Rugby Tours, Marriage Prep and life in general

Well hello everybody after a couple of weeks away and regular nagging about not posting I have decided to put you all into my misery. Last weekend Tom went on his annual rugby tour this year to Leamington. The weather was outstanding and the rugby was excellent as well. In previous tournaments Tom's team have lacked discipline and focus at times and have underachieved. This year they stepped up to the plate and showed what they could do when they tried hard. Unfortunately it was a long day and the last match was against the hosts and it was possibly a game to far. They lost concentration and lost the game to finish second. Their record for the day was Played 5 Won 3 Drawn 1 Lost 1. The festival was one of the most well organised I have ever seen. Photos to follow soon.

The hotel was OK but for my money the hotel last year was better. What is continually frustrating is that the hotels take the booking knowing that there is a bunch of young kids coming but make no provision in the sense of the swimming pool for them. This year I didn't travel on the coach. This caused a bit of annoyance in some quarters but Tom and I were quite happy with the arrangement. I drove down instead. I am coming to the conclusion that websites giving directions are about as much use as chocolate fireguards. I still had to resort to accosting a man with a dog and asking him for directions. In fact the directions I had sent me off in completely the wrong direction at one point. However, that aside I was less stressed and was able to have my music blaring out of the speakers as I avoided the large amounts of roadkill on Warwickshire's roads.

One annoyance over the weekend was that an arm dropped off my Wayfarer sunglasses. I had a screw loose apparently ( a line that I used many times and strangely nobody disagreed). On Monday as I was going into work I called in at Rayner's opticians in Huddersfield to see if they could fix the problem. They are about the only optician in Huddersfield left to try as everybody else has annoyed me at some point. The two blonde assistants (it just had to be really) were extremely helpful and set to work fixing my loose screw. When the work was done one turned to the other and said (with a straight face) " Do we charge for a screw and how much?" Her colleague replied "£1". I have to admit to nearly corpsing at this point but managed to retain my dignity and spare the ladies blushes.

As some readers may know, Alison and I are part of the deanery marriage preparation team. The team are currently in a state of mild narkiness with the priests as we set out limits and numbers we could cope with and we have been just ignored. At the last session we got the feedback forms from the couples attending. Two criticisms thrown at the team were that we were pushing the Catholic teaching and we were too gender specific. This midly confused and irritated me. In each couple there was at least one Catholic. They were getting married in a Catholic church and had been to see a Catholic priest about getting married. They were on a marriage preparation course designed by the Catholic church. What were they expecting to get, lectures in how to do it according to the church of the flaming sword of Las Vegas? Also since part of the course focuses on the differences between men and women that is only to be expected. The church's position on the subject hasn't changed in 2 millennia and isn'tlikely to in the next 2.

Well rant over for now. Reviews and photos to come probably next week as Tom has his end of season awards on Sunday. Off to chill out with my tai chi class this evening.

Toodles.
J