Sunday 25th October 2026

At two in the morning, the clocks went back, bringing GMT back to the United Kingdom. Meaning lighter mornings, but darker and earlier evenings.

We did lay in bed, and slept through our extra hour. Jools got up at six to feed the cats, and I slept on to half past, woke feeling refreshed.

I do read old blog posts from each of the preceding ten years, and I see from last year that that week was when we switched to going to the gym really early to avoid crowds and to ensure our machines would be free.

This meant on weekdays being at the doors for six, and seven at weekends.

Which we did this weekend.

As usual, the gym was pretty empty at a minute past seven, although the speakers did boom our Europop to no one, as we all pretty much have headphones on, which we have to have turned up the volume so to drown out the Eurodisco.

One of which was a reworking of "You've Got the Love", which was itself a reworking and mash up of two older songs: an instrumental, and a vocal by Candi Staton. That was a hit when I was going through trade training in 1991, and I remember it booming out of boomboxes as we bulled and studied.

We both did our fifty minutes, then after a short cooling down outside in the sunshine, we went to Tesco to fill the car up, then to the Promenade for a walk.

In a change from the two previous days, and the two following days, Sunday was gloriously sunny, though with a stiff westerly.

It was too rough and too near high tide for anyone to be swimming. No Sean and Ange, so we walked down the promenade and over the new bridge before turning for home, when the café under the clock tower said we were too early as opening time was still five minutes away.

So we saved our money and walked back to the car, me doing some light botanising on the way on the few flowering plants on the edge of the stony beach, before reaching the car and climbing in.

A quiet morning, so we drove back to Townwall Street, then along to the port and up Jubilee Way, free of traffic as there were no ferries in.

Once home we put the kettle on, and in a change had a shortcake each which I had made between halves of football the previous day.

And a very good start to the day it was.

I had another shower, changed and so was set for an afternoon of football. Or in the case of Manchester United, an attempt at football.

Lunch was our old favourite of chorizo hash, all prepared, cooked and eaten before kick off at two, at which point the week of preparation for Man Utd was for naught, as opposition, Bournemouth, had already in the six days before beaten both Sunderland and AC Milan (!), so the current iteration of The Red Devils would pose no serious issues.

So it was that Russian monied Bournemouth cruised to a 3-0 victory, and on another day might have scored more. In their last four visits they have won 3-0 three times and had a 4-4 draw!

Much less said about the second game, Sunderland v Leeds, which due to storm force winds was something of a bore-fest.

And as the commentator stated there had not been a 0-0 draw in between the two teams in living memory, it was then inevitable that it did end 0-0.