overlap

This time last week I was almost within spitting distance of Scotland, slowly negotiating my way through the edge of Carlisle. I haven't been that far north since I was last in Glasgow a few years ago, and having made a suitably early start the getting there was pretty straightforward. I made it all the way to Charnock Richard before my first stop, and that definitely broke the back of the journey up, and it was good to be reminded what a beautiful bit of landscape that stretch around Tebay is, where the two carriageways are separated by more than a central reservation. The league tables will tell you my trip was ultimately a fruitless one, but I would have been disappointed to have missed it in the event we had pulled off a minor miracle. I've been through relegation before, and because of all the off-field business stuff this one has been pretty painless, in a football sense at least. Meanwhile, last saturday also turned out to be one of the first really warm days of the year, and the combination of boiling in the car, minor heat-stroke on an open terrace and the cumulative effects of driving nearly a thousand miles in under sixty hours by the time I got home meant my journey back was not the most comfortable. Even if it was refreshingly early on account of leaving a ground a very long way away at five rather than a venue that's merely a long way away at getting on for midnight. I've just about caught up with sleep now from those couple of days, but I reckon I've earned the rest over the next couple of months!

Labels: AFCB, football, relegation

Mostly I like driving. Or at least I like it when I have time to spare. I plan my driving accordingly, because I don't like the effects of feeling like it's questionable whether I'll get where I'm going on time, but then I'm frequently doing journeys I've done before and where I know roughly how long it takes. Taking yesterday off work to spend six hours of it driving isn't a lot of people's idea of fun, I imagine, and while the route is familiar, doing it on a weekday and risking involvement in rush hour is a new one on me. And doing that for a meeting with a defined start time meant I was clearing the ice off my car rather earlier than I would have preferred. Twenty-odd minutes to spare when I walked in the door was rather more than the two minutes before start time that the arrangements before the meeting are supposed to have been finalised, so it wasn't me that was cutting it fine. With something like fifteen years of variable standards of business management by another of different parties, this was a one-off opportunity to see the people involved in the latest saga of desperation in person, and find out a small amount about what may be coming next for myself rather than through the media. While I was there I made the most of briefly decent weather to take a quick walk around some of my favourite scenery, something I haven't done at all this football season, so that was an added bonus. And as for the football club, threatened with either liquidation or a bright new dawn? Well, today it was announced that one party had been successful in their aim of buying the club, and then that announcement was retracted and a different party was disclosed as the successful bidder. With this sort of example of knowing exactly what we are doing, is it any wonder the business has reached its current desperate straits? I only hope the new owner turns out to be either generous, or capable, preferably both.

Labels: AFCB, football