The Willimers in America

Blackburn 0-0 Tottenham

So the eternal August optimism lasted all of four whole days. The friend who send me this witty little picture on the left obviously knew he would be striking a chord.

English School of Soccer

It's been a busy week. Last year, Thomas did a couple of soccer camps during the summer, and really enjoyed the one run by English School of Soccer. So when Steve the organiser asked for volunteers to help next year, Linda was only to pleased to offer her services. To cut a very long and tortuous story short, we ended up with Linda doing a whole lot of admin, and hosting Luke, one of the male soccer coaches for the week.

It was a stange experience. We had been led to believe that it would be a cultural exchange, and that the coaches would become part of our family life and shared activities for the week. Instead, inevitably for a group of young teachers who had been working hard for 4 weeks and were looking forward to their last week before going home, we didn't see a lot of them, or Luke. Their mornings were taken with the camp, whilst the afternoons and evenings were filled with trips to New York (twice), Philadelphia and shopping without us. This left us with just the Friday, when we hosted a barbecue for all the coaches and the host families. Hardened old cynics like us can always find loads to bitch and moan about, but it hurts that Thomas was quickly and lastingly disappointed not to be able to share his stuff with our visitor.

Still, Tom had a good time at the camp, picking up on his soccer skills and re-charging his enthusiasm. His biggest disappointment, however was failing to win the weekly quiz about the British Isles, even though he knew all the answers without help from us.

'Ere we go, 'ere we go...

So, it's only two games into the season, we've only played Portsmouth and Middlesbrough, and the bubble may burst against Chelsea this weekend. But I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. I just hope I can keep posting this table looking like this into October....

Ode to the Hillbilly

Luckily we haven't yet run into these people in our travels around the U.S. There are places around New Jersey where it sometimes looks and feels like the deep south, but this is the genuine article (it's a large file, and it may take some time to download).

Right Said Fred...

So now we've started on the third and biggest project so far. Last Thursday, our contractor friend Ron finally turned up (after two false starts) and began work on Linda's workshop.

This room looked like it used to be the 'den' of the house. It had lots of shelving, but most disturbingly, it had that persistent yellow stain of nicotine and no overhead lights - which rendered it rather useless as a craft room. Our plans are to rip down the ceiling, install new dry wall, fit recessed ceiling lights, and also have a partial wall built to create a small entry hall, and give the room a bit more definition. Well, our plans were to pay a contractor to do it for us...

Thursday they dismantled the ceiling, and started fitting the lights. Friday they constructed the half wall, then took all the lights down and replaced them with the right ones, then finally finished all the dry walling. Monday they came and put the first lot of spackle on the drywall joints, then hopefully on Tuesday they will finish spackling the seams to make the walls ready for paint.

Then, all we will have left to do is paint the hallway wood panelling, prime the dry wall, prime and paint the ceiling, find the right wall colour, give the walls four or five coats of paint, order and fit the carpet, move all the furniture in, fit the ceiling fan, install Linda's shelving...see, that's why you get contractors to do the hard work.....