This is getting ridiculous – four days is very very scary indeed.

I have also had a rather poor week on the preparation front. For a start the weather has been atrocious, secondly I have had too may distractions, third I have absolutely no will power whatsoever. Take yesterday for example – I was originally going to not drink at all this week so as to cleanse the system ready for next week. But Wednesday night I got asked out for a curry, and well, one beer led to another, so that was pretty bad. I woke up slightly hanging, and then trotted off to Lords where I was being ‘entertained’ at the England Pakistan test match. As I got there the heavens opened, and my hosts asked if I wanted to ‘go for a coffee’, which sounded like a good idea. When we got to the erm, coffee area, it looked remarkably like a Veuve Cliquot champagne area to me, and so when they asked me “coffee or champagne sir?” that was a bit like asking me if I wanted to be punched in the face or given a lifetime pass to the Oktoberfest, and so my answer was very easy.

Apologies to anyone in this picture who was supposed to be 'working from home' yesterday.....

The rest of the day sort of happened in a similar vein really. There was a little bit of cricket inbetween, but actually only 12 overs in total, lasting about 45 minutes. My view of the pitch was a great one, being just at the edge of the pavilion/MCC balcony, but the pitch looked like this for much of the day:

Nice weather for ducks....

So for the other 8 or so hours that I was in the ground, we just had to take shelter in the Corporate Hospitality areas, and very nice they were too.

Not very good preparation for a 340 mile bike ride really, but never mind.

I did also pick up my rail tickets yesterday to get me to Lands End. I was rather surprised to find that I need eight, yes EIGHT tickets to get me on a single train journey. How ridiculous is that? It just annoys me as it is such a waste of trees – you would think they could do these things electronically these days.

Anyway – I have the Bank Holiday weekend ahead of me now. Just three days of preparations to go. I need to do a couple of easy cycle rides, buy a lot of things that I don’t so far have (I like leaving things to the last minute, makes it more exciting that way:)), then pack for the big event. Meantime I have to carb-load too, and so it is a weekend of pasta, brown rice, raisins and beans for me. Oh and no booze. I just dearly hope that no-one asks me out for a curry or to any more cricket matches……