Sunny Saturday

John Terry, allegedly, had an affair with the ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge, his Chelsea & England team mate. It made the front page of all the national UK papers today. And, apparently, having an extra-marital affair will hamper your ability to play football for your country. Also, there are things called super injunctions. So, if you want to keep things out of the media, you get an injunction. If you want to keep that injunction out of the media you get a super injunction. This means, you not only can’t talk about something but you can’t talk about the thing that has stopped you talking about it either.

I heard an interview on Football Focus. Three ex-footballers were asked about John Terry’s future as English captain since his affair has come to light. All three, very grave and concerned, were convinced that Capello (the England manager), known for being strict and moral, would strip him of his captain’s armband and demote him to…well, not being captain, I guess. Of course, all three spoke of it all in just emotive terms.

And then, following them, came the sports writer from the Financial Times. I much prefer his level-headed approach. Basically, he said, these are professionals. They are paid to play football and to win. When they are on the pitch, that’s what they do. They have to in order to justify their wages. Capello, too, is paid a lot of money to get England to, and maybe win, the World Cup this year. It is up to him to gauge how the team will be affected by the news story but really, Capello would have to think hard about removing one of the best players in the team.

And then Chelsea went to Burnley this afternoon and Terry showed his worth on the pitch. He scored the goal that won Chelsea the game.

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Anyway, today the sun was glorious hot, though the wind was frigidly cold. The two evened out somewhat to make a lovely day, full of blue skies. It seemed the perfect day to go to Frensham for a walk across the sandy hills and through the spiky gorse.

All was lovely and peaceful (I didn’t let the noisy trail bike riders upset me to much). The gorse that lines the path that follows the bronze age barrows on the top of the ridge has been bent over by the snow and is now growing across the path. This can be quite painful in shorts as gorse is covered in prickles, but when the temperature is just above freezing, this is not really an issue. We just brushed on through.

We passed a chap who said that ‘they’ had made a big path through the heather because of the snow. I couldn’t work out what he meant so I just nodded and smiled and said something inane so he’d think I had. He walked off smiling so I can only guess it worked. I’m pretty sure he didn’t tell me who ‘they’ were.

We have two options when we reach the top of the ridge. We can go straight back down and then around the pond or we can continue on, through the conifer woods then sweep down behind the pond. We hadn’t been round the back for ages so I voted for this. I was soon regretting it as we wound up sloshing through semi-frozen puddles of mud, half of which adhered to the puppies. Still, it was a lovely and long walk.

Mirinda & Puppies at Frensham

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Tonight we went to the Yvonne Arnaud theatre and saw the new Alan Ayckbourn play, My Wonderful Day. It’s been a while since we went to the theatre together (I went to the opera in November and Mirinda went to the ballet a couple of weeks ago) and we always try to get to Ayckbourn’s latest as it always tours to Guildford.

Well, as usual, it was excellent. Maybe I’ll give it a proper write up tomorrow. It’s late and I’m half watching Match of the Day.