Tuesday - and this will be a long one........

Minor panic tonight at the curling club as I could not get into any websites even though I had a good wireless connection but now back at the hotel and everything is OK - phew. A number of other people have been having problems of varying types with their laptops and I was concerned it had "gone viral" as the phrase seems to be these days - or maybe that should be "toxic".

Anyway I do not know whether to begin with the curling which I am sure you want to know about or with the adventures of the English curling team which may be of more interest to a certain type of reader.

But let's start with the interesting stuff...... well I was not at the curling club for the first two sessions today and so any news will be strictly factual and you have probably read it elsewhere!!! Main thing was that Scotland's men at last got their first win with a 7-4 victory over Japan though that did depend on a 3 at the 7th end to break the deadlock. Meanwhile Canada and New Zealand continued their winning ways with victories over Netherlands and Italy respectively. Scotland's next game is at 0900 tomorrow against Italy.

Earlier on today Wales lost to Sweden by 4-8 and later to Norway by 2-6, holding their own in the latter game after going 0-4 down in the first 3 ends. They are currently on a 1-3 record.

The third session was highlighted for British fans by a win for Scotland ladies against Finland and one for the Irish ladies against Russia. Finland, who had lost the previous evening by 1-15 to Denmark who Scotland had beaten, were 4-1 up after 3 ends and then some great play by Barbara Watt's team registered a big 5 at the 4th end. But the lead was only 2 shots and after 7 ends the Finns had fought back to 7-7. A miss by Barbara on her first stone at the last end went unpunished when the Finnish skip failed to change the situation and Barbara's last stone, a repeat of her first, ran true to hit and lie for 3 to loud Scottish cheers all round.

Meanwhile a few sheets away Ireland broke the deadlock against Russia with a 3 at the 6th end and eventually ran the Russians out of stones at the 8th to win 6-4 and record their first win of the week.

One unexplained scoreline shows that Sweden beat Germany 5-4 after 6 ends with X's in the 7th end implying that the end was not finished. I did not check but I can only presume that the German skip missed with his last shot and left the Swedes lying a bundle and he then conceded with the Swede's last stone and the 8th end to come.

And so to tonight's final session of the day where the games of interest were England v USA and Ireland v Switzerland.

England have never beaten the USA in 6 previous meetings but it has to be said that this has probably been the poorest performance by a US team at the Seniors, at least going by results so far. In the previous 10 World Seniors USA have reached the semi-final 9 times and the final 8 times, winning twice. This year after 4 of the games they are almost certainly out of the play-offs with just one win from 4 games. Oops - for those of you paying attention I have just given the result away - so yes England defeated the USA by 7-2 tonight to keep their hopes alive of at least a third place finish and possible quarter final place.

After the disappointment of the loss to Ireland last night the English men had had all day to relax and re-focus and it was a much more aggressive performance all round which forced the Americans into mistakes as the pressure was cranked up.A steal of 2 at the first end and another stolen single at the second end had echoes of the game against Ireland but tonight it was only a 2 that was lost at the third end and that was the last that the US came close to scoring, England eventually running the Americans out of stones at the last end.

Meanwhile through in the annex and invisible to us in the main bar Ireland and Switzerland were going to an extra end after reaching the eighth end tied at 3-3. With last stone still to come JohnJo Kenny placed his first in the 4 foot to lie 2 shots and he did not need to play his last stone when the Swiss skip, Karl Grossmann (who played in the 1979 Europeans in Varese), failed to disturb them.

So a good finish to a successful day for British teams.

So how did the English men relax and re-focus - by getting a bit of culture - Phil and John and their wives went to the design museum and had a cruise on the river / canals while Michael, Tommy and JB went to the Museum devoted to the Danish resistance against the Germans in WW2. There now follows a picture diary of some of the day's activities.........

Nyhavn (below) is one of the tourist traps of Copenhagen - a small dock where numerous cafes and bars offer food and drink of varying quality and price. Many have outside tables but the flurries of snow deterred anyone form partaking of these.

Tommy and Michael found the holes being dug very interesting - maybe they were looking for somewhere to lose the rest of the team!!

Across the water was the impressive new Opera House...

 

while on this side Tommy and John spotted this floating crane and as there was a sign at the end of the gangplank welcoming you aboard they did ........

whee they found that it was used to erect wind turbines at sea and on board was this single 18 ton arm from a wind turbine, which as you can see from Tommy's size was quite impressive - being plastic and so incredibly smooth that as you approached it you could hardly tell where it was as there were no imperfections to give you any depth of field of view.And even in the light breeze blowing along the deck the arm was flexing so what it must be like when mounted 120m up in the air.........

So a busy day on and off the ice now comes to a close and I will post this now for all my early morning blog viewers to read before going about their business of the day.

Just 2 final things - Louise Kerr is doing a blog on the Irish Curling Association website and it is many happy returns to Deputy Chief Empire Glenda Barrowman who was 49 again today!!