I’m a bit of a film addict, so it’s fortuitous that Henley has such a great little three-screen cinema complex. Over the past two weeks I’ve seen two animated films – both in 3D and needing Polaroid glasses. (I’d rather see them without 3D as the polarisation tends to dull the image too much for my liking – and as one of my eyes doesn’t work too well I can’t really appreciate the 3D effect anyway). Last week I saw Shrek 2 and this week Toy Story 3. Both were really good, but Toy Story3 was superlative – so real and evocative. I must admit a tear or two crept into my eyes towards the end of the film. I guess I’m just a big kid.
It’s nice to be back bowling once more. For the last two Monday evenings I’ve spent a very pleasant couple of hours being coached – yesterday I had one-to-one coaching with John and learned a lot (I think). However after two hours my arthritic hip took a bit of a battering, but the lovely weather on both evenings and the sounds of the river at the end of the green made me forget the pain for a while.
There’s the Henley Royal Regatta and then there’s the Town and Visitors Regatta. On Saturday it was the latter. Our lovely little local Regatta – well not so little as crews came from all over the country – played host to a perfect day. As I’m a subscriber we were able to wine and dine in the President’s tent. Very swish – I was the only male there not wearing a blazer - one man was in a glorious scarlet and white college blazer. (I must improve my sartorial image next year!) I said dine, it sounds posh but actually all we had was a hot dog, burger, and a banana!
Later in the morning I decided to test myself on the rowing machine prominently erected on the grass by the towpath. It seemed I’d recovered enough from my operation last year to exercise my stomach muscles, so I had a go.
The distance to row on the machine was 300 metres. For the first 200 I pulled really fast and hard- buoyed on by a few rowing types, but suddenly my strength seemed to ebb away and the last 100 metres took much longer than the others. My time was one minute eight seconds, which at least was faster than the fastest woman and the under sixteen’s. Wish there had been a veteran’s section. But here I am - straining hard.
Incidentally I am often amazed to see who reads by blog, and where in the world they live. After all it’s only a diary of some of the things I get up to during the week. But a quick check on my stat counter the other day came up with this map showing where my readers live