Wednesday 21st November.

19 days to go.

After I enjoyed an uninterrupted nights’ sleep I seem to have shaken off whatever it was that caused me to feel unwell. It must have been 24 hour malaria. (One of the lesser known Malarias)

The SS contained in about half of its 16 pages, stories relating to the political situation. More claim and counter claim, it is getting nastier though. Accusations in the paper of lying and deception are now the norm, rather than the polite innuendo of the previous days. Maybe this is the start of the real battles.

One thing that is troubling me about the Solomons is not the political situation, but a football one. Football is the national sport. They have a Football Federation and a development system. They only have one football ground where the teams of the national league, The DJ League can play. That is the national stadium, Lawson Tama.

Recently there was an Oceania Champions League match played here, the week before all DJ League matches were postponed to let the ground recover and be at its best. This week is the start of the Solomon Cup, played by under 23 teams from all the provinces of the Solomons.

Again Lawson Tama was closed for 2 weeks prior to start, this weekend, to allow the ground to be at its best for the competition. It will be allowed to rest after the competition so there will be no more DJ League games this year.

I would have thought that there would be at least another ground available for the DJ League. Even the Football Academy could be used. There are other football pitches, none are good enough for the games, but to develop them would not be a stretch, particularly for the “national sport”.

So that is the excitement, sorry it is like this, but, I am a boring old fart. I could tell you about the combined Army and Police patrols passing by the office every hour or so. Maybe do a piece about the Helicopter flying over every day on patrol. If I did that, however, you might all think that this was an exciting and dangerous place to live and work.