Happy Christmas Sunday

So after the death of Christmas Eve, here’s another tradition that has bitten the dust ‘Christmas Sunday’.

For hundreds of years if Christmas Day was on a Saturday then the next day was known as ‘Christmas Sunday’ and Monday would become Boxing Day because traditionally, Boxing Day could not fall on a Sunday. It is the day Christmas boxes were given to staff and tradesmen who didn’t work Sundays, the ‘day of rest’ and all that. As a child I loved this concept, as it appeared to extend Christmas by a day.

Even today most dictionaries still describe Boxing Day as the first weekday following Christmas. So what went wrong? Call me a cynic but I think the rot set in with the Sunday Trading Act of the mid-1990’s when for the retailers, who along with the media are of course in charge of such matters, Sunday became pretty much a normal working day. In 1999 the country still seemed split on the idea but five years later in 2004, the last time 26th December fell on a Sunday, the tide had clearly turned the wrong way. ‘Christmas Sunday Sale’ just doesn’t have the same ring about it.

It probably didn’t help that a lot of people could never get their heads around Boxing Day being movable and would say it was the 26th with no thought into how it came into being. Now the whole country defaults to ignorance and even institutions that should know better, such as the BBC, seem to go with the flow rather than hold the line. It’s such a shame that old traditions like this are allowed to die out. Well, I shall celebrate Boxing Day on Monday or try to...

Another tradition of Christmas and of Boxing Day, which of course today it isn’t, is football. As it happens Derby’s ‘Boxing Day’ game is off. Nothing to do with the weather, power failure meaning no floodlights.

At a loose end I decide to trawl the web to see if anyone else has got it right.

You would kind of expect the traditionalists into fox hunting would get it right and the annual Boxing Day hunts are all scheduled for Monday or was that just to throw the protesters off guard.

Scarborough’s traditional seafront Boxing Day events are being held on the Monday. Kedleston Hall is holding its Boxing Day sale on the 27th. Some sword dancers got it right! As did Aston Old Edwardians and Bann Rowing Club. As well as the Boxing Day Windlesham Pram Race and Blewbury Village Boxing Day Walk.

Small fry maybe but at least there is hope.

Today is also the Furnace's 3 mile run of which I have no idea whether this is a Boxing Day tradition or not. What is tradition is that Doggo is the first dog across the finish line. I had hoped to run MD as well. Yep two dogs at once but just as it was last year it’s too icy to be tethered to two dogs, one of which is as skittish as MD, so he’s booted and looks utterly gutted about it. Sorry mate.

Partly because I chat on the course with an ex-colleague from work who I bump into and partly because we’re simply not fast enough, Doggo is second dog. We are both inconsolable. Another tradition dies. To be beaten by a man dressed as a Smurf, a bare-chested Smurf at that, makes it all the more galling. His dog obviously helped him. It appeared to be of a husky type too, which probably suited the conditions better.

Oh well. If one tradition dies, start another. I'll call it the twelve pubs of Christmas. We head into Wollaton to see what’s open. The ‘Wollaton’ nee ‘The Willoughby’ is oddly closing at 8pm even though it’s busy so it’s not surprising that next door the Wheelhouse is packed. Another reason could be the Greene King's Abbot Reserve at 6.5% on draft. We’ll stay here shall we?



(Sunday 26th December)

Laryngitis

Here's a thing. Just to prove that my young dog is now growing up and getting more mature, I can report that MD passed three dogs on his walk this morning and didn't bark at any of them. L thinks he has laryngitis.

Here's another thing. When L got home and unlocked the back door to let the dogs out, she found a teenager stood the other side of it carrying a bag of sausages and bacon. It's actually not as strange as it sounds. We're used to such occurrences. Son had a bit of a mini 'bash', confined to his room, last night but it appears one of his guests had headed out early to find breakfast and we had inadvertently locked him out. Needless to say, all this helped MD made an immediate recovery from his laryngitis.

I ride in to work, dodging the downpours. I even enjoyed being on my old faithful. The weather was far too unpredictable to get my posh bike out. It's still licking it's wounds after getting very damp up in Windermere. It might not be getting another trip out to work any time soon as according to tradition, if it rains on St Swithin's Day (that’s today) then it will rain for forty days, which is basically until the end of August. Isn’t that the period that we call summer.

That said, I reckon it’s gone quite warm again, not that L would agree with me. It even looks like it might stay dry for my ride home.... Ah. 4pm and it’s torrential. Good old St Swithin's Day.. but then it stops and I actually get home in the dry.

And so to squash. I win a game and then celebrate in the pub. Then it rains AGAIN before I can do any training with MD in the garden.

(Wednesday 14th July)

A Long Standing Tradition

Yesterday’s ice gives way to an old favourite, rain. So I bike. As I meander through the estate I can see L and the boys up ahead of me. I can also hear them, well one of them, MD. He seems to be in good voice this morning.

I pull up at a red light in Spondon but the cyclist behind me simply carries on regardless, as do the two cars behind him. I know it’s a long standing tradition that at every set of traffic lights at least two cars jump the red light but the cyclist should have known better and all of us cyclists get the blame for that. He’ll stop one day though, when he meets those two cars coming the other way.

One of the events I’d fancied doing for a while was the Humber Duathlon in April but now I’m rapidly going off the idea. Mainly because there were only 27 entries in the last one, so I could end up doing the event and hardly seeing a soul for most of it. This defeats half the object of doing a ‘race’. This April’s event would be the third running of it. They had 41 entries for the first one but then it dropped to 27 for the second... so it’s getting less popular, either that or they lost the other 14 over the side of the Humber Bridge... I expect it's a bit blowy going over the bridge. Depending on where they land, that would make it a triathlon, technically speaking.



I was describing to L the other day my plan for avoiding a head on collision when a car overtakes another car and is coming towards you on your side of the road. This is when cycling. Basically it’s a case of getting ready to hurl one’s self sideways and home there’s a soft landing, like a hedge, there. I nearly got to put it into practice today on my way home. It was a close run thing.

My eventful journey continued a few miles down the road when I got a puncture going through Bramcote. I pull over and install a new tube, getting nice and cold doing so. I do the usual check for nails, shards of glass etc, which may be imbedded in the tyre. Nothing. I do notice that tyre is very thin though. Is that a hole? Hmmm, to be honest I have known that these tyres were on the way out, since... well, before Christmas. Half a mile down the road, whoosh, all the goes out of the tyre again. Another tube blown. It must be the tyre. I have another tube but I don’t wish to waste it, so I walk the remaining mile home.

All this means that I don’t get my swim again but still I get home at almost exactly the same time as if I’d been. Not the best day on the bike.