My annual flickr subscription auto-renewed overnight. It’s £65-ish.
Whatever.
It’s one of the few online outlays that I don’t stress over. I see it as incredible value for money.
flickr isn’t so much a photo publishing platform as an online storage device for me. I upload everything. Bloody EVERYTHING.
Most of my content is hidden away in private albums. Back ups of back ups of back ups etc.
I watched the brief Forest FA Cup highlights from last night over breakfast. I say ‘highlights.’ - y’know.
It was short and brief. Spoiler: there were no highlights.
The road workmen rocked up at 8am. They started work on filling in the craters along the road they created at the start of the week.
Half were filled, half weren’t. They buggered off an hour later.
I rolled out on a morning bicycle ride on the Raleigh electric. I took it easy. There was a frost with some black ice in places. I was thankful for the two pairs of gloves.
The smell of Estuary manure was quite magnificent. I didn’t pass another cyclist until an hour into the ride. The mini-lake that caused me to abandon ride a few weeks ago has now dried up.
I picked up the pace for the return route of the 40km circuit. A month ago post-op, and I would have switched to a higher assist mode. I managed most of the ride in Eco today, powered mainly by my legs.
Back at base and there was an optimistic ice cream van dodging the road craters and attempting to sell his wares. It was six degrees outside.
I watched the Ipswich Vs Maidstone match. I confess to having tears at the end. TOP MAN George Elokobi. Once a Dulwich Boy, always a Dulwich Boy. And a Forest Boy for that matter.
To Broad Lane! On the Brixton Genesis!
It’s been a while since I’ve watched the Dragons. Home games have either clashed with the basketball, or been called off because of the weather.
The visitors were Norwich CBS. They even wore a canary yellow kit, similar to the more famous Canaries from the city.
Broad Lane was even more sparse than usual. Most of the main characters were missing. I’m not sure what was going off there.
It was an even match, but one that led to Wivenhoe chasing the game, 2-1 down. They made a decent attempt at forcing a draw, but couldn’t quite get over the line. It was bloody freezing in the wide open spaces of Broad Lane.
To the Essex Sports Arena!
I cycled on to the University. There was a basketball double header with the Div 3 and Div 1 men both having home court advantage for the Rebels.
I arrived in time for the final quarter of the Div 3 men Vs Essex Challenge, a team from Chelmsford. Rebels cruised home 97-73.
There was a great family atmosphere to the game. The Rebels organisation had printed up some player profile pics and handed them out to an army of ankle biters. The young kids loved hanging around at the buzzer and getting the autographs of the players.
On court next was the BIG BOYS as the Div 1 Men took on D***y. This was a top of the table clash with first placed Rebels playing the team in second place.
Rebels allowed D***y to take a 20 point lead. This was made up mainly of some clinical free throws from the line. Rebels couldn’t match this, and they couldn’t pull the game back.
D***y left with a well deserved 102-80 away win on the road.
Basketball can be a brutal game when players are benched. Rebels hardly rotated their starting five.
It’s a BIG game for the women tomorrow. Rebels are in the National Trophy Final at Birmingham. A crowd of 10,000 is expected, along with live telly coverage on Sky.
I will be waist deep in shit, helping out at the Rowing Club annual race day.
Hey hoe.