stevegerrard.org

Yup, it snowed last night. It was quite surreal actually; after a lovely meal at the Lokanta Turkish restaurant in George Street, we head off to the Bee’s Mouth for a quick drink, only to emerge just 1 hour later, and a good 10cm of snow!

Of course, the obligatory, inevitable, and fairly lenghtly snowball fight followed. Here’s a couple of pics taken on my iphone when we were on Palmiera Square:

Ayfer, John M, Philippa, and Antonio

with the local snowman

In the morning,instead of going to work, Ayfer went for a wander and took some great pics that you can see on Flickr.

Here’s a few of the best ones:

In the a space of 48 hours it’s all gone Pete Tong. In pretty atrocious conditions successive semi-finals in the mens singls and mens doubles have not gone my way. In the singles I simply didn’t play well enough, and in the doubles last night, and excrusiatingly tight second set was lost 11-9 in the tie break… Merde!!! (as they say in France).

The slight consolation is that wer’e in the Mixed final on Saturday so at least there is some chance to salvage something from what has been a pretty dire week on the tennis front!! :((

The Grasshoppers quadruple is still on; having secured the Winter Mixed with Jenny, I’m still in the hunt for the singles, mens doubles, and mixed! Will my flat look like a large gleaming trophy cabinet, or will I grab defeat from the jaws of victory in spectacular fashion… only time will tell!

First up is the mens doubles semi against Giles and Matt; should be a close one.. will keep you posted…!

Yes, I can’t believe it, we actually won the damn thing! After many under achieveing years I have finally won something, and it feels pretty good. Even though I thought Brad and I had a makings of a good partnership, I had it in my mind that we needad another year to crack it, but with three good victories against 3 very good pairs, we have the silverware a year earlier than we hoped!

The match started fairly predicably for us where we had a slow start, trailing 3-1 after the first round of serves. We have got intot he habit of treating the first set as practice which gives us an advantage in the sense that we never get too stressed when we (often) lose the first set. So with the practice over, we still felt pretty good and were playing actually quite well. In the second and thrid sets things just got better and better and we started to play some of the best tenis that either of us have played, and most impotantly we were playing good tennis at the same time! Harvey and Richard, who had won for the past 3 years found it increasingly difficult to cope with us in this form, and after a little short stumble towards the end of the thrid set, casued by a few nerves I think, we closed it out 6-4.

Now we have to consolidate and defend the title next year which will be tough, but its a good position to be in! Well done Brad!

After 4 years I’ve finally dragged myself into one of the open final’s at Grasshoppers with my trusted partner Brad! This marks a momentous occassion in my life as a perennial underachieving tennis player; I really should have got there sooner!

It was a tough match; we started well by blistering throught he first set 6-2. We then had a Murray-style lapse in the second, losing it 2-6. So its was all square going into the 3rd set. The tennis was not that pretty at this stage, but in true professional style, most games were going with serve. At 2-2 we had a breakthrough when we broke Mark’s serve, but then wasted the opportunity when I lost mine straight away. next couple went with serve until we finally managed to break Mark’s serve again, but this time I managed to hold mine for the victory. Score was 6-4 in the end!

I must say we were quite fortunate as although Jerry was playing particularly well, we benefitted from Mark having an unusually bad day, not like him at all so you have to take these opportunities as they don’t come round that often! And lastly, congrats to Brad who’s being playing great recently and definately got us through yesterday with some great serving and volleying. And to think how good he’ll be when he gets a new racquet to replace the antique he’s currently playing with!

So fingers crossed for the final on 6th September..!

So, I have a new web site and looking forward to putting positive, fun, and even creative content for my first post, but that’s all gone to pot after I took my Audi A3 in for it’s service and MOT at Grant’s Garage in Brighton. Now, before I carry on I must point out the following is not a critism of the garage at all, they did the job very well and I would like to recommend them to anyone else who wants an independant garage; this is a critism of Audi and many other car manufacturers who have all designed in a fundamental design flaw into almost all vehicles…so let me begin..

So, my lovely little Audi A3 has been happily shepherding me back and forth to work and back over the last four years and has racked up 75,000 miles in the process. Its now therefore due for its forth service of its life and the garage point out that its due for a cam belt change. OK fine. (well not fine at all actually but I’ll come to that) I ask how much and they say that unfortunately on the Audi A3 its more complex that on some other cars and it will come to £290 + VAT. So here’s my first point: Why is it that on a component that the manufacturer knows will need replacing at 70,000 miles is it designed to be complex? Isn’t that like gluing the tyres on so that its difficult to get them off when they wear out? Surely it should be pretty simple and significanlty cheaper to replace what is in effect a big rubber band? Of course the real answer to this is that its quite a money spinner for the car industry as a whole i.e. both garages and parts manufacturers, but you would have though in this day and age here would be a better solution.

Secondly, I have an issue with the fact that cambelts need changing in the first place. Surely its a design flaw if its just a rubber band that’s all between you and a blown engine. Shouldn’t it be via a chain, or cogs, or electronically timed, or something else that doesn’t wear out (or at least designed not to wear out like the rest of the engine) and also, if it must be a rubber band, surely in the event of failure, the engine should be designed so that it doesn’t mince itself to pieces?

So come on car manufacturers, Audi in particular, sort out your design so that cambelts are not so expensive to change, and do not cause total obliteration of the engine on failure.

I do hope my next post is more uplifting..