2 months to go until this years Tour Of France commences. Bradley has vowed to defend his victory of last year and go one further by also winning the Cycle Around Italy, something not many people ever manage to do.

Last year Bradley was ably assisted by team mate Chris Froome who remains on the team and staunchly vowed to, also win the Tour Of France.

I quite fancy going to The More Festival in Venice as the Bieannale is on at the same time, so I had a look at flights and I could go to Venice for £40 return from East Midlands, bargain I thought but then looking at accomodation I discover that it's £30 to even stay in a ten bed dorm which isn't even in Venice proper, this makes a five day stay rather costly especially if you factor in the the cost of a festival ticket. I'm looking at £350 before I've even bought an overpriced pint of beer.

Report of the evening for the benefit of future Joe on the occasion of his 79th Birthday.

Back in those days we mostly still used telephones and the internet to communicate so throughout the afternoon I had been receiving reports that Eileen & Sophie were in the process of missing every available method of transport from their home in Oxford ( before Global Warming so you could still live there without deep sea diving equipment ) to Birmingham. This was before flying cars had been invented so in the end they managed to get on a train.