Ankle-o-sore

Ankylosaur

That post title is a particularly sad play on words which dinosaur enthusiasts might appreciate, although I think they’d probably just groan. My ankle was sore from the seminar on Sunday, and last night I managed to turn it over and hurt it more. I thought if I was going to do it, it would’ve been sparring or something like that. Nope, despite being as sure-footed as a mountain goat I twisted it during a form. Doh! Never mind, it’s ok now, just a bit stiff and ready to go again tomorrow. The forms I’m working on now are really interesting and very hard to get right, and it’s getting even trickier now that subtle differences are being introduced as we learn them from our federation. They’re only small changes, a change of tempo here, an extra leg movement there, but it all plays with the muscle memory you build during practise.

It’s Thursday folks, and that can mean only one thing – games night! Once again the group of ‘old-enough-to-know-betters’ get together to shoot, punch and football(?) the crap out of one another via the medium of video games. I suppose really, if you were to over-analyse it, it’s just an excuse to see my friends once a week, but we don’t. It’s just sitting down, sharing a few drinks and flinging plenty of verbal abuse at one another. It’s really just an evolution of cavemen sitting around a fire in a cave and poking it with sticks, the sticks are just more expensive. Just how evolved we are, I really couldn’t tell you. I’m lucky to see my friends so regularly, and I’m making the most of it while I can because I know it won’t last forever. At our ages it’s only a matter of time before someone gets sprogged up.

The more observant of you might have noticed I haven’t updated much about the house renovations yet, and the reason is that there hasn’t really been much done in the last couple of weeks. Everything stopped until we got some designs drawn up by a structural engineer and got it all signed off by the buildings inspector, but this week digging has begun again. The three foot deep hole where the kitchen will be has a surround of foundation trenches now, taking it down to about five feet deep at places, exposing the sewer pipe which needs encasing before we can build on it. The groundwork is really dragging on now, but I always knew it would be the case so I’m not too concerned. I think once it starts going up it’s going to go up very quickly. I can’t wait; my barbecuing instincts are beginning to make me twitchy already since the Spring sunshine has started to show its face. The outdoorsy stuff is already appearing in shops and once those bottles of delicious sauces start appearing I’ll be going crazy.