… my musings on, er, "stuff"
Pic of the week 19/3/17
A few weeks ago I rocked up to ref an U15 game between Wessex Youth and Wells City. The Wells City manager was Mark Cornish, who I used to play with many years ago, as boy. Barry Dickens, who also played in the team, is the Wessex manager.
This week, Mark sent me the above photo. Not sure how old we were then, I’m going to guess U14 or U13. A few I can name, but too many I can’t.
A great pic.
Pic of the week
The weather is turning, it is definitely starting to feel a little warmer and one gets the wonderful sense that Spring is just around the corner. The pic above is the Magnolia tree in our front garden taken today (12/3/17) – just about to flower and blossom can be seen on some other trees, the hydrangea plants leaf buds are turning into to leaves.
Yesterday I made my debut in the middle of a 1st XI game. Wasn’t meant to be – I was supposed to be running the line but Paul, who was to be the man in the middle, hurt his toe and by kick off time could barely walk, so it was my time to step up to the mark.
Really enjoyed the game, v Weston FC U18s, think I handled it well (am looking forward to getting my hands on the video so I can analyse fully my performance – I few possible fouls I may have missed at the start of the second half. Gave a pen in the first half, stonewall, good decision. It probably helped that our 1st XI ran out 9 – 0 victors in a friendly game, making it easy to officiate. Am surprised how much physically harder it was than any other games I’ve done – I had the fitness, but knew about it at the end of the game. A significant (and surprising) step up from the 2nd XI.
Pic of the week 26/2/17
Wednesday evening, 7.30pm kick off, and I did my first game under lights, at the Abbey Moor Stadium, Glastonbury.
Wessex Youth U16 v Stallbridge in the Yeovil & District Youth League. Pitch was heavy, and the lights not brilliant – certainly some areas a little gloomy forcing you to get up close to have a good look, but I really enjoyed the experience.
For a while I thought it was going to turn into that elusive beast – a 0-0 drawer – but with 20 minutes to go I awarded the home side a penalty (stone wall) which they dispatched with vigour. 10 mins later, another penalty, this time to the away side, but blasted over the bar and the game finished 1 – 0 to Wessex.
A fast paced game, really enjoyed it. The lights made it a bit different and a bit special. As I trooped off the pitch at the end of the game I overheard a spectator saying to a coach: “A great game to watch” and I think it was. Glad to be a part of it.
Pic of the week 19/2/17
So half term has been and gone. A contradictory week full of exercise and rest, of freezing cold and warm sunshine. The need for sleep was satiated, with lovely lie ins until at least 8.00 am each day. Not sure how I’ll cope again with the 6.40 rises that start tomorrow.
And I’ve been active, doing something everyday:
Friday spinning, Saturday refereeing, Sunday playing football & swimming, Monday: run & swim, Tuesday spinning, Wednesday, a long swim (72 lengths, 1.5 miles), Thursday swim, 28 lengths (1 mile), Friday refereed at Yeovil Town U16 trial games & spinning, Saturday refereeing (OA), Sunday refereeing (U15)
In amongst all of that, on Thursday I found the time to do some tree surgery, taking a couple of high branches down from the tree by our compost bins. I was at the full reach of my ladders and used a pole to strap a hand saw to to get extra reach for the upper most branch. A bit brutal, but needed doing. Will be interesting to see the difference once we start getting some long sunny days.
Six weeks and counting ’til the next hols …
Pic of the week 12/2/17
A successful couple of days! I’ve got my ‘puter back up and running.
A couple of weeks ago, my trusty desktop PC started taking ages to load, before grinding to a complete halt. Long story short, I was going to whip the hard drive out and see if I could retrieve anything from it, but before I did that, I decided to fire it up again to see if I could get it running. It did, but all my old data was lost and it was slower than an asthmatic ant at an athletics meet.
Since the computer failed, I’ve given some thought to what I actually do with a PC these days and concluded that what I needed was email, the internet (most stuff I now do is online) and remote access to my school PC. I wasn’t sure about the latter, but I knew I could get the rest from linux, so I figured it was worth seeing if I could get old faithful to run using that, rather than windows.
Rather than have the faff of downloaded and burning to disc or memory stick a copy of Linux, I bought a copy of Linux Mint from Amazon prime on Friday evening. It arrived before lunch on Saturday, and now, Sunday evening, I’m now up and running and happy as Larry. I’ve even just worked out how to Remote Desktop to my school PC, so I have all that I want, although it’ll be Open Office for me now rather than the Microsoft suite – this may cause some issues, but I suspect they can be resolved. The only snag I currently have is that I wasn’t able to upload and image to my blog from Linux ‘puter, I had to use the laptop to do so – strange? One to ponder on.
Other news
‘Tis now half term (hooray!) Ref’d a game down at Strode yesterday and played for Millfield Legends v Oakhill today in a friendly veterans game. Really enjoyed it, despite losing 4-1. Had a (longish) spell in goal, in which we kept a clean sheet (Stu was absent – with him in goals I think it would have been a very different score). Was a cold day, but great fun.
Have just updated the blog to Twenty Seventeen Theme – I do rather like it, plus the big header photo has a stripey cactus just like mine!
Pic of the week 22/1/17
A bit of an odd week, characterised by the demise of my computer from Wednesday.
It wouldn’t fire up in the morning and I left for school with that nagging away at me. Was able to pop home at lunchtime and managed to get it going, so I saved most of the files that I thought would be important onto a memory stick. Once it was up anad running I should have left it, but each night I shut it down, and each morning it took longer to get going. On Friday evening I tried restarting it again as it woudln’t connect to the internet (would connect to the router, though) and its never started again. It is an ex-PC, it has shuffled of this mortal coil, its pushing up the daisies etc. All a bit of a faff, but I’m less bothered about it than I thought I might be.
I now have the laptop fired up (with PC keyboard and mouse) – all I really use the ‘puter for is emails, surfing the net and a bit of Word & Excel, which the laptop is handling fine. Remember all my logins and passwords, however, that is a right royal pain in the postierior.
Ref’ed on Pitch 1 yesterday, a first for me, and a bit of an honour! 2nd XI (although boosted by approx 5 1st XI players who needed game time) v a side from University of West of England. Enjoyed it, was hard work, both physically and mentally, but I enjoyed the challenge and felt I did a good job. Today I reffed a cup game in the U16 Yeovil Youth Shield – Wessex U15 v Avishayes Combe. Thoroughly enjoyed it – a beautiful sunny afternoon, good football although Wessex ended up 8 – 2 winners. Flattered them a little, but another really good game and great to be out in the sunshine.
The pic above shows the hint of spring to come – its been quite a pleasant January thus far: pretty dry and occasionally sunny. Although I’m sure February will bare its teeth, with the evenings getting lighter one does begin to hope that Spring is now somewhere on the distant horizon.
Pic of the week 15/1/17
I bought this cactus in mid-December from IKEA.
I rather like it, and it seems to be thriving in my new room. Thought it’d be a good idea to have a pic of it now, so I can compare it in the future.
Fortunately I am better at looking after plants than I am at taking pictures.
Pic of the week 8/1/17
OK – so a bit of a cop out for pic of the week, 2017 is now fully up and running, yet I’m posting a pic of 2016 pics. That’s because I couldn’t find a good pic to summarise the week just gone – S & S have gone back to school, Becky’s been madly fulfilling sales orders, I’ve run, swum, spun, ref-ed and endured a day’s INSET. Back to school for me too tomorrow, a short five week sprint ’till half term and the weather starts to improve …!
Pic of the week 25/12/16
It’s Christmas …!
Pic of the week 18/12/16
Last night, Saturday 17 December 16, we descended, en masse, to Ask in Wells to gather together and celebrate Christmas.
It was a lovely evening of great food, fine wine (or so I’m told – my Diet Coke certainly passed the taste test) and fab company.
Sam was delighted to get confirmation that he is now officially the second tallest in the family and he is eagerly eyeing up my crown – still a couple of centimeters to go, but maybe this time next year …