Cows

Walking across moorland yesterday I phoned my son to check if sheep would chase me when Iwalked across a field full of them. 'City boy!' he said. I'd been walking two hours by this time and I had no idea where I was. I relaxed a bit and struggled, ill equipped and thirsty, through lumpy grass and squelchy brown water that filled my boots every third step. I saw some sheep's ribs and the skull in this picture. Wolves or wild boar I guessed or something that would no doubt enjoy my meaty urban flesh. The rain started and the wind lashed it into my face as I struggled through the swampy terrain. I came to a stile that led to another field; this time full of cows. At least I thought they were cows. Maybe they were bulls. As I walked tentativley past them they stared at me in the way Gary Larson's cows stare blankly out of the cartoon panel. I took this picture as I walked past them, trying hard to exude confidence or, at the very least, an absence of fear. 'What are you looking at?' they all seemed to be asking. 'Get off our land.' Disturbingly, every time I looked round they all seemed to have rushed closer then adopted the same blank pose. It took me ages to get past them. I don't like cows.

Good riddance to chocolate

So, as per every year, the new kits are unveiled in time for parents all over North London and the South East (and one in Yorkshire) to mutter under their breaths: '£54.99...??? daylight robbery...I'll get his grandma to knit him one...bah.'

Glory glory hallelujah though; the chocolate monstrosity has gone. When Ferguson famously made his team change out of a grey strip at half time I scoffed along with the rest of the world but that shite brown thing they wore in some of our worst performances last season must have had an effect. Maybe it made them hungry or camouflaged or something.

The one Robbie is wearing is a one off to celebrate 125 years of THFC- it looks a bit like the Blackburn kit but is supposedly close to what the Spurs wore back in the days. The whole 125 year thing makes me feel old- I have a Spurs centenary shirt in a drawer somewhere- not that it fits so well now; people were smaller in those days.

I like the look on Berbatov's face: 'Why they put me in yellow? Yellow not a man's colour, I want Dawson shirt. Will use poison tipped umbrella on him in minute. That will show...now where I put my hair band...?'

Bradford Fire

Today is the 22nd anniversary of the Bradford fire. 56 people died when the main stand at Valley Parade caught fire during the last match of the season in 1985. It's strange how proximity in place can make you closer in time and emotion to an event too. I'm in Bradford today where a minute's silence marked several work places and in a few places I've been the talk is of people that died. The footage is shocking (as well as subject to much controversy- Yorkshire TV have worked hard to prevent it from being circulated on the web). The commentary is particularly poignant as you can clearly hear the change in emotion in the commentator's voice as well as the broader change from surprise to panic in the crowd as a whole. It makes me realise how much things have improved since then but, having read some of the reports and comparing it to Hillsborough, it also engenders a sense of anger at how it could have happened in the first place. It's stuff like this that really makes me angry though. From the Guradian article below: 'It was the deaths of 66 supporters at Ibrox in 1971 that led to the introduction of the first piece of legislation that offered protection to sports fans, the 1975 Safety of Sports Grounds Act. Government staggered the legislation's introduction; international and First Division grounds were designated first, with lower division grounds to follow later. Only they did not. After lobbying, the Thatcher government indefinitely postponed further designation on the basis that lower division grounds were not attended in sufficient numbers even though any proposal that public safety legislation be abandoned at other public buildings that held thousands less would have brought uproar.'

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dboocock/fire.htm

http://football.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9753,1480946,00.html

I love martin Jol

inspired song, crap images.

Of all the teams to get relegated

Of course we needed the points, of course we're likely to struggle on Thursday to Blackburn (who still have an outside chance of qualifying for Europe), of course Man City won't be the pushover they should be but...I can't help feeling discomfort about Charlton's relegation and the fact that Spurs sealed it with their 2-0 win at the Valley last night. I know there was one incident last year but, apart from that, they are such a friendly, innocuous, happy-go-lucky bunch that it just seems a darned shame. I lived in the Woolwich area for a couple of years and I still don't understand where all these nice people at the Valley come from; they certainly don't frequent the shops in Woolwich. That's reserved for women in toweling jumpsuits f-ing and blinding at their scrawny offspring.

It looks as if West Sham are going to scrape survival at Wigan's expense- the kind hearted me thinks maybe this is a good thing for London football seeing as two london clubs are already set for the drop. The Spurs fan in me thinks: 'spawny gits.' I also think it's a shame for us that we can't now cream off their top players. Tevez is definitely ugly enough to wear the lillywhite shirt. Having said all that, apart from the last couple of seasons, Spurs have struggled for years agaisnt London opposition so maybe it's a good thing. However, we did the double over both the Shammers and Charlton this season, amassing 13 goals in the process, so I'm in two minds about that too. Frankly, if there's an omniscient, free thinking, benevolent football overseer in the sky I hope s/he hears my wish that next year Chelsea, man Yoo and, of course, A****l all go down. there'd be dancing in the streets north and south if that happened.


the goals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-n0yVNjPrQ
report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/eng_prem/6602895.stm

No room at the top

The lift doors opened to reveal an elderly couple. Two smartly dressed people, unselfconsciously oozing wealth and poise. Wealth and poise mingled with the dirt and grime of the once smart elevator. Woise and drime became nothing more than woime. I’d seen enough woime in my life to know a failed portmanteau. The fact that they just smiled but didn’t move suggested that they weren’t rich as a consequence of higher end intellects. So I guess it was either years of inbreeding or they were the classiest elevator attendants in London, England. Immediately, something told me to be careful. I smiled at something and thanked her for the warning. The whole set up stank. Was the girl with me one of them? Was one of them with the girl? Was he one of them? Who could I trust? Should I have used whom? Why did I even sniff the set up in the first place?

We walked in and waited. Ten seconds seemed like twelve or thirteen. I reached over to the control panel: something wasn’t quite right- ‘Shift a little from the left,’ I hissed at the girl. The panel had four buttons. I undid them and noticed the controls ran from ground to two then skipped all the rest of the floors until eight. What was on floors three to seven? My confusion was tangible. My contusion was triangle. Her cardigan was tangerine.

‘You going to the top?’ he queried; the accent so clipped and nasal he was the epitome of British aristocracy. The monocle, top hat and silver topped cane kinda gave it away too. I said nothing.
‘Nothing,’ I repeated, determined to convince him I was merely a foreign visitor to London, England. ‘I up in lift to top see many please.’
‘Is it the restaurant or the viewing balcony you want?’ the woman asked in a voice dripping with the residue of a thousand silver spoons. Again I used subtle inflections in my voice and the merest hint of a change in posture to deliberately evoke a hint of the Middle East or South East Asia and, of course, use a valid split infinitive: ‘Vleiwing Bralcony prease,’ I muttered.

We emerged from the lift on eight. The couple drifted into the restaurant: they’d stepped into the rapidly flowing ornamental river. The air reeked of fine wine, good food, expensive perfume and regular beef stock. ‘Actually, I’m just looking for the toilet,’ I said to the girl, ‘there’s no way they’ll let us anywhere near the restaurant dressed like this.’ Such is the reality of life at the top of the Oxo tower.

Wolf Girl in Spoon Attack

Stories of children raised by wolves have abounded for millenia. It seems now, though, that Romulus and Remus are to be knocked off their pedestals as the greatest wolf children of them all. A family of wolf children have been plaguing the very modern city of London. Our photographer barely escaped with his ice cream intact yesterday when this snarling, hirsuite (yet somehow extremely foxy) wolf girl leapt at him in a bankside restaurant. With claws, sharpened teeth and a big shiny spoon she leapt at him shreiking 'Hei? Hei? Hei?' in a shockingly plaintive wail that would have engendered sympathy had not the salivating jaws confirmed her bloodthirsty intent. He fended her off with a combination of charm and a baton of french bread. Police were called but the wolf girl had already made her escape. This is the fifth such incident in as many days but the first to be captured on film.