Sporting Success for the Crawfords

The last few months have been very football focused for us here in the Crawford house.

Toby’s Robin Hood football team train hard and they train regularly. The team have been getting better, fitter and stronger….and from a fourth place position at Christmas they started climbing up and found themselves in second place. All very exciting! On Friday it was their final game of the season and they lay 3 points behind the leading team, and 1 behind on goal difference.

Their last game was against top placed Flanagans Onions. Therefore a win would be good enough to win the league, and on goal difference at that!

Before Friday though, was Thursday, which was Toby’s birthday. Do I have something to report? Well, with a big match the next day, this was a very quiet night and I wouldn’t even let him have birthday steak as it would take too long to digest! 🙂

So back to the football! It was an 8:30pm KO so me and fellow WAG Katie went for dinner beforehand. By 8pm though we were getting too nervous ourselves so the remaining pizza was boxed up and we set off to soak up the spirit. The Premier league side were out in force to support and had been getting into the spirit for quite a while before we got there! Needless to say it was a lively and noisy crowd with lots of ingenious and not so ingenious chants!

We were worried it might be a cagey game as the opposition only needed a draw to win the league but we were not disappointed. It was a great game and the Robin Hood ‘Hoodlums’ were definitely the ’12th man’ that cheered the team to a 3-2 victory.

Toby and fellow centre back Martin look rather proud!

After this the boys jumped into a rather noisy motorcade round town. Apologies for the swearing but here’s a little outtake

🙂

Needless to say, the celebrating continued into the early hours and Saturday was a bit of a write-off! Not for me though, this is where I came into my own….

So the knee is nearly 6 weeks post-op now. The previous weekend I’d done 50 minutes of walk 2 mins/jog 30sec/repeat. Impressed?! Having got approval from the physio, it was time to step it up….with Toby’s weary legs a perfect match for my unfit and recuperating legs, we set off to ‘Zoom around the Sound’ on our bikes. For those outside Bermuda, ‘Zoom around the Sound’ is a yearly race by foot or bike. And a visual is always good! Here it is on the map;

Admittedly we didn’t ‘Zoom’ – it was more of a sight-seeing pace….but I was extremely pleased with my 11.5km ride! So much so, today while Toby’s helping out with security for one of the football matches followed by cheering on the Premier side, I did it again. It might not compare to the Robin Hood team efforts, but I feel like a superstar!

On my ride I saw people getting in the water for a swim. And they weren’t tourists! And others were cleaning up their boats. I think we’re getting ready for summer! I better progress quickly with the exercise to get ready myself!

Moon Jelly

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post.  This was mainly due to having spent the last week or so studying for an exam.  Being nearly 30, I was hoping to have left exam taking behind me the best part of a decade ago.  The company I work for wanted to apply for a Microsoft scheme, but needed a certain number of the engineers to be Microsoft certified in order to be eligible.  Losing a couple of guys last year who were certified and then employing me, who was not, had swung the balance just under the required number.  So with study guide in hand and practice exam papers loaded up I embarked on attempting to become MCTS, or a Microsoft Certified Technical Specialist, for those of you not familiar with our IT acronyms.  Now, it wouldn’t be true to say I had to teach myself to learn again, because I generally keep fairly up to date with new technologies and take strange pleasure in reading text books; but the thought of having to spend three hours proving I could do the job I have been paid for the last 8 years or so to do, was a little daunting.  I went into the exam genuinely feeling it would be touch and go; with a 70% pass mark, the percentage of people who pass is not that high and  the practice papers I had been taking were all coming out around 70%.  Luckily for me, when push came to shove, I got through fine and am now happily certified! More importantly though.. I can relax again and write a blog!

The last couple of weeks haven’t purely entailed fourteen days of study. For example, I spent two evenings in the company of Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris! Yep, the Chelsea legend was on island doing some charity events.  First up was the football quiz at the Swizzle Inn.  Teams of four, lots of footie questions, a bit of booze and a sprinkling of banter. Lovely old job.

A few days later was a ‘Night with Chopper’ in the Robin Hood pub.  Chopper was with his mate, a stand up comedian called Mike Pugh. Mike did some stand-up before Chopper told some anecdotes.  Here’s a picture of me holding Chopper… He looks as chuffed about the quality of photo my new phone takes as I am:

I’ve always love a quiz, so when Michelle mentioned that the International Women’s Club were holding their annual quiz, it was obvious we would have to put a team together.  Held at the Dinghy Club, a private club on the other side of harbor, we grouped together some friends and booked in a team of five.  Sadly we didn’t win, but third out of about 16 teams was not bad.  It was a decent night and I’m on the lookout for a pub quiz now to scratch my general knowledge itch on a regular basis.  Team Supanova:

On the basis we’d not done much over the last week due to the studying and Chelle having started her new job we decided to get out a do a few things this weekend.  Firstly a bike ride, along Middle Road to Flatts Village, down the side of Harrington Sound to Tuckers before coming back along the South Shore road.

We stopped off at a jetty on the sound to check out the fish.  Under the jetty was a little group of jelly fish! Google makes me think they were ‘Moon Jelly’ – although the ones we saw were tiny, maybe just 5cm.  I was fascinated though…

The bike ride passed through one of the many golf courses here; and as is standard here, there were chicken on the greens:

Today Chelle and I headed out to the south shore for a walk on the beach.  We headed down to Warwick long bay.  This was really cool.  Firstly, because, contrary to popular belief it seems Bermudian’s do go in the water in the winter:

And secondly because further down the beach (it is a large beach by Bermudian standards), it was just Chelle and I on it.  Lovely.

Chelle was obviously in a good mood about this; she even went it the sea to sit on a rock when I asked her to 😀

Fish and chips and a couple pints in the Swizzle on the way home topped off a great weekend that was much needed after all the study for me and work for Chelle of the past couple of weeks!