(no subject)

A grueller of a driving lesson. For the first hour we worked on turns; I had a terrible time, once putting too much brake on (resulting in my stalling when on the point of turning right, with cars queued behind me) and once hitting the gas when coming out of a left turn before I'd straightened up (meaning I almost mounted the pavement). I also had some trouble at first keeping the brake on while pushing the clutch down to move down to first gear waiting at a junction.

Next we did reversing in a straight line. As well as the neck strain from turning to look out of the back window, when I wasn't moving too fast I was drifting out to the right or making the common mistake of getting my steering direction the wrong way round.

For the last 20 minutes we went out onto the open road, this time going to new streets - round Anglesey and out by Haslar. By this part, my mistakes were drawing Peter's irritable side out, notably when we were goinglong a narrow road by the bay and I allowed an oncoming car on the other side too much room, meaning our car's left-hand side was brushing the bushes growing by the side of the road. Then there were things like slowing down for bends or junctions too early or too late, and taking turns too wide...

Peter had regained his patience by the time we pulled up at the end, and just said we'd keep working on everything but it'd take a long time. Ho hum.

(no subject)

Hawks v Eastbourne Borough, newly promoted from our division, in a friendly this evening. Angie's move went without a hitch; it just took her all day to move all her stuff.

The buzz around the place was that Rocky Baptiste would be turning out for us, and the club were negotating with him about a possible return. We also had Sammy Igoe, formerly of Portsmouth and Reading, on trial. We need to sign up both these guys if humanly possible, whatever it takes! Sammy played brilliantly and Rocky scored the only goal of the game. This was a much more encouraging display, with Hawks on the offensive more often and Guy Butters, Ian Simpemba and Gary Elphick strong at the back. Eastbourne threatened a few times, but Kevin Scriven caught everything that came at him, until the very last minute when an Eastbourne striker rolled the ball along the front of the goal - but Jay Conroy cleared it off the line.

Now let's keep that up, lads.

Getting off the ferry at Gosport a bloke spotted my Hawks shirt and asked me "Did you have a home game tonight?" I told him about the match and he asked me how we're doing at the moment and whether we'd gained fans from the Cup run. He had the effrontery to say I should be supporting Gosport Borough, but my simple reply of "No, I love it at Hawks" defused that and, after hearing that I'm a home-and-away diehard, he ended up wishing us luck for the coming season.