While 1000 birds circle overhead in the brooding red sky...

I'm getting back moving tonight. I will be playing Badminton tonight at Tampere Arena. I think that sounds quite extreme - like I would be playing in front of 15000 people. This actually happened to a guy I used to know, or so he claims. He was struggling to find a badminton court and found out that Manchester Veledrome sets up a few courts while there aren't any cycle races on. He turned up to discover that there were both badminton courts and cycle races. Unperterbed, they started playing. Unfortunately not a lot was happening was in the races and the crowd's attention was drawn to the action on the badminton courts. They chose their favourites and started cheering the results. The players were especially happy to get a round of applause after a particularly long ralley. Of course, he told me all this about ten years ago and I got the feeling then that he was stretching the story a little bit and I think that some of the details have been fixed wrongly in my head. I think that it's a nice story though. All the same, I expect that anybody watching me play my first badminton game in nearly 10 years will be sorely disapointed at the skills on display.

But winter is coming and I need to get moving before the extreme cold comes. Currently it's about +5 but Ulriikka doesn't think that it's winter coat cold. She thinks it's even too early to wear my fancy new wooly winter boots. I mean for me to wear my furry winter boots. Not her.

Incidentally, has anybody heard the results of the US presidential elections? The world media seems strangely quiet on the outcome. I assume that Mike Huckabee won.