Grr!

It’s late – I haven’t finished this week’s Forest View copy yet. In fact, I haven’t started it yet. There’s not a Forest View theme in my head and the Forester sub-editors are shouting for my copy. It’s panic time.

ALL RIGHT!! I’M WORKING ON IT!!

A theme, a theme, I need a theme. I know – rugby? No, I’m sure I did that before.

A poem? I haven’t the time, and I’ve run out of rhyme.

Politics? – too controversial. I don’t suppose anyone is interested in my political views.

500 words seems an awful lot – I could repeat a few, they don’t all have to be different.

Landscape – I think I’ve covered that quite extensively.

My sporting career was not distinguished – no one will be impressed by a lifetime best cricket score of 51 in a span of nearly 60 years playing the game.

And squash – the most boring game to play and to practice, boring practice. I played this game for 20 years. There were multi-stroke rallies where you had to manoeuvre your opponent to a remote part of the court so that you could then, with your opponent out of position, administer the coup de gras. I have watched in professional squash rallies of 100 strokes or more. To get to any decent standard it was necessary to practice on a squash court just hitting the ball up and down to oneself. Boring! I’m not surprised that 2 of the 3 squash courts in the Forest (at Five Acres, Berry Hill and at the former Brightlands School, Newnham) have been demolished. Nothing to report there.

I did have a schedule of possible topics on my computer, but I can’t find it. Was it that I accidentally deleted them when I was deleting dodgy offers from dodgy companies which seemed to be too good to be true?

It’s a bit late for a report on the first cuckoo of spring, a traditional theme for newspaper correspondents, which I missed. I’m notoriously unreceptive to birdsong. I haven’t heard the last cuckoo of summer yet, so no possibilities there.

I was going to write a sequel to an earlier Forest View but I can’t remember which one.

There used to be a theatre (as well as a squash court) at Five Acres college. There was always something going on there, a forest festival, a concert, a play, musical – always something substantial to review, but the Five Acres site has now, of course, been demolished.

With sport, events at Berry Hill and cuckoos off the agenda, I’m struggling.

ALL RIGHT!! I’M NEARLY THERE!!

Sorry about that .

Suddenly, I find that I’m approaching the magical 500 (words). Not quite there, but I hope that 480 will be enough for this week.

See you here next week. I’m nearly ready to start it now. Just need a theme.