Train of Thought

Thank you Jelte for the £10 you owed me. Betting against a gay man on male TV and film star identities wasn’t your finest move!

Jelte owes me £10.

Last weekend, le Tour came to London. One of my old schoolfriends, John, came up to view the spectacle with his two oldest kids.

I took lots of photos, the best of the bunch are here.

I’ve signed up for a Twitter account. Anyone else out there?

I’m on facebook. Its interesting to try and figure out what it offers, over the stuff about me to be found on mcaleely.com. I’m not quite sure I understand what’s in it for social websites, long term. However, I’m a member of a few.

I’ve not discussed where I work much on this blog, since the company doesn’t have a clear policy encouraging blogging about our jobs. Our customers are pretty sensitive to releasing information about upcoming products, so I decided to basically avoid my job on this blog.

However, I’m currently rather busy, which means I’ve not had the time to think too much about new blog entries. Normal service should resume in a month or so. In the mean time, I’m learning lots!

Something I’ve known was coming for a while, that I can now talk about.

Congratulations to Liam and Brett on their engagement. It sounds like New York has been fun. It was certainly a great evening on Thursday, and I was honoured to be present at the start of something new. I also now understand why there weren’t airline tickets in the envelope that Brett opened – Liam wasn’t done with the surprises at that point :-)

Blogs are different to ‘regular’ websites in a way I hadn’t fully appreciated. The combination of easy updates, topical content, and easy subscriptions (maybe there are other things?) makes them a very social medium.

Since starting this blog I’ve been contacted by several people who I suspect I would not have been in touch with otherwise. Including a branch of my family I’d lost touch with, a blogger from London who I’ve never met, and recently a friend of my Mum’s, who is also an old friend of my brother.

This blog has also been a topic for discussion in the pub – it is boring apparently (hello Joe, if you’re still out there). Figuring out when to mention here the fact I’ve recently met a lovely man who I introduce as my boyfriend (Hello Richard!) has been something I’ve been looking for an excuse to do for a few weeks. It seems like an important thing to mention on my blog, but figuring out the right moment wasn’t obvious. Even if Liam got there some time ago…

A year ago, I hadn’t been seriously thinking that leaving friendsreunited would work out so well, but it seems it has – people can still find me here on the web, and more people than can be found on freindsreunited, I suspect. I wonder how long my other social network subscriptions will prove useful.

Revolution is a Track Cycling event at the National Cycling Centre (Velodrome) in Manchester. I’ve wanted to go and watch since it launched a few years ago, and last weekend I actually made the time to get there.

It was a lot of fun. The event packs in around 15 competitions in one evening, and so there is always something happening on the track. Track cycling is quite varied, and when I saw it for the first time a few years ago, I was surprised how dramatic it was.

Apparently, there’s another event at the velodrome in February. I may have to visit!

I turned the trip into an excuse for a short holiday – two days in Manchester, and two in Leeds. This meant I could take a trip to The Lowry (recommended!), and a stop in Leeds on the way home. In Leeds I caught up with some of my family I hadn’t seen in a while, which was a very pleasant evening.

The picture shows the limits of my compact camera. At least the blurring gives you an idea of their speed!

It seems a long time ago now (I’ve been travelling), but last Tuesday I was in Coventry for the first time in many years. Readers who know me well, or have a good memory, will know this is where I grew up. I was travelling with Andy, and we were there to watch some football.

I’ve been watching Bristol City for a couple of years with Andy, and as they are in a lower league to the Sky Blues, there’s been little risk of divided loyalties at a match. This year’s FA cup changed that, and Bristol vs Coventry was drawn. Of course, I had to watch that! For the first leg in Bristol, I just sat discreetly in the Bristol crowd (it was easy to applaud them too!), and we watched an exciting, if scrappy, 3-3 draw. Setting up, of course, a replay at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry.

I was quietly hopeful of a win, even setting up the right feeder line in my last post, but it was not to be. Coventry are in the middle of a long run of bad form, and Bristol clearly wanted the win. 0-2 was the right result, if disappointing. The run has been so bad, Coventry ditched their manager the following morning, and the fans were chanting “We’re shit and we’re sick of it” at one point.

Still, it all seemed very appropriate in some way. Coventry are a team who rarely win anything (apart from the FA cup in ‘87 when I still lived there), and slipped without much fuss from the Premiership a few years ago. My first visit to see them at home, in their new Stadium, was a loss. Oh well.

It was fun to see Coventry again (it did all seem very familiar), and the evening out in Birmingham that followed was also good. Probably because at least Andy was celebrating :-)

If you look very closely at the picture, you can probably see Andy grinning already, the away fans were having a great match…