"I'm not your sweetheart"

I had a bonkers busy day, today. A meeting in Chorley at nine-thirty, followed a haircut in anticipation of tonight's award ceremony, and then back home to run through my speech a couple more times and, oh yes, actually finish the last bit, plus have the first shave since the last time I met with a client (maybe four weeks ago) but as I pulled up in the drive, I saw the Minx's keys were there just in front of the gearstick!

I had some work I had to do, so I got that out of the way and then drove back down to Chorley, dropped off the keys and headed straight back north. (The silver lining to all of this was that it gave me a chance to listen to the tracks for this week's #electronicears.) Despite being pushed for time, I decided to go for a quick swim and then went back to get on with the shave, rehearsing, writing et cetera.

And that would have all been absolutely fine but the new camera I ordered had arrived, so in amongst everything else that needed doing, I was unable to refrain from unpacking, setting up and grabbing a few shots. Dan was happy to mug for the camera but Abi was less interested, despite inadvertently giving me the shot that I ended up liking the most.

In the end, everything went fine: the Minx arrived in good time, we made it for the pre-ceremony drinks and the speech appeared to go down well enough (no actual jeering or bottle throwing). And afterwards, a band of us went down to into Kirkby for beers and pizzas as we do every year. It's this part of the evening that I love the most and is one of my favourite events of the year.