It's been a strange week, nothing much happened in itself, just a week of strange observances.
It is worth noting that we did get booed again in the pub quiz this week for alleged cheating. Ok so the barman comes rushing over to give us one of the answers, shame we already knew and that the whole pub noticed this act, it was so bad a substitute question had to be found, which we got right aswell.
Also, our webwaster, sorry typo there, webmaster asked me if I fancied a short trip to Brazil in October to watch the last F1 Grand Prix of the season. I had to decline this offer, but it does give you an insight into the thinking of "Rag". Talking of rag, we get rag reports at work, and although admittedly they are from an all female team, it is a red, amber, green report, not an indication of their moods swings.
So, back to the observances..
I was in the supermarket the other lunch time and I spotted an old dear pushing a supermarket trolley, not strange in itself. However, she had somehow managed to collect one of those "slippery when wet" signs that are bright yellow and stand a couple of feet tall, onto the front of her trolley. She was completely oblivious of the fact and I followed her for about a minute pushing this thing on the front of the trolley. I got bored, but I've no idea how long it was before she or someone else noticed. (told you my life was dull if that made into my highlights of the week).
On Saturday evening I was flicking around the channels for something to watch, anything but Dance X or X Factor (X meaning [swear filter off] fucking shit [swear filter on]) and I came across something on Eurosport. Eurosport is notorious for it's wacky sports coverage such as tractor pulling, beach rugby, table football etc., so I shouldn't have been too surprised. What I found was ski-jumping, which is not that extraordinary until you remember it's August. It must be from Australia or South Africa I thought to myself, but then the commentator said welcome back to Poland. Yes Poland, it turns out that the height of sophistication on a warm summers evening in Poland is to hold a dry ski slope ski-jumping competition. To add to the drama one of the competitors had been disqualified for wearing the wrong kind of suit, I switched over before finding out that he was wearing a wet-suit instead of the regulation dinner jacket.
On a similar sporting theme, I was watching the coverage of the world athletics from Osaka the other night. It was the heats of the men's 3,000m steeplechase. For those of you that are not familiar with the steeplechase it's like a normal 3,000m race except they put obstacles in your way, a barrier of 91.4 cm tall, the same as the hurdle in the hurdles events, but far more solid, i.e. it's going nowhere if you hit. To add to this fun, they throw in a water jump just to spice things up. So, back to the first heat, they just gone through the water jump and were heading for the last jump on the first lap when the runners bunched up on the approach and one of the athletes clipped the heals of Austrian Guenther Weidlinger and he sent sprawling towards the barriers and he hits his chin square on to the top of the barrier and collapses in a heap. This causes two guys behind him to stumble and they end up somersaulting over the barrier and onto of the Austrian.
The TV coverage switches back to the race leaders and then a few seconds later you see a whole bunch of Japanese guys running across the track with a stretcher and poor old Guenther spark out with blood pouring from his mouth. Whilst they are attending to him, the race continues and a minute later the field are heading for the same barrier where this guy is still out cold on the edge of the track, which s not a good place to be when there are 12 men wearing running spikes are about to jump at you. Fortunately one of the stewards realises this and stands in front of the barrier frantically waving his arms encouraging the runners to move to the outside portion of the jump to avoid landing on poor old Guenther's head. He was on the track for three laps before they moved him and was out for 30 minutes, but apparently he is fine now.
(Video is blocked for sharing, but can be viewed here
https://youtu.be/g_s6ahuPCwQ)
It's been a great weekend for sport, so I'll leave you to it whilst I get to the cricket on this bank holiday Monday. Until the next time, remember your car keys are on the table next to the door.
