Moving To The Dark Side...

Buoyed by yesterday's ride, I take the Ilkeston route again.

L is at the pool where it's been so long since she put in an appearance that the lifeguards give her a round of applause, so she tells me. Really? How cool. Humour within a city council establishment, whatever next.

In another slow news day, the headline a 'Third of staff hungover at their desks' catches my attention. Blimey. Naturally I jumped to the obvious conclusion that this was a daily problem and that a third of staff were turning up with a hangover every day, which would genuinely be quite shocking but no. It's actually a third of employees have admitted to going to work with a hangover a least once in their lives. Big deal. There's clearly a lot of lying going on. Do they mean to say that there are people out there who have never been to work with a hangover? Not even after the Xmas party? Hmmm... I don't think so.

Speak now... or forever hold your peace, my agent tells me, as she's poised to post off a couple of 10k entry forms on my behalf. I’m in denial. Whatever will be, will be.

I do however have to recompense her for the entry fees. I offer her cash, which she seems disappointed with, saying I must be getting old, she was convinced I would offer to pay by 'other means'. Double or quits later perhaps.

I cycle to the pool. It’s mad. Five people in lane two, four in lane one but all evil looking. So I slip into lane two but it's too uncomfortably packed to swim in there. Everyone in lane one seems to have stopped for a chat and one of the guys in there, seeing my frustration, urges me to move across, so I dive under the ropes. It's a bit like moving to the dark side...