If you were to listen to the likes of Steven Hawking, or even Albert Einstein, they’d tell you the one certain way to slow time is to travel at near-to light speed. I however, offer an alternative theory, friends – waiting to go on holiday.
I’m off to Spain this coming weekend, and up until now time has just raced away from me. But now, with just one working week left, time seems to have slowed to a crawl. Early on Saturday evening a minibus will be pootling its way around west Cornwall gathering the suspects for our first ‘friends’ holiday, after a scant ten years of talking about it (and even now there’s still two who won’t be there). From there we make the short run up the road to Newquay airport, which is essentially a shed in a field, and then a direct flight to Espana! Naturally I’ve not even done half the things I need to, so that’s my week sorted out for me. I still need all sorts, including a couple of good hats, sandals, currency, a small vat of sunscreen (I burn very easily and managed to do just that yesterday at my parents’ barbecue) and various other bits and pieces.
Somehow everything seems to have come at once yet again, I was thinking ‘Hmm, I need to spend quite a lot to get my Euros’ and then remembered that I need to renew my road tax too. Oh, and my car needs an MOT. It usually doesn’t cost me much, but I can’t help but think it might need some work done this year. I do hope not.
My friend came around on Saturday afternoon for the first time in ages, which was a great treat. He’s been extra-busy for months now renovating his house with his other half, and we managed to have some quality rot time. Rot night was something we as a group of friends used to organise every fortnight or so, which gave us a chance to crash at someone’s house for the evening and just play games or watch the kind of films our girls would never sit through, but it’s not happened for ages. Saturday’s impromptu rot was a classic, we just sat down and played Smash Bros for about four hours I think. That evening more people gathered at our place and we all headed out for the evening. We went to the meadery (think ‘Medieval eating house’) which was awesome, I hadn’t been for years. A few libations and plenty of scampi later we headed into town for a for more drinks and a lot of Pool and Table Football. A thoroughly enjoyable day!
Sunday’s training was good fun for the most part. I’m back up to nearly completely uninjured now, so I’m training for the full two hours each time I go, and the second hour last night was the adults-only fight squad training. The traditional class went well, even if I did manage to muck up part of pyung ahn oh dan, and it was good to go through ho sin sool and il soo sik dae ryun with the 10th gups before their first grading next week. It’s unfortunate that I won’t be there to watch them and wish them well, but I know they’ll do me proud. The sparring for the second hour was really odd. When we do the adults-only training the contact levels tend to come up a bit and with it being continuous, but never with (much) animosity. In my second fight I took a kick down below which put me down for a minute or so, but luckily it was more frank than beans so I was able to finish. When I said it was odd before, I meant from a scoring point of view. Every fight I had I came off the mats believing I’d lost, where in actual fact that was only true of my first fight. I have no idea why, but either way I managed to clock up some points before my penultimate fight against my brother. I’m still not sure what I did, but during a hook punch I threw, something very strange and very, very painful happened to my arm. I tried to carry on just using my legs but it was so painful I had to stop, and had to concede my final match too. I’m not sure why but I don’t seem to be able to go to training without coming home with an injury at the moment. I wouldn’t mind so much if it was someone hurting me instead of me doing it all the time! :).
Never mind, a week of reading, supping cold beers by the pool and relaxation should help me mend up nicely. I’m not looking forward to that first lesson back though ;).