Diary

The first week of the French Open has been a busy one. I spent most of the day on Saturday researching Sunday’s matches and writing the trading email. As I said in the last diary post I had double booked myself on Sunday. We were looking after the grandkids all day. Normally during the first Sunday of the French Open I would be writing Monday’s trading email while I’m trading. As I couldn’t do that this year I started on the email at around 6pm when the kids had gone home. It was a late night but I managed to get enough done that I could finish the rest on Monday morning. That’s been the pattern of the last few days really.

Tuesday and Wednesday were complicated further by us having appliances delivered. Tuesday was new cooker day. Thankfully they came just after 9 which helped though they seemed to take a while to get finished. On Wednesday the new washing machine was delivered. That wasn’t until 3 pm so I was having to stay out of matches as I didn’t want to be stuck in a trade when they turned up.

Today was the first day that I had not been working late the night before. I got up at 6:30 and had plenty of time to download the matches from the Oncourt software, put them in order and get the prices from Betfair. It was a busy morning but its a routine I do every day and there was nothing out of the ordinary. I only managed to trade one match which was the Pliskova v Ostapenko one. Pliskova started slowly and was having real issues on serve but so was Ostapenko. I laid Ostapenko fairly heavily at prices down to 1.48 and managed to get a decent sized free bet on Pliskova. I could have hedged for just under £300 but figured she would sort herself out so left it at that. I had left about £25 on Ostapenko. No real reason for that other than I had used my pre set stake buttons to lay off the liability and it had left me with that small green on her.

That has been the only trade o the day. I finished the remaining matches on the trading email and had some lunch. It was around 1:30 pm. I was ready for a break and some fresh air so I took the dogs down to the field. When we got down there it was empty. At that time of day we have the field to ourselves 9 days out of 10. The dog were having a great run around and there are lots of trees and bushes to investigate. We usually just do a lap of the field. That means I pretty much do a lap and they move with me. We were nearly back to the gate at the top of the field and I was getting ready to leave. I never use my phone when I am out with the dogs other than if someone signs up for the service. As I got to the gate the notification came through from Paypal. I thought I would set the guy’s access up rather than wait the 10 minutes until we were back at home.

The dogs had wandered off a short way and were just out of sight. I hadn’t seen someone walk down the path that runs along side the field. I heard the heavy metal gate open and looked up. There was a guy with 2 dogs. Other dogs aren’t an issue. Except these where German Shepherds. Molly was attacked by a Shepherd 2 or 3 years ago. She was attacked twice by the same dog. She seems to have got over it but Charlie hasn’t. He was the one who fought the Shepherd off and ever since then he hates all Shepherds.

To make matters worse this guy had the dogs on flexi leads. Those leads that extend. If you ever see someone with a big dog on a flexi lead there is a really good chance that have not got a fucking clue what they are doing. The guy was probably in his sixties. He looked like one of those old guys who spends half the year in Spain. Very deeply tanned, shorts, anorak, sandals and sunglasses.

Molly had heard the gate open and came running up. She ran towards the dogs to greet them. I told her to stay away and she stopped. Then this twat let his dogs extend the leads. Both his dogs were on top of her and she was crying out. I yelled at the guy to shorten his leads. I told him to get his dogs away from mine.

Pretty much all of the following was shouted:

“Well at least MY dogs are on a lead. Your dog came up to mine.”

“Are you fucking stupid? Just get your dogs away from her and give me some space so I can get them out of here.”

By this time Charlie had run up and piled in to help Molly.

“See? Its YOUR dogs being aggressive not mine!”

“HE’S protecting HER! Just take your dogs away from the gate. I’m trying to leave!”

“No you’re not! Your dogs were over there and You were on your PHONE!”

“JESUS CHRIST! Stop talking and fucking move your dogs away”

“My dogs can go where they like. You should have your dogs on a lead if they’re aggressive”

While he’s being a cunt I’ve shoved his dogs away and grabbed Charlie’s collar. Molly was already standing by the gate. I can’t remember what he was shouting at me but it was more bullshit.

“Are you actually fucking retarded?? Should you be out on your own? Do you want me to call your carer? I mean it looks like you’ve shit yourself!”

He actually put his fists up and moved towards me. While he’s moving towards me he is pulling his dogs towards mine again. His dogs were quite a bit bigger than mine and my two aren’t exactly small.

“Oh you’re gonna hit me? What a fucking genius you are. You’re putting my dogs in danger. MOVE AWAY!”

He finally got the message. As he moved away he shouted:

“You need to calm down you miserable old bastard!”

I put the dogs leads on and left. I was angry for several reasons. Mainly because you don’t want to see your dogs get hurt. Molly was ok other than a few nips. Charlie was fine. There was no need for there to be an issue. Molly had stopped approaching them on command before he allowed his leads to extend around 20 feet. I was also angry that I had let him get to me. The only time I get angry these days is if my family or my dogs are put in danger. This idiot was just frustrating. He wanted to argue rather than just shorten the leads and let us leave.

By the time I got home I had calmed down a bit but wasn’t in the right frame of mind to trade.

That’s me done for the day!

 

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.