First of all, I know that everyone at the track, and around the country, will agree with me in sending best wishes to Swindon track curator Gerald Richter, who has not been well recently.
Last Thursday we had to manage without Gerald's guidance at the track, so "Get well soon mate," from all of us.
The day didn't start off too well for me. Two miles from the track, with rain spitting onto the windscreen when I realised that not only had I left the camera at home, but that it was sitting on my desk alongside my mobile - so no photographs possible.
Fortunately, Mark Price, who has been working on Thursdays with me this year had his mobile and camera with him, so it's thanks to Mark that there's anything to look at this week.
With a less than propitious weather forecast, the day looked as if it was going to be a difficult one before heard that Gerald wouldn't be with us for the whole day. Under leaden skies, and with the rain always in the air, Punch, Ronnie, Roy, Arron, Mark and I set about our work for the day, preparing a strip for the Robins to take on the Aces from Belle Vue.
As has become the norm recently, Punch, Mark and I pumped all the water off the air bags before inflating them and then Mark and I hooked up the blue catch fencing and then the top of the air bags to the safety fence.
While I worked away on a fence panel Mark cleared the area immediately outside the safety fence of all heavy objects (as requested by a referee some weeks ago) and then checked fuel levels in all of the pumps. Most of the banners had been cleaned the day before but the last few were laid out on the centre green for a quick blasting with the pressure washer).
Back in the pits Punch and Ronnie were spreading new gravel over the area immediately in front of the new pits. Ronnie has been painting the new complex and it looks very smart indeed. Judging from his bleary eyes and a good 12 hour sleep the previous night, I would imagine that the fumes had got to him.
Capable of housing 7 riders, each with two bikes, these smart new pits will be the Away team pits. With an awning to extend the depth of each pit area, they must rank amongst the most luxurious in the Elite League and are certainly a hundred times better than the existing away pit area. The area outside the pit has been dug up and a soak away put there to catch any water that could accumulate in the pits themselves.
At the end of the previous meeting Punch had been talking with Flo (Karen, our sports therapist) and her husband about chain harrows. Now, I will admit here that they may as well have been talking a foreign language as far as I was concerned. The upshot of that conversation was that Karen's husband happened upon a set of chain harrows while at a ploughing match. Said harrows were abandoned in a hedgerow and, after an exchange of notes, became ours.
They arrived in the trailer behind Karen's car mid morning to be met with the cooing and aahing that one normally associates with the birth of a new child. Punch and Ronnie were in raptures over their appearance. Mark and I looked on bemused but faintly moved by the overflow of emotion over what looked like so much scrap iron to my untutored eye. Apparently they will be of great benefit to us once they have been fixed into a frame of some sort ... but I'll update you on that later because, while Punch was effusive in explaining it all, I was totally lost
We had two sets of repair men on site today. The first was to repair a tractor tyre which had picked up an errant nail from somewhere while the other was our good friend Gavin from Janair who appeared mid afternoon to deliver the last of our air bags back to us and take away the one that was so brutally assaulted during the match against Wolverhampton.
In the meantime we actually had to water the track, even though it was raining. The fact was that the rain was very light and the track was actually drying out - strange but true.
Punch and Ronnie top dressed the track whilst the rest of us tidied up the back of the pits area. One of the club sponsors had provided an enormous skip for the afternoon so we set about filling it up with anything that hadn't moved. It is very cathartic throwing out rubbish and we had lots of fun. By the time that we'd finished I could not recall when the old place had looked tidier nor so capacious.
The velcro attached kickboards have been a vast improvement on the cable tied and riveted versions of years gone past, except in one place - the air panel that covers the entrance to the pits. As the gate panel is pulled back and forth so it dislodges the kickboard, the velcro picks up dirt and then it falls off of its own volition.
Last week I decided that enough was enough so this week Mark and I cable tied a strip of old kickboard to the panel and the result was greatly appreciated by the team who work the pit gate during meetings.
I know for a fact that my mobile was very busy receiving calls in my absence - quite a few people doubted that we could get a meeting on based upon weather forecasts for the area but whilst it was certainly raining hard elsewhere, the drizzle continued into mid afternoon with no break in the clouds but also no real threat of a downpour.
It's been 10 days since our last meeting and the centre green grass has grown significantly, so much so that we decided to fix up an old mow8ing machine that we found abandoned round the back and use it to cut the grass rather than the normal sit on mower.
Adam had first turn but when he was called away I took up the task. Always taking the photographs ensures that I seldom appear - but Mark caught me as I drove up and down. What a pleasant afternoon's activity it was. I was reminded of Genesis as I drove round and round and then up and down - "Me, I'm just a lawnmower, you can tell by the way I walk ..."
If you read last week's missive you'll know that I was a little unhappy with new regulations stipulating the numbers of staff allowed out on the centre green during matches. Ronnie and I had a long discussion about the merits and disadvantages of limits and we agreed that whilst there was a case for more staff, perhaps more work should be left to the graders and the blade that we use with the tractor during grading intervals. Consequently we tried out a new regime and the consensus was that it worked. Track staff concentrated more upon keeping the top of the air fence clean and changing banners between standard heats and then raked like mad during grading breaks. With John, who drives the tractor with the blade, doing 2 laps around the outside we were able to get all of the dirt back from the kickboards with much less fuss and effort than before. It's early days but it's good that everyone is showing a willingness to try to make changes for the betterment of the sport here at Blunsdon.
A good home win ensued and what could have been a difficult day, without Gerald and with the rain, went remarkably smoothly.
Final word is a slightly indulgent one, but congratulations must go to the Minety Under 15 Rugby team and their coach Dan Thomas, who triumphed in the big 10 a side season concluding tournament at Wootton Bassett recently. They may be a small village side but they've shown themselves to be more than capable of matching their counterparts from much bigger clubs, and they feature two big Swindon fans - Jack, the fly half, and my son Dave who fills the flanker role. Well done lads!
