A very strange sports award

Hartleypool
Originally uploaded by victoriaros56

For the 2nd year in a row I see to have won our football award for best kit. My original idea was nicked from this article in the face (yes secretly I always wanted to be one of those icy blondes in the locker room. Failing that I would have settled for the Dorothy character from Gregory’s girl (yeah how cool was she? Say not more...) however sadly I looked like neither of these people. I started playing football on the mixed playground at school as quite a few of my friends were lads and we used to play with a tennis ball (gives you quick reactions, you don’t want to get hit on a fleshy part with that!). My football skills were then used at University when I played for the county girls team (coached by an angry Scotsman called Andy, his main goal was to get us to win something, the main goal of our captain (Lozza) was to organise as many social events as possible, hence we never really did that well). But both these events stood me in excellent stead for joining the mixed teams at work. The 2nd year I was involved I was a team captain and my team (the whirlwind tiger clan of doom) did pretty poorly, only being rescued by my next season in charge of Big Guns & Roses (who finished second) . This year however it was double glory Hartleypool united (the team I was on, I gave up the captaincy lark when I got promoted due to time constraints) came first (here we are smiling winningly around Captain Dan Hartley (middle, well we were supposed to be smiling winningly, dunno what I was doing) and below is a photo of my award and also the secret weapons that helped me win it, gonna have to think of a new twist on kit for next season, at the moment I’m thinking take the lead from Morris and go with bells...

Othello

Yes indeed, it is the play that I am am going to see tonight by the very brilliant Creation Theatre Group (http://www.creationtheatre.co.uk/), I'm very excited but I have to remind myself that unlike Love's Labours Lost Othello is pretty much 'the horror, the horror' all the way through (oh dear). The rest of the weekend at this point is looking pretty busy too, with a book shopping trip planned on Saturday (I swear the bookshop owners of Oxford know when I'm coming cause they always seem to have what I want!). This weekends main mission is to buy a smallish dictionary (for a new kind of puzzle I'm working on for the work magazine) and to get hold of this book (The Vampyre: Being the true pilgrimage of George Gordon, sixth Lord Byron by Tom Holland) which I found thanks to that wonderful institution Wikipedia (I was checking out some outrageous claims made about Byron by one of my authors, and they are alas, outrageous claims). Anyway the book brings Byron back from the dead as a vampire and apparently poet closest to my heart Percy Shelley also makes an appearance. I've nearly finished A Suitable Boy (as usual with Vikram Seth the novel gradually builds up and I'm really enjoying it now, much more than at the beginning when I was having trouble keeping up with which character was which). The book is quite a tone however so a light bit of Byronian vampire relief might be quite nice (there is a sequel as well called Supping with Panthers).

Sunday Nicola is coming round to to help with the hall. My new flatmate Dave moves in a week and it would be quite nice to have the hallway at least nearly finished by the time he arrives (I've also got to buy him a chest of drawers this weekend, scary grown up stuff buying your own furniture!). I've been doing a lot of house and garden tidying of late (which is quite handy as my parents and Kip are coming down next weekend) but there is a lot more house to clean now there is only 1 person tidying it, alas! Still I won't be alone for that much longer. Right better get back to work, the new mini football league starts this lunchtime and if its anything like usual I'll be back late from that, so time to crack on!
(all Images (C) creation Theatre)