Quality

The thing about Spurs fans is they are articulate, intelligent, they can sing, they know the words to songs and they are good looking. Oh, hang on a minute...

Superstition

I have just read that Juande Ramos: "is reputed to avoid using the telephone on the day of a game, puts his right foot first on to the turf before each match and would have avoided touching or looking at the Carling Cup until it was won or lost at Wembley on Sunday."

I'm glad these things affect the elite as well. My boy has taken to wearing several layers of Spurs shirts in a particular order at each match. Lucky we don't play in the height of summer. He also has a flag that's lucky for goals and one that ensures we win. I had to take that one to Wembley on Sunday and take a picture of it to send to him.

I used to have a lucky scarf that I'd had since I was a boy. In those days you got boys' scarves so this one barely went round my neck. it was moth eaten and had been chewed by my dog and I used to trail it out of the window of the car on the way to a game. One day a couple of seasons ago it worked its way loose and was in some puddle somewhere by the time I'd noticed. Once I got over the trauma of realising that all future defeats would be my sole responsibility, I decided to buy a similar scarf. This one, though, is thicker and hotter. It's a right pain actually but I still have to take it to games.

My girl (why doesn't this surprise me?) had a cup cake on Sunday while watching the match. She rolled and rolled the wrapper in her hand until it resembled a small rabbit dropping. This wasn't deliberate; it was just one of those nervous things you do. Apparently it was down to this 'lucky poo' that we won and this now has to be handled on the occasion of each game.

All the talk in the press about Ramos' genius is a nonsense. So long as no-one phones him and we have poo and scarves and multiple shirts all in the right order, we can't fail to keep on winning.

Exam answers

There are some great maths ones on this site. http://mozey.wordpress.com/2007/02/18/funny-exam-answers/ I was looking for some daft things that students have done so that i could give them to my students so that they could role play giving effective feedback. Instead i spent all afternoon laughing and not getting much done. This one is my favourite:

If you can't read it, it's about kittens and chromosones and asks a very complicated (to me) question about what colours you'd expect given a specific set of variables. The answer is: "I would check to see if it had a vagina."

Top marks

Quaking in my boots

I woke up around 1am this morning shaking with the disconcerting sensation of being on a roller coaster. Initially I thought it was a dream but as I came to I realised that it was something real. Once it stopped I went through all the possibilities and, having assessed the room and flat for signs of disruption, decided that something had happened to me. All I could come up with was that i had had some kind of fit. My 'fitful' sleep that followed was anxiety ridden and full of doctors and tests and thoughts of losing my driving license and medication for epilepsy. I told my boy about it this morning and it was only then that he told me about the earthquake. Man, I have never been so relieved to hear about a natural (mini) disaster.

It's funny how our disasters are so puny. We have mini tornadoes, mini floods, snow flurries and now mini earthquakes. If a meteorite ever hits the UK you can be sure it'll only smash the window in some old boy's greenhouse but will still make the 6 o'clock news.

My girl felt the quake too but her educated analysis of it was even more off the wall. She decided that it was someone going to the toilet in her house. I put it to her that her fellow house dwellers must be elephantine or seriously ill for her to draw that conclusion but she loyally disregarded that suggestion. I wonder if our reactions to these things reveals anything about our psyches. My conclusion may well reveal deep rooted pessimism about my own frailties and consiousness of impending doom. Hers seems to reveal a sweeter, more noncholant, non self obsessed acceptance. Either that or she's a doughnut head.

Ossie's dream + Ricky's goals

We were singing this a lot on Sunday. The Top of the Pops performance resonates of more innocent times.

Hug

My best mate is more tactile than me. Sometimes when he is off to work on the rigs for a while or we have had a drink and are going our own ways he gives me a hug. I have known him for 21 years so you'd think I'd be comfortable with it by now but I still stiffen perceptibly each time it happens (not in that way). Have I really been conditioned so thoroughly by my 1970s upbringing and stand offish step dad that I will never be able to go with the flow? What made me think about this and what makes it odder is the fact that I hugged and was hugged by a number of rough/ tough blokes I'd never met before on Sunday and can say that I was unquestionably unstiff.

My girl is worse. When she saw the video clip of the final whistle below she even said that she was glad she wasn't at Wembley. Maybe that makes us even more suited. I'll buy her a hermetically sealed bubble ball so that she can roll around our house in it while I, Howard Hughes like, disinfect everything and only receive visitors who have been through a special decontamination chamber.

Carling Cup Final Highlights