Hula Hoops

I take it easy on the bus today, where I discover that if Doggo or MD should ever fancy a trip on the Red Arrow, they can. I can vouch for the fact that they accept dogs. Well they appear to, that is judging from the volume of dog hairs on the back of the seat in front of me.

It dawns on L that, last night, she may have agreed to a 21 mile run. Yep.

Daughter, revising hard for tomorrow Physics obviously, sends a photo of both dogs snuggled up together on the sofa. Hmmm. I assume it was taken immediately before she chucked them both off and seriously reprimanded them. L says she shall use it as her windows backdrop.

As I wait for my bus home, I see standing in the next bus queue a lad who seems to have got a hula hoop stuck inside his earlobe. No, not one of those you swing around your hips, one of the potato snack type things. I think it’s supposed to be an earring but you can see daylight through his earlobe. I know it’s fashionable to look gross and face mutilation is so very in vogue but it’s really gut wrenching... as well as fascinating. There’s a girl in my queue who can’t take her eyes off it and laddo thinks she’s giving him the eye, so he promptly starts preening his greasy hair. I think you’re deluding yourself mate, that's not an eye job she's giving you, she’s just thinking, like the rest of us, that you're an idiot to have done that to your ear.

I’m playing tennis at 7pm and rain is forecast for... yep you guessed it, 7pm. Time to pray to the Sun Gods then. Even if it doesn't rain it’s not exactly warm, our pre-match knock-up will add new meaning to the phrase ‘warm-up’. Oh for a nice warm squash court or perhaps not, there's warm and then there are the council unventilated squash courts.

In the end, the weather forecast is stunningly inaccurate and it doesn’t rain at all. As I make a dreadful start and lose the first set 6-0 I start to wish it was raining. Things though, take a turn for the better and somehow I lead the second set all the way through. Obviously I don't expect this to last and of course it doesn't, but then just as it looks like we’re heading for a tie break, things go my way for once and I take it 7-5. So a decider. Losing even a set can send my opponent slightly crazy, as I well know from squash, and as he rants and raves on his side of the court, I storm into a 5-0 lead. I then try desperately to throw it all away but amazingly I still win 6-3. Cool, I won.

Then I get ready to duck as I’m sure a racquet will come flying over the net but no, he's quite calm, just a couple of tennis balls dispatched in anger at 100mph and they’re heading over my head towards the next but one court, so I’m safe.

Then I have a good smirk into my post match pint.