The Commonwealth Games came and went in a flurry of exhaustion, lovely family time and some unbelievable sport. Standing for 8-10 hours a day for days on the trot was an expensive business... flight socks, freeze gel and some ibuprofen all went to help me get through it all.
On my early days I stayed in Edinburgh and caught up with sons and then on my late shifts, when I wasn't finished until 11.30 pm on some nights (though I was down to finish at half past midnight so perhaps I shouldn't complain) I stayed with my step-daughter and grandson in Glasgow. It was much fun and Nathan (aged 5) very kindly gave me his bed, complete with star canopy, to sleep in, but the payback was sword fighting and balloon badminton at 8 in the morning. Utterly worth it!
Here's a couple of pics from my time, the first one is of the last Thursday team, the one to my right is the Mixed Zone manager and it was her job to keep us all in line. The second pic is of me in the Velodrome where we had a staff party (well they called it that!) at the end.
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| On the show court at the Emirates Arena |
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| In the Velodrome |
I was asked to be the subject of an article for the Commonwealth Games Office magazine, which goes out to all the Commonwealth Games Offices throughout the world. I don't know why I was chosen, but it was lovely to be asked. I'm now waiting to see a copy to see if I made any stupid remarks!
After getting back I discovered one of my OU compatriots, who'd been on my Creative Writing course in 2010, was at the Edinburgh Festival with her daughter. As I wanted to do some stuff with Odi we agreed to meet up. It's a lovely thing to finally meet a person who I've been in contact with over blogs, Facebook and online course cafe. She was as lovely as I expected.
Then this last week has been a flurry of puppy activity as I was asked if I'd take in Quaver, who's now 10 weeks old (9 weeks on arrival). Quaver is Nancy (Odi's best friend) and puppy walker Alec's new puppy. Nancy had to be speyed and needed some peace.
Quaver is the barkiest wee pup I've come across and quite aggressive in some ways, but Odi just loved having her here and the more aggressive the better as far as she's concerned. They had great fun, but Odi just doesn't know when to stop and I had to calm it all down at least once a day. Quaver is very cuddly and would spend as much time as possible sitting on my lap (on the cushion on the floor... no furniture allowed) and the house is unbelievably quiet since she left at lunchtime today. Odi's gone into a bit of a sulk!
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| Odi and Quaver in a quiet moment |
Odi and I also had a bit of time to do training in Edinburgh yesterday. We met up with the lovely Nicola Morgan for lunch at the Museum and Odi behaved impeccably and then we did a bit of festival stuff, which means wandering around while Odi gets admired by lots of folk. Interestingly, we met up with a guy who I'd worked with at the Commonwealth Games and we spent a pleasant half hour chatting about our experiences.
The other thing I was asked to do recently was a book review. Now that's the kind of work I really like... the kind where I sit on my arse and read for hours on end. Sadly the real kind is going to intrude next week when I head up to Inverness for a meeting on Tuesday. If I had my way I know which one I'd choose! Ah well... reality bites!
I wrote a comment yesterday but my ipad doesn't like commenting apparently! Good to see you back. I wondered how the commonwealth games went from an insider. Sounds like the party wasn't up to much! I can't believe how big Odi looks next to Quaver (great name!). How much longer do you have Odi? Can't be long until she goes to big school.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed my CG's time, but it was interesting to see how much stress the media caused themselves. The party was the least like a party I've ever attended... no booze and all leftover food from lunch and a lot of people just standing around!
DeleteOdi is going off in October at current reckoning. She's actually being assessed as a brood bitch and still has 2 more assessments to go, so we wait and see what that brings. The assessments are super stringent so she might well not pass them esp the psychological one (don't ask!), but won't know outcome until at least October. I've asked that our new one, coming end September has a nice name... the puppy supervisor just smiled sardonically at me!
I won't ask how you psychologically assess a dog but I am intrigued!
DeleteI think it goes something along the lines of trying to spook the dog out and see if they react. If they do they see how long it takes for them to recover... Odi, who's a chicken at heart (we're doing vacuum cleaner training at the moment) won't pass that one!
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