The blog is late - I know, but Thursday was one of the longest and most taxing of my time at Blunsdon and Friday disappeared in a flurry of work and chronic aching back syndrome.

One factor exercised all of our minds on Thursday - the massive accident of the week before and the reaction of the air fence. Those closest to the action (I was at the other end of the track at the time) suggest that three riders hit the same air fence panel. One clipped the far right end, one in the middle while the third slid under the fence and came to rest against the wire safety fence.

A closer inspection of the panel in question shows two huge rips in the front panel where the first two riders went in. This must have caused a massive loss of air pressure which then helped the fence to wrap itself around the second rider, ripping out the restraining clips behind it and then allowing it to be lifted by the bouncing third bike.

As I said in last week's blog, it was a massive accident with a violence that few who witnessed it had seen before. That two riders got up and walked back to the pits while the third, the unfortunate Chris Kerr, was winded, battered and bruised was a huge relief to all concerned.

The first surprise of the morning is that the old blue pickup (that replaced our beloved Land Rover) has now been painted. Resplendent in its shiny new bright red attire, it will not, however, start. The battery is flat. Mick Richards is able to get it going but Arron finds a new modification when he leaps into the passenger seat and then leaps out again with a speed not previously seen from the young man. Some oik has thrown a stone through the passenger side window, shattering the glass, than now resides in small, painfully sharp pieces on the floor of the passenger seat, on the passenger seat and now in Arron's buttocks!

While Mick and Roy pressure wash the pits, the rest of us set too, assembling the air fence, putting up the blue netting, laying out the shale plastered banners from last week and generally getting the place ready for a 1pm practice for our reserve, Krzysztof Stojanowski (henceforth to be referred to as Stoj).

Practice during the day is a two edged sword. We want our riders to get as much practice in as possible but it does compromise our work on the track and its environs. Stoj has found the early weeks of the season hard and since he is not riding anywhere else in the world, and has a young family to provide for, he needs as much help as we can give him.

The track is dry and very very, hard. Ronnie Russell and Rosco stand on the centre green with me and watch as Stoj tries to get the best lines possible. With the slick track he tends to overshoot the entrance to corners and drifts out wide, losing grip and momentum. Rosco tries to get him to throttle back as he comes into the corner and then get him to move his body around on the bike to get him closer to the white line on the exit. I am reminded of Tomasz Chrzanowski, who rode for us in recent years. Tom moved around so gracefully on his bike, subtly shifting his position on the bike to help it position itself on the track as he wanted it. There is noticeably less movement from Stoj until suddenly it all comes together and he blasts into turn three, shuts off for a milli second, opens up the throttle mid corner, moves his body weight forward and to the left and hits the perfect line out of turn 4 (a move that Rosco calls the "Jimmy Nilsen" line). Jim was famous for his ability to be able to squeeze out a line that often necessitated him lifting his front wheel over the white line on the exit of turn 4 before blasting under the opposition on the run to the line.

Stoj appears pleased. His mechanics are certainly happy, especially when he repeats the move to perfection a second time around. But we are getting worried. Dust is flying up, so much that a member of the track staff later in the evening tells me that he could see the brown cloud of dust from the main road outside as he drove past.

A fine layer of thickish dust lays against the fence but the track surface is almost bare. The base is rock hard and very dry - quite how we will get sufficient water into the base to allow it to bind to any top dressing is in doubt at this time.

Stoj goes back into the pits to change bikes and then completes another sequence of fast laps on a second bike.

All speedway riders look fast when they are out on a track on their own, but a practice such as this really gives the spectator a chance to appreciate quite what goes on when a rider blasts into a high speed turn such as the ones we have at Swindon. Stoj is right on the limit, the bike and his body making extreme angles with the track surface, the back tyre spinning viciously and the engine actually vibrating the ground upon which I stand.

Satisfied that he has got all he needed to from the session, and not wanting to flatten a valuable engine, Stoj departs and we can get on with the work.

Rosco has acquired three Swindon Robins' decals and, together with Adam and Arron, he applies them to the newly painted Ford.

While I gather up the banners and organise them into piles for each of the four corners, Rosco bags a ride on the sit on lawnmower that we use to keep the very large centre green tidy. The centre green used to be maintained by the stadium owners but we took it over last year and will soon have it looking like the playing surface at Lords (I still cannot believe it, but a group of us were sowing grass seed on a bare patch at 10.40pm, long after the meeting had finished!)

Out on the track the first task is to flood the surface to try to ameliorate the effects of a bright sun and a drying wind that whips across the stadium. We need to thoroughly wet the surface before applying the top dressing material and ripping the start line and the exits of turns 2 and 4.

While Punch and Ronnie put down a liberal top coating, Gerald rips the starting area and I drive the water cart that will wet down the newly ripped material. The ripper goes down about a half inch into the surface, breaking up the rock hard material. It is important to get all of this newly ripped material wet and then lightly packed down if we are to give the riders a surface that will afford excellent grip and drive whilst not disappearing into the crowd at the same time.

We follow the surface dressers around to turns 2 and 4, ripping, watering and packing. From now until the start of the meeting we work hard at keeping moisture in the shale.

The banners are put up on the air fence, the pumps adjusted and the white line washed. Roy spends some time planting some annuals in the tubs on the start line (thanks to our good friend Andy Nurden for providing us with the plants).

Mick Hunt and the referee, Barbara Horley, carry out their track inspection. I always try to get to speak to the ref at this stage so that any problems can be ironed out properly. She provides me with a list of tasks that she would like to see undertaken before the start of the meeting. With an hour to go, we set about clearing every moveable item away from the outside of the safety fence so that a clear and entirely empty exclusion zone is created on the greyhound track side of the safety fence. She also asks that any non moveable item be protected by car tyres. We've not been asked this before but the team are more than happy to comply. It's at times like this that I am so thankful that we have such an amenable and good natured, hard working bunch of guys (and ladies) working backstage at Swindon. I only have to mention the referee's comments and they are off, carrying out instructions to the letter.

The meeting starts on time and Ronnie is pleased that during heat one, won in a quick time by Mr Adams, very little of the track appears to be have been plastered on the air fence banners. I sense that we will only be able to tell after a couple more heats. Sure enough, turn 3 and turn 4 banners disappear during heat two as some riders drift off line.

Our job for the rest of the meeting is to keep material away from the kick boards and off the front of the air fence banners. Each time the tractors come out we move as much material from high up down to mid track.