Forecast's Looking Grim Again

Daughter keeps emailing me to see if her camera has been delivered yet. Of course it hasn’t, it was only despatched yesterday and it’s coming via Royal Mail. Need I say more? Oh, hang on a sec, a parcel has just arrived. I’ll open it later, it could be anything. I do like winding Daughter up.

Under pressure I open it. 'How does it look?' she asks. Durr, like a camera. It’s a shame I haven’t cycled, because then I wouldn't have been able to carry it home then. As I said I do like winding Daughter up.

As does MD, we thought he’d given up the rolling himself in dung malarkey but he seems to have got back in the swing of it recently. So it’s yet another shampoo or blow dry for him. Unfortunately we’ve run out of dog shampoo, so Daughter washes him in Head & Shoulders which smells much better than his usual stuff and brings his coat up a treat.

My friend emails to inform me ‘the forecast is looking grim again’. I assume he’s referring to the weather prospects for tennis tonight and not Leeds’ prospects for next season. Though, it’s fine and dry here at the moment, fairly sunny but there are a few black clouds looming.

Half an hour later just the looming is left... then after I get home the looming turns to rain. The shower is heavy but brief, so we decide to give the tennis a go. The court we are allocated is underwater so we hunt around for one that is above the flood plain. Some folks are just climbing out of the shallow end of one that doesn’t look too bad, so we take that one instead. After a bit of work with the provided mopping up tools we are ready to roll until two guys turn up who have booked this particular court. They are impressed to find such a dry one. Yes, because we’ve just spent ten minutes mopping it. Naturally we have no intention of giving it up and we stage a sit in, and they reluctantly move on to do some mopping of their own, elsewhere. Then just as we start playing, the heavens open again which renders all court preparation redundant.

Bravely, we play through the storm and I quite enjoy it, the weather is a great leveller and most games go with serve. Probably because a damp ball doesn’t bounce too well. My particular favourite game is one on my opponents serve when I keep dragging the game back to deuce and even occasionally go advantage up. I lose it in the end but only after six deuces but it’s enjoyable more for the look of continuous frustration on his face rather than the final outcome. At 3-6 3-4 down, although going with serve in that second set, we’re out of time and someone else wants our court. We no longer feel we have the moral high ground to hang on to our still impressively dry court so we let them have it. Normally we would have finished off on another court but the prospect of having to mop another one dry and then possibly have someone chuck us off because they’ve booked it, would be too soul destroying, so we retire to the pub.

I know our council is tight with its money, except when it comes to fake beaches in the Market Square of course, but you would think that an investment in some motorised device to dry the courts would be a good idea bearing in mind the British weather and how much business it must lose them.

After a swift one, I head home for some food. In honour of meat-free Mondays, I have christened today and all Tuesdays, must-have-meat Tuesday.

Meanwhile in France, it’s win number three for Cav. With the route back on the flat all this week, just how many wins can the boy land?