The sunshine in the north west has continued solid for a couple of weeks now and yesterday was not to prove an exception. I was down for working but had one overdue issue; the courier's bane: balding edged front tyres from all those damn curbs we climb up on. It had got to a point which was borderline a potential losing argument about legality. After failing to get them sorted on Tuesday I finally got it booked in for yesterday (doing about a thousand miles a week tyre issues can quickly change from borderline to "what rubber?") This meant an increased likelihood of yet another unwanted day off, but better a few quid down that a £1000 and 6pts on the licence.

At least it meant I had the chance to take a walk in the early morning sunshine and go get a breakfast, albeit in a County Road kind of way. I had a piece of writing I wanted to work on for a competition Owl Canyon Press were running. The closing date was yesterday and I had been working a little on it on and off over a couple of weeks. Needless to say that I was only half way through but if I had to take the day off I could at least work on it and get something submitted however rushed.

Two phone calls later. A route in Altrincham if you want it; over 140 stops with a very late start? No thanks. Second call. A miss-sort route, ready now. OK. 21 drops spread all over: Liverpool city centre, Birkenhead, Ellesmere Port, Wavertree, St Helens, Warrington, Timperley, Lymm, Kirkby. Ended up being a bit of a late finish with the delayed start (and actually 168 miles), but less tiring than 140 stops in that sunshine. Oh, and driving on new tyres was a lot more relaxing not worrying about pulling up next to the rozzers or parking next to one in a car park. And relax...

Driving around whilst listening to the exciting France v Argentina match was good. Normally you can't hear much as you're in and out of the cab so much you miss more than you catch, but with 21 drops there was more driving than delivering. Huzzah! Whilst it meant I missed watching a great game there was the Portugal game to come - Suarez vs Ronaldo. So I got to watch that. And the joy of watching Ronaldo knocked out of the World Cup at this early stage made it a mildly joyous evening.

So a quick bit of reviewing at breakfast had been overtaken by work and left me fifteen hundred words short of the story with the deadline of the competition looming quicker than a German exit from the cup. The closing date was 30th June, but it was an American competition so there were more hours to play with from Blighty. By midnight I'd printed it out. Read and edited. Made the changes and uploaded by 1.30am. Yay! I got it in with over 5 hours to spare. Result. 5,500 words. All the right ones, just not necessarily in the right order etc etc.

Memo to Self: Don't leave it to the last minute next time.

Reply to Memo to Self: Yeah, right!