Sundays back to what they should be

Yes rugby is back and we've been down to York for most of the afternoon watching the North Yorkshire U17s trial with Matt and his team mates. A good afternoon with the parents of the other Middlesbrough triallists and the parents of the York players who we miss seeing this year as our U17s are playing for the U19s. Always good to see the York folk as they have some top players and are a great bunch and great to see James, ex-Boro player and ex-schoolmate of Matt who was outstanding today. Good performances by the Middlesbrough lads as well so fingers crossed for a call up.

I've had a full weekend off, apart from a few emails, which is the first one for some time. Saturday saw a blitz chess tournament in Middlesbrough Central Library (yes some of us Smoggies can read) as part of the centenary celebrations and a quick dash to the Star for some beer and a pick up of my free ticket to watch Boro in the footy championship followed by more beer in the Star - well it would have been a little impolite to not pop back afterwards.

The working week, a mere five days in the last week, saw a couple of new websites begun which will be finished off early next week. One is for a local plumbers and the other for a local building company. More on those next week.

I spent Thursday at the We Are Bounce Event at The Riverside Stadium, Middlesbrough. This was a great event aiming to get Tees Valley businesses working together to bounce out of the double dip recession and beyond. We were all confident of continuing to grow the success story that is the North East economy but that the national media want to hide. If you haven't done so already, check out the stats on the balance of payments up here and you will get a different picture to the doom and gloom. There were some really good speakers, chats with other businesses we already know and getting to know some people we didn't know previously. We've got meet-ups planned with a few of these new business contacts in the coming weeks to see how we can work together. A very useful event.