The First Slash Of Grass

It's never a good thing if you wake up in a Hotel room at 4 in the morning and you're cold.  Especially if you have both quilts covering you and there is nothing else you can do to get warm.

I went down to breakfast feeling not brilliant - but I did manage to eat something and I did get a cup of tea down my neck but nothing tasted of anything.

I started brightly in our conference but quickly waned.

It is no fun for anyone when you have a colleague who is just a mass of sniffles, sneezes and coughs.

And so I decided to make my way home.

And it has to be said that "der Arsch der Welt" has some pretty good train connections.  Every 15 minutes to Wiesbaden for example.

It all falls apart in Wiesbaden though.  There's only one connection to my local train station and that runs hourly.  And the bus only runs after 2:30.  Which meant I had to schlepp into town and get the DramaBus home.

Thankfully there is very little drama at midday.

Today's Blip is a partial view of the inside of the Commerzbank Arena.  A couple of colleagues are BIG Eintracht fans and could identify individual cars parked outside - Marius Wolf apparently drives a really expensive Mercedes (although the cars were pretty much all top of their ranges).

I do love the sight of the first slash of grass in a stadium - a title I stole from the baseball writer Thomas Boswall.  Sorry, Thomas, I owe you for that.