Diary

It’s the last ATP tournament of the season with the World Tour Finals in London. The Challenger calendar seems to have been updated since the last time I checked it. There are 2 tournaments next week and 2 the week after.

Unfortunately the WTA tournament in Limoges has been cancelled. This is because of the 2 week quarantine that players must respect if they want to play in Australia.

Something else needed replacing in the kitchen! We have already had a new cooker and a new washing machine during Covid. Last week I noticed that the fridge wasn’t cold enough. The freezer was working fine. A google search came up with several possible reasons and I spent a day trying to fix it in between trades. Nothing worked and as it was about 12 years old we were due a new one. As Sue has more idea now of how much money we have I expected her to push for one of those American style fridge freezers. I was bracing myself for the 900+ quid bill but she was happy with a standard one. It has a lot more capacity than the old one and a cold water dispenser on the front so she’s happy. I did tell her that if she breaks a leg or an arm I will have to throw her out. I can’t justify the expense of replacing anything else.

We will be having our Christmas Day on Boxing Day so Sue has swapped her shifts at work. That means she is working on Christmas day and it’s just me and the dogs at home. I don’t mind that. We have done it before. We’ll go on a long walk and then hit Netflix.

Things have remained pretty quiet around here. Most families are keeping their kids inside during lockdown. There are a few who think they can do what they like. It often seems to be the people who have the most kids that are the worst parents. One family has 9 kids and a few of them have been meeting up with a few from other households. They express themselves by screaming as if possessed. They are far enough away from us for them not to be a problem but I’m sure those parents who ARE keeping their sprogs inside won’t be impressed.

I got some new dog shampoo. This time of year tends to bring a little more of that wet dog smell. I found something on Amazon that claimed to make dogs smell like baby powder. It really works!! I bath them outside so needed a mild day to try it out. I managed to get Molly done last week but it rained practically every day after that so Charlie stayed smelly (not VERY smelly but enough that he was due a bath). The sun was out briefly on Sunday morning so I took the chance to bath him. He smells LOVELY! He goes very fluffy after a bath which seems to depress him for a while. He then takes the first chance he gets to roll in fox shit. This time not only is he fluffy but he smells like baby powder. He’s WELL impressed.

Sue has been looking forward to the new series of The Crown coming onto Netflix. She asked if she could watch it last night. I don’t mind it so we watched the first 2 episodes. That took us to 11pm. I took the dogs out and went to bed. She was up until 2am watching more of it. She got up as normal at 7am but soon went back to bed. When she got up she watched the rest of the series. She said the last one was an anti-climax. She was absolutely bolloxed when I finished work. We ate at 6 and she went straight to bed. She is working Tuesday and Wednesday so she’ll be like a zombie by Wednesday night.

It’s nearly time for the Medvedev v Zverev match at the year end finals. Slight edge to Zverev although I thought the same when they met in the Paris Masters final.

That’s about it for now. Stay safe.

 

We don’t often buy the local newspaper. Most weeks it’s more like a comic as it can be very thin and not worth the money. A neighbour told me that they had listed the various areas in Worcester and the Covid infection rates. Apparently our area is the worst in the city. Last night I took the dogs out as normal. We go past the local pub each night. It is set back from the road so we don’t get that close but I have never seen people leaving at 10pm since the curfew was put in place. However last night there were loads of people coming out. I would bet that they have had a visit from the constabulary.

Most of my family are in West Yorkshire and they are due to go into Tier 3 from Monday so I gave them a call yesterday morning to see how everyone was. It rang for a while before my Dad answered. He told me that one of our relatives had died the night before. She was my God Mother though had been more like a Grandma than both my actual Grandmas. It wasn’t a shock as she was 95 and since all this Covid shit started in March I have been wondering if she would make it through as she lives on her own. I am glad that she passed in her sleep. One of my first thoughts was of relief. She hadn’t been well for a while and my Mum has been going to see her twice a day since March which has been taking its toll on her. She is 77 herself. At least I had spoken to her on my birthday last month. I don’t think she really knew who I was.

I don’t know when the funeral will be yet as when I called my Mum was still at the relative’s house with the police and my Dad was going back there to organise the back door being boarded up. They had to break in when they got no response and the old girl had the door locked ( which she often didn’t) and had left the keys in the lock. I didn’t know if you were allowed to travel to a Tier 3 area for a funeral. It took a while and the sites I found didn’t really answer the question but I did find a FAQ page from Liverpool council who were the first to go into Tier 3 and they said you were allowed to travel to a Tier 3 area but must avoid socialising and couldn’t visit private homes or meet in private gardens. I would basically have to drive up for the funeral and travel straight back afterwards.

Last night I read on Twitter that we are all likely to be in full lockdown from Wednesday. That will probably change the situation but I will have to wait for the PM’s press conference on Monday. The lockdown is overdue though you have to feel for the people in hospitality and other jobs that will be badly affected.

The tennis has been pretty good this week although yesterday was one of the most random days of tennis that I have seen in a long while. The first couple of matches were ok. I had predicted that Gerasimov would win in 3 sets as underdog and he was a break ahead in the deciding set but lost. In the second match I went for Tommy Paul to win in 3 as slight underdog. He was twice up by a break in the third set and was 5-0 up in the tie break but still managed to lose. Both matches were great for trading.

I thought MacDonald and Kukushkin would trouble the favourites in the other 2 matches in Kazakhstan but both lost quite comfortably.

In Vienna I expected a close match between Anderson and Medvedev but went with Medvedev to win in 3. Anderson played a great match and won in 2. I thought Rublev would trouble Thiem but went with the Austrian to win in 3 in his home country. To be fair Thiem had a problem with a foot injury that slowed him down enough to allow Rublev to dominate and he won in straight sets.

Djokovic should beat Sonego with both legs tied behind his back but he wasn’t interested. Great performance by Sonego and Djokovic won 3 games. Djokovic tanked as a 1.03 favourite.

I thought Dimitrov would salvage a little for my predictions. He had played really well in the previous round to beat Tsitsipas and Evans hadn’t been as sharp as normal in his previous match. I had gone for Dimitrov to win in 3 sets. It did go to 3 and was another great match to trade but Evans won.

So in terms of final results I picked 1 winner from 8 matches. That’s why trading beats punting every time.

For the last 5 years we have gone to our Daughter and Son in Law’s for Christmas Day. This year will be different. They have moved house but their “new” house needs a lot of work doing to to it. They hoped to be in for Christmas. I had real doubts about that timetable. You always find extra jobs and problems when doing up an old house and that has proved to be the case. At the moment they are living with his parents who have a big house in the country. By Christmas they will have been staying there for around 6 months. It isn’t at all unreasonable that his parents expect them to have Christmas day with them. Sue and our daughter were discussing Christmas on Thursday and Michelle said she couldn’t have Christmas day without seeing us. A couple of times in the past we have had our Christmas dinner with them on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day.

His parents have said that we are very welcome to go to them for Christmas. I don’t know if they said that as they already have 6 people in the house and also have their daughter and boyfriend there for Christmas and we wouldn’t be allowed to go there if we stick to the Covid rules (which we do). Maybe the rule of 6 only applies if you don’t have a big house. When Sue told me about the conversation I suggested having our Christmas on another day. Sue has Christmas Day off but is working on Boxing Day. She said she had thought about swapping Christmas Day off with someone at work who has Boxing Day off but that would mean I was on my own on Christmas Day. I said that didn’t matter. One year I was on my own until the evening so got to cook the Christmas dinner. I’m actually a pretty good cook but as we would die of dysentery if Sue washed up on a regular basis she cooks and I wash up. Another year I was on my own all day and we went to Michelle’s on Boxing Day. So it might just be me and the dogs this year!

Stay safe and strap in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.