Medievel Bowling and Constant Football

Sorry for the silence. Since the cup final, I have been on an intense and almost invigorating trip that involves a lot of refereeing, extortionate entertainment and plenty of tiredness. It's safe to say my extended weekend has been full of highs and lows.

Strangely enough, my Friday was as dull as most Fridays. The one day where nothing really happened, unless you count a fantastic win on the EuroMillions. Zero pounds. It almost goes without saying. After a rare productive training session, where people were actually bothered, (SHOCK HORROR!), I went home, ate some cookies and then tried to get to sleep. Maybe it was a mistake on the cookie front, because I could not sleep. At all. It was 5am when I last took a tiresome look at the blazing red numbers of my digital alarm clock, before the alarm went off at 10 for my early kick off.

Time for the 1st of my 4 games over this extended weekend, and it's safe to say I didn't want to be there. Sorry, from the 1st minute to the last, I would have preferred to have been in the Australian Outback, dying of thirst and being bitten by every insect on the planet. One of the teams were right moaners, (their skipper having modelled himself on Vinnie Jones), and to say I was relieved when I blew the final whistle, is an understatement. And a half.

My Saturday took a turn for the better though when I was invited for an evening of frolicking in the "new city" that is Milton Keynes. Driving past the "New City" sign, made me wonder how new a rusty sign needed to be. Anyway. We originally went to Xscape, to find out the bowling there was fully booked, so we went to some 'Leisure Plaza'. Greeted by a balding man, with a strange likeness to David Armand, we were charged the most ridiculous of prices for 3 frames of bowling and then shown to Lane 19, where the computers were from the early 1980's and didn't really work. After figuring out how to enter our names, we played our 3 frames, (ok... 4 frames!), to a standard usually seen by half-baked penguins, and had a laugh along the way. Halfway through however, David Armand came over to embarrass Natalie, (the birthday girl), and after a chorus of Happy Birthday, conducted by none other than myself, (literally no one else in the complex joined in...), we went home again via McDonalds. I got in at about midnight and I should have gone straight to bed.

I should have. But I didn't. For an unknown reason, I decided to doss on the laptop for a while, facebook stalking people and chatting to others, but before I realised, the time was 5.30am.. Oh no... I had to be awake at 9.30am for the latest chapter of the MAFC saga, followed a jam-packed day of activity. This wasn't going to be nice... It wasn't.

I nearly didn't wake up at all, but an angry Mother Mitten made me get up because she didn't want Father Mitten going in goal. Over protective Wife aswell as Mother! ;) So, I hauled myself out of bed and went to watch a football match. I was playing, and I was in goal, but for 90 minutes, I stood and watched as my teammates trounced all over the opposition, and proceeded to knock 9 goals in. It was exactly what I needed. An easy morning. After turning up a measly 5 minutes before kick off, the natural assumption was that I was hungover. So I went along with that story. Sounds better than, "Naa, I was just being a lazy bastard!" Still, no rest for the lazy. An hour later, I was at another game. An Under-18 game to referee, and I was hoping for an easy afternoon to follow the easy morning I had experienced. It was my day, because that's exactly what I got. Not a single word from the players, who, for the last 20 minutes, treated the game as a kick about in the park, as Modern FC went on to secure a 3-1 win.

I did think about going to sleep, as the headache I had from the morning was still dancing a tango on my temple, but I decided to keep up the activity and went to have a 2-hour net session at Cople. It was alright, I batted OK, but now that Bedford's outdoor nets are up, I will have much more fun in batting outdoors than the indoor echoes of a badly run school. It doesn't end there however.

Nope, at 8pm, I joined Ridgway and co. for the Sunday Night Pub quiz, where we failed emphatically, but had a laugh as always. Natalie got embarrassed again, for it was her birthday weekend, but my enthusiasm for whacking out another chorus of 'Happy Birthday' was nowhere to be seen. It had run away, with my brain and subsequent "awakeness", as I sat in the corner nearly falling asleep. I think I may have drifted off once, but was awoken from an accidental kick from Ridgway. As soon as I got home, I collapsed on my bed and didn't wake up for 13 hours..

Which brings us to today. I had almost forgotten I had a match this evening, a line on a league cup semi-final, but I remembered in very good time, and even had time to enjoy an outdoors net with Boony, who went and gave me two short balls that cannoned into both of my thighs. Come the match, I noticed I had two identical bruises on symmetrical points on my thighs and spent the consuing 120 minutes thinking of nothing else. I had a good game none the less, getting a controversial offside call absolutely spot on, and we went home a happy enough team.

A brief outline of my weekend then, but unfortunately, I don't have a scheduled game for ages now. No Saturday game at the moment, because one of the teams I was supposed to be doing are all on a stag do.. No game on Thursday because I was mysteriously taken off of it for no good reason and no game on the Sunday afternoon. And then no games at all the weekend after, because I feel some sheep appearing.. I feel the bank account is going to see some action soon. Oh dear..