An absolutely huge delay updating this time - and I've no real excuse, beyond chronic laziness! I did do three consecutive weekends in Middlesbrough visiting my gran in hospital who got much worse and then started to recover. This is the second weekend I've not been up and now she's taken a huge turn for the worse and is back on full oxygen and unconscious again. The doctor's say she'll never leave the hospital and now she's got MRSA as well, but she's a resilient old bugger so we're not writing anything off yet! Half of me wants her to get better, the other half just wants it to be quick and painless. Nowt I can do about it though. Will be up again next weekend....

I've just got back from Edgbaston having spent the weekend at the test. Well, I say weekend, I overslept and didn't get to the cricket until 12 which wasn't a problem because constant rain meant that play didn't start until 4:45pm. By that time we were all a teensy bit drunk :) They played just enough to not refund any of the ticket price, didn't take a wicket, and barely scored any runs. Thankfully I had a ticket for the Sunday as well! Danny and I stopped off for a pint in Leam (the others were all staying elsewhere) at one of our old (uni days) watering holes in town. Hmmmm. All I can say is that Leam has a lot of pretty 15-year olds and a lot of ugly 40-year olds. We left after one pint.... :)

Stayed on my mum's sofa overnight which was fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuunnnnnnnn, and did get to see my other gran who's 95 and going strong physically but not at all there mentally. She kept trying to give me money for the kids :-/ My mate Chris has more chance of having kids than I, and he's gay.... :)

Anyway, the play today was better, we bowled them out before lunch and needed 78 to win which we got by only losing 4 wickets. It was a bit touch-and-go on 30-3 when Pietersen was caught off a no-ball, but it was comfortable in the end. I did manage in that short time, and with no visible sun, to get sunburnt again (a very regular test match occurrence). Next time I'm wearing sun cream even if it's raining!

And that's pretty much it. Been working quite hard, managed to get my car MOT'd at the second attempt and finally located a copy of two books by John Christopher which I remember fondly from my school library when I was twelve (and they really shouldn't have been available to kids, concerning as they do the brutal death of society after two seperate natural disasters). They were both written in the 50's and have been out of print for decades, but the internet shall not be cowed, and an australian bookshop and an american one had one each and were willing to part with them for several of our english pounds. I've also taken over the monday 5-a-side team again after my time away up north, have possibly found someone else to rent the spare room after girl 1 went travelling, have had many chats online to foreign girl 1 in Korea, and have met someone (online obviously, real people don't exist) from a forum I frequent when I should be working who's really lovely and funny and will now be known as internet girl 1, for blog purposes... :)