I sat up Wednesday night keeping an eye on news from the Blues (Birmingham City FC).
Back at the beginning of January, Wayne Rooney had just been sacked by my #1 football (soccer) club and speculation was rife about who’d be appointed in his place. My 2 personal favourites were, at the time, John Eustace, who’d been ceremoniously sacked in favour of Rooney, and Gary Rowett, who was sacked in favour of Zola back in 2016.
The club appointed Tony Mowbray, who immediately garnered respect from all around the football world, from other clubs to players to pundits to fans. In February, though, he took ill and had to have time off. They thought it would only be for 6 weeks or so, and Mowbray’s assistant coach Mark Venus was left with the job.
Now, however, it seems that Mowbray is going to be out of action until the end of the summer break, and speculation started to circulate on Wednesday about whether or not a previous manager would be brought in to take the team to the end of the current season. The name bandied about was Gary Rowett…one of my original preferences in the first place. And out came the popcorn…
You can read my original post here:
Oh my goodness! We have link cards. How exciting!
Anyway, at about 10pm on Wednesday, the club finally announced that Rowett would be taking over as interim manager until the end of the current season and that Mowbray will return at the start of the new season. (I didn’t spot the announcement until after 11pm.)
Naturally, as a bluenose, I wish Mowbray a speedy recovery and I’m grateful that Venus was able to step up. Poor Mark Venus, though. It seems he’s always the caretaker but never the boss. However, I’m delighted that the owners of the club saw sense, listened to Mowbray, and re-appointed a temporary manager who should never have been sacked when he was – although, granted, not the current owners’ responsibility.
I generally say to folk, ‘What do I know about football?’ and I often think in reply, ‘Not a lot!’ But I do know when people have been treated unfairly and, actually, my family has long been associated with football.
My dad’s brother ran Highgate United FC, my mom’s cousin ran what used to be Solihull Borough but is now Solihull Moors, my own cousin ran a youth team, and I helped start up and run a Sunday league team when I moved to Yorkshire. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I actually know more than I credit myself with.
I was quite tired yesterday. That’s probably due to me working all hours on the proofreading job that went back on Tuesday. I worked on it all weekend too, so perhaps I needed a day off completely before starting the next one. I faffed around a lot on Wednesday, until around 3pm when I could hardly keep my eyes open. So I closed the office and retired to the living room for the rest of the day, taking my Kindle with me.
My reading this week
(Did you see that segue? Seamless!)
I usually have at least one novel and one non-fiction book on the go at the same time. Sometimes I’ll have several non-fictions in progress, but it’s rare I’ll read more than one novel at a time, although I do also read short stories.
I do try to read non-fiction during the day and fiction of an evening or on days off. This is because I’m often reading a writers’ guide or 3.
This past week, I’ve been reading:
- D IS FOR DEADBEAT by Sue Grafton
- JUST EAT IT by Laura Thomas
- E IS FOR EVIDENCE by Sue Grafton
I’m currently re-reading all of the Sue Grafton books, mostly because I really enjoy them and they make very comfortable reading. I finished D on Tuesday, and lined up E on my Kindle. Reading them back-to-back is interesting, especially as it wasn’t something we could do when they were first coming out every couple of years or so.
JUST EAT IT is a book about intuitive eating that I asked the poet to get me for my birthday, along with the companion HOW TO JUST IT EAT by the same author (but I’m not reading that one just yet).
I recently downloaded the entire alphabet series to Kindle as well as the first 20 Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich, so that I have something to read if I’m out of signal for any reason. In the past few days I’ve also collected around a dozen books that have been sent to me for review, I’ve converted them to both Kindle epub and generic epub, and I uploaded them to Google Play Books as well as downloaded them to Kindle.
Plan for today
The plan for today, then, is the same as it was yesterday, pretty much, with only one addition:
- Writing Mastery Academy
- 12 STORIES IN 12 MONTHS
- THE LAST PIRATE OF PENZANCE
- THE SECRET OF WHITEHORSE FARM
- print off new client edit
- weekly tech scan
- Diane’s Gig List admin
- tomorrow’s blog
What’s on your schedule for today?
What a good day!
I’m going to pick up D when I go to the library on Friday. E and F are on their way. It’s very different reading them back to back, isn’t it?
I picked up Sara Paretsky again, starting with SHELL GAME (2018) and I’m reading forward, then I’ll go back and read the other ones in order again.
I’m hoping I’ll stay organized and get a lot done over the next week, because April starts busy, and with Mercury going retrograde, who knows what kind of spanners will go into the works?
I discovered Sara Paretsky a lot later than I did Sue Grafton. I went right to the beginning, but V.I. had already made it onto our TV screens and I suppose I didn’t like what they did with her and it tainted my reading. She came across as more girly than Kinsey, and I preferred Kinsey’s tomboyism. I also kept calling her Vi… I did find those books a bit complicated as well. I think because V.I. was going into industry and doing her investigations. I ought to go back to the beginning and start again there too. But first, I’ll finish the alphabet, I think.