Spring? I don't think so!

I don’t get to bike today, as Derby are at home tonight and I need to stay in Derby after work. However I still get to do my warm-up. The match against Colchester is live on Sky TV, can't imagine why. Who's going to watch that. It's not exactly going to be pretty.

When I switch my mobile on I get L's reply to my text from last night. "Cool can I have one? Get 2! Would you shag me in it?"

'Mobile Communication' let me down, as the Brakes say in one of their songs. She's on about the t-shirt. I'm happy to lend it to her, as it sounds as if the pay back could be good.

Daughter is also impressed with the t-shirt. Well she's impressed with it having the F word on it. Would go down a storm at her father's this weekend. Unfortunately they are £15 + £2 P&P on their website. Looks like I could have two women scrapping over my t-shirt. This never used to happen when I was a lad.



Don’t know what’s up with the traffic this week, no queues again today. I left later than usual as well and I was still in work for 8.30! Very odd.

The radio keeps saying that we are now in spring, as apparently spring starts on the first day of March. Well no. The spring (or vernal as its known) equinox starts on 20th or 21st March and always has done. The equinox is when the nights are as long as the days and marks the start of the next astrological cycle e.g. spring. So as usual the BBC are wrong.

Hardly any emails today. Nobody wants to speak to me.

I checked out the start list of this Duathlon that we are doing next Saturday at Clumber. There are loads of people doing the full Classic event, which is a world championship qualifier. All have BTA (British Triathlon Association) registration numbers, which I assume means they know what they are doing. So I’m glad I'm not part of that. We're in the sprint event. This has quite a small field of mainly women and oldies like me, so I should fit in well. There's a chap born in 1937 in my category. L reckons he'll beat me. Now there's a vote of confidence from my beloved! She says he'll be out training like a psycho while we're stuck at work. She also suggests that we ought to be AF until the event is over. AF? How could anyone be AF pre-event? It’s just not possible.

L and I widely disagree on the event. She wishes there was a swim at the start like a triathlon or even instead of the bike. The event is run-bike-run. My opinion is why would anyone want a swim in there at all? My preference would be to remove the runs and made it all bike.

L goes home early and takes Doggo out but he's soon in bad books. Apparently he's attacked Bruno the Boxer. I assume that's another dog. L and Doggo are now not speaking. Again. This is a common occurrence.

Then she and Daughter go off to the gym. On the bus because I have the car. Unfortunately it's now throwing it down, so they get soaked.

Turns out Sky were right and I was wrong. Now there's a first, Sky picking a good match. The match WAS pretty. Derby scored three amazing goals and won 5-1. Back on top of the league, at least until tomorrow.

Have a couple of pints of Bass with my folks, and then home to L, where we have a little wine.

Just Trying To Watch The Band

L looked just too tempting to resist this morning. Rather than be grateful for the affection I was showing her, she seemed more concerned that this might be my pre-biking warm-up and that I was about to head out into the wind again. Unfortunately my morning workout only confirmed what I already suspected, that my legs aren't up to a second consecutive day of cycling. Got the bus instead. Traffic still light.

It's always entertaining on the bus. This morning a girl did a complete clothes change whilst we were in transit down the A52. When she got on the bus she was wearing a red fleece, leggings, and trainers. I saw her strip off the fleece and put a posh blouse on over the vest top she was wearing and then start doing her hair and make up. At which point I lost interest and proceeded to play hunt the news story in today's Metro. I also had to plug myself into my ipod to drown out the chap in front of me who had started shouting incoherently into his mobile phone.

Did you know that apparently 16% of the British adult population has a hearing impairment? I can't help wondering if this has something to do with all this shouting into mobile phones.

Anyhow back to the girl, to my amazement when she came past me to get off the bus in Derby she now had a skirt and ankle boots on. I didn't see her do that 'interesting' transformation.

Doggo and L didn't run round the Pond this morning because she thought it would be a mud bath. They did a long run around the Park instead. Huh? The mud didn’t stop her taking me and my new trainers round the pond the other day.

More 'entertainment' on the bus on the way home. A group of teenagers' takeover the bus and soon have all the other passengers scurrying for the cover of their respective mp3 players as they start playing crap music loudly on their mobile phones. Although its hard to tell on such poor quality equipment, it does sound like they have the new album by the Smurfs. How cool. Oh hang on; I didn't know the Smurfs had covered Razorlight's 'In The Morning'. Either that or someone's been conned into one of those low bitrate mobile phone downloads. They are poor quality in the first place but once you start playing them through a mobiles tinny speaker the result becomes unlistenable, if you're lucky or if you're unlucky everything sounds like... well like the Smurfs. I know they're only impoverished teenagers but if I was too broke to buy a decent mp3 player and a pair of headphones I'd keep quiet about it.

I get home and say a quick hello to Daughter, who lifts an eyebrow and a hand from Hollyoaks\Simpsons\Skins\Confessions Of A Driver Instructor (whatever she is watching - delete as applicable) to acknowledge my presence. Son shouts down the stairs, asking me how my day was. No not really, I made that bit up.

Then I'm off down the road, being towed by Doggo as we head down to meet L from work and for a quick beer or two before I head off to see Brakes tonight. Doggo survives being attacked by several buses on the way down. They don't actually attack him but he always seems petrified that they're going to.

Have a pleasant couple of beers with L and then she is towed home by Doggo, a little worried that two glasses of wine may be too much to keep control of such a skittish creature.

I arrive at the Rescue Rooms to catch the end of the first of two support bands. Somebody called Cook, he has a first name too but I can't remember it. He also appears to be a band not a soloist. He/they are ok but nothing special. Wonder if he/they are local?

Next up is a bit of a treat because tonight the Brakes are being supported by Chris Rea and his band Absentee. I've never liked Chris Rea and have never forgiven him for 'The Lady In Red'. Which is a bit harsh because that was by Chris De Burgh. So tonight it's time to make up.

Absentee appeal to me because I'm in a bit of a 'lyric' phase at the moment and they have wonderfully maudlin lyrics about failure and the sheer hopelessness of life. Which is really uplifting. They have songs with titles like ‘More Troubles’ and lines like “Use your heart, and other body parts”. One he announces as a song about being drunk and having a girlfriend because the two are inseparable.

Chris or shall we can him Dan, as that apparently is his name and his hefty baritone voice are on form tonight. To only compare him with Chris Rea is a bit unfair, he's also part Lou Reed and part Tom Waits too and as a band they sound a bit like another great lyrical favourite of mine 'The National'. What a concoction.

The female keyboard and glochenspiel player and backing vocalist (Melinda) also blows into some wierd gadget which she then play with her fingers, no it's not a set of bagpipes, it's just a box with a tub coming from it. The sound comes out sounding like a mouth organ would. I'm told its call a Melodica.

They finish with the brilliance of ‘Something To Bang’.



Some lad, who is obviously with one of the bands and is rather oddly wearing a tea cosy on his head, is chatting up this girl next to me. She appears to be at University here. At one point he takes her back stage. A little later she returns alone looking very distressed. Oh dear I wonder what went on there. Then ten minutes later I see her leading one of her friends back stage with her. They don't return. Hmmm. One girl not enough?

And so to the Brakes, who are both weird and wonderful in equal measures. They immediately strike up a great rapour with the crowd and Eamon (formerly of British Sea Power) is a great front man. I know it's my age but this has to be the 'nicest' gig I've ever been too. There's a good mix of old and young folks here, although I feel like one of the youngest. Not a single glass of anything is thrown in the air. No one pushes me in the back or stamps on my foot yet it's a great crowd and people dance, sing and have fun with no hassles. I watch all three bands leaning against the same pillar close to the front. I even go to the toilet and come back and somebody has saved my spot for me.

So it is rather inappropriate that they open with "Hi How Are You". Which is a song about the annoyance of inane conversation at gigs as there is no such distractions tonight. The song includes the great line "Won't you shut the fuck up, I'm just trying to watch the band". The entire lyric to this song is on one of their t-shirts. I text L to see whether she wants one or if it's appropriate to get one for Daughter. Oddly I manage to text out but now I've got no reception at all. So I buy one for myself. Both the girls will probably end up scrapping over it.

The Brakes are hard to describe they play a mix of quirky, highly original indie and quaint country songs. Tonight they also do some odd cover versions. For instance I know little about 'Camper Van Beethoven' but tonight they cover a track called 'We Saw Jerry's Daughter' and yes it's rather good. Then they lob banana hand grenades at the crowd during Porcupine or Pineapple.

A Brakes gig was always going to be short; their debut album 'Give Blood' had sixteen tracks but lasted less than half an hour. Some of their tracks last only a matter of seconds. They are allocated 75 minutes yet don't fill it, yet it still seems a long gig because they play so many tracks.



They play out with my fave 'Ring A Ding Ding' but then promise one more 'Comma Comma Comma Full Stop' all 6.9 seconds of it. Although I'm sure they cut it short tonight. The words are easy to learn, they are all in the title. They return to play three more tracks including their cover of 'Jackson' however regrettably without the vocals of the The Duke Spirit's Leila Moss.

Excellent gig. I head off home to L, Doggo and cheese on toast.

Once More Unto The Breach

Really must bike today. No sound of rain on the window. Radio suggests the only rain is in the east and heading further eastwards. Sounds good. There are however warnings of strong winds. I go for it.

The radio is wrong. Once I'm kitted up it starts raining but I don't bottle it. Its true what they say. Once you've taken the step in getting your kit on you're unlikely to change your mind. I don't. In any case before I've done the first mile the rain has ceased. It is however 'a touch' windy.

Ecstatic when I make it to work in one piece. Was a rubbish time, so I must have taken it easy? L will be pleased I was so careful. However when I tell her she merely remarks that I must be very brave or mad. I prefer mad.

L's had an exciting morning too. Oh their run, she and Doggo bumped into a woman running with a mongrel and GSD. Apparently they sort of speak but Doggo always growls at the GSD. So they aren't getting to become friends.

He's not keen on GSDs. They are number five on his hit list I believe. After, in reverse order: - Dalmatians, Belgian Shepherds, Weimaraners and top of the list Poodles. Although L thinks there's a good case for ankle-biting shiatsu's to be in there. We don't come across too many shiatsus when we do agility, which is a shame because it would be great to see.

Apparently Son has got to take in a baby photo for the school year book. That'll be a hoot. Unfortunately he needs it today and as usually only mentions it as he's getting his coat on to leave. Erm a tad short notice. This will now result in a delay to the printing of the whole yearbook.

Unlike my friend from Leeds, who's permanently depressed, my friend from Scunthorpe is on cloud nine. Scunthorpe United have won thirteen games in a row and are walking away with Division 3 (or League One as apparently some people now call it). They are nine points clear at the top. Four wins from their remaining eleven games should guarantee them promotion. They could get those before the end of March. This is a team that have spent last thirty years apart from two in the base division. The last time they reached such dizzy height was in 1958 when they were the last team to be Third Division North champions.

All bad news for poor old Nottingham Forest who are now left scrapping over the remaining automatic promotion place. I doubt they have the stomach for the play offs, so if they don’t get in those top two places, I can’t see them going up.

L emails to say it's bloody windy in Nottingham. Hmmm only a slight breeze here. Ideal cycling weather.

L emails again to say the weather's now totally foul in Nottingham and raining quite a lot. Hmmm not raining here, well perhaps the slightest of drizzle, it was quite heavy earlier but the gale force winds must have blown it over to Nottingham. Conditions now ideal for cycling.

With my loving partner totally reassured, I step outside. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more" as Henry V once said (via Shakespeare), "imitate the action of the tiger, stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood" etc etc

Had a cracking wind assisted ride home, although the odd sideways gust was a bit interesting. Cracking time too. 51:14 which is almost a whole minute quicker than my best. Can't be right, can't believe the wind was behind me all the way, on wet roads too. Bike computer says I hit a top speed of 50kph? Surely not. Oh well who am I to argue with technology.

Daughter not going to guides tonight. I don't ask why, assume Hollyoaks is just too good to miss tonight. Cook a rather odd but tasty frankfurter bolognaise. Then head off to dog class. Which goes amazingly well. Doggo does everything I tell him to, perfectly, even when I tell him to do the wrong things!

Head Butt

It's raining. I can hear it. The radio forecast is for more of the stuff. Reluctantly I decide not to bike, as I have nowhere at work to dry my wet gear. Could do the bus but then I get a wet walk! So it’s car again. The journey was very good again, roads quiet.

L's not so happy; she got soaked on the park with doggo and then soaked again on her way to work. Yep, I'm glad I didn’t bike. Just got to decide now whether to bike or swim tomorrow! Decisions decisions.

The rain appears to have fallen as snow all over the ski areas in Scotland. Whether it’ll be enough to ski on at The Lecht, I’m not sure. Cairngorm seems optimistic it will at least put them back to where they were when we went.

Son could be in mega-trouble today because he hasn't done a project that should be handed in today and its part of his GCSE coursework. Apparently he's going to do it in his lunch break. So perhaps he won't be getting a very good grade for that then. I doubt he'll have a problem. Son always falls on his feet. Knowing him he'll get an extension, probably until the end of May. After all the school does have to think of its exam results and its league table position.

Daughter's a very unhappy bunny. Her planned cinema trip has been cancelled because her friend is off ill. How inconsiderate of her friend. Then again they were planning to go see Epic Movie. So she's had a lucky escape.

To make matters worse she also got soaked this morning and then missed the bus and had to walk in, so she got a detention for being late. My first thought was, great, think of all the calories she walked off.

Then she almost got another detention for going into school without a tie. She'd left it at her ill friend's house. Hmmm don't quite understand that. We have a house full of school ties, most of which are on her bedroom floor. If children had eyes they'd be dangerous.

Got home and did a very muddy pond run with L and Doggo. Far too muddy and because it was dark I couldn't see where to put my feet. I nearly got my new trainers muddy.

Then we swim which kind of makes my mind up for tomorrow. I'll have to bike now. It was a public session but with two lanes both of which were full. So I made an unofficial third lane along side them. This worked well until L, who was swimming further down, shunted two women who were probably discussing the latest edition of Hollyoaks down out of her way and into mine. I think they finally got the hint that they were in my way when I kept doing my turns by touching the wall over one of the women shoulders. Eventually they got out.

I might have intimidated them out of the pool but the girl in lane 2 is certainly intimidating me. She is doing all four strokes in rotation: - Breast stroke, front crawl, backstroke, and butterfly. Even when she's swimming butterfly she's faster than me. I'd like to see her be so cocky on a Wednesday when the Iceberg is parked in lane 2! My one consolation is that at least she can’t do flip turns but then just to rub it in she does one. Show off.

I try a flip turn of my own but soon pack in that silly idea. Far too embarrassing. I can see the attendants glaring at me, imploring me to please not drown on their shift.

Despite all these distractions I think I manage seven, yes SEVEN lengths of front crawl without stopping. Progress.

Back home L cooks again and then we retire to bed. Unfortunately in the bedroom Doggo head butts L as she tried to pull the blanket off the bed before he can shag it. The collision leaves her with a cut lip. She’s not happy with the dog and I’m not happy with the dog because that means no BJ tonight.

Oh and Son's project doesn't even have to be in yet. He got the wrong date. Which means we'll have the same panic all over again when it's finally due in.

Transvestite Vest

Back to the grind today. Back to work. Back to the traffic, of which surprisingly there is very little. Cones still there though. See what it's like when I leave.

Doggo didn't seem to want to be left today. Bit of a come down for him after a week of our company. Bit of a come down for all of us! It's back to work for him today as well. He's got dog class tonight.

Very busy at work, a ton of work emails to deal with.

Managed to get time over lunch to watch the highlights of Derby v Sunderland on the internet. I'm more enthusiastic now for the rest of the season. It was a very good performance by both sides. A better game you will not see anywhere this season. Premiership? What's that then?

Daughter has got into Fall Out Boy. Not sure if that's a good thing or not. Anyhow I find out that they've covered Joy Division’s 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', so I download it to my Ipod. Needless to say it’s terrible. I had planned to play it to Daughter and then play her the original but it's so bad that I daren’t in case she likes it. I delete it. Shame its in digital form, in the old days if you didn't like a record you got the joy of burning the vinyl!

Daughter's already in a bit of a huff because I’ve put some eighties stuff on her Ipod – Tears For Fears and Transvision Vamp. She didn’t seem pleased. However she must have tried to play them because she's complained that the Transvestite Vest doesn't work. I think we're talking about the same thing. So I'll have to redo those tracks. She had a new style nano for Christmas and Apple seem to have booby trapped it. It refuses to play a good percentage of mp3's although once you rerecord them in Apples preferred AAC format it is perfectly willing to play them. Hmmm suspicious. Likewise a mains charger (not an apple one) that I bought and that works with all our old style nano's won't work with hers. In fact rather than charge it, it totally discharges it instead.

It’s our anniversary this Saturday. Eleven years with L and no time out for good behaviour. Only joking Dearest. XXXX. We'll have to celebrate in style. There’s orienteering at Blair Atholl this weekend, which is near where we stayed in Scotland. We could nip back up for that, it would certainly send the kids running for cover and give us a childfree weekend! Although L doubts they'll leave the house at all until we leave for Austria at Easter.

Talking of Austria. Having looked at the webcam where we're going it's currently snowing like mad which is good news. Not so good news in Scotland. The Lecht has lost the snow off all its main runs. Only the nursery slopes remain now.

When I leave work it turns out they've actually improved the cone layout on the A52. Now there's a first. Begs the question why they didn't do that in the first place. Still takes me ten minutes longer than usual to get off Pride Park but that's an improvement on the 30 minutes that it was taking.

I get home and collect the dog and take him for his weekly Weimaraner bating session. It goes quite well. He manages to not upset anyone and performs pretty well.

Back home L welcomes me with a stir-fry and an offer of wild sex. That's my girl. Well I wouldn't say it was wild but it was certainly top draw and she didn't cough or splutter once. It must be the Lockets, just hope she's not addicted to them.

Back In the Swing Of Things

Had a lie in and some none squeaky fun. Then we got back in the swing of things with a pond and park run. Found that all my aches and injuries appear to have cleared up, which is good news.

In the afternoon we went for a swim, although L was reluctant as she still felt a bit off it. Once there I discovered the down side of having a week off. I can now only manage three lengths of front crawl non-stop. It was four before the holiday. The session we went to was a standard public session without any lanes; therefore I collided with several swimmers and a few 'walkers' - those ‘swimmers’ that don't lift their feet of the pool floor. Generally though it was a good work out.

Watched some TV! Because Britain's most successful sport was on and had been all this weekend. Well our most successful sport apart from ones like darts, snooker, squash etc which don’t have Olympic status, although obviously squash should have.

I’m talking cycling again, World Cup Cycling. Britain topped the medal table yet again with eight goal medals. Three individual gold's for our new star Vicky Pendleton.



Two each for Chris Hoy and a black-eyed Bradley Wiggins. He fell off a treadmill. Hoy then went on to win a third race, although not a medal, in the final non-World Cup Keirin.



Terrific stuff. Get into your cycling.

In the evening I did a lamb curry for all of us and spend a lot of time trawling through emails and catching up on the internet. We also watched a profile of Wainwright on BBC4. Very good. It was actually quite a sad and moving tale.

I haven't mentioned the Fratellis that I went to see last Friday. The first thing to say is that as they walked on stage they were accompanied by the biggest rainstorm of lager that I've every seen as everyone's plastic glasses went up in the air. This lager chucking phase it something new, that the gig going youth of today have invented, that was pretty much absent when I first started going to gigs. It's not pleasant and it's certainly not clever. The only thing that was worse was the punk era and it's even more repulsive spitting.

As usual they opened with Henrietta and they were good, they can certainly play. Although it was all very formulistic, even the set list seemed identical to what I'd heard they were playing six months ago. Most of it was pretty much flawless but it all seemed very predictable and I hadn't even seen them live before. Chelsea Dagger though, despite being the lager boys' clear favourite, was a huge disappointment, having less energy live than it does on record. It was a proper professional job but that's not really what you want from a gig, you just might as well buy the record. They'll need to come up with something more varied if they don't want to fade away very quickly.

The best track was the last one of the encore and it wasn't even one of theirs, they finished with a rocking version of Goldfrapps 'Ohh La La'. I don't like Goldfrapp but I liked this version.

Too much alcohol to count this week, so I'm not going to bother. Although I don't think it was as bad as when we usually go away.

A Week In Review

Back from Scotland today. Took us seven and three quarter hours driving there last week but nine coming back today courtesy of the closure of M80 near Perth for road works.

Mind you last Saturday we did get up at 4.30am. Of course Son still hadn’t packed the few things that we’d asked him to, so that delayed us but we still got away by 6.00. Had breakfast in Carlisle.

We had a great cottage in a really quiet area. Doggo loved it. Daughter loved it. Son was nonplussed by it.

Well when I say Doggo loved it, he loved it apart from the fact that he couldn't go in the kitchen because the timer on the cooker beeped at him. He couldn't go in the lounge because the real fire spat sparks at him. He couldn't go in the conservatory because the heater in there blew hot air at him. He couldn't go in the bedroom because we shouted at him. Other than that he loved it.

Because Daughter slept in the lounge where the fire was, it was always a bonus to wake up with the house still intact around us.

Oh and our bed was very squeaky. What with the area being so quiet, the whole street could probably hear it and guess what we were up to. Very off putting. Had to stand up instead. Even tried it against the wardrobe. Far too wobbly, thought the whole thing was going to fall over. Next door had a different problem. They had very noisy stairs. Either they do a lot of going up and down them or perhaps they have a squeaky bed too and they’d found the stairs to be a better option.

The skiing was a little hit and miss because there wasn't much snow. We skied at The Lecht on Monday, which will be a really nice place if they had a decent dump of snow. Four runs and a nursery area were open when we went. This had been reduced to one run by the end of the week. The kids did approximately six (short) ski runs and then crashed in the coffee shop where they burned off £20 on hot chocolate and cake. We even took Doggo up on to the piste.

Cairngorm was better when we went there on Wednesday. Plenty of runs at the top on the Ptarmigan Bowl but they were packed with people. On the other side, The White Lady was good but only just skiable. I had to scramble through the rocks to complete it. The traverse run down on to the Cas and down to the Gun Barrel was the best, did that loads of times. Again by the end of the week the bottom of these runs had gone.

It was all good practice but with the lack of runs, it wasn't worth the money to ski any more days. It’s £21 for a half day at Cairngorm. So we had plenty of squeaky lie-ins and took Doggo loads of excellent walks in the woods instead. Threw hundreds of sticks over the week for Doggo, who looked progressively worse (e.g. more knackered) as the week went on. He is not a dog with stamina. For once though he was a dog with an appetite.

Tried all the local pubs. Nothing special about most of them but the Old Bridge Inn at Aviemore is worth a mention. The Cairngorm Wildcat 5.1% went down a storm. They’ve got a nice covered over outside area where we could take Doggo. We had a nice romantic beer in the rain there. This was about the only time it rained.

Son and Daughter only left the house the once. That was to ski with us on the Monday. They didn’t come to ski on Cairngorm. Their loss. The whole area was glorious, the scenery breathtaking. Every day we got back from our exploring to find that they hadn’t moved.

Daughter already had a heavy TV addiction before the holiday and the cottage provided her with a free upgrade to the really hard stuff. Sky TV. Now she's back home, she has to go cold turkey. It won't be pretty until she's totally off it. She's already requested it for her birthday.

Son and Daughter had an argument over Hollyoaks on Tuesday. Son never came out of his room again after that, only for meals. We cooked all our own meals. Only make one mistake. White Pudding. Don’t go there.

The only way we could distract Daughter from the TV in the evening was with increasingly painful games of Scrabble. So finally we played her at her own game and got our own back by having the TV on what we wanted to watch. Which was World Cup Track Cycling and eighties music. To be honest it wasn’t very good eighties music but it annoyed Daughter so it served its purpose.

Other than the skiing and the walking we didn’t do any fitness training other than a short run on our last day, so I’ll be fit for nothing now. Though L has been a bit rough all week. Her coughing and spluttering interrupted many a squeaky session. In the end she even had to take my advice and go for the Lockets.

Derby are missing me. They lost to a last minute goal at Sunderland today. A game apparently they should have won. This follows a home defeat to Stoke in midweek and defeat in the cup at Plymouth last Saturday. A bit of a wobble? Or maybe just too much squad rotation Mr Davies? Resting players is all very well but when the replacements haven't played much football (and we haven't a reserve team) you can't expect them to perform as well. Predictably Plymouth got the cup draw we would have wanted, home to Watford. Yep this really was our year! Oh well. Good luck to the Pilgrims.

When we got home we fobbed the kids off with chips while L and I dumped them and Doggo to head off into town to top up our alcohol levels. Had some very nice 5.0% IPA, 2 pints of. Then we had a curry in the Mogul for the first time in almost a decade. They had some very different dishes. I had an Albi, which had potatoes in it. Not bad. Nice sauce, not enough potato. Keema naan quite good. Mushroom rice good too. L's was better as usual; the dish she chose had huge garlic gloves in it. Had a Singapore Tiger with it.

Then we popped in Scruffys for a Dark Leffe.

On Holiday. Back Next Week.

Scotland Bound

Wake up to find that I have lost the use of my right shoulder. Think I ran into the wall at some point last night while playing squash. That's in addition to the bruise I have one on the back of my neck from where the ball hit me. L is still looking quite ill.

Not biking today, as I want to be fairly fresh for the drive up to Scotland tomorrow. So disgracefully I have not biked at all this week.

Journey in on the bus was ok and I was at work nice and early.

Seems I got off lightly last night. Everyone is complaining about last night's traffic. Good job I wasn't heading into town, it took them all at least an hour to get off PCP that way.

As I say off to Scotland tonight. Feel we might look a bit silly taking the skis up there on the roof of the car, as there's very little snow there at the moment. As you can see below: -



There's likely to be none at all by the time we get there. However if we don't take them we're bound to regret it.



Not really bothered about whether there's snow or not. Our main skiing trip comes at Easter in Austria; anything in Scotland would be a bonus. Just looking forward to a week chilling out in the Cairngorms. Doggo's going to love the walking.

As I'm away they'll be no blog for a week. When I get back I'll round up tonight's Fratellis gig, Derby in the FA Cup and everything about the holiday.

Gridlock

L's looking better but far from 100%. She seems keen to pay me back for her romantic muddy treat yesterday and indulge in some sex. I figure its best not to turn her down in case she expires before I next get chance.

In car again because I'm doing the pub run.

Lunchtime and the Farmers Blonde goes down a treat, very tasty (Bradfield's 4.0%). As was the Steak And Kidney Pie. The new kitchen looks the same as the old one.

Daughter wants to go to the gym tonight. L says "We'll see". That’s Sonspeak. I'm still waiting for him to finish 'seeing' about some things I asked him last year including compiling his Christmas list.

Talking of Son. He's sent L on another wild goose chase, into town for a new computer game. She's not learnt her lesson from last time. After she'd queued for ages she found out that they've not even set a release date for it yet. Bless him. He falls for all the advance marketing etc in his magazines and assumes these things exist. It's like on the music channels just because they're playing the video, you can’t assume you can buy it. These marketing people like to build up huge anticipation before they even think about releasing these products. In some cases if they don't get that, then they decline to release the stuff at all. In the good old days things used to sell on their own merits!

My Editor, L, points out that the hyperlink that I put in yesterday's blog hasn't worked. Good job they're not paying me to promote their service.

Daughter (who apparently is now my new science adviser) informs us that when you cremate your dog you can have the ashes turned into a diamond. I did know that. It was in the news that some woman had three pets made into one diamond but think it’s a total con as it's so bloody expensive. It costs thousands of pounds to have it done. So L's not going to get Doggo on her finger once he’s shagged his last fleece.

In any case she says she'll settle for turning him into a rug or preferably have him turned into a fleece. That would be funny when our next dog shags that fleece. Although as L wants our next dog to be a girl lap dog, she doesn't think that this would be an issue as they don't shag. Although if we got one, I'm sure it would, just to be different.

My squash opponent checks in to let me know that he is 'unfit' enough for tonight's game. Says he's done no exercise, drank last night, one week older, so count him in.

Come out of work in the car and can't even get out of our road for ten minutes such is the gridlock on Pride 'Car' Park. In this sort of situation I would sometimes take a right and go through Alvaston but that way is jammed solid too. So stick with my usual route. Forty minutes and one mile later I finally get off PCP and find out what the problem is. Some joker has coned off one lane of the A52. What’s worse is they've put up a sign saying that they're not removing them for six weeks. Bus tomorrow then. Not that that'll be any quicker but at least I can read the paper and catch up on the East Enders gossip.

Finally get home. In all it takes over an hour, twice the usual amount of time. The phone lines on local radio are busy as people who are stuck on PCP ring in and complain. Some of them have been there for an hour or more, so I seem to have got off lightly.

Start doing a spot of packing. Then L and I take Doggo for a walk and a bit of a stick session. L is looking a little better than she was. Her, Daughter, and Doggo even go for a run later.

Squash again goes pretty much to form. I win one game. Adnams Broadside 4.7% in the pub, which wasn't really as good as it should have been.

Home and L has done a very wonderful Balti, which we have with Naan and Chapattis, as well as some red wine.