IT’S been a strange and in many ways upsetting week.

IT’S been a strange and upsetting week.

I’m talking about the tragic loss of two great speedway riders, Paul Fry and Kelly Moran.

I feel sad at the loss of both riders. I knew Paul quite well and was devastated to hear of his death last week.

He was still riding last year and was a real proper grass roots rider.

In fact riding on grass was where he was very much at home, as well as on the speedway track, and it is just such a big loss, I feel so sad for his family.

Across the water in America, Kelly Moran passed away too.

I didn’t know Kelly so well, but marvelled at his brilliant racing style, as he was good friends with John Cook, who used to ride for Ipswich. And Cookie was one of my boyhood heroes.

Kelly enjoyed life to the full, there is no doubt about that. And it is sad he left this world so young. When he and his brother Shawn were at Sheffield, they were simply awesome.

A sad week.

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WELL, I got to Swindon, as I promised you I would.

However, can you believe it? I nearly didn’t make it on time.

An accident on the M25 meant most of us were held up and Pete Simmons and Chris Louis only arrived with minutes to spare. What is it about Swindon?

And then it rained. Just as our comeback was on.

I don’t think we would have gone on to win the meeting at Swindon, but we were 37-22 down and I’m sure me and Claus Vissing would have got an 8-1 in heat 11. That would have made it 38-30 and maybe we could have nicked a point.

Still, we’ll never know and we will have to do it all again.

Next day at Ipswich, it was a repeat performance.

Again the rain came and spoiled things. I do hope the fans who came for the first time, come back. It’s not usual for meetings to be rained off half-way through and fans not to get their money back.

But I can see both sides of the argument, the promotion make it clear that after a certain amount of races, there will be no re-admission and fans feel they have missed out on seeing a full meeting. Very difficult.

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I met up with my old friend and Ipswich Town goalkeeper Richard Wright at Foxhall on Good Friday.

His lad, Sonny, was making his first visit to see speedway and I hope he enjoyed the eight heats or so that he saw.

Richard and I go back a long way and I remember when he was playing at Everton, he used to nip across from his Merseyside home and come and watch when the Witches were at Belle Vue.

He’s a keen speedway fan.

Tonight we are at home to Wolverhampton in the knock-out cup and are hoping for a big lead to take to Monmore Green on Monday night.

And on Saturday night, we travel to Eastbourne for an Elite League meeting.

It’s a meeting we have targeted to get something out of and I think we can. I know many people have already written Eastbourne off, but making predictions is easy, the Eagles will be stronger than that.

However, we must look to get something out of it and get our first Elite League points of the season.

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I’VE been laying turf this week.

My meeting in Poland was called off early, so I made use of the time, with a couple of mates, Paul and Matthew, to lay some turf at my house.

We were alright, in fact I was quite impressed. We half thought about setting up a company . . . ‘Bodgeit and Leggit’ . . . got a ring to it I reckon!

AS TOLD TO MIKE BACON