It’s been a mixed day, but at least I’m back on the blog and feeling enthusiastic. I even took some video of clothes going round in the washing machine. It’s not very exciting – the excitement came later when I emptied the machine containing six of Julia’s jumpers. It turned out that the spin cycle wasn’t up to much on that machine and I ended up with seven wet jumpers (my contribution being a modest single item), a pool of water on the floor and, it later turned out, a drier that wasn’t up to the job.

I won’t bore you with the video. Partly out of consideration for my valued readers, but mainly because I can’t get it to download properly.

The damp jumpers are currently draped over a variety of convenient items in the bathroom.

I think we need to have a talk about knitwear. Why one small woman needs her own bodyweight in knitted garments I really don’t know.

Yet anothre (inelegant) selfie

The view out

Notice in the Laundry at Sherwood

I’m going to start going to the laundry later – it can be quite hectic at 8am as we all try to get in before the rush, but at 10am it was empty again and quite relaxing. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to rush, despite all the talk of eating frogs.

You can take pictures when nobody is there.

After writing a menu for the week, which is going to be healthier and better structured than I’ve been managing recently, I then went shopping.  It was a special day today, with everything set up to make it difficult for a man having a bad joint day.

One of the doors is still jammed, people seemed to be targeting me like something in a chariot race and then the trolley wouldn’t release the £1 coin. I’m seriously thinking of writing a letter so TESCO can ignore me.

I also noted some unusual items in the bins they use for collecting for the Food Bank. Quinoa and Couscous?

Don’t get me wrong – people using food banks deserve good food, but I’m a little sceptical that there are many eaters of Quinoa and Couscous amongst the typical users of food banks. Some collection points specify the types of goods they want, and I’ve never seen either of these on the list. They aren’t generally on my list either, but this week I happened to buy both as I’m going to be eating healthier lunches.

By the time I finished shopping the light had gone so I went home to prepare red cabbage and put the gammon joint in the oven.

Finally, on looking at some internet pages relating to the Winter Olympics, I ended up looking at our medallists for the first Winter Olympics at Chamonix in 1924. We aren’t particularly good at winter sports and it took us from then until Sochi in 2014 to win four medals again – a gold, a silver and two bronzes. We’re currently on four again, a gold and three bronzes, so people are getting excited. My experience of British sport indicates we’re heading for disappointment yet again, but you never know, I may be wrong. Perhaps our famously unlucky speed skater might stay upright until the end of a race. Or perhaps not…

If she does, we will have to make a film of it. Disqualified three times at Sochi, crashed twice at Pyeongchang and has one last chance to fulfil her destiny. It would be brilliant if she did.

It would make a better story than the British Ice Hockey team at Chamonix. At least eight of the ten were Canadian, Wiki is silent on the place of birth of the remaining two, though I suspect they were probably Canadian too. Several of them had interesting careers, particularly Blaine Sexton. It’s an interesting link, particularly the picture of him in the uniform of the Windsor Swastikas, in the days when they were one of three teams using the name, and Swastikas were merely seen as interesting good luck charms.

I’ve always thought of  people swapping between nations as a symptom of the moral bankruptcy of modern sport. Looks like I was wrong.