Camp Bastion

Mrs O and I went camping at the weekend, as is our wont at the end of August.  Sadly, the summer ended a little prematurely this year in England, so the weather alternated between air frost and torrential rain the entire time.

The final day of the trip, Bank Holiday Monday, was worthy of especial note.  It started raining at about 10am and gently ramped the action up until lunchtime, by which time it would have brought down an albatross.  We had intended to have a mooch to the coast after breakfast, but you couldn't really get out of the car without a full-face crash helmet, so decided against it.  Instead we thundered back to London to do some utility shopping.

There are fewer more spirit-sapping experiences than being in the B&Q in Leyton on a Bank Holiday Monday in the p1ssing rain.  People were slumped in corners writing war poetry.  It was that bleak.  The dead-eyed staff didn't help much either, shuffling about trying not to catch anyone's attention.  The whole thing was miserable on an industrial scale.

Next year we're taking the tent to Doha.

Summer lovin'

Another bank holiday here in dot-coe-dot-you-kay yesterday, and another hosing-down from the gods.  We're in that difficult transition period between "it's been a shit spring" to "it's being a shit summer".  No-one's quite sure where the cusp lies.  It's like Easter; only the Vatican seems on top of that sheight.  All we do know is that it's close.

The point of this equinox of course is that one must abandon hope if it can be shown we've passed it.  Summers in this country and short and brutal, like a spell in a young offenders' institute.  If we've missed even a week of the summer season to poor weather, then statistically-speaking it cannot be saved.

As Bill Shankly or Buddha would no doubt have averred: it's the hope that kills you.

This spell of appalling weather has come at the end of a very trying weekend too.  On Sunday my beloved Orient were beaten in the League One play-off final at Wembley.   I've seen Orient lose more play-offs than I can shake a stick at, but this one hurt particularly  

I was stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the same cohort of people I was in the 80s when Orient went up against Wrexham, and we've been there for every major game since.  The difference this time is that if we needed 13 years to reach another Wembley final (the gap since our last play-off final), would the club even exist?  It was this thought that played on my mind on the interminable tube journey home.

If West Ham get Olympic Stadium, I fear we're screwed.  The children of Walthamstow, Leyton, Leytonstone etc. will grow up to be Hammers.  You can't blame them; I would have done the same.  The idea of Orient not outliving me is hugely troubling.  I've got football existential angst.  I wonder if my GP will sign me off work?  He is an Os fan after all.