Everyday tales of Not Much

Borough Market, May 2016

It's been a bit rough at work - not so much for me, but the main nurse has had a bad time. There have been two premature deaths, a stolen mobile phone, the start of a new Type 1 education course, conflict (there's always conflict) and we are all quite glad when the weekend arrives each week.

A couple of weeks ago I did a foolish thing - I attended a badminton training weekend at the National Badminton Centre with a group of Young People (and one other Old Person) from another club. This entailed arriving on Friday night and having a bit of a play around, then six hours coaching on Saturday followed by another six hours on Sunday. The coach was a very pleasant young man who was once in the GB squad playing men's doubles, and he did a pretty good job. I was pleased with my level of fitness and managed not to fall behind right up until the final hour, when due to a serious misjudgement I ended up having to play two games of singles against the youngest, fittest, strongest man in the group. But until then it was fun, and I learned a few things too. I don't think my badminton is going to improve much, but it's good to keep learning.

The unexpected benefit of this extreme weekend was that I was amazed to find that my frozen shoulder improved quite a bit. I have no idea why this should be - it's not my dominant arm, but badminton does put demands on the non-racquet arm for counterbalance, so perhaps this was what helped.

Lola II came to visit on a school night because she had to go to an event in Birmingham. We went out to a restaurant that I've had my eye on since they had a stall at the Food Festival, but the food wasn't as good as I'd hoped (and I accidentally set fire to the menu). After our main courses we reviewed the dessert menu, but it just didn't hit the spot, so we went to Tesco and carried out a thorough assessment of all possible options before realising it was 10 minutes to Bake Off. Making our final choices at great speed I then packed them into a carrier bag with a hole in it and managed to lose one of Lola II's choices on the way home. However, we not only made it in time for Bake Off, we sneaked in an episode of The West Wing and marvelled anew at how good it is.

The only other news of note is that I decided to treat the lawn with feed including moss killer. It turns out that the lawn is about 60% moss and is now looking a bit brown and sad. I also have some seedlings and some bulbs to plant, and while preparing the ground I ended up chopping down a large pyracantha. So that's been another trip to the local amenities site with a car-load of bags of hideous thorny branches.