No Complaints From Me About The Weather

My bus is on time again, the roads are clear and there's hardly any traffic about so I arrive at work earlier than usual! The added bonus is that all the women on my bus who are usually in power suits are now donning woolly black stockings and walking boots. Which is far sexier. I have no complaints about this Arctic weather at all.



I think L is getting a bit fed up with our wimpy dog. Collies are supposed to be outdoor beasts, used to combing the hills in all weathers looking for lost sheep. Ours prefer a comfy duvet and a hot water bottle.

Doggo has had a bit of a rough time of it these past few mornings. L’s had to repeatedly defrost his paws. MD doesn’t have the same problem as his paws barely touch the ground when he's out walking. Yesterday a load of snow slid off the lid of one of the wheelie bins on the park and unfortunately onto Doggo's head. He was absolutely mortified. You would have thought he would have shaken it off, but no, he just sat there petrified and had to be revived with a full body rub down. Tempted to try that one myself.

She vows she’s not walking him again unless he wears socks and perhaps gets a coat for Christmas. This is a bit of a turnaround, it’s usually MD she swears she’s not ever walking again.

Apparently the old man even helped himself to a bundle of socks off the bedroom radiator, so perhaps that’s a hint... or perhaps he just wanted to play.

I can’t imagine getting him into a coat. He’d be petrified. He’d think we were trying to murder him or something.

It’s been gently flaking down with snow all day long and I quite fancied a lunch time stroll and a pint but my colleague declined to venture out. Personally I thought it was a good opportunity for a long liquid lunch.

L's suggested technique for getting home is to sit at the top of Ilkeston Road and simply slide home down the hill. Which sounds great, I might get the bus straight into Nottingham and join her.

At work, we’re all kind of gripped, in a morbid expecting the inevitable defeat sort of way, to the World Cup bid decision. The verdict comes forty minutes late after the stuffing of twenty pound notes into brown envelopes took longer than expected.

Latest score. 1-0 to the Mafia. Which continues FIFA policy of taking the tournament around the world's most dangerous countries. This year South Africa, four years time Brazil and now Russia. I wonder if Afghanistan will bid for 2026.

And it’s Qatar for 2012. What a surprise. That's four in a row for Mr Blatter. His favoured bids have both won, just like in 2010 and 2014.

So everyone else has wasted a lot of money bidding for these two cups and they’ve simply gone where the head of FIFA wanted them to go. If the strategy is to take the cup to countries that don’t have any stadiums, infrastructure or much of a football tradition then they should just say so. Then countries with everything already in place like England and Spain won’t waste their time and money bidding.

I’m not totally opposed to Russia getting it, they do after all like their football there and they do usually qualify for the tournament, which should be a condition of bidding in my opinion, but really they should have been given a smaller tournament first, such as the Euros. Qatar though is just an out and out joke.

We only got two votes, one of them our own, despite having received the best FIFA evaluation report. Bit of a stitch up there. Same thing happened to Australia, who I favoured purely because the other candidates USA, Japan and South Korea have all hosted the tournament recently. They received the best evaluation report for 2022 and they only got one vote. Not sure who their media upset. Whilst the two countries with the worst evaluation report have both won. Work that one out.

Squash tonight is interesting. I lose 3-2 which means my opponent is well unhappy but not as unhappy as his racquet.



(Thursday 2nd December)

In Need Of Socks

After their walk this morning L texts to say Doggo needs some socks. Ah. Ice in the paws again.

There’s a rumour going around that they might start gritting the roads with sugar. Well what they’ve called 'sticky salt', salt that has been coated in sugar molasses to help it stick to the roads better. I can just imagine what a mess that’ll make of my bike. The salt on its own is bad enough.

I head over to training, half expecting us to get snowed in at the equestrian centre but nothing happens. Bit disappointing really.

Doggo is off his food tonight. So MD kindly steps in to help him eat it, until we haul him off. I offer Doggo a biscuit instead, which when he hesitates for half a second, MD nips in and steals. We have to extract it from his jaws. Honestly, that dog is food obsessed.

BBC’s Panorama programme tonight puts the boot into England’s World Cup bid. Quite why they and the Sunday Times wish to jeopardise our bid I’m not sure but it looks as if they might be successful.

It does surprise me though that some people expect organisations like FIFA, the IOC and even national Governments not to be, lets say, a bit dodgy, when that is often the default setting. They just don’t see themselves as... dodgy. With any of these organisations if you want anything from them you have to play their game or else you’ll get nothing.



In the unlikely event that we still do get the World Cup it will probably be because the delegates will be worried what, if they don’t pander to the crazy English, our media will expose next.

(Monday 29th November)

Small Margins

I actually feel quite sprightly today despite yesterday’s seventy mile plus cycle. Even my shoulder feels fine. So it was worth getting a massage from that attractive young masseur after all.

L feels sorry for poor old England because they got to the top 16 in the whole of the world and don't get any credit for it. She says she would be elated to be in the top one hundred. Perhaps she has point.

The media are slating them but had the USA not got that late goal in their group game, we’d have won the group, played Ghana, probably played just as badly as we did against Germany but scraped a win and would now be facing a quarter final against Uruguay. The media would have them all as heroes. Small margins and a fickle press.

Work has put L in a bad mood, so she heads off to pump iron in the gym. More like she’s sloping off for another sneaky session with Mikael and her audiobook.

I'm dog training again in the evening. What started out as a nice quiet ‘do your own thing’ session is rapidly ballooning in size. It’s now getting far too busy. Mind you tonight there was free tea and ice creams afterwards. Things are looking up.

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.

We Know What We're Doing This Time

This morning we both run the Wollaton Park 10K, organised by the local secondary school. L has entered in advance whereas I check the weather before going down to pay on the day. I nearly didn’t get in. They reached the race limit of 300 around ten minutes after I’d registered.

The course doesn’t endear itself to me. Around 80% of it is across the grass as they seem to avoid the footpaths for some reason, unlike the Run to READ 10k which was the opposite, 80% on path. Running on the Wollaton Park grass isn’t pleasant; it’s very uneven, full of mole hills and pot holes. Real ankle twisting territory and I have ankles that love a good twist.

Perhaps this is why I do a decent twenty minute first lap of the two lap course before going round two minutes slower for the second lap. Still a good overall placing though. Unfortunately both the goodie bag and the t-shirt are rubbish. There’s nothing edible in goodie bag, what use is that? The shirt is a polo shirt with BMW on it, and not a very nice one and that. Not that I got one anyway, as a late entry I got a bag instead. L gave her shirt away. I bet she gets much better goodies when she does the Long Eaton race tomorrow.

I watch all three world cup games today. The first two at home, both are on the dull side but then World Cups are always slow starting. It’s just this one seems to be the slowest starting ever. The first round of games is always lacking in action, things will liven up as the games gradually get more meaningful as teams panic about not making the next round. We hope.

Of course the third game of the day is England’s and we head down to Scruffy’s to see it there, hoping that it will have pulled some punters in for them. All the newspapers, along with L’s cleaner at work, are predicting England to win. So that's that sorted then. I’m not so confident. We shall see. Even if they were good enough, half the team are walking wounded anyway. At least we appear to have a manager who knows what he’s doing this time...

Scruffy’s has pulled them in, it’s packed and we’re early as well. Where are all these people on a normal night? And who’s that sat in our usual spot? on our settee! Oh well. We find a seat although not a good one. Thankfully the chap next to me, frustrated by the view, removes a vase of flowers off the bar. I joke to him that he should move the guy sat on the stool at the bar as well and he has a go.

England score early and even an old sceptic like me expects them to go on and win easily from there, but of course that wouldn’t be playing to the script. The rest of their first half is woeful, as demonstrated by a spaced out James Milner who is withdrawn after half an hour and also sees the end of another centre half as Ledley King is substituted through injury. Did I say we have a manager who knows what he’s doing this time?

The misery is of course capped off nicely by Robert Green’s howler as he fails to gather the much criticised Adidas beach ball that they’re using for these games. So a 1-1 draw then. Still the wine is good, as is the beer and the pizza on the way home, as we both prepare seriously for our respective events tomorrow.

The result and the performance are of course very disappointing but I’m sure the whole country and in particularly the media will pull together, get behind the team and put a positive spin on tonight’s failings. Some hope.

A Quirky Underdog

Today’s ‘dogging’ extravaganza is up in sunny Scunthorpe, which indeed it is today. Doggo starts well with a clear and keeps that up throughout his three runs. Although the speed of his last run, late in the day, takes slow and steady to new heights. Speed wise, he doesn't do afternoons. By contrast MD does most things in a rush, a habit I don’t wish to knock out of him. So although he runs really well today, in fact the best he has run, smoother and quicker than before, he still doesn’t go clear. Next week... didn’t I say that last week?

Daughter texts to ask if Armenia are in World Cup. It’s good to see she’s taking an interest but unfortunately they’re not.



When I tell her this she switches her allegiance to Benin. Asking me if they’re any good? Well no... not really, and more to the point they’re not in the World Cup either.

I think she’s after a quirky underdog to support. So just who are the underdogs?

According to the bookmakers, the country with the longest odds are New Zealand but they’re hardly quirky. Then come North Korea, un-Democratic People's Republic of Korea, who could possibly be described as quirky... but would most likely be labelled as a secretive Stalinist dictatorship who may be inclined to nuke anyone who beats them. So to Honduras who might fit the bill as might Algeria, who are the weakest of the African nations to have qualified.

Back in Nottingham we have the best curry we’ve had for a long time. Full praise to the Laguna Tandoori Restaurant. In fact all of the dishes that the four of us have are excellent, well I can vouch for three of them anyway. I’m too full and not that much of a pig to sample all four. Well, I'm too full anyway.