Diary

Djokovic has said it is important for him to play in the US Open to help keep the sport keep going. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with the fact that Nadal and Federer won’t be there and he will be strong favourite to take another slam title.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/53849312

US Open: Guido Pella & Hugo Dellien in quarantine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/53845499

Simona Halep decides not to play Grand Slam in New York

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/53806509

It has been quite a good week trading the two Challenger tournaments. Cincinnati is on next week and then it is the US Open! For the last few seasons I have done a daily video looking at most matches during the slams giving info on who I see as value and giving trading tips. The videos didn’t get as many views as normal for the Australian open In January. That helped with the decision to not do these videos in future. If I DO decide to do them it will only be available for subscribers to my Trading Tips emails. Sometimes it can help to actually hear someone explain why they wrote what they did. There can be an emphasis that you don’t always get from simply reading it in black and white.

There hasn’t been a huge amount going on away from the screens. I lost one of the dogs a couple of nights ago. No she hasn’t died! I had had a good day until I went shopping. As I got back to the car and went to put the bags in the boot I noticed that someone has put a dent in the back of my car. Not impressed. It is only a small dent with 3 paint chips in the middle. I have really tried to look after the body work of this car. Three years I have had it with only minor scratches that i could take care of myself. I contacted a few companies for quotes to repair it. Only 2 got back to me. The first was for £220. I just laughed at that one. I intend changing the car in the next 6 months. Its not worth that to me for a small dent. The next company phoned me for extra photos so they could see exactly what the damage is. It is only the size of a 10p piece. Their quote? £299. Fuck off.

I can easily take care of the paint chips myself. There have been quite a few minor scratches and chips in the last 3 years so I have had a lot of practise. I do have some suction cups for removing dents. Poor boiling water on the area and give it a long steady pull and it might pop out. Even if it doesn’t once I have sorted the chips it won’t stand out as much.

Later in the evening we ordered Chinese. I ordered through their app at around 9:15 and they gave a delivery time of 10pm. By 10:15 there was no sign of it so I rang them. The guy on the phone asked me what I wanted to order. I explained I had ordered an hour ago. He said they hadn’t had it. I told him I had received the 3 emails from the app saying that my money had been taken for the order and the restaurant had accepted the order. As if by magic……….Ohhh the order has JUST come through. Of course it has. They said they would have it with us in 15 to 20 minutes. To be fair they did get it out quickly but it was almost 11pm before were were eating.

So by the time I took the dogs out at 12 I was a little pissed off. I don’t know what was wrong with Molly but she wanted to stop every 10 metres. That’s fine if she actually wants a pee or a shit but most of the time she would sniff around as if getting ready to do something and would then just stare at me. After 6 or 7 of these I wanted to tie her to a lamp post and leave her there. It also started raining. Part of the walk takes us up a main road. I don’t let them stop for a pee there. She was still doing her stop, sniff, stare routine. As soon as we got off the main road I dropped her lead. If she wanted to pratt about then she could get on with it and catch us up. Charlie and I carried on with the walk. I could hear Molly behind us on the path.

We carried on past Tesco and onto the Community Centre car park. That’s one of the regular toilet stops. We waited for Molly to catch up. After a couple of minutes there was no sign of her. We walked back retracing our steps. Just after the Tesco steps the path splits into two. You can see a fair distance in both directions. No sign of her. She is mainly white so is easy to spot in the dark. Molly used to be a runner. If she got off her lead she would pick up the first scent that she found and would follow it as fast as she could. That’s what Trailhounds are bred to do. It took a long time and a lot of work to get her to be reliable off lead. It wasn’t like her to wander far from me. We headed back to the carpark. I was thinking that if she wasn’t there I would be best dropping Charlie off at home and then coming back out to search for her. I have spent many hours searching for her in the past.

As we got round the bend to the carpark she was there! I called her and she ran to us. I think she was panicking a bit when she could find us. I think when we doubled back to find her she had taken a different route to the carpark. She must have gone round by the pub and the convenience store. It is the only way that we could have missed her. Little bugger.

Anyway if you haven’t signed up for the trading guide or the Trading Tips emails I’d get a move on if I were you! Just over a week until the US Open!

Trading Guide

Trading Tips emails

Stay safe.

 

I think it has been a week since my last diary post. Quite a bit has been going on.

There were 2 tournaments on this week and as one was in Europe and one in America we have had tennis almost all day. The trading has been good although Thursday wasn’t an easy session overall. It isn’t long before the US Open starts at the end of this month and then the French Open is only a couple of weeks after that.

I had an email from the CEO of the SMTP service apologising for the delay in responding. They have authorised my domain. You may remember that they had rejected me initially and then refused to discuss it when I explained that the reason they gave for rejection was incorrect. I contacted their boss via Twitter. He did reply and asked me to send him details so he could look into it. I sent over the information but after 3 days he had neither replied to or acknowledged the email. I sent him a professional email and a little more shitty Twitter reply saying something along the lines of his lack of basic courtesy meant he and his business were a bad fit for my requirements. I didn’t expect to hear from them.

The surprising thing is that once you’re accepted their customer service is excellent! There have been a few teething problems as they tweak settings to get all emails delivered but their customer support guys are available on live chat straight away. I’m on a free trial for 30 days but I am very happy with the service so far.

The party house quietened back down after a couple of days. We’ll see how they are this weekend. The weather is cooler so sitting outside might not be as appealing. The heat made sitting in the office all day a little uncomfortable. I’ll invest in some sort of air conditioning for next summer. I’ll buy it during the winter when it’s cheaper. I’m always looking for value! I’ve had to make do with the office fan and I nicked the bedroom one too. After a while though in 34 degree heat the fans are just moving warm air around.

The Police turned up at the door yesterday morning. They wanted to take statements from both of us about the neighbour’s daughter being snatched 3 months ago. Three months! That took an hour and a half.

I’ll probably trade the Lexington matches tonight. Good luck if you get involved.

Stay safe. I keep wondering if we are still saying “Stay safe”. Things seem to be back to some sort of normal. I think we will have some degree of social distancing for many months.