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I am delighted that the Human League are going to be playing Hitchin. I am disappointed that Phil Oakey hasn't grown a beard that's really long on one side and really short on the other. Seems like a missed opportunity.
Feeling a bit better today, if still pink and itchy, which was lucky as Catie was going to spend the afternoon in the spa so I was starting the long payback for the last month by being sole parent.
We parked our bikes at the top of the hill down to the lake and as we have always done, took off our helmets and clipped them to the bikes. It was quite a squeeze to get the bike in and I couldn't easily access the wheel to lock it and nearly didn't bother. Catie is always very cautious about the possibility of theft, but I always tell her not to be silly. No one is going to steal anything in Center Parcs. Pretty much everyone leaves their helmets with their bikes and I have seen plenty of unlocked bikes.
Anyway we went down to the lake and I took the kids out on a pedalo, which was harder work than I had anticipated. Then Ernie went to do some indoor climbing and was very good at it - I hate heights so would never do this and as a kid I was too uncoordinated and scared to attempt anything like this. The kids have inherited their mother's tree-climbing genes.
It was all little kids doing the climbing, except for one man in his twenties who was throwing himself into it. I assumed he was the dad of one of the other kids, but when he left he didn’t seem to take a kid with him. He saw that Ernie had attempted the toughest climb and got 3/4 of the way up and seemed keen to defeat this 8 year old. Satisfyingly he got to the same point as Ernie and could get no further. He did not seem at all perturbed that he was the only person over 10 doing this activity and for that he has my only slightly mocking admiration.
We played on some arcade games and then started going back to our lodge so that we could investigate the fetid lake/river at the back of our property.
When I got back to the bike I was very surprised to find that my bike helmet was gone. All the other bikes had their helmets and even Catie had left her helmet on the bike, because who would steal someone else's helmet? The helmets are all free to use and readily available at the bike store. Also who would want an unsanitised helmet that some stranger had been sweating into in the hot 2026 summer. They probably didn't know that this particular helmet had been sweated into by someone who had recently had chemo, so it might be slightly radioactive.
Would you like my sweaty helmet resting on your head? (get in touch if yes).
Who would do this? Center Parcs is gone.
There's no way you could take a helmet by accident. You wouldn't get on your own bike and then take a helmet from a different bike. It had to be a choice. Maybe someone had lost their helmet and thought, well, might as well just take someone else's. But still a very odd choice.
It meant me either cycling around unhelmeted or heading back to the cycle shop for another one. There was the possibility that I could fall off on the way and smash my head in, all because someone was the kind of pervert who likes to wear stolen cancer sweat helmets.
I was just bamboozled by the crime. Also now Catie could laugh in my face whenever I said that we didn't have to worry unduly about theft.
Enjoy my sweaty helmet, helmet thief.
Sad to see England England-up the semi-final and yes, in hindsight it was a mistake to try to protect that one goal lead. Yet still insane to think we should be sacking a manager who got us to the fucking semi-finals of the World Cup (and ten minutes from the Final). Do England supporters expect too much of a men's team that hasn't won anything in my lifetime? Support your team, you dolts. Fourth place is amazing. My prediction that England will lose 3-0 to France in the final sort of still holds good.
