I think it has been almost 2 weeks since the last diary post. Things are really busy. I certainly aren’t complaining. It’s great to be busy. Just before the CoronaVirus arrived things were going nuts. In a good way. The business was flying and it was really frustrating when it was taken away. That sounds selfish and of course it is. I personally have come through Covid losing a lot less than most people.

Once the tennis started up again in August things got back to near normal more or less straight away. I tried to be as fair as I could be with subscribers to the trading emails service and promised that no one would miss out on the email days that they had paid for. Those who signed up for the whole 2020 season could, theoretically, have been told that it wasn’t my fault that the tennis tours were shut down. That just wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. We missed four and a half months due to the virus so those people will get the first four and a half months of next season free to compensate. I even worked out how many days the monthly subscribers missed out on and have carried those days over to when the tours restarted. I was obviously refunding payments during Covid and advised subscribers to cancel subscriptions and just hoped that they would sign up again in August once any carried over days had been used up. I would say over 90% DID sign up again. Amazing loyalty.

The US Open was a decent tournament and certainly gave us 2 great finals. Two weeks later and we’re looking at another grand slam. The French Open starts on Sunday. I’m double booked on Sunday. When we were asked to have the grandkids we agreed. I don’t know why but it wasn’t until I was out with the dogs last night that the penny dropped. Shit! I will miss most of the opening day. I can do the research for the trading tips emails on Saturday and I’ll have to work very late on Sunday to get the email written for Monday! I’ll get to trading the matches myself from Monday.

I made a schoolboy error this evening. I was checking my Paypal balance on the laptop and my wife was looking over my shoulder. She knows the business is going well but doesn’t know HOW well. She does have more of an idea now. Thankfully she hasn’t seen my bank account. We have always had separate accounts. Anyway the new gas cooker arrives on Tuesday and the new washing machine arrives on Wednesday.

The French Open draws have been released this evening. I haven’t had a look at them yet. I’ll do that in the morning and try to work out which players stand a chance of having a good tournament.

I posted a video showing 4 matches in a row. It seems to have been well received so I recorded another session yesterday. It is 6 hours long! I’m not posting a 6 hour video so will split it down into 3 videos. I will edit out some of the dead time but will leave the important stuff in including the final market suspension so you can see the actual end result isn’t different to where I stopped the video. It takes quite a while to tidy them up and add a commentary but I’m on it.

We have increased lockdown measures and Boris says they will be with us for 6 months or more. They are a long way from the total lockdown that we had in March but a lot of people are going to struggle. Those who rely on the office workers for the lunch time trade for example as people are being told to work from home again. A lot of businesses were getting ready to reopen but that has been put on hold and if it lasts for 6 months so many businesses will not survive. It is heart breaking to see people around me and on TV whose lives are on a knife edge. Some potentially could lose everything. I’m not sure how the government can support everyone. Some tough times ahead.

Be kind to one another. It’s not always obvious who is struggling.