Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.
Before I chat about Saturday one quick postcript about yesterday's post. As I explained I'm not going to start learning Polish until Monday as it will be the first day I will have time to myself. Having said that this (Saturday) morning I stumbled on a Polish series on the foreign language on demand service of Channel 4.
The show is called The Border. It's about Polish border guards as they stop criminal gangs trying to bring illegal immigrants entering their country, That you must think is ironic in so many levels.
Saturday was a day I had to go to work in the afternoon/evening shift. Again I've been unlucky in the sense that for this tranche of games in Euro 2016 (Saturday,Sunday, Monday) the only day I'm not working is Sunday. Not only that but the teams I want to do well.England. Italy and Wales are/were not playing on that day. If there are such things as football gods they're mocking me right now.
Wales were playing to reach the quarter finals of the tournament against Northern Ireland. Earlier in the morning national rugby team had faced New Zealand. The rugby and the football teams were playing on the same day but again it was the football team that had most of the attention, indeed even more so than the beginning of the month as there was a chance of going into the quarter finals. Really unless the Welsh Rugby Union pulls its socks up the slow decline of the sport here will seep into the national game. Something no one would have believed possible even five years ago.
Whatever my failings as a husband in the DIY department I come into my own in being able to grab an internet stream of sporting occasions to watch from around the world and at 8:30am had got the rugby game ready for my wife to watch. Must admit from time to time I peaked at the laptop and it was pretty awful for the team in red. Seen from my admittedly unknowledgeable eyes it moved from men vs men to men vs boys to men vs infants. Even she could not watch it to the end. It was like having arsenic through your eyes.
So anyway to work. In the two previous games where I've been working whilst Wales have been playing the days were less busy but busier than I had expected. This time though it would be almost dead. Good thing I'd brought a book with me. Of the four on the go at the moment today it would be The Other Side Of The Story by Marian Keyes.
It would have been a long day had this book been dull. Thankfully the skills she has that I'd remembered from Sushi For Beginners were also on show here. The ability to be able to say deep things but in a humorous way, believable female characters that are not dependent on men but not at war with them either, living lives that you can as a reader get involved in.
I'd read 361 pages that day. In a lot of books that would have been occasion for a pat on the back and a look at the great unread to see what's next to go for. But not with a Marian Keyes book oh no. About two thirds of the way through.
As I've mentioned before. I believe she's an underrated writer who has lost male readers who would genuinely appreciate what she writes about if it wasn't for being put off by the chick lit covers of her books. Still this male reader was grateful that what could have been a dull working day was alleviated by this novel and after yesterday when a majority of a disunited kingdom voted to bring us into the dark ages she raised a smile to my face.
For that alone. Thankyou Marian Keyes.
Until the next time.
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