Another mass-debate

I have a debate about this weekend.

You may wonder if this is how I spend every Friday afternoon when work dips a little quiet. It isn't. I'm usually listening to songs on Youtube whilst catching up on the latest edition of one of the legal magazines I have to read.

But in my life of constant dilemmas I have a new one.

You may recall a couple of months ago I reported that I was taking a period of enforced leave from football. This was due to a number of reasons, but mostly due to:

• Brighton weekend
• V Festival
• Manchester
• London

Along with various other distractions and a surprise visit a) of my mother over from France necessitating a couple of  family meals; and b) some rather pleasant weather necessitating a barbeque and the opportunity to get some decent work done in the garden.

I wanted to take a break anyway; but last weekend was the first weekend that I would have been available to go along and train. Only training wasn't on - the team was up in Scotland playing against the entirely descriptive HotScots.Yes, they are Scotch; and yes, they are hot.

But that means I have a decision to make as to whether I go this weekend or not. Only it's not simply a decision as to whether I break my hiatus - these things are rarely as simple as that!

The main factor weighing in as to whether I stay away, is that one of the players is leaving. All the more reason to go, surely? No. He is leaving the county - he is moving away to Leeds. As such he is having official leaving drinks on the Sunday night, an hour after the end of training. Were these just nice, informal drinks they wouldn't have any bearing. However as they are formal 'leaving' drinks, I really should make the effort not only to attend, but to attend smartly.

Which is where the problem occurs.

Drinks start at 9pm, training finishes at 8pm. In that hour I have to cycle home from the training ground (30 mins); shower (10 mins); dress (10mins); faff around (10 mins) and then walk (30mins) to the pub where the drinks are. It just doesn't add up.

And again factors have conspired against me turning up late. Usually turning up half an hour late to these sorts of things is no bother at all. However I have to be at work the next day. Have to be. I did think about taking it off: I still have eight days of holiday to take before the end of the calender year and I have very little else pressing on them; and I haven't had a good night out with the footballers in a long time. However I am doing some testing on a new system to be released to clients which must start Monday morning. So I cannot be absent.

As such, bearing in mind the ridiculously early time I have to get up (5:45am) this means that the latest I can leave the pub really is midnight. So if I turn up at 9:30 instead of 9pm I have already lost 1/6th of my available drinking time.

So that is one factor working against my return.

But then there is my legs. One of the unmentioned reasons for taking the time off football was to rest a little. I have had some quite severe pains in my shins for a wee while. I have put these down to shin splints from football and jogging, so took a break from both over the summer month, though I have now restarted jogging again. But the pain is still there.

So maybe it isn't shin splints. Maybe it is bone cancer. I always think I have cancer. I'm a tiny bit of a hyperchondriac. I've had a constant pain in one of my lungs for a good couple of years now - I think that is cancer too. It probably isn't. If it were I'd probably be dead by now. It might be like that chap who inhaled a pea and it started growing in his lung. It might actually just be absolutely nothing. Or purely psychosomatic. That boy needs therapy.

But I will probably never know, because I don't go to the doctors'. The last time I set foot in the GP surgery was around three years ago, and even that was only to pick up a sick note that I had rung in for because I had a broken jaw. And the surgeons I saw for my broken jaw were the first medical professionals I had seen in a long while. And even that was only because of the said broken jaw.

I know I should go to the doctors about it. It's not as though it's a nothingness. It is actually quite painful; and it has been there fore a while. I just don't like to be a burden, or get a reputation as one of those people who is 'always at the doctors'' for one reason or another.

And I'll only be able to go to the doctors once I have sorted out my critical illness insurance anyway.