Goings on

I survived that soccer tournament, by the way, but only barely. It was two weekends ago and I still have stitch mark imprints on the inside of one knee where I blocked a shot (the other pentagons imprinted on my skin have faded). It took a week for the pain in my knees, shoulders and lower back to ease up enough to go to the gym. That's what I get for trying to keep up with teenagers. But not only were the other teams in the tournament composed of teenagers - they were composed of teenagers from sports academies. Yes, those jock schools where you read a book for five minutes of the day and then spend the rest training. These girls possessed an alarming amount of testosterone. They grunted and growled, gave the ref lip, behaved more like prima donnas than Cristiano Ronaldo, and nearly got in fist fights with one another. Needless to say, we got annihilated by every team except the only other team with players over 20 years old (we did beat them). As I've said before, not many women play football just for fun over here. Anyway, my main achievement was the world's most dramatic slow-motion fall (which has entered team legend). The kind of fall where you stagger backwards a few paces, sway unsteadily, and slowly crash to the ground while everyone around stares in fascination. A younger person would have absorbed the blow and remained standing, but at that point I was so tired I thought 'oh, to heck with it, I'm going down and then at least I'll have a moment's rest'.

But I was able to recover just in time for Natasha's visit. We shopped, hung out in London, had cocktails at the Grand and pints at the Trout.(The Perch had sadly burned down the week before - those thatch roofs catch fire easily.) I see her so rarely, and always for just long enough to remember all the many reasons I like her so much. And then we are cruelly separated again for another year or two. Why haven't they figured out teleportation yet? That's ahead of space travel in my list of priorities. Cause I really miss all the folks back home!