THURSDAY
Today was the day that our appeal was heard. My football team St Mirren had to cancel two matches in October because a few players came down with Covid. Kilmarnock had to cancel one. We were fined £40000 and the two games were given to our opponents as 3-0 wins. That was so unfair when teams are doing their best to stay safe in a global pandemic! It was deemed that because our team ate lunch together and shared cars to get to training that we deserved to be punished by not getting to play those games and *losing* them 3-0! What got us mad was that a game of ours v Celtic was called off because a Celtic player went off on a foreign holiday and came back with Covid but that game was rearranged. We weren't awarded a 3-0 win! About 7 or 8 Aberdeen players went out drinking against the rules and they got to play a rearranged game. Two Rangers players went to an illegal party and their game was rearranged. Celtic were also allowed to cancel and rearrange a game to go on a training camp jolly to Dubai this month and one player caught Covid! Big teams get away with murder but we got hammered!
No other league in the UK or Europe did this to teams with Covid! All their games were rearranged. So today our appeals were heard...and we WON! It was deemed as too hard a punishment! Our fine was reduced but not cancelled as we admitted rule breaches and that's fair enough but the appeal board said we must be allowed to play those games. What a relief! It means those six points are up for grabs again!
FRIDAY
It's been a funny sort of week. I've got a lot of things done and I've been pretty busy yet I've still got a pile of stuff that needs doing. I finally finished that massive book tag that I was working on which was taking weeks to deal with, despite Blogger trying to make me give up on it with that Paragraph/Normal nonsense again. Honestly it was driving me nuts. I read a full book over a few days which was something-I'm trying not to put pressure on myself to read but that Tackling The TBR post is forever at the back of my mind! I watched several months of Classic Coronation Street from back in 1993, which I enjoyed and wrote episode notes for each one. It's another time consuming task but I sort of enjoy it.
I also finally cut the newspapers from September to December which were sitting in a big pile. I put aside all the interesting stuff from them to one side for my news scrapbooks. Last year was mostly Brexit negotiations, football scores, Trump v Biden and Covid so not much light relief! On a few days this week I was out with a brush and shovel to clear away snow and a ton of monkey nut shells that the squirrels drop everywhere. What a mess that makes. I need to start getting on with sticking the stuff into scrapbooks which is a lot more complex than it sounds. Putting news, sport, cartoons and stuff together is like a very complicated and time consuming jigsaw but I hope to make a start on progress this week. Somehow I need to fit in that, blogging, reading, watching films and getting on with dvd box sets. There aren't enough hours in the day!
SATURDAY
Today totally sucked overall. I hate Saturdays as I have to get up at 6.30am to check our bins-we have to have them out on the road by 7am for collection though sometimes they don't get collected until late afternoon. It was freezing cold and pitch dark when I stumbled outside with my torch to peer inside. This week it was the paper and cardboard bin. When I opened the bin lid, I instantly saw that *someone* had shoved four huge cardboard boxes into my half filled bin and I was raging. I had to drag the four of them out and dumped them beside the bin of the culprit. For once the right stuff was dumped in the right bin but that wasn't the point. It's the rudeness of just doing it without asking that really pisses me off. Well, no more. I ordered bin locks so I hope this lot works and that will stop her in her tracks from now on.
To top things St. Mirren had another howler of a game and lost while teams below us picked up points. We need to wake up and get a grip. At any point the league could end and we must stay out of that relegation zone! We play a cup semi final next weekend so we have to be better than that. I sulked with a can of lager and some cheese doritos with nacho cheese dip...
