Pants

I check my watch and its time to leave. I have to get showered, changed, parked and walk up to the quiz, all in 30 mins. Hopefully ill have a spare 5 minutes to get some dinner in on the way.

I am rushing as I enter the changing rooms and take off my faithful Senegalese football shirt. I hunt in my bag for some shower gel. I take off my shoes, socks and shorts and am just about to take of my pants and head for the showers when I recognise Tom Daley. Plymouth's golden boy (well, golden in the 8th, rather than 1st place in the Olympics sense) is also in the changing rooms. This fact confuses me slightly and I’m not sure what to do, but end up staring at him, my mind matching his real life face with TV memories from Beijing. He catches me looking at him so I feel compelled to combat the rapidly increasing awkwardness and say,

‘Oh Hiya!’

pointing at him with one hand and giving a thumbs up with the other. He is polite enough to reply and nod while I continue the crap conversation;

'So you're back into training now then...'

'Hope everything is going well..'

'Did you really fall out with the other synchro guy?..'

But something is wrong. Suddenly I'm very aware of my lack of clothing. His voice is saying the occasional word but his body language is saying ‘stop talking to me this is very uncomfortable.’ I imagined afterwards that the dialogue in his head was saying , ‘A sweaty man has rushed into the room, taken most of his clothes off and then has suddenly started talking to me. Get yourself out of this situation.’

So that was the day I spoke to Tom Daley in my pants.

Krypton Fish Amazon Factor

By some mysterious, and numerous, quirks of fate, not to mention a series of unlikely events I find myself lying in bed with AnnE. We embrace as a hangover stamps noisily around my body and I dare to dream of contentment in between short dozes and long thoughts over investing and getting dumped. Once bitten twice shy, and all that.

The past few weeks have been messy. I’ve drunk more than I have in years, partly because there are no races to prepare for but mainly because there has been a busy social calendar and I feel like I may as well get involved. This time last year I was off to Brazil with work for 6 weeks, and had arranged my 3 week holiday straight afterwards, so I missed the current seasonal change to cold dark evenings with leaves on the ground. This year I seem to be busier at work than ever, and yet still find myself wondering what my next challenge should be. Common sense seems to indicate I should get the current one finished first.

I entered the new series of ITV’s 'Krypton Factor' on a whim, and got an interview, but couldn’t make it through work commitments. They phoned up on a Wednesday and were like, ‘Ooo, could you come up to Cardiff on Friday morning’ and I was like, ‘well maybe if you'd given me some warning, but I've got work on Friday.’ So they tried to re-arrange but it wasn’t to be. In a similar vein I am also writing an application for a BBC wildlife series, but suspect that this one will be slightly more competitive. I hope that tales of my trip to Brazil might count for something and I can get an expedition out to combine filming some fish, maybe giant freshwater stingrays, with doing some more fieldwork for the current work project. You’ve got to have a dream, right?

AnnE is lovely, but, I’m dont feel able to rush into anything this time. I’ve gone from living in different cities to the previous two girls I’ve ‘seen’ to living in the same house as AnnE. Its not that awkward par se, but sometimes on a bland Tuesday evening you just want to veg out and not have to make an effort. I think ill miss the excitement of dating, as I see her a lot at the house so the time is not that special. That said, we are having a ‘date’ tonight to see the new Bond flick, so we’ll soon figure out how we feel. Speaking to a few mates I don’t think housemates getting together is as uncommon as I first thought – I can now think of 3 at least – all of which went/are still going long term.

Time will tell.