UK Tour

Last night we dropped Son off at Nottingham Trent’s Clifton campus where he had arranged to meet some friends. That was at about half-past-midnight. Four hours later he turns up back at our place for a few hours kip before departing again just before 7.30 on the next leg of his UK Tour, back to Warwick for an 11am seminar and then up to York for the weekend.

L had taken a bag of provisions for him with us up to Leeds. This had then travelled back with us and then had spent the night on his bedroom floor, via a stopover in Clifton. We hope the meat and cheese isn’t too rancid by the time he comes to eat them. It's done some miles.

The media is full of Wayne Rooney and the Liverpool sale. How this is of any interest to anyone outside the supporters of those two clubs I’m not sure but we’re being force fed it anyway. Thankfully the Rooney saga now appears to be over after he agreed a new five year contract just days after announcing his intention to leave over concerns that the club's squad was not up to scratch... Seems he forgot about that once they waved wads of money in front of his eyes. Unfortunately for Wayne, the amount of money they are now going to be paying him will mean they'll be none left for any new signings.

After work I walk to Chaddesden and then attempt to get the bus over to Long Eaton, where I’ve arranged to meet L. I get there five minutes before the bus is due but the electronic signs say that the next one will be in 24 minutes. How can that be, when the buses are every 20 minutes. The one after the one I was waiting for hadn’t even left its start location yet.

One eventually turns up, only around ten minutes late, I rendezvous with L and we head off to the Erewash Valley Beer Festival. This nomadic festival, which was originally held in Sandiacre then Ilkeston, is back on the calendar after an absence of two years.



It is being held in one of the old lace mills in the town, which has recently been refurbished, The Westgate & Clifford Suites on Westgate.



It’s only a week after the Nottingham Beer Festival but we reckon we’re up to it. A not too bad selection of beers as it turns out and almost all were from local breweries, which is how it should be.

Set List

FUNFAIR - WALTZER 4.5%
BLACK HOLE - NO ESCAPE 5.2%
LEADMILL - RAMPAGE 5.1%
NUTBROOK - COW JUICE 6.0%
FUNFAIR - CAKE WALK 6.0%
BURTON BRIDGE - FESTIVAL 5.5%
BURTON BRIDGE - TOP DOG STOUT 5.0%

There were a couple of repeat performances in L’s selection.

FUNFAIR - CAKE WALK 6.0%
BURTON BRIDGE - FESTIVAL 5.5%
THORNBRIDGE - KIPLING 5.2%
FUNFAIR - CAKE WALK 6.0%
DERVENTIO - CLEOPATRA 5.0%
BURTON BRIDGE - FESTIVAL 5.5%

(Friday 22nd October)

Serious Training

Tonight I’m planning my first serious training run as part of my build up to the Nottingham Half Marathon. So I get the bus and walk the rest of the way to work, listening to my book (I’m turning into L), saving my energy for later. I shall do the run straight from work.

Daughter rings. The ‘Rave Shack’ is up and running... and presumably raving. In fact they’ve stripped the shirt off the only boy and written the name of their adopted abode across his bare chest. What with I’m not sure but I hope it’s erasable.

After work, I run from Pride Park to Long Eaton, that’s around nine miles. It’s tough, very tough. My legs ache a lot when I get home and that isn’t supposed to happen. For the first time ever I ran listening to an audiobook rather than music (I am seriously turning into L). I thought this might cause me to run slower but obviously not, if the state of my legs are to be believed.

Despite being well knackered after that, I still decide that I ought to finish cutting the hedge, now that the wasps have been culled. We’re going away on Thursday and I wasn’t sure when I’d get another chance to do it.

The wasp’s nest is very impressive.



Despite all this activity, I still can’t sleep. Perhaps I’m overtired. Who knows? They do say as you get older you require less and less sleep, unless you’re L that is, but at this rate I’ll soon require none at all. Apparently it bottoms out at about four hours a night but I can undercut that.

(Monday 2nd August)

There Hasn’t Been Much Else To Do

To cap my choice of wrong race over the weekend. I get to work to find that Protégé, who ran Long Eaton on Sunday, was over two minutes slower than last year, so I would almost certainly have beaten him particularly as I’m feeling in form at the moment. Unless of course my presence spurred him on to knock a few extra minutes off but he hadn’t train much for it. Then again had he thought I was going to be there he may have trained harder.

I enquired when his next race was, thinking of a head-to-head, but he said Long Eaton 2011. I think he's avoiding me.

The World Cup is on and in full flow. Well, it’s more of a trickle than a flow. This is perhaps why all the talk is of the vuvuzelas, those annoying horns. People have been complaining in their droves to the BBC, as if it’s their fault. Perhaps most things are but surely not this time. You can’t really blame the supporters, I mean there hasn’t been much else to do whilst the games have been on, you wouldn't really have wanted to watch many of them.

All the same the BBC seem willing to take the rap for it and have said they will consider showing coverage that cuts out the noise of the vuvuzelas on its red button service. If they can tamper with their live coverage like that, then can they also cut out the goalkeeping errors and other bad play when England are on. Thanks.



Training tonight for both the boys. Both do well. We have a double header of shows this weekend and I’m quietly optimistic.

A Misery Shared

I take the bus today, ahead of my second long training run tonight for the Buxton Half Marathon. I’m hoping to do eleven miles tonight.

L intends to run as well. She’ll be setting off from Nottingham and I from Derby. Hopefully we should meet somewhere in the middle. We’ve both entered the Half Marathon, a misery shared is a misery made marginally more sufferable and all that. If it stays this hot, the half marathon, which being in Buxton obviously isn’t going to be flat and is only two weeks ago could refine suffering.

L’s dreading tonight’s run because she reckons she feels so tired and skipped the gym, to save her legs for it. The run should wake her up, shouldn’t it? She’s starting off with a stretch along the canal. Alongside it, not in it. Well if the run doesn’t wake her up, toppling into the canal should do the trick.

I’m dreading it too but mainly because I went out for a walk at lunchtime and almost died in the heat. It’s going to be a hot run.

We may never meet, she’ll be asleep in Beeston and I’ll be collapsed from heat exhaustion in Long Eaton. Just got to make sure I ring her before I pass out. As L says, the way to get through it is to think of my first pint. First? and the rest.

In the end it’s not too hot as there’s light breeze, yet all the same I feel sick after only two miles. A quick stop and a bit of head between the legs and I recover. Then at four miles, stitch. I never get stitch, well not since running cross country at school when they made us do it straight after the indigestible school lunch. Perhaps I should have chucked up, I mean at two miles, not years ago after the school lunches.

I walk a bit, even though I know this won't help. Then I turn my music up, in some odd attempt to blot out the stitch and start running again. In half a mile I’ve run it off and the rest of the run starts to become enjoyable.

At just past nine miles I meet L. Well actually I would have run straight past her, heading in the opposite direction, but she sees me and detours towards me. We run together, for a minute or so, after which I unsociably push on at my own pace. I wait for her a few minutes down the road at the retail park that had been my intended destination. Only 10.3 miles but that's enough, I’m not going any further tonight.

Its good weather so we take the dogs down to one of the local pubs that we don’t usually frequent, as we can sit outside with them. It has Thwaites' Lancaster Bomber on, which almost makes it all worthwhile.