Today was a great day for eavesdropping - the moon was over Jupiter and the stars were swooping under the sun, with a Dreamworks moon for good measure. I was in the changing room listening to two ladies who were drying their hair.

Yes we flew straight to Malo, Kuoni are the only ones who do it.
Ah yes we went to Mina.
Flew direct.
Mina was great, we went for the diving, how many hotels were there on Malo?
Hotels? No, there were 27 lodges, the whole island is just 27 feet wide and 4 feet across ( might be a bit out there, but bear with me, the hairdryers were blasting out).
Oh, on Mina there is a bar at one end where the watersports are, a bit livelier, and it takes 20 minutes to walk around the whole island.
( Cranking up now) Oh, well Malo is the size of a postage stamp and you can walk around it in 10 minutes. and you can swim out to the reef.
Clearly not the Isle of Wight then. ( that was me thinking, not them)
On Mina there is a bar in the middle and one at the end, where we went for the diving.
Of course Malo has a reef all around it.
Oh. Well, Mina has a reef that you can swim out to in just a couple of minutes, we did diving there, of course.

I left, feeling that my circumnavigation of the Isle of Wight on a bicycle would be as alien to them as almost anything else I could contribute helpfully to move them on in learning to listen and not just talk at each other. They didn't look like they wanted to learn less combative forms of communication, and frankly, they were enjoying the whole thing almost as much as the guys in the steam room a while back comparing kitchen gadgets. I am reading a book by Alistair Humphreys about riding around the world on a bike, not a camel. So far he is in Ethiopia. It is a well written travel book and I recommend it to Granny M, who likes travel and travel books.

Today I met Heidi, my new best friend, as she is a massager. Or whatever you call such a person, a sports masssager, I hasten to add. She gave me some idea and exercises that should help my knee be able to cope with running again. Basically, it is that I have too much muscle on the outside of my leg and not enough on the puny insides. So, off to the gym tomorrow to toughen up my miniscule inner knee muscle. The other option would be a transplant, I suppose.

Glory days are back at Liverpool FC, eh? When I did the Panini sticker book collecting ( approx 1983) it was the glory team which included Sammy Lee, Ian Rush and Kenny Dalglish. Now I hear KD is back as manager, with S L helping out on his days off from Macdonalds, or whatever footballers do after being part of the dream team of the 80s. We shall see. I will listen to the sports news with Johnny with more interest now my team are back in the running. I am going to watch Saints on Saturday, so will have plenty to tell you after that I am sure. Also exciting on the radio is Jack Dee pretending to be Humphrey Littleton and the Archers, with high drama of birth and death - better than Eastenders.

Yesterday we went to the uni to do the bargain swimming lessons, me and the girls, with my evangelistic ways meaning the Whitmores, Clarks, Crandons and Hannah's friend Jennifer were all represented somehow in the pool. Ang joined the improvers, and I was in the improvers improvers. We did diving, which was fun, but not much swimming, in fact after 10 lengths we had to cool down! It was a bit annoying that the teacher spent all her time with the most needy person, and I didn't feel like they helped me to improve my stroke at all, which frankly needs improving. But the whole point of it is to be guinea pigs for the student swimming teachers to work on, so I can cope. I asked if we could learn tumble turns, and the poor lady went into apoplexy about why not. Wished I had not mentioned it, but am a bit nervous to start looking like a berk, as my dad would say, and sloshing around upside down solo when the hair drying ladies are doing sedate lanes. Would have liked to try it out under tuition at the uni. Still, days at Esporta are numbered so I will soon be free to go to Bitterne Verruca Land again, and before you know it we will be begging to rejoin our posh gym and going out robbing old ladies to find the money. We are still doing well with our budgeting, writing it all down etc, however my swimming hat split so I had to spend an unexpected £6 on a new one. I have figured that we save too much ( uni fees, if required, although will do about a week at current figures) and give away too much. If we didn't give any money or save any money, then we would have tons of spare money to spend on starting smoking, or doing a triathlon every weekend, or drinking coffee at Esporta daily, or all of the above.