Strike Factory

The main cheery highlight of the last week is possibly the Ball family dog the Jack Russell charmer Toby who celebrated turning 5 years old recently, and over the weekend whilst visiting my parents at Ball Manor HQ.

Toby was charming my sister Rose and her 3 school friends in the living room greeting them hugging and kissing them like a gentleman and charmed them enough that they were happy to let him join them in Roses bedroom! What happened next? when the girls are not looking he helps himself to a slice of pizza the girls were devouring, taking it with him downstairs as his trophy what a charming Jack Russell our Toby is, but we love him, but girls beware Toby knows how to get what he wants by his magic with the female sex!

Well an awful lot has happened since my last blog post, been through all the emotions with Brighton the last week seeing them sneak into the playoffs in style get outplayed by Derby County in the semi finals and now Oscar Garcia has resigned 2nd manager gone at the club in 12 months, what is going on?

The other not so great stuff includes the Oxfam Crawley shop where I occasionally help out was broken into on Thursday night and £300 of cash and goods was stolen, and the culprit left a broken window, resulted in the shop being closed for a day losing yet more money and also now having to invest in better security gear at the shop, some sick people in the world! 

Finally was sad to hear the death of former British No.1 and WTA Top 50 star Elena Baltacha, Ukraine born but raised in England and Scotland due to her USSR international footballer Sergi coming to play football in the UK in late 80s! Elena became one of Britains best female players of recent years, I first of her as a teenager in the early 2000s when Ace tennis magazine tipped the then fresh faced 17 year old as a star of the future, and showed promise when she stunned WTA Top 10 star Amanda Coezter at Wimbledon in 2002 though it was a few years later that she cracked the WTA Top 100 eventually rising to her highest ranking of 49 becoming one of the leading girls along with the likes of Anne Keothavong and Katie O Brien in the revival of British womens tennis as they were first ones to crack top 100 since Sam Smith, Elena retired just at the end of last year and getting married with plans to focus running her tennis academy finding the next top Brtish tennis stars in Ipswich, then sadly liver cancer comes along and few months later she is gone but not forgotten! :( My thoughts are with her friends and family RIP Elena Baltacha!