration of football supporters country wide by reviving Newcastle, getting them promoted and up to the dizzy height of 11th in the Premier League when everyone thought they’d be bottom six if they were lucky. The guy deserves a medal as big as a frying pan.



I’m just off down the bookies to put some money on them to go down. They’ll sink without trace now he’s gone.

Guess what... Tonight’s council run coaching course is off. Bet that shocked you. What a surprise. Two out of my three coaching nights have now been cancelled. The tutor is ill apparently. My next scheduled one isn’t until January 11th.

No dog training tonight either but that was planned. Our trainer is away and it had fitted in nicely with my coaching course. Now they'll rescheduled the course nights I’ve missed presumably when I have other things on.

Instead I spend the evening trying to construct a working computer for Daughter out of her old deceased one and a second hand one I bought on ebay. I’m thwarted by one missing cable. Typical.

So I put the Christmas tree up instead and then when I've done it, realise that it's actually a bit early for such festive gestures. I must be sickening for something.

Stranger Things Have Happened But Not Often

I park my car at my parents’ house and run in to work. It was a reasonable run and my iffy calf seemed to behave itself. I did have one problem though. The building of the rather unnecessary industrial park hear Alvaston has been snarling the traffic up for weeks and it’s a long term project, so there's no prospect of any respite any time soon. This morning though they had also closed the main road, Raynesway, to pedestrians. Apparently that includes runners as well. Flippin’ roadworks, can’t even avoid them when I run. So I had to detour through Alvaston, which must have added a mile or so. Yes I know it's all good extra training but it made me late for work.

As for my time... 9k in 46 minutes. Terrible. Slit my wrists stuff, but I suppose I did waste a lot of time scratching my head, trying to decide which route to go and attempting to negotiate with a yellow coated workman whose only form of communication appeared to be the ‘shrug’, as in ‘of the shoulders’.

So not happy... but happier than my Kilomathon training work colleague who ran the eleven miles home last night and crawled in this morning. Say he’s exhausted and can’t see how he’s going to add another five miles to that. L suggests I tell him to try training for a cycle event at the same time... but I daren’t. I think he would turn violent, if he had the strength.

I apologetically confess to him that I am running again tonight, back to my parents house, although going nowhere near Raynesway this time.

Ah the joys of the Fantasy Football League.

Where you find yourself performing complex mathematical calculations each time some player in a match somewhere crosses a ball.
Where you find yourself supporting teams that you really should hate.
Where you find that you are more bothered about your fantasy team than your 'real' team.
Where you get up early in the morning to update your team selection for the thirty-second time.
Where you spend more time thinking about team selection than work.
Where you wish you put this amount of thought into the rest of your life.

We’re starting a self-help group called Fantasy Football Anonymous. So if you can answer yes to more than two of those statements, let me know and I’ll put the membership forms in the post. Not that you’ll be able to spare the time to actually fill them in as this week some teams play more than once... and one of your players has probably got booked or injured and will not play...

Seriously though, you can’t beat it, great fun. Well I am top of the league at the moment... but that is before tonight’s games. This reminds me, I must update my team selection again.

Derby County are not eligible for the Fantasy League, what with not being in the Premier League, so at least I don’t get a conflict of interest. Tonight’s game though is as close to ‘fantasy’ as you can get. League leaders Newcastle United are in town and like Forest the other week are in the midst of a long unbeaten run. So obviously Derby win 3-0 and thoroughly deserve it. Stranger things have happened but not often.