Sunday Rugby School, iPad, Pony, Angry for No Reason

Today was the final day of the Vipers’ Summer Rugby School and it was a beautiful sunny day. We all four went to the club to watch the final mornings training and then stay for the BarBQ and bouncy castle and tombola etc. Things were fine to begin with but I let the side down by having one drink to many and becoming angry and annoyed for no good reason. I only had three pints so I’m blaming and empty stomach and the hot weather. Before all this we were chatting with Brandon’s parents, Paula and Mark, only to discover that Paula, the jammy minx, had found an Apple iPad in the road. She assumed that someone had perhaps placed it on the roof of their car and then driven off forgetting it was there; whatever the explanation she found herself with a brand new, fully working, slightly chipped iPad with nothing installed on it give any clue as to the identity of the genuine owner. Hannah and I spent sometime stroking the Shetland pony in an adjacent field, after that she then spent mucho pennies buying tombola tickets. She kept winning, the lucky bugger, when I had a go I won diddly squat! At the presentation at the end of the day’s events was awarded with a silver certificate for his efforts.

We returned home although I left our party at Sainsbury’s and bought some more beer. I walked home with these to find the kids had departed to their bedrooms to avoid me and Deb was in the garden studiously ignoring me. No one to blame but myself, eventually, after watching an episode of How The Universe Works, I cut my losses and went to bed. I really don’t know why I was angry and where the black moods come from but, unfortunately, every now and again they come!

The Girl's Sleep Over, Pancakes, Nachos, Rugby Summer School, Bye Brandon.

I got home at about 08:30, just in time to bid Nat adieu as Deb was about to drop him off at Leicester Vipers for the first day of Rugby Summer School (for additional info see Nat’s Blog). I was left to deal with Hannah and Shantelle, who had stayed for a sleepover. They wanted to cook pancakes for breakfast and I was quickly dragooned into making (blueberry free) blue berry pancakes (US style pancakes, more scotch than crepes) as per the Shrek Cookbook. This did not go well; Hannah got out the scales and I began weighing and measuring. I didn’t realise that the scales were set on imperial measurements and so my 155 grams of flour was in fact 1.5oz of flour. Unfortunately the milk was correctly measured out in metric; the end result demonstrated, forcefully, why mixing these systems is always a no-no. Just like the Mars probe that was buggered when the US bits were built in imperial and the European bit were built in metric my pancakes were a total and unmitigated disaster. I might have spotted my error if I’d not been “surrounded” by two tweenies vying for the chance to sieve the flour and other ingredients. I should have seen the writing on the wall! After it became obvious that we weren’t having pancakes I prepared a plate of nachos covered these in cheese and then microwaved them. The girls seemed happy enough with this substitute. Afterward I was fully expecting them both to succumb to exhaustion and let me kip in peace but no such luck. Despite being up all night they were both chirpy and full of beans. Eventually I decided to go to bed and leave them to it. When I woke at four it was to discover that they were still going strong and had gone round to Shantelle’s house to play. By now Nat was also home and had informed us of the sad news that Brandon, tied of last season’s losing streak , had decided to leave the Vipers and, was in future, going to play for South Wigston instead. It’s a real shame that he’s leaving because he’s a great player and a lovely lad to boot.

Miscellaneous Rugby Photos

Here's a selection of Rugby Photos that I'm not sure we've already uploaded. Some are Vipers games and some are School matches.

Trying Out Mobile Blogging

Here we are at Vipers RFC ground watching the under 11:s training before they have a go at beating the under 12s. The game was very good, they lost this week, Nat is awesome when he commits but he can still decide that the game has passed him by and as a result stops playing. When he learns to keep running them he'll be fantastic. Just in case someone notes the date is wrong it's because I'm doing this the next day 4 practice. That is I wrote it on my phone at the match but didn't upload it at the time as I wanted to check I had the correct settings.

18-19 August - Vipers Summer School

Nat again attended the annual two day summer school at the Vipers this year; Deb took the photos so I'm blaming her for everything you are about to see: