Diary

It has been a pretty chilled out week. Only ATP tournaments but the trading has been pretty good. I prefer trading indoor tournaments to hard courts as the indoor surfaces are usually slower so big servers don’t have as much of an advantage. The women are back next week.

Things have continued to go well since the tennis resumed. Lots of interest in the service and a shed load of new members. I’m already looking forward to having a great full season in 2021. Hopefully the CoronaVirus doesn’t put another spanner in the works. The tournaments have been doing a good job of keeping players and officials safe. There have been a few reports of players testing positive but no real claims that it was caught at a tournament.

Cases in Worcester are going up but we are on the lower tier of social distancing rules. We are surrounded with areas with much higher rates though and there is a chance that Worcestershire will be lifted to tier 2. Cases at the local hospital are increasing but fairly slowly. Sue’s ward hasn’t been made a covid ward again just yet.

The street has been extremely quiet for a while now. The local pub allegedly ignored the first lockdown. With a 10 pm closing time imposed on pubs you’d expect if you walked past around 10 pm that you would see a load of people piling out of there. I haven’t seen a single person leave at 10. Some nights I can hear voices in the woods next to the pub so maybe they’re taking their drinks there in case they get checked upon.

One day this week Sue had gone up to bed early to watch a film on Netflix. Our daughter, son in law and grand kids all use our Netflix log in details so when Sue fired up Netflix on the bedroom’s Firestick she was greeted by a screen full of kids movies and cartoons. The Firestick is voice activated. I was at my desk in the next room sorting an issue out for a new member. Sue wanted to see the list of films so said into the remote control, “Adult films”.

She let out a sort of, “Aaaargh” noise as she was presented with a list of adult films. I didn’t know Netflix had porn on there. To be fair I couldn’t see the screen from my desk but she was insistent that it was a list of porn films. By the time I had stopped laughing at her she had got back to the main menu. I suggested she tried, “Main menu” if she wanted to get rid of the kids films in future.

I have not been putting “Stay safe” at the end of posts as I really thought we were getting to the end of the Covid issues. I think people have become complacent and also the universities were opened up way too early. I think this is going to drag on for many months. Maybe “Stay smart” might be a better sign off.

 

It has been a quiet week as the second week of grand slams often are. There have been some strange results in the French Open. Mainly in the women’s tournament but the men’s tournament has also seem some strange matches. Apart from the obvious reasons of the Corona Virus keeping players away from competitive matches for 4 to 5 months and the fact that there are a fraction of the usual number of spectators I think one of the main reasons has been the playing conditions. Tennis players don’t play in cold conditions. The outdoor tournaments follow the sun around the globe. They are always played in summer. That’s why in January the tour is in Australia and New Zealand and European events such as Wimbledon and the French Open take place during Europe’s summer. The players don’t have any tactics for dealing with playing when cold other than having more layers on. Muscles take longer to get warmed up and also just the fact that people generally don’t like being cold has resulted in some unexpected performances.

I had a conversation with my sister on WhatsApp about my Nephew’s birthday present. She was at work so it wasn’t a long conversation but we talked a bit about the lockdown. She lives in Wigan and they seem to have extra measures in place. She was saying that people around her were just refusing to wear masks so she was avoiding going to shops. She also said that her netball matches had not restarted and her partner’s rugby matches weren’t happening. The kids’ football and gymnastics had extra safety measures in place.

She asked me how I was managing with no tennis being played. The family don’t talk about what I do. I get the feeling they think it is something dodgy and at best is just gambling. All she seemed to know was that my job was something to do with predicting tennis match results. I told her that the tennis had returned in August and I had been very busy since. She was surprised that the tennis was back when the sports that she knows more about weren’t happening.

“Oh so you have been making tennis results up then? Or do you manage to fluke one occasionally?”

“I get most of them right. I’m a legend!”

“Ha! So if I google tennis prediction flukey legend, you will come up?”

“LOL probably!”

She went quiet for a bit and I wondered if she WAS googling it. I googled it myself and I was nowhere to be seen but she must have used another similar search term. Then…

“OMG!! Bettinggods.com An interview with Paul Shires!! I thought you were joking. I can’t open the links in it as I’m at work.”

She must have tried some other searches.

“Wow you’re all over the place! I had no idea”

We chatted about what I actually do. It was nice to talk to someone close about building the business up and some of the success I have achieved. I give myself a hard time if I get something wrong but also give myself a pat on the back when I get it right. I am extremely proud of what I have built up and getting pretty much zero acknowledgement from my loved ones has been hard at times.

I finally got the second and third matches posted on Youtube from the 3 match trading session from WTA Strasbourg. That means I have very little to do today. I’ll be trading the French Open Women’s final at 2 pm.

I’ll try to take it easy today. Sue is at work and we have the grand kids all day tomorrow so there won’t be much relaxing until they go home!

Have a great weekend!