Almost a taste of home

I went to the butcher's today to pick up our custom-made, specially-ordered Lincolnshire sausages. 52 sage and pepper pork sausages. The best $42 I've spent for a long while. I tried a couple tonight, practically the minute I walked through the door (after cooking them, of course!) I approve. I've had better, it is true, but not in this country. Given the pepper and sage proportions were guestimated from a range of online recipes I've found I couldn't really expect them to compare to Birketts' or Petitts' or Boston Sausage's but they're a really good step in the right direction. Maybe I'll get them to add a touch more sage next time.

I was speaking to a guy at work the other day about playing football. During the winter he runs a team, a proper 11-a-side team. He's recruited a couple of other people from the office. I mentioned I might be interested but unfortunately he's got a full quota of players. The good news though, is that one of the IT consultants we have around the office also runs a team in the same league and he's looking for players. I gave him a call and am ready to sign up. It's been quite a while since I've played full outside footy competitively. We had the fortnightly Barge footy back in London but it was still pretty much friendly stuff. The most recent regular stuff would probably be back at uni when I played for Ian's team sometimes, once the American football season was over. So Saturday afternoons from April onwards (except the 5th because the team has a bye and the 12th becuase we'll be up in Abel Tasman) I'll hopefully be playing a bit of footy. Training is on Wednesdays unfortunately, so given our current commitment to helping run the Christianity Explored course at church I won't be able to go along, at least for now. The guy who runs the team doesn't seem to think that'll be a problem though. I'm a bit worried about my fitness levels and my ability to last 90 minutes but with the rolling subs I've heard about I'll manage. And it'll get easier over time. And it's not like I'm doing no exercise at all or anything. I just need to ration the sausages.