Weight 13st 9, CNPS numbers spotted 0.
You don't need to drink loads of booze to have a good time on a date. This evening I travelled to Battersea Park to play a couple of sets of tennis. Who says dating can't be healthy?
The fact I felt like I'd been run over by a truck before we'd even started didn't really help matters. And it was a truck that had been carrying a cargo of white wine, some of which had bounced off the truck and gone all over me, and in my mouth, so I smelt of wine.
Aside from the healthiness of the date the other bonus was that it was only going to cost me £6.25. Which at this early stage is a big blessing.
I had got badly caught up in traffic and was really embarrassingly late, but number 14 didn't seemed too perturbed. It's been a while since I've played tennis, but I need to get good at it again if I am going to defeat the arrogant pup who is the spawn of my sister. I have to say that on first impressions this evening he does not have much to worry about. My date had told me that she was "pretty good for a woman" at the game. Which could mean anything, but I suspected she would be better than me as I would be "fairly average" if I was a woman, but am "pretty shit" for a man.
Although she wasn't quite as good as Martina Navratilova, which had been my fear, she was much, much better than me (especially a 13 hangover me) and was quickly wiping the floor with me. I did manage to just hold my first service game, but after that it was one way traffic and she got to 5-1 ahead. But with such awesome defeat and humiliation staring me in the face I managed to up my game a bit (maybe she felt sorry for me and let me have a bit of an easy ride) and finally won another service game after a whole heap of deuces (this game lasted longer than the previous six put together) and I even managed to break her, before she came romping home for the first set.
I did a bit better in the second to start with, but threw away a 40 love advantage in my second service game and it all started slipping away from me again. She finally won 6-3 again. Still it wasn't all horrendous and I had acquitted myself adequately against a much more competent player. If I do some work on my serve (which is great when I get in the zone) and my backhand then I might be able to take the smug smile off of Andrew Edmonds childish face.
Tennis is an amazingly psychological game and hopefully I can apply some of what I have learnt from the boat race and the Marathon and not start to fall apart mentally whenever I get either ahead or behind. Or when things are quite equal.
On the way out of the park I went a little too fast over an innocuous looking speed bump and the underside of my car cracked down with a nasty clunk. It now makes a funny noise when I am driving. This might prove to be the most expensive date after all.
