Guess who's back!

Hi everybody. How are you all? I didn't mean to suspend bloggage for a full week, but life – in the form of the School Games and then the start of Freshers' Week – got in the way rather. The Games were mostly enjoyable. The fencers and other athletes were largely lovely and happy. Tired, bruised and focussed, with the usual fallings out between themselves, but nothing serious. The adults, on the other hand, were infuriating. Some team management seemed to consist of little more than sniping at each other, while some of the parents were vile. Not just demanding, selfish, reactive and dumb, but hostile, rude and arrogant to boot. For future reference, an early start is neither 'child abuse' nor 'a breach of the Children's Act'. Your son is one of several thousand elite sports performers and the occasional early alarm call is entirely normal. Oh, and describing the event as 'not serious' really insults the other participants: being selected to represent your country is actually quite a big thing.

Rant over. Here are some of my favourite pictures from the weekend. I'll spread them over a couple of Vole entries and you can see the rest of the 500 here. Click these to enlarge them. While I'm at it: Flickr Uploadr is awful and I've wasted a day trying to get it to work.