Back to St. Mary's

It was nice to have a bit of a lie-in this morning - nowhere to rush off to this morning. Sara took Tom and Mary to the ~Rec where Tom is currently in training to beat his school's Under-15 100 metres sprint record which stands at 11.03 seconds. Currently he is running at around 11.57 seconds so has some way to go. Tom and I went into Southampton at lunch time and after a quick lunch of fishcake/pea fritter and chips and purchasing one of the brand new Fanzines we entered St. Mary's Stadium's Kingsland's Stand to watch the Saints' friendly game against Reading. It was good to see Grimsby Town's former player, Danny Butterfield, playing so well for the Saints. Lallana and Lambert did not play and Alan Pardew used quite a lot of the youngsters in the second half. Reading scored first with an equaliser from Saints before half time. In the second half Saints went into the lead but a penalty was awarded to the Royals which was converted with ease. Two further goals from Reading made it a 4-2 win for them. As a friendly match it was not an important or worrying result and it was encouraging to see how Butterfield and Hammond have strengthened the defence. Tom and I went to Chiquito's for a Mexican dinner before returning home. Sara was babysitting for our neighbours Paul and Karen when we got home. Tom watched the European Athletics and I dealt with messages and emails which had built up whilst I was away. I will need to continue with this tomorrow.