Badminton Club

2 weeks ago, I found a badminton club on the Net that was about 10 minutes walk from my house. I went to check it out last Friday and found it to be quite reasonable: nice people, good range of quality and also usually a coach in residence (who is on holiday at the moment), who could probably help me improve my rather strange technique. As motivation is one of the major stumbling blocks for me, I decided to give this place a go rather than traipsing all the way to Canary Wharf. My first session was on Friday and it was not bad as first sessions after a few months' layoff go. As always, I had trouble seeing the shuttlecock as the lights in multipurpose stadiums tend to be strategically placed up above, just in your line of sight for badminton. I played 4 games, all with the same partner, who is left-handed. Those who have played with me before will know that my partnering and communication skills are pretty poor even with right-handed partners, let alone lefties. We crashed several times (no problem, what I lacked in speed I more than made up with in mass so our momentums were generally equal :-) ) and both left things several times. I now know where all the Asians in London are - in badminton clubs! Almost all of the people there were Chinese (from HK, Malaysia or UK-born) or Indonesian. I woke up on Saturday feeling only slightly sore but got progressively tighter until I woke up this morning with very painful muscles.
As Taffy is rather obsessed with politics, we organised postal votes (he was going to go down to Australia House until he found out that 20,000 people went to vote there at the last election) and he woke up early on Saturday to listen to the commentary online. While it is sad to see the end of an era, it seems to be a similar situation to the Gough Whitlam campaign 'It's Time.'
I'm going to have afternoon tea with Kalika (she of the 'Where does pork come from?' fame) today. I found her through the Old Collegians network. Haven't seen her for years.