Rain stopped play again and general update

 Last weekend all the cricket was called off, as far as I'm aware not a match was played despite the fact that over the weekend the weather was fine, it was the run up to the weekend - rain, rain and more rain and all the venues including our own pitch at Mopsies were water-logged. But the weekend saw a change in the weather. The Azores high pushed north moving all the bad weather up to where it's supposed to be... In the north - Scotland and Northern Ireland and at last for the first in months we had some proper weather. Sunshine 25 degree centigrade and blue skies!

We'd decided to go up the Midlands (Derby) to see the in-laws having had notifications by email and text messages that our matches were off, so this was the perfect opportunity to get up there and see them. But, somehow I'd missed the fact that Ben had a game on Sunday and it wasn't until we'd left and were half way up the M1 that Kieran Barbero's Mum sent a text asking "Is the U13's match off then"? So as soon as we go there I had to text Ben's manager Dave Ayres and explain that we'd cocked up. He then did say that it wasn't 100% that the U13's game was on and that it may yet be called off and sure enough by the end of Saturday we got notification that it had been called off as well because of the state of the pitch, so I felt a lot better about the situation as it felt as though we'd let the team down.

Joe's recovery update

I haven't posted any pic's of late of Joe's leg, so here's the most recent shot this morning. As I've said before the visual aspect of the recovery seems to have slowed down massively and the difference from one clinic visit to another is now very minimal. Overall though, Joe's doing well, since the consultant spoke to him, relating his condition to the astronauts and the way that their bones and muscle deplete because of inactivity, Joe's been ditching the crutches and hobbling around with out them when he's indoors, outside though he's still using the crutches, but he seems to be putting more weigh through the injured leg.

He's got his first physio visit at the hospital this Wednesday and we're all looking forward to seeing what they say, but a few people have said that they reckon by the time he gets back to school in early September he'll be walking around with a limp with no crutches or even a walking stick, which if it happens will be really good news. But for the moment he's still very reliant on his crutches and is missing out on so much, normally he's a very active kid and just today on day one proper of the 6 week holiday he already looks very fed up and is saying that he's bored and that he wishes that he could get into his new school.

A couple of days later... Just been to see the Physio at the hospital (Jill) and that's gone really well. She checked out his posture and the way that he's walking and where Joe's got deficiencies and over-compensating for the injured leg. His mobility in his ankles and knees are good and generally his strength in the bad leg is okay and only slightly behind where she expected it to be at this stage. So Joe's been given a list of bends, stretches and drills to do and we have another visit next week. Overall it went really well and again the message is that he's expected to be walking without any aids by the time he goes to secondary school. When we got home I suggested that Joe have a little go on his bike and he had a little go and said it felt weird - I think he's mostly worried about falling off and having to put the bad leg down quickly.

I've just gone through the physio routines with Joe and there was only one where he reported pain. Sitting on the floor with a green terra band around his foot with me holding the end he has to  push his foot away from me as at 2.56 in this vid. From the physio advice I've had from Liz Ward on www.bigcricket.com in the past I know that if there is pain then this shouldn't be done, so we adjusted the resistance so that it was much lower and then this was fine.

This is Joes wounds as they were on Monday. The top one is the inside of the leg with "The hole" to the left and the "Exit wound" to the right nearer the top of the leg and as you can see they're very slowly getting better. The physio today had a look at the scars and said that the exit wounds can and should be massaged to break down the scar tissue under the surface and showed Joe what he needs to be doing, which was good as this is one of the things I've been a little concerned with. The lower image is the impact wound.

The Paddock.

After months of rain the paddock at last has dried out enough for some work to be done on it. As usual the kids that try and play football in there, they run all over it and ruin it and for some reason dog walkers pretty do the same simply because the grass is short.

With some rolling though and the addition of a few buckets of water it came good and by the next day we were able to get the nets up for the first time and have a bit of a knock about.

Once the work had been done what with the temperature at 30 degree centigrade and 20 at night the moisture soon dried out and left us with a pretty smooth surface for Ben and Kieran to bowl on. The leg -side we leave a little rough so that the wrist spinners have got something to work with.

The nets had to be put up in a different way this year because the fence has been taken down and the council refuses to replace it and this took ages and I had virtually no help at all from the boys as they all mucked about as I put it all up.

Once up though it worked quite well and needless to say if it goes up again it'll be a lot easier 2nd time around.

Ben Transformation

This morning Ben left the house on the verge of being labelled a 'Bleedin Long Haired' and came back with a new hair cut, not only that having had it cut he looked taller than me and when we measured him at the age of 13 he's about 5mm taller than me!

Here's the new look Ben...

What a difference 20 minutes makes to your life, and this wasn't instigated by me, this was his own doing and he loves the new look and the way that it feels.

Fox in the back yard.

This is a bit off-topic, but a fox turned up in our garden in broad daylight and decided he'd have a snooze. He knew we were watching him out through the window, but he wasn't bothered although he kept and eye on us, he ended up being there for about an hour and half.

Stuck a net up outside the house

We stuck a net up outside the house so that Joe could have a bat. We stick a chair behind him in case he over-balances and it works quite well and most of his shots are leg side and it gives him a chance to have a bit of fun and gets him working with both legs and balancing all of which are good news and it's just good that he gets out and about doing stuf rather than being indoors doing nothing much at all.

It's good to see that Joe's now getting up and about doing things, we've been up North recently to see his Grandparents in Derby and his Granddad has set up a table tennis table and for much of the time we were playing table tennis and this again was encouraging Joe to balance and use the bad leg.

 

 

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