Jnr breaks his duck

Coventry's first win since 12th of December last year, with a 1-0 thrashing of the mighty Luton.

England lost to New Zealand, just to restore the balance.

Pay day today

Or as I like to think of it; the day before I'm skint again.

London - the friendly city revisited

On my way to get a sandwich today I saw two fights. Considering that the sandwich shop is about 100 metres away, I'd say that was good going. One was between a car driver and a biker who had parked at the end of his bay and the other was 2 fellas in suits who seemed to know each other outside the Sanderson Hotel.

I got the train into town on Friday and on my way home at Victoria Underground I saw some guy kick over a busker's collection bucket. And laugh.

It makes you glad to be alive.

Motivation critical low

You know that things aren't going to well at work when you go for a shit 'to kill a bit of time'.

Dentally ill

Coventry's ailing season reached another milestone last week when the club captain, Robert Page and Michael Doyle had a punch up on the training ground. Page 'injured his hand' and Doyle 'required dental work' (ie, Page knocked his teeth out). Happy days.

Is there an echo in here?

With the risk of repeating myself... England have been beaten again by Australia. That's 9 games v the Aussies on this tour, and we've won none. Drawn none neither. Just when you thought things couldn't get worse, they bowled us out for 110 and won by 9 wickets. It was a day night match but they didn't need to turn the floodlights on. Tomorrow we have our final game of this tour* against New Zealand. Then let's put this silly game to bed.

*If we beat NZ and get a bonus point we will play a best of 3 final v Australia. Like that's going to happen.

Random moan of the day

Microwaves, what a waste of space these things are. My mum bought one, ooo, about 20 years ago when they first became freely available to the proletariat. We cleared a spot for it in the kitchen, unwrapped it with great eagerness, and plugged it in. Dad had the first go, he pretended he wasn't really interested, but like any male with a new toy, had to have a play. We soon discovered that it was excellent at making things hot. Unfortunately that was about all it was good for. We tried to cook everything in there, starting off with baked potatoes because the box boasted 'You haven't tasted a baked potato until you've tried one from the microwave'. I think the clue is in the name really, 'baked'. Various other foodstuffs made a brief appearance; pies, pizzas, frozen chips, we even tried to fry an egg in it. All of the experiments were a complete waste of time, everything that was cooked in it tasted like shit. The fried egg was good though - it exploded and splattered the kitchen with yolk. The only thing it was good for was warming up soup¹, warming up water² or melting cheese³

Last night I was in a bit of a hurry to get fed before the football started I so slapped a spud in the micro. 20 years later, after all the technological advances we have made, it still tasted like a squash ball covered in wallpaper paste. It was nice and hot though.

¹what's wrong with a saucepan?
²what's wrong with a kettle?
³what's wrong with a grill?

As predicted

Played 8, drawn 2 lost 6, GF 11, GA 20.

Oh, and England lost in cricket again.

Coventry didn't lose this weekend!

Ok, we didn't play, but at least Saturday night/Sunday morning wasn't as depressing as it normally is. We play Plymouth tonight, so I expect the sinking feeling to reappear at approximately 21:30.

Parktown Prawn

I lived in South Africa for a while in the 90's. Now I hate insects, so living over there was traumatic at times as there are hundreds of species of crawling, flying and jumping things that did their best to make me feel unwelcome. Out of all of them, the Parktown Prawn was by far the scariest living beast I have ever encountered. It's kind of a cross between a cockroach and a grasshopper, copper in colour and grows to about 2 inches. Amongst other things, it eats snails, slugs and small children. It has an armour like shell which makes it hard to kill (think a miniature Predator). They jump long distances, and when pissed off, excrete a black ink that stings, stinks and stains. They are immune to any bug spray. I know this as I once emptied a can of the strongest stuff on one resulting in the Parky developing a slight cough and a hellbent objective to hurl itself at me and make me cry. The only sure way of destroying one is to either stamp on it really really hard or setting light to it. They both have their disadvantages; setting fire to one means needing a can of lighter fluid/petrol at hand, and squishing one means having to get very close to it. There is also the danger that you might just slightly injure it then it will be out for revenge, and you only get one chance with these things. I hate them, they give me the willies.

Anyway, as with most of my anecdotes, this has some relevance. Today someone, somewhere in the building has been using bug spray. My mind has now made a connection and I keep getting this horrible feeling that one of these buggers is stalking me.

Chalky

Chalky's gone to the great kennel in the sky. There is no point watching Rick Stein's programme anymore.

Adams sacked

Oh well, it had to happen. We've gone 8 games without a win and only picked up 1 point in our last 6 games so it was inevitable. I feel sorry for Micky, he's a good guy and pulled us out of the relegation places when he first took over 2 years ago. I think he might have been able to turn things around, but when is enough enough? Now obviously. I think he is a good manager, but things just didn't work. There's no point having a good looking girlfriend if you aren't getting any. The board should also shoulder some blame in allowing McSheffrey to leave, the most reckless piece of football business I can remember.

So, who is going to replace him? McAllister will be the fan's choice, but I doubt if he will be interested. In the short term, Adrian Heath will be taking over. God help us.

Tara Micky, and thanks.

Spotted in London

I've just seen someone using a public pay phone. Kerazee.

Pop goes the winning streak, bang goes my sleep

Well Junior's amazing run of one win came to an end at about 9pm last night when the mighty Bristol City knocked Coventry out of the FA cup. That makes it played 7, drawn 2 lost 5, GF 9, GA 17 in his brief life. 2 Days before he was born we lost 5-0 to West Brom as well, but I can't count that. I'm scanning the sports pages right now to see if Adams has been sacked or not. I suspect the announcement will come some time today.

After the result I went to the spare room to sulk and reflect. 4 hours later, I heard the baby crying. Then I heard the wife talking. Saw the bedroom light go on. The cry and talking got louder. I knew what was coming next: the light burst into the spare room like an over-ripe zit being squeezed. I was informed that he was crying, there must be something wrong with him. I explained to the ball and chain that in human history, no baby has won the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor has one written a timeless opera. I think I am right in saying that there has never been an astronaut under the age of one, nor does one have any artwork displayed in the Tate Modern. In fact, the single thing that babies are good at is crying. They are experts at it, if there was a World Championship of crying, a nappy wearer would win every time. 'But he's been sicking up as well' I was informed. Well would you believe it, the next best thing that babies delight in doing is yakking. She just needed to mention nappy soiling and she would have won a prize. Anyway, I convinced her that his screaming wasn't due to him having a leg sawn off, he was just doing what babies do. He continued this for 2 hours, then promptly fell asleep.

I think he was trying to tell his old man that he desperately doesn't want to be brainwashed to support Coventry, like his granddad did to me. He was begging me to let him support Man United or Chelsea, it would be so much easier and the kids wouldn't tease him at school. Or maybe it was wind.

Because of all this, I slept through 5 renditions of the first three minutes of The Bolero and ended up being an hour late for work.

One bit of advice

'Do one thing every day that scares you'. I did about 20 things on the bike on the way home last night that frightened the bejaysus out of me. Does that mean I can lay off the sunscreen for a while?

London - the polite city

I was strolling back from Sainsburies at lunchtime having acquired my tuna and sweetcorn sandwich (a snip at £1.30) and came up to a man on crutches walking, as you can imagine, rather gingerly. The path was a bit busy and not very wide, so I moved to one side to let him struggle past. As he was passing me, this suit came from behind him and bumped into one of his crutches causing the bumper to stumble. The able bodied man turned round and said to the man on crutches 'Watch where you are going you twat'.

Junior breaks his duck

At bloody last. England stumble across the line to beat New Zealand by 3 wickets with one ball to spare. Andrew Flantiff finished on an unbeaten 72. More importantly, Junior breaks his duck. Let's hope the City can follow suit by beating the west country mob in the cup replay tonight. Two in a day? Surely not. If so, it will be a fine fine day in my son's life. How sad.

Junior's dismal run continues

Since Snowy Jnr was born a month ago, none of the teams I (we) support have won.

Coventry have played 6, drawn 2, lost 4, scored 9 goals and conceded 15. Considering the two draws and 4 of our goals were against the worst team in the league (Southend) and a League One team in the cup (Bristol City), I won't be bragging about those results.

England cricket have played 5 (3 tests, a 20/20 and a ODI) and lost all of them, badly.

Thank Buddha England rugby haven't been playing recently.

The last time any of my teams won, I wasn't a father, we had two household incomes, the dreaded visit of my in-laws hadn't happened, Xmas was a distant date as was the office Xmas party and I was allowed to go out on Saturday afternoons and get wankered. If things don't pick up soon I'm going to have to dock his pocket money.

BDO World Championship Darts

Let's face it, a darts federation without Steve 'Adonis' Beaton is hardly worth watching.

Maria

What on earth has happened to Maria Sharapova, the once slender goddess of the tennis circuit, proof that there was life after Anna K? Looks like she has been on the Mauresmo man tablets.

Songs of the week*

k-os - Equalizer (from 'Atlantis: Hymns For Disco')
My Chemical Romance - Mama (from 'The Black Parade')
The View - Wasted Little DJs / Same Jeans (from 'Hats Off To The Buskers')
Maurice Ravel - Bolero (from 'My Mobile Phone')

* So far. The week ain't over yet (said in a Curly style voice)

Posh and Beck$

From HolyMoly

Diana - Princess of Wales

To all the royalists, journalists, conspiracy theorists, Mohammed Al-Fayed, Sky/BBC/ITV News, The Sun, Her Majesty's Government and those who set up public inquiries and inquests: she's dead, get over it. Please stop spending tax-payer's money on another inquiry which will unearth absolutely nothing apart from that she died in a car accident. She wasn't topped by the royal family or secret service. Let the woman rest.

False alarm

I've been evicted from bedroom number one. There just isn't enough room for me anymore as my third of the bed (it used to be half but over time has gradually decreased) contains baby/nappies/towels/bottles/cotton wool balls/unrecognisable objects with 'Tommy Tippee' or 'Mothercare' stamped on them. It made sense that I move into the spare bedroom as I just couldn't sleep, even when His Majesty was sleeping, I'd be awake. There are a number of problems with me relocating:

1- It feels like I am either lodging or I've had a fallout with the wife, coupled with a subconscious feeling of guilt and shame.
2- The room is a mess, it is a dumping ground for all the shit we own that didn't fit in the main bedroom or the 'baby's room'. This is the same 'baby's room' that has yet to be introduced to the baby and was once my study. There isn't enough room to swing a cat. This is a fact, I have three cats and have tried.
3- It is located next to the neighbour's 11 year old daughter's bedroom. She is either (a)watching tele, (b)talking on the phone, (c)talking, (d)listening to music, (e)singing (badly) or (f)making odd whooping noises, where a, b, c, d, e and f = very loudly.
4- It doesn't have a television, so when condition a above = true, it makes me hog wild.
5- It has a single bed. This is the same bed that the wife wanted to replace because we've had it for years and is less comfortable that a tray of broken glass scattered amongst stinging nettles. The same bed that I said we'd be stupid to replace as it will never be used.
6- The way the room is laid out, the only plug socket is in the opposite corner to the bed. My laptop cable doesn't extend that far, so if I want to watch a DVD, I have to do it in 30 minute spells and then charge the battery for an hour. Note to self: buy an extension lead this weekend.
7- Also because of the layout, the end of the bed is about 2 foot away from the wall and there is a shoe rack (every house should have one) in the gap. Over the course of the night, my pillow edges bit by bit and every hour, falls off the bed.
8- Because of the plug socket situation, I haven't got my alarm clock anymore. I have been using my cellphone alarm to wake me up, but the tune has been driving me mad. All week I have been trying to think of a piece of music that is pleasing on the ear, but vibrant enough to ease me gently from my slumber. After much to-ing and fro-ing, I decided it had to be classical music. Rock music would be too harsh and pop music would just put me in a bad mood. I settled on Maurice Ravel's Bolero. If you are familiar with this piece of music, you will know that it starts off incredibly quietly and then builds up into a dramatic crescendo. The problem is that the first 5 minutes are pretty much inaudible. My phone alarm plays for 3 minutes before automatically going to 'snooze'. I overslept by 30 minutes.

I hate Will Smith

That's it.

ASDA

I've just figured something out. I have always wondered where company and brand names come from. Not likeApple or HMV or anything, but those nonsensical ones like ASDA, Lidl, Aldi (in fact any supermarket chain thinking about it). Is Asda a word, in any language? I think not. Is it someone's name? I hope to God not. According to Wikipedia it's 'an abbreviation of ASquith and DAiries' which i find preposterous and ever so disappointing. However I know the real meaning. You know when you are trying to download some software and you have to fill in a form before you can get to the link? Well, if you do it quickly and type in rubbish, as most folk do, you probably do it the same as me. Mouse in the right hand for quick movement to next 'required field', and left hand perched over the QWER bit and neighbouring keys. Do the form fill thing real quick and I bet you dollars to doughnuts that you'll type in 'asda' at some point.

Crisps and Wagon Wheels

When I were a lad, I remember that packets of crisps were really big, and full. And that Wagon Wheels were the size of ping-pong bats. Do you think they have got smaller or is it just my hands are bigger now?

Soothsayer or simpleton?

Many moons ago, when I had a life, I found myself in a casino late one night playing roulette. The table was full and there were a quite few people standing around waiting for a gap. This respectable looking man, quite young and definitely sober, pushed his way to the table and said to everyone playing 'The next ball will land on green double zero'. We all looked at him in a 'who asked you' kind of way and he repeated 'Green, double zero. Trust me.' One guy on the table said 'cheers buddy' and put a chip on double zero, more, I thought, because everyone had ignored this fella and he felt obliged. The croupier spun the wheel. 'Told you so' said the young man as the ball came to rest where he had predicted, and he walked off. Cue lots of people looking bewildered, a croupier looking pissed off and mildly embarrassed and one lucky punter getting a pile of chips pushed towards him. I've often thought of that incident, and wondered if he had some insider knowledge, or was he a Jedi, or more likely, was it a guess (a hell of a guess though). Mostly, I wonder why the devil I didn't chase after him and see if he could have made me a millionaire.

I thought of this incident this morning when I arrived at work. The security guard said 'Coventry are going to draw Man United in the 4th round of the cup. Trust me'. I've just checked the draw and we are playing either Hull or Middlesborough.

Castaway

I was watching that Tom Hanks film Cast Away t'other night. Maybe it's because I had a particularly grueling year at work in 2006, but the idea of being ship/plane wrecked on a tropical island really appeals to me. I'm not talking Lost style (although being marooned with Evangeline Lilly would have it's merits), but being alone, in the sun, on a beach Robinson Crusoe-like (Man Friday can find his own island). I was in my own little fantasy world for a few moments, until I thought, what about alcohol? I could never survive without a few jars every now and then. Even if a few crates of Fosters washed up with you, they would soon disappear. I then figured out that I would devise some way of creating my own brand of Malibu out of the coconuts. Shit yeah, cocktails all day long. Bliss. Then I thought 'no internet, no sport results, NO SKY!' Fuck that for a game of soldiers then, I'm staying where I am in miserable rainy Camberley.

What now for England?

I think the only way forward for us is to repeat the daring experiment that was tried a few years ago, and has resulted in this fantastic sporting achievement by Australia.

Namely... we need to find a deserted island somewhere, empty our overcrowded prisons and beggar-filled back streets into it, then ignore it for a century or two...

If it works then this time we should retain the "England" brand name on the results, for marketing purposes. If it fails then we can just invite a few of the less unpleasant ones back here to do the jobs we hate, like barman...or policeman...

13/09/2005 vs 05/01/2007

What a difference a year (and a bit) makes. Today's news story on the left, 2005's on the right.

A lot to learn

My wife tells me that I have a lot to learn about fatherhood and how to successfully and responsibly bring up my son. She thought it was humorous that I was explaining the rules of darts to him the other night whilst we were watching Barney humiliate The Power. However, her sense of humour disappeared quicker than a snowflake in a microwave when she caught me feeding him whilst watching 'Bad Santa'. I would have probably escaped her wrath if it wasn't the scene where the protagonist pleasures a non-dieter in the store fitting room. I was verbally scalded (although it would have been quite literal if there was a hot cup of tea within her reach) and was sent to the naughty step.

Pissing against the wind

The security guard at work is a bit of a prat. He cottoned on very early that I like a bit of sport, and then systematically extracted the specifics from me. Now every Friday night on my way out I get 'Who are Coventry going to lose to tomorrow?' and then on Monday morning 'I'm surprised you've showed up today after the result on Saturday'. If we win or draw (seldom) then he'll just talk about something else, but if we lose he'll say 'Told you so. I knew they would lose'. He's a West Indian but been living in London since 1969, so naturally supports Man United. If United lose, and I mention it then the excuse windmill chugs into life 'We should have been given 3 penalties', 'their first four goals were all offside' etc. Trouble is, United rarely lose so I don't get the pleasure to wind him up very often, and if they do he ends up irritating me anyway. He's had great fun with me with the Ashes debacle. He should really apply for Fletcher's job as he knows exactly what is going wrong. He supports West Indies, so rubbishes England at every opportunity. Although last summer, he couldn't shut up about how 'we' won the Ashes, and what a great cricket team 'we' were; he is the human equivalent of a chameleon.

Unfortunately I have to keep him sweet as quite often I need him to unlock doors, get keys cut, activate security passes, turn a blind eye to office parties/fag breaks on the roof etc so I have had to put up with his shit for over 2 years.

At approximately 2am today, Junior woke me up with the type of wailing that is normally associated with torture victims. He eventually dropped off to sleep after a feed/nappy change/cuddle but I was wide awake so I watched a bit of the cricket. I witnessed Warne knocking 7 bells of the brown stuff out of our bowlers, Clarke getting 35 runs rather easily, then our top order tumbling to the Aussie bowlers. A series whitewash is a few overs away. I had a shower about 6am, and left home at 7am arriving at work an hour later. Considering I had 2 hours sleep and had witnessed English cricket at it's lowest ebb since the last lowest ebb, I was not in the best of spirits.

I was welcomed with 'Have you lost yet? You're going to lose 5-0 you know'.

I said to him 'You know what? I've been listening to your crap for 2 years now and I really don't care what you think'.

He said 'Well I think you do'. There's really no point.

The Ashes, Camberley stylee

Rummaging through the bargain bin at Game during my Xmas shopping spree, I came across 'Brian Lara Cricket 2005' for PS2. Excellent stuff! A bit of practising in the nets, and a one day game against Bangladesh (easy, easy...) I had a brainwave; Freddie and the lambs are struggling a bit in Australia. I'll do England proud and have my own Ashes series. The mother-in-law has gone back to the hole where she came from, so I have the comfort of my lounge again, a few cans and knock the socks off those Aussie bastards. Hmm... I see a strange parallel happening here. They just wouldn't declare!

You don't have to be an astrophysicist

My wife knows as much about football as I do about knitting. She knows that Coventry lose most games, that she fancied David Beckham 'before he married that stick insect' and, although Portuguese, hates Portugal because they cheat (good gal!). But that's about it. I caught her watching a match on Sky recently and she proudly announced that she had been watching the Bolivia v Checkoslovakia (sic) game for the last ten minutes, and the guys in white had no strategy. It was actually Bolton v Cheslea, but I didn't have the heart to tell her. (Or that Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1993).

Every time Coventry lose, which is rather too frequently, she asks me why I don't support a good team, like 'Manchester'. I tell her that I support Coventry because they are my team, Man United and the rest are other people's teams. I am from Coventry, I have no choice. (Although I have a friend who supported Sunderland and then unbelievably changed to Newcastle, and had to cover his Sunderland tattoo with a big magpie. Another friend switched allegiance from Man United to Chelsea, but that one was inevitable. He's from Brighton). She doesn't quite understand my loyalty. Anyway, I digress, the subject of explaining football loyalty to a woman needs it's own blog.

Recently after another Coventry defeat, I commented to her that we can't buy a goal these days. The conversation continued thus:
'Why don't Coventry just buy a player that can score goals?'
'Well it isn't that easy, good goalscorers are hard to come by, and are very expensive. Although we had a guy called Gary McSheffrey who was brilliant, he was our top goalscorer last season with 15 goals. He played in the midfield as well which makes it even more remarkable as to how many goals he got.'
'So what happened to him?'
'We sold him to Birmingham and he's scored 13 goals already.'
'Why did you sell him?'
'We needed the money.'
'How much did you sell him for?'
'Well the transfer went through as £4 million, but we only got £2.5 million up front, the rest is tied up in clauses, which could mean us never seeing the rest of the cash.'
'£2.5 million doesn't sound a lot of money.'
'In the grand scheme of things you are right, it isn't. But to a club like Coventry, who are in a lot of debt, it could mean the difference between survival and death.'
'So the money has sorted out the clubs financial problems?'
'Well no, we are £30 million in debt, so it's a drop in the ocean really. And we've pretty much spent that money trying to replace McSheffrey.'
'So you get rid of your top goalscorer because you need the money, but then spend it all on players that don't score goals? That doesn't sound like good business to me.'

She has a point.

An open letter to the guy three doors down from me

Xmas is over. Please remove the runway landing lights and the 3 Kong sized inflatable Santa's from your house. You keep tripping my electricity and it's scaring the cats.