am drinking elderberry cordial with white wine, standing shoulder to shoulder with a fellow up-late twitter mate who was debating more elderberry cordial and rum and as she was the supplier of the elderberry cordial in my fridge I agreed to join her. So I googled for a quote about elderberry cordial as I knew there was one from Monty Python.
Maybe now would be the time to come clean about not thinking Month Python is genius? I have a few sketches I quite like – the dead parrot, the four Yorkshireman is very funny but in the same way as I’ve never seen Star Wars or read Harry Potter I don’t think I’ve sat through a whole MP show let alone one of the films. So I can often identify someone monologue block quoting a load of MP (usually a drunk bloke) and raise a grin it’s not really my idea of top humour.
There. I’ve said it.
And I have a good blogpost title too – Jan, over to you ;).
I had my lie in this morning. It was good :). Up to supervise breakfast and getting dressed and drink plenty of tea. Late last night I had realised our phone was not ringing and we’d missed several answerphone messages as a result. I had a go at getting it to ring this morning and failed despite all sorts of pressing buttons so deduced it had come to the end of it’s life and checked online for cheapest source of replacement. Ady rang and we discussed it and he agreed to find and buy one.
Scarlett was caught up in some RSPCA animal rescue type programme and Davies was doing some Simpsons movie maker stuff so I did some blogging over on Wandering Wonderers and pondered on things that need doing in November but didn’t actually get up and do any of them 😆
We had lunch and then Ady rang to say he was going to be fairly local by 3pm and did we want him to collect us and drop us off at swimming to prevent me having to use the car (heavy rain). So we arranged that and I did some more online stuff. The kids geomagged and we all watched a documentary about animal swarms narrrated by David Tennant which was excellent, beautifully filmed, really interesting and educational. The kids recognised the voice as Dr Who (despite him being Scottish ;)) but for me he is now Dave from Single Dad.
Ady collected us and dropped us at the pool where we had bang on two hours. I got stuck in and tried to use my arms more than my legs this time. I used the same pacing as before with 30 lengths every 40 minutes which worked well and in the third set I was able to step up the pace a little on the back stroke which I am now feeling in my upper arms. Davies can in and did 10 lengths with me while Scarlett was in her lesson – he did really well, loads of stamina and a pretty good style, overtaking one of the slower lane swimmers :). Scarlett then came in and did 8 lengths but she took breaks between them. When she did use her arms her backstroke was faster than mine although her technique is a little random. Swimming with them did slow me down and I would say lost me 2 lengths although I don’t mind at all. So I was very chuffed to do 92 lengths and know I could probably have done 94 in the time. It’s my aim to achieve 100 in 2 hours by Christmas, which will maintain the speed I had built up to in one hour and mean I could theoretically achieve that 5km (150 lengths) in 3 hours if I chose to do the Swimathon again one day. There are 5 weeks left before the Channel Swim ends and we are away for the final week which leaves me with 4 more weeks. I will need to do at least 2 additional sessions to finish before we go away and am hoping to do one this week, maybe Friday.
I slightly turned my bad ankle at the Mohair Centre last week and am getting twinges from that although I suspect the exercise of swimming will do it good rather than harm.
Ady arrived about 15 minutes before the end so caught some of Davies’ lesson, some of Scarlett swimming lengths with me and of course some of my swimming too. Was nice not to have to drive home all wobbly-kneed!
Back at home I set up the new phone Ady had bought while he fed the kids. But I was most dismayed to discover the new phone didn’t ring either 🙁 I rang BT and they have arranged for an engineer to come out on Friday, so in the meantime I will have to get better at checking 1571. I did feel silly ringing to say ‘My phone isn’t ringing. Not like Bridget Jones style nobody is calling me, but it’s not ringing even when someone is trying to call me. I know because I have rung myself’ 😆