Tense, nervous headache.....?

'Tense, nervous headache?' It's an ad strapline that has stuck in my brain for years - mainly because we corrupted it. What was supposed to follow it was: 'Nothing works faster than Anadin.' Think about it.... - nothing works faster than anadin. So our take was 'Take nothing, 'coz nothing works faster than anadin.'

Anyway, I'm rambling. It's tense this morning on all fronts. The final day of a wonderful Ashes summer has started. The equation is simple. England simply need to bat for about the next six hours. The aussies have to get nine wickets and leave sufficient time to knock off what they hope will be a small total. Sounds simple, but the pride of two nations and years of bragging rights hang on the result.

This year the Ashes has been a phenomenon - even my wife was watching what little action there was yesterday. And the halo effect is palpable. My son, who'd never picked up a bat before spent a day at Lord's learning cricket skills and watching a Totesport match. Like me before him, he has now adopted Middlesex as his team, and we both scan the net each night to keep up with their fortunes....while planning just one more day of live cricket before the season ends. Better still, he's regularly dragging me round to the park to practise his reverse swing and reverse sweeps. Now if we could just get five-year-old Sophie to stay at cover for more than four seconds....

Still, it's tense here on a number of fronts. Last week we went after three contracts. We've already been ruled out of one, which is a shame as it looked interesting, but still have two on the go. If either (or preferably both) come off, it'll make all the difference between a very good year and an average year for the business. All will be resolved in the next couple of days, but it's very distracting trying to do the bread and butter stuff while waiting for the phone to ring.