It hasn’t been all shale and speedway bikes in the King household this week.
No, far from it.
Indeed, there has been more jelly, ice-cream and sausage rolls on offer than anything else, as we all celebrated my youngest son Casey’s first birthday.
It was on Sunday and it was a good day. I spent most of Saturday with the family prepping the food. Well, I say I spent most of the day prepping the food, it was more like wife Clara and the rest of the family, including my mum and other friends who did most of it.
Then again, someone has to test how good the egg sandwiches taste!
The event was at our local village hall and there were loads of children there.
Ritchie Hawkins and his lovely wife Anna were there with son, Stanley.
Little Stanley and Anna behaved themselves impeccably as you would expect... Sadly, Ritchie showed far too much of a liking not just for the sausage rolls, but also the bouncy castles.
Okay, okay, so I had a bit of a go myself!
It was a great day and as you can imagine Casey wasn’t short of presents. A big thanks to everyone for their kindness.
Back to the shale and last week we rather demolished poor Scunthorpe at Foxhall.
An injury to Ryan Douglas didn’t help matters in only the third heat of the night. Ryan’s crash was a nasty one.
It was similar to the one that Ritchie Hawkins had at the start of the season before last. Ryan just came out of the start and reared up, but while Ritchie did the same and crashed on his own, poor Ryan had Kyle Newman plough into him. It wasn’t nice.
They can be a funny side, Scunthorpe.
They are capable of running us close at Foxhall and have done so once or twice in recent years, but they have also taken a hammering or two against us.
Last week was the latter, with Justin Sedgmen now settling into our side really well.
The week before, he hadn’t quite got it right until his final race, but last week he was on it from the off with three excellent wins.
Nathan Greaves was another who has joined us and what a great job he did on his debut last week.
All positive stuff and now we can look forward to a busy few days, with Sheffield home and away, and Scunthorpe away on Sunday.
I don’t think the weather forecast is great for tonight.
Typical isn’t it?
We hardly ever race on a Wednesday and when we do the weather looks dodgy. Still, let’s hope we are racing on the Heath tonight because there is little doubt it could be a cracker of a meeting against Sheffield.
The Tigers are decent and we did well to beat them on our opening night. But they are also good at their place and we go to Owlerton tomorrow.
Owlerton is very fast and you really have to be on the gas to race well there.
But we will be targeting victories at both Foxhall and Owlerton, so here’s hoping.
I played football on Friday.
I’m not very good at football and at school I never played much. But I had the chance to play in a charity six-a-side game at Peterborough United’s ground with some mates of mine. It was great fun.
I went in goal. I think it is pretty fair to say I would have got in quite a lot of trouble if I had to phone Chris Louis up and tell him I had got injured playing football.
We didn’t win, didn’t ever look like winning either.
We were just having a laugh, our team. But some of the others were taking it so seriously. Blimey, you would have though it was the World Cup or something.
I enjoyed watched the Grand Prix on Saturday night.
Freddie Lindgren was in great form again on one of those GTR engines.
Freddie is one of the only, if not the only, rider to be on a GTR and he looked really impressive.
Chris Louis has about 12 of them apparently and no doubt taking orders as we speak!
Like most riders I’m on GMs. It would be good to have a GTR in my garage, but you would really have to go the whole hog and get four or five engines and that would cost a fair bit.
I have to think whether I would be able to recoup that outlay? Probably not at the moment.
I had a bit of a stinker at Leicester on Monday night. I went through the tapes in one race and in heat 13 with the rain coming down I was stuck out on gate four and had no chance as we all slithered round.
Us Lions were well beaten by Rory ‘maximum’ Schlein and that boy Lindgren again.
It was only my second competitive meeting at Leicester this season. We’ll get there, make no doubt.
So, hope to see you tonight at Foxhall Heath.
Give us a wave, and if you want any autographs, just shout.
DANNY
AS TOLD TO MIKE BACON
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