It’s three days since my last post, give or take a few hours. This is handy because it is half the previous lapse and makes it look like I’m making progress.

England lost 2-1 tonight and Argentina paraded round the pitch afterwards with a political banner. It was against FIFA regulations on such things, it’s not a classy way to celebrate a win, but that’s football for you.

Anyway, given that Donald Trump seems to consider himself a personal friend of the King, and an expert on football, I’m tending to think of the result as 2-1 (subject to official confirmation by President Trump).

That is my nod to world events of historical note.

Now, how about this. If you think you had a bad day, see what Billy Mann has been up to today.

You will then understand my title. And Billy’s anguish.

(Warning: Not for the Faint-Hearted)

Meanwhile, my day progressed quite well. After a major breakdown of my email system, and needing to use it quite urgently as I had two submissions to make, I resorted to the BT help bot.

Pigs and flowers

This consisted of a circular system where the questions always came back to the same answer – “Many customers with this problem found that resetting their password solved the problem”. Well it didn’t solve mine, because to reset the password you have to be able to progress further than it was allowing me to go. Absolutely useless. Useless email, useless help system. I will be resetting my password, but I will be resetting it using a different provider. I’m not looking forward to changing, but I’m not sure how long I can carry on with the shoddy service either.

I did eventually get the two submissions sent off in time and then did a third one, which will surprise the editor, who is more used to me submitting with only hours to spare.

Finally, another acceptance for a tanka prose and a request via the Military History Group for use of another of my articles. Looks like I’m doing something right.

Meadow flowers at East Leake