Last week, knowing I was going to Buckingham, and there was a jewellers, and that I needed to get a new wedding ring, and would therefore be going into the jewellers, I took along the pocket watch my Mum and Dad got me for my 18th… to have a new battery put in. I took it in, asked the nice lady behind the counter to put in a new battery. Yes sir, no problem she said, come back in 15 minutes…. And I did. She greeted me with a smile, and said, ‘it’s in very good condition sir, I took the back off and it is very clean inside, there was no battery, I have wound it for you and it seems to be working fine’…. er…. my first proper senior moment. I must have been getting mixed up, because when I thought about it, I knew it was a wind up watch.

So, onto the next thing… ‘anything else I can help you with’, yes I said, a wedding ring. It was at this point I thought she hadn’t heard what I said properly, as she proceeded to put her hand down the front of her top. To my surprise she produced a set of keys… which opened the safe where the rings were. Strange place to keep the safe keys. But without casting disparaging remarks about the lady, also probably the safest place if you know what I mean.

The idea is that I have a new wedding ring on account of losing mine some 20 odd years ago. Now, I am not a jewellery sort of person, never worn it or taken much interest. I just assumed I would get a gold wedding ring… but it isn’t that simple. There is white gold, which looks like silver to me. Tricia thought this might be a nice idea, on account of it looking silver… but what is the point of gold that looks silver. Somebody please explain. On Saturday I was tasked with getting myself a new suit so I could look smart for our 25th on this Saturday coming, so whilst walking around Milton Keynes I also looked in the jewellers… of which there were plenty. Which is surprising considering there is a recession… you would think these guys would struggle more than Woolworths wouldn’t you. But there were loads of them… white gold, yellow gold, rings with white and yellow gold, titanium ones even, white gold with diamonds etc etc. I gave up. Today I just went straight into Aylesbury, spent 5 minutes in a jewellers and bought a silver ring. After all it is our silver anniversary… and it is cheaper than gold. Job done.

We are all on schedule for our upcoming celebration this Saturday. However, what hasn’t helped is ‘the cold’. This would be the rotten, stinking, sneezing, streaming cold I have had for the last week and now passed on to my lovely wife and son. . Last Wednesday morning I woke with a sore throat, but otherwise felt fine. I thought I had probably picked up something at the swimming pool the previous day. Wrong, on Thursday the cold kicked in… and it was an unpleasant one. Being a gentleman I moved in to Nikki’s room (as she was away) and slept there for a few nights so that Tricia wan’t interrupted by me constantly nose blowing… I awoke with cramp one of the nights, with my nose streaming, and of course in a different bedroom. In a tv sitcom it would probably looked funny as this confused man tried to get out of bed and find some wall to hold onto so he could stretch out the cramp, which wasn’t where it was supposed to be on account of being in a different room, whilst also trying to retrieve a hanky to stem the running nose, and at no point could I seem to settle on what was the priority, the nose, the cramp, or trying to work out where the wall was….

Anyhow, come Monday I rang the boss…. explained that I was going to be a little late, but was feeling better and was on my way in. He suggested I work at home and stay away from the office… mainly on account of him going on holiday soon and not wanting my cold. So the last few days I have worked from home, but will be in the office tomorrow. Tricia and Robbie have not had a good day today… look on the bright side I said, having the cold now means you will be fine on Saturday … this didn’t seem to be appreciated.

Talking of holidays, Tricia and I are off to Florence next week. Some culture, sun, good food, and a relaxing time (well, hopefully). We arrive back in the UK on Friday the 19th in the evening, then on Saturday the 20th we are off to North Devon for a week with Ellie and Robbie. The thing is, I then go back to work after the bank holiday… and its nearly September. Our calendar is already chock-a-block to the New Year. Blimey… I had better enjoy the holiday because there seems little respite between now and Dec 27th. Except for my trip to Cork with Carlos in October… we are off to meet Brother Barry (Antonio) and catch up with our old Maths teacher and Form tutor.

Nikki is living life at a 100 miles an hour as usual. Her trip to Dallas was successful, and she had a great time. I picked her up from the airport on the Sunday morning, on the Monday morning she started her final physio placement at St Albans hospital, where she seems to have got on well with staff and patients. Last Friday she was in Bath, where she had her quarterly review with the bobsleigh management – they are really pleased with her progress, and believe she is starting to show her potential. They agreed some new targets … one of which was to improve her 30m pb from 4.08 to 3.99 seconds by September…. sounds like a big ask, but in the afternoon she did a track session and recorded 4.00. The coach immediately revised her target down to 3.96. These fractions of a second sound small, but running at speed are quite large margins, going from 4.08 to 4.00 was a big pb, but shows how hard she has been working. Nikki has some technical improvements to make, and the coaches think that if she makes the improvements in technique she will make more good progress. On Saturday Tricia was at the track in Hemel Hempstead coaching her athletes, where the main GB bobsleigh coach sometimes works out, and he happened to be there, he spoke with Tricia and said if was really impressed with her work ethic and progress. Lets hope it all continues on a positive manner…Today she in Loughborough for on a 3 day training camp, she text earlier to say she was training on the track with Lisa Dobriskey (came 4th in the 1500m in the World Champs a few years ago).

On Friday the home computer decided that it didn’t want to play anymore, that it wasn’t fair and changed the rules. Well, in other words it corrupted the registry… which meant I would have to reinstall the operating system etc etc. Last time I had to do that it took days and days as I am on XP and it it is donkeys years old, and there is so many patches, fixes etc that need to be installed it takes forever. So, I bought some more memory, installed it and upgraded to Windows 7… and so we are now up to date, and the computer feels so much the better for it.

Ellie has had her ears pierced… and has grown a new limb attachment… a mobile phone. Groan. Oh well, all part of growing up.

West Ham have shown that despite getting relegated they haven’t lost the knack of playing nice football but still losing.

Here are some piccies of Tricia and Robbies recent Hadrians Wall trip…