Wimbledon is just one stop on the tube from Mordor.

I know it isn’t exactly the ends of the earth, but bloody hell Wimbledon is a long way from Bolton!!

I had the delight and joy of making my way there last Wednesday for a customer meeting, that beforehand I didn’t want to go to, and my ever reliable spider sense proved to be spot on as it was pretty much as expected. The sheer awe and wonder of the tube system, probably lost on those using it regularly, is something I do marvel at.

The fact that way back in Victorian times they managed to dig holes under London and put trains in them, and today they turn up more or less every couple of minutes, should be a mind boggler, but we take things for granted. Having said all of that, trying to get from Great Portland Street to Wimbledon is much like the journey across middle earth undertaken by The Fellowship, and they were only carrying a ring. I had a laptop, iPad and book in my bag!! To be rewarded at the end by one of my all time worst meetings was truly kicking a man when he is down.

My raid on the capital, in the form of as brief a visit as I can get away with, ended with a three o’clock train from Euston, and exactly two hours of feeling sea sick….on a train!! I was quite delighted to get back to Piccadilly and sit in traffic for an hour. At least there was little danger of filling my lap with lunch! The rest of the week was fairly quiet, with a day working from home on Friday. I had a load to do, and can’t get any peace in the office, so when Louise said she was going for a “procedure” in hospital on Friday, I used the need to drop her off and pick her up to base myself at home.

A weekend without any major events was on the cards, but that didn’t mean for one minute that we had nothing to do. Between “the big shop”, a bit of tidying up and taking Emily for a hair cut, that was most of Saturday accounted for, but on the plus side, my house wasn’t full of teenagers on Saturday night, aside from the two that I don’t mind being there.

Of course, both girls were out on Saturday night, with Rebecca at the cinema scaring herself to death with Insidious, and Emily out on about the 27th “leaving event”, a field party. I think that translates to around 100 teenagers stood in a field being cold and wet, but I think she enjoyed it. With Louise feeling pretty rough still from her “procedure”, she went to bed, and this left me at a loose end, with the worrying combination of Eurovision and Twitter to keep me entertained.

I apologise now for the sheer volume of tweets, but it made the time pass until I had to go and pick Rebecca up after her film. As ammunition goes for pithy tweets, Eurovision has to be the event of the year to be honest. Where else would you see rapping gnomes, dodgy singers and crass over production? Well, to be honest you could have turned over to ITV and seen exactly the same stuff on Britain’s Got Talent, but you pays your money and you takes your choice I suppose.

With the usual voting nonsense, with the likes of Cyprus giving Greece twelve points, (and I don’t think Greece were even in it were they?) and all those countries ending in consonants voting for each other as they used to be the same country until the mid nineties, we did well to come mid table I think. Blue can now slip back into panto and reality TV for another decade.

Sunday was a little less hectic, with Louise enduring the ironing as usual, and me pestering Emily about revising as usual. I popped out to kit Emily out with her exam essentials, you know, the lucky gonk and 27 packs of polos, and left her to her work.

So after five years at secondary school, all that effort, all that homework and hopefully all that revision she kicked off on Monday with her English GCSE. Emily, as ever seemed pretty unfazed by the whole thing, and toddled off to school in usual fashion, whilst I was trying to give her pep talks and inspiration. She was more concerned with the Panic! At the Disco gig they were going to on Monday evening to be honest.

Upon picking them up after them Panicking at the disco (and for one second did you imagine that anyone else would be doing that) and dropping off the customary friend, it was going on for midnight by the time everyone got to bed on Monday. Luckily, Emily’s exam on Tuesday was not until the afternoon, but Rebecca looked suitably zombie like the morning after.

Hopefully the week ahead will see Emily handle all that the exam boards can throw at her, and Louise feeling more normal too. She’s not had the greatest few days following her trip to hospital. Oh, and by the way, it is 71 days until Florida. Yes, I am indeed counting. Till the next time…..