And the day before yesterday was Tuesday

What an exhausting week. Running a training course where not enough people turn up (despite the fact their organisations have paid) making the course barely viable. A two day course, no less, which ends up with just two participants: it becomes, almost, a personal surgery - but I guess that's ok: just harder work. It's too hard to tell two people to "break up into groups". But it went reasonably well, despite all that, with the both giving positive feedback: but thank god that's over.

Tonight went to M's last EVER parents evening: for 13 years I have listened to teachers telling me how clever, nice, kind and hard working my son is (with only one exception - she was a fool). I know. I know. He's now got an interview at Oxford in a couple of weeks: of course I'm proud of him, the clever bugger.

Meanwhile, City have been playing crap and lost to stoke and are no longer top of the league. So that's all over, and from now on the battle against relegation begins. Interestingly, our bad form seems to have coincided with the introduction of the 'winter ball'. Chopra seems unable to kick it into the back of the net, while Mcpahil seems to prefer hitting players: sent off again and banned for three matches - three matches we will, in all likelihood, lose, and will end up floating mid-table by the new year.

Cheerful bugger, aren't I?

Today's Sunday, yesterday was Wednesday

So went up to Sheffield yesterday with the 1927 club. Journey ok, pub good, (nice beer, nice food, nice cat) and the football was ok apart from the complete inability of any City player to put the ball in the back of the net, despie a number of good chances. The ref was rubbish: Phil Dowd reffing us as a punishment for his crap reffing of Spurs and Blackburn last week, and I am pleased to say that my cohorts did not fail to let him know about his failure to understand the rules of the game. He obviously listened, because he was better in the second half: nobody got booked for kicking the ball, or anything.

Alan Wright though is incredibly small. And with his lack of hair he is very reminiscent of the little bald bloke Benny Hill used to pat on the head. Alexander gave him a tentative pat at one point after he cleared the ball well. You could almost hear the music starting up. It would be no surprise if they had to get him a special junior kit, and I hae been told his boots are only size 4. Standing next to Purse he looked like a mascot. The picture here shows him in his Villa heyday next to Gus Poyet. It gives you some idea of the proportions. To be fair, he played ok. For a short arse.

Still top of the league, but we should have won by at least one.

Afro Bombers Second Explosion

MMMM. Nice.

It must make sense to someone somewhere. This is from the website afrobomber.net. It's Japanese and means nothing to me. A computerised translation of some stuff on the front page doesn't help much:

" The people who idle in the online game PSO series... being to be, it does, but now funny so finding ネトゲ which is, they are the people who rage moderately and turn."

Now it's all clear. Nice Afro.

Short ugly old left back

So the last chance to sign someone on loan passes with us signing Alan Wright on loan from Sheffield United. He used to be ok when he played for Villa, but that was a few years ago. He's 35 now, and has certainly stopped growing: at 5 foot 5" he is, I am unreliably informed, the smallest player in the league. Well, he might be ok. We'll see.

The sad thing about the photo is that I got it from uglyfootballers.co.uk. So there you have it: short of players, so we borrow a short ugly old left back from Sheffield United. It's a wonder I'm not over-excited, isn't it.

By the way, I gather a cricket match has started in Australia that some people seem to care about it. Bizarrely K was listening to it on the radio in the night when she couldn't sleep. Kept me awake for HOURS, even though I was snoring, I am told.

Nothing much

It's been a funny first half of week. At the weekend both kids were in Belgium which is kind of strange, as they were there for different reasons. J was with her dad, M went with his school to see the 1st world war battlefields. Of course he managed to drink some belgian beer and brought back some welcomely received Belgian chocolate. Monday K & J were both ill: headaches, throwing up and all the fun that goes with that. J was back to school yesterday (kids bounce back so fast) but K's been off all week so far. Kind of strange for me, while I'm working at home. But at least I have been working - various bits and pieces: preparing for training I'm running next week, helping someone with a grievance and writing bids for work that starts in January. It would be good to get it, financially, but you can't rely on things like this, so also preparing other bids, and organising for other work I have coming up. Also putting new bits on the toosh website about the kind of things toosh can do. More interesting I think, and more likely to get the punters in: I need to do more marketting but am wary of emailing potential clients too often: I may circulate leaflets in the new year.

As for Cardiff City, will they bounce back from last Friday's dreadful QPR game? I'm going up to Sheffield to get dru... sorry, I mean to find out. I do hope we get one or two more players in soon: our squad is looking paper thin. Again, last week's game showed that we need everyone playing, everyone on form. Let's hope we get there against the owls. Good nickname. J thought I was making up their real name "Sheffield Wednesday? WEDNESDAY??!! You mean United, don't be silly". A 9 year old expert: WTFDIK? Hey, this post needs a picture. Ah, that'll do. (Don't ask why).

Oops! Cardiff slip up against QPR

Well, last night's defeat to the hoops was a piss off. K and I went to the Quays in Holloway Road to watch, and they put it on for us on a big screen in the corner: there are different screens all over the pub. The other screens were either showing Gaelic Football or Irish musicians. Meanwhile behind us a couple of couples were rowing rather rowdily. Not enough for me to take my eyes off the football, you understand, but rowdily all the same. As for the game lots of people have been slagging off Ledley: Interestng. I don't think Ledley's been much cop for a while: I actually thought he was better last night than in other games I've seen, Scimeca's passing seemed to have gone astray, Parry was anonymous, and our front two looked the worst I've seen them. Thompson was no surprise given he was returning from an injury, but Chopra's performance was by a long stretch the worst I've seen him play. Gunter's performance for a 17 year old's first game was very good (he'll improve), McNaughton looked good in the 2nd half (apart from the goal). Still, we were the better side by a mile in the second half and were unlucky to lose to a breakway goal a couple of minutes from the end.

Apart from the rowing we were entertained by a simultaneous disco for the last 20 minutes of the game. We watched the game while the DJ played "Going back to Africa" by Toto for a couple of South Africans, and the drummer of the band on later drummed along badly to the song. We were glad we weren't going to stay for the band. I've got more rhythm than that drummer.

We need to be better to have any chance of staying up near the top, though. Luckily Birmingham failed to beat Wolves and Preston only won 1-0 at Leicester so we're still top on goal difference. We miss Gilbert, I should add, for his battling qualities and forward movement.

We didn't stay at the Quays. It's a big modern friendly Irish pub with a widely varied clientele. Apart from the rowing young couples, we saw older couples dressed up to eat, a couple of asian ladies drinking tea, old Irish men at the bar supping on pints of Guinness, a woman on her own drinking a cup of coffee, various other young people come for the band... It's an amazing job to pull that many and so varied a group of people in, and I guess it helps that the bar staff are so friendly. Shame they couldn't organise the right result.

Pictures

I have started putting my pictures (as opposed to photos) on ArtWanted. Take a look. (click here) It's kind of a weird website in that it has its own community. As soon as you upload a picture you get comments from other artists: this is because there are people who take this terribly, terribly seriously: if they comment on your work you are likely to comment on theirs - the more comments you get the higher rating you get, the more likely you are to appear on the front of the website, the more people see your work, the more people comment on your work etc. The problem is I haven't liked many other people's work. Therefore although I've received some nice comments from some people, I absolutely loathed some of the art those people put up on the site, and I'm far too polite to say: "thanks for the nice comment, but your paintings are shite". The cynic in me says they probably hate my work anyway, but don't care if it gets them comments. Hmmm. maybe I should go and congratulate someone on their shit.

Hollandish

The telly was on yesterday evening and I caught some of the England - Netherlands bore - sorry, I mean match. Marley and I were drawn to discuss the issue of why the Netherlands is sometimes Holland and the people are Dutch. It makes absolutely no sense. They must all get very confused about their nationality:

"Your team are playing"
"Who, Holland?"
"No. Netherlands"
"Nevermind, I'm Dutch"

I don't get it. I'm sure someone can bore me with a rational explanation, but clearly it's all a load of bollocks and they should all just sit down and decide once and for all what they want to be called. I have a few suggestions if they wants some ideas. Cloggies from Clogland, for example.

That was the week that was

A very hectic last week which is why no postings for a while. And a complaint that this blog is too much about Cardiff City. As if that were possible. The thing about personal blogs is that unless you are an 18 year old depressed girl in your student bedroom you realise quite quickly that it's not always too wise to reveal too much publicly, Therefore very little about my personal life, and lots about Cardiff City. And a bit about Fred Pratt. Anyway at the end of last week, after a couple of very time consuming, expensive and irritating days doing things I don't want to talk about on here, on Thursday we went back to Ganges (which was nice), flying to Montpelier. The journey was blighted by incompetence at Stansted, but all fine once we were on our way. The weather as we arrived was such a contrast to here: 21 degrees and bright sunshine. The drive from Montpelier is easy and quick and beautiful. Views of the Cevennes and Pic St Loup as you whiz down good but quiet roads. A lovely welcome in Ganges where straight away we meet people we've met before. (Getting hooted at in the street in the process as we blocked traffic to say hello - gosh I felt French driving so inconsiderately).

Friday we went down to the river beach at Laroque, said hello a couple of times to the house, said hello to our bank, and generally had a nice time.

Saturday was Armistice day and a public holiday in France. From the comfort of our seats in the bar (outside, plenty warm enough) we watched the mini parade from the church to the town hall (About a two minute walk normally, but the slow march done by the local dignatories stretched it to nearly three). Where the mayor and some other dignitaries hung around a while doing I don't know what. A big man with a yellow jacket arrived carrying a banner. And that was it. "Vive la France" shouted one parent from the playground by the Bar de la Poste. It was clear he was being ironic.

There was much fuss on the news about shops opening on a public holiday. We went up to La Vigan where there was a lively market. We bought some pretty stones, and I bought my dad a beret. I can say this even though it will be a surprise for him on Thursday when I see him, as he never looks at the internet. It's not that he thinks it's evil or anything (like Kinky Friedman asserts despite having his own website) it's more that he's never advanced beyond the typewriter - and mum doing his typing.

Later that night we watched a lovely sunset. Still warm enough to be sitting outside at the bar.

Sunday we headed home. This time via Nimes. Again a relatively easy, if slightly longer (an hour or so) drive to the airport, through pretty countryside (not as pretty as theMontpelierr journey) and no problem with car hire (and no extra charge) picking up at Montpelier and dropping off at Nimes. The only problem was the croque monsieur I ate at the airport which put me out of action for about 24 hours once we got home. There we go, no one really wants to read a blog about my bowel movements do they?

The good news on the way back was the victory over (spit) Burnley. Still top of the league, and McPhail not suspended. No more right back though with Chambers back to Watford and Gilbert out for a while injured. And no Alan Smith who Jones tried to sign on loan- I'm kind of glad he didn't want to come to City: I have strong memories of his last visit to Ninian Park, getting sent off for 'assaulting' Andy Legg. (Inverted commas inserted on advice from counsel).

One final point: Ganges rhymes with Manges. "Je mange a Ganges". Plenty.

Bring your boots (someone's filling theirs)

Great article in the Guardian today by David Conn regarding Hammam and money. His money, City's money, and various other people's money. Ridsdale is clearly playing with other people's money. Of course he's done this before and landed Leeds with £95m worth of debt. I can't pretend to understand all the financing stuff that's going on, but it doesn't look like there's going to be much money around in January to strengthen the squad.

Which we need to do. McPhail suspended. Loovens injured, Thomson injured and out for a month, Gilbert now out for 6 weeks. And Chambers goes back to Watford after Saturday's important home tie against (spit) Burnley. It's getting to the point where the old joke about if you bring your boots to Ninian Park you might get a game might come true. Although of course nothing seems to want to make Jones pick Ferretti. I have heard that this is because he doesn't like players who "Scream when they are tackled". Better than someone who says: "never mind then mate, off you go" I would have thought.

Jones beats the curse again

Once again, despite City being top of the league, Dave Jones has not won the 'manager of the month' award, it being awarded instead to Burnley (excuse me) manager Steve Cotterill. "I am obviously delighted, it's the first time I've won it at Burnley," said Cotterill, whose side won four and drew two games in October. "I felt we had a tough month and, coupled with injuries, that's probably made it a bigger achievement. That is all credit to my players."

"Piss off you smug bastard" Jones was allegedly heard to reply. "It's not whisky, so who wants it anyway". Jones then wondered off down the pub singing "WE ARE TOP OF THE LEAGUE, WE ARE TOP OF THE LEAGUE" and narrowly avoided being arrested. "We thought he was the soul crew" said Inspector Moron of the South Wales Police.