LifeisTOOSHort

"Don't mess with me..."

2011-08-07T16:53:00.001+02:00

Biscuit Boy

2011-07-22T11:07:00.000+02:00

Very strange behaviour by my step daughter's father. He has a new girlfriend apparently, and whilst she was spending some time with him, he told my step daughter that the new girlfriend was coming on holiday with them to Spain. My step daughter objected to this, and after a lot of rows he decided to bring her back to Montpellier rather than give in. He clearly had told the new girlfriend everything would be ok, and (as usual) he refused to back down. I think he has some severe problems with ever admitting he is wrong, and our experience is he deludes himself into believing he is always right and everyone is conspiring against him. Especially my wife, and by extension, me. Past insane actions include deliberately forcing me and my step daughter to miss a train back home from Paris, refusing to hand her over to me in Paris, calling the police in the UK when my father in law died to say his daughter was missing, lying in court about that (and other things), making endless complaints to the french police about my wife when his daughter has refused to visit him (can you blame her?) ... And so on. Anyway, this time he brought her back to Montpellier airport, refusing to communicate with us, but sending messages via my step daughter that they would be arriving at 9.05 this morning. Oh yeah, and adding the bizarre and not completely sane demand that I "wasn't allowed" to be at the airport. Sorry? No really, he truly believes he is entitled to issue these orders. O course we ignored this nonsense and I went with my wife and our dog to the airport to pick my step daughter up. I decided it was sensible to stay in the background in order not to provoke him, yet he saw me there, and came up to me and said "Don't cross me, biscuit boy, or you'll fucking regret it". Now I'm sure this must have sounded great when he rehearsed this in his head, but, frankly, it just sounded completely bonkers. "biscuit boy"? - what was he on about. I've done some Internet research on this assuming that it had some meaning I wasn't aware of, but the only references I can find relate to a no longer living reggae musician, a band formed by Paul Heaton, and an urban dictionary definition which says it is a slang term for a "teenage pill popper". Somebody who likes to take a lot of "disco biscuits". Any way I look at it, it is rather a shit insult, and to be honest, I quite like it as a nickname - after all, like most people, I like the odd hobnob.

What a strange man!

Shearer says no, thousands celebrate. Then he does a nazi salute...

2011-06-15T10:05:00.000+02:00

I suppose it could get worse, we could appoint Paulo di Canio.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

No to Shearer

2011-06-15T00:23:00.000+02:00

I have generally been ignoring all the talk about different names being put forward as the next Cardiff City manager. Like many others, I was glad to see the back of Dave Jones, who had clearly done as much as he could do, who, despite the resources and team he had, could get us no further than the play-offs - whilst down the road the Jacks showed us how it's done. No star-fucking celeb signings with big egos - just good football played by well coached players. And Alan Tate.

Anyway, I figured all the talk of Martin O'Neill, Chris Hughton, Malkay Mackay, Billy Davies et al would soon peter out, and someone or other this week would be appointed. Never in my wildest dreams did I even think of the name "Shearer". Fucking Alan Shearer - Jesus that's all we need. A man who has shown he has no deep understanding of football each week on TV, a man who managed a team for eight games - how many did they win? - just the one, and got relegated. A man who hates our hero Bellamy, a man whose experience is as an England star, and is not loved - nor even liked or admired - by the welsh public.

You couldn't choose anyone more likely to piss people off. So here's what I'm hoping - it is all some elaborate joke dreamt up by some Swansea fans with media influence, and a Proper manager gets appointed this week. Shearer - god no, not him. My cat could do a better job. At least he's got a name the fans like: Earnie.

Earnie looking out of the window - hoping it's not Alan Shearer he sees coming up the road.

Meanwhile back in the atelier...

2011-05-26T22:31:00.000+02:00

I have managed to complete two paintings (Just like buses, you wait for one then two come along). Well actually what happened was I had left a painting I was unhappy with last week and started something new. This led me to re-examine the first painting, change it - a lot. The end result is two paintings completed at roughly the same time.

Here they are:

This one is called "Porte des Remparts" - it depicts the eastern entrance into the medieval village of Les Matelles.

This one is "Ancien Chemin du Triadou" - which is the street my atelier is on, and this is the view looking out of my front door.

These two are more painterly than recent paintings, but I am quite happy with them both.

Smashing iPhone

2011-05-22T16:47:00.000+02:00

Well, smashing a FAKE iPhone to get my money back from PayPal.

Bizarrely I have discovered there is an entire YouTube genre on destroying iPhones. People are weird.

Virtual Art Gallery

2011-03-06T23:51:00.002+01:00

Take a look:
http://3dvas.com/galleries/gallery.php?ex=3266

Cool?

Silly names

2011-02-28T12:35:00.000+01:00

I think it is time to come up with a team made up with silly names. For no reason at all other than I've got a headache. Obviously I should start from a Cardiff City perspective, and obviously that means my team has to have Billy Woof up front. Unfortunately, City is pretty short of other silly names in its history - and believe me I've checked. I have found T. Witts from a 1913 team, who I guess will have to go on the bench because I don't know what his position was but others with silly names aren't as good as some others I've found:

Andre Muff - Swiss striker (a bit of a diver, allegedly)
Johnny Moustache - Seychelles player who clearly wants to be a city manager in the future
Two Boys Gladstone Gumede - South African footballer
Bongo Christ - from the Congo
Danny Boffin - genius Belgian footballer
Ars Bandeet - Algerian (can't be real but it is)
Norman Conquest - Aussie keeper (better than Peter Zois)
Harry Daft - who played for England
Steve Death - Who I remember seeing in goal for Reading
Hilario - hilarious Chelsea keeper
Stefan Kuntz - less hilarious German
Yapi Yapo - Nantes player

and of course, David Ginola.

Try running that through an anagram software programme....

New employment reform proposals threaten workers' rights

2011-01-27T09:58:00.000+01:00

According to reports in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, Prime Minister David Cameron and Business Secretary Vince Cable are due to announce fundamental reforms today to the employment tribunal system today. Whilst the details remain unclear, the article asserts the following reforms are proposed:-

a fee to lodge a claim. The Daily Mail states this is believed to be £500, other sources suggest a fee of one week's pay
compulsory mediation for all tribunal claims
increase in unfair dismissal qualifying period from one year to two years
employment judges to sit alone (presumably meaning in all cases, not just the jurisdictions where they currently can/do)

They will also introduce an Employer's Charter, which will remind employers of their 'rights', such as the right to ask an employee to take annual leave at a time that suits the business, the right to ask staff to take a pay cut and the right to dismiss poorly performing staff.

RedBubble - Artists' site profiting from genocide

2011-01-25T13:22:00.000+01:00

See http://matelles-art.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-redbubble-hijinks-they-are-nazi.html

for the full story.

Three billion viewers .. there's gold in them thar hills

2010-12-06T10:59:00.000+01:00

The Sun has reported that 3 billion people will watch the next royal wedding on TV. I won't be one of them, but it occurs to me that there are massive profits to be made here. Do the royal family have the TV rights to sell, or is it the UK state that does this? Have the BBC got automatic rights? Do they sell them on for multi-millions? Or can Sky outbid them, like for the football? What about advertising? Think what people pay for half time at the Super Bowl - this is 3 billion viewers for god's sake! And sponsorship - think what Bill and Kate could make by getting wedding-gear sponsorship walking up the aisle with "Pepsi" on their backs (Sorry coke they offered more) . Or could the whole thing be turned into a massive interactive phone-in reality show, with members of the royal family being evicted? JEEZ the possibilities are endless - it's a money mine I tell you, and people will be digging like crazy.

(NB all these ideas are © Gary Socrates 2010 - just leave your number below next to how much you are offering and I'll get back to you)

Crestfallen

2010-12-03T15:27:00.000+01:00

The Daily Mail today ran the following story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335188/World-Cup-2018-Russia-knew-won-24-hours-decision-made.html , in it you will find this photo with the following caption:
"Crestfallen: Hardy England fans react to the announcement in London"
You may notice that one of the 'England fans' looks less than 'crestfallen'. You may also note that he's wearing a blue hat with a Cardiff City logo and a Cardiff City "Pride of Wales" scarf. For it is none other than Mark Ainsbury, former Chairman of the 1927 club. Isn't it funny when the Daily Mail screw up?

Olives

2010-10-17T17:26:00.000+02:00

Close to us there are loads of abandoned olive groves. Walking the dog on the garrigue it is fascinating to come across properly organised groves in the midst of overgrown heathland. The trees were all abandoned to the wild in 1956 after an awful frost ("la grande gelée") killed off the entire crop. There's still some cultivated olive trees in the area, but these are abandoned despite the fact, we have been told, that with a bit of judicious pruning the trees would all be fine. As if to prove this, this year some of the so-called infertile trees are covered with olives. Taking internet advice I have waited until they are yellow before picking them, and today filled a great big bag. According to more internet advice they need to be soaked in brine for a while, so that's what's happening now - I have a big pot of olives soaking in a brine and lemon juice mixture. I will have to change the brine every two or three days, and then after a couple of weeks transfer them into some conveniently saved jam pots, where they will sit in flavourful mixtures for a couple of months before we try eating them. I hope to be scoffing them at Christmas, accompanying some nice local wine - which kept going locally after the "grande gelée" courtesy of the wonderful M. Christiane Ader.

Why does this man look so happy?

2010-08-17T14:47:00.000+02:00

He's not the only one. As well as the people selling City shirts and the blokes who make and sell the letters B,E,L,A,M and Y and the numbers 3 and 9 there's all the thousands of Bluebirds fans who can't believe it: Bellamy has sogned on a season's loan for City. I haven't been this excited since we signed Fowler. Hmmm. That one ended well, didn't it? All we can hope for is he keeps fit and well and plays his normal game. Bloody hell, it's fantastic.

The question remains: How can we afford his wages though? It can only be concluded that Bellamy gained the negotiation driving seat after Man City said they wanted rid of him, but refused to let him go to Spurs, Liverpool or Fulham. Effectively it could be argued legally that they were restraining his trade and breaching his contract (Thus Bellamy's comment last week that he may consider jacking it in for good). Given that Bellamy HAS a contract with Man City, and they were telling him where he could and could not play, they could clearly only retain this level of control if they continued to pay his wages - or at least a good chunk of the rumoured £90,000 a week he is on. No way Cardiff City could afford much more than 10% of that - but we'll see what the real story is, probably - or maybe my guess is as good as anyone's.

Matelles-Art - all sorts of new things

2010-08-07T12:06:00.000+02:00

Visit www.matelles-art.com for a whole range of paintings, prints, cards, t shirts and now clocks! See even more at RedBubble and take a look also at the Matelles-Art Facebook page.
Have a look and don't forget to click 'like'.

Admire the art! Buy something!

The Guatemalan Linesman - a World Cup story

2010-06-11T19:04:00.000+02:00

Oscar Perdomo was on his way back from the sugarcane fields when he got the news. Luis Reyes, the local postman called after him “Hey, Oscar. There’s a letter for you here from the GFF. Maybe they want to sack you after that decision you made last week! That was never offside!” Luis laughed, and handed the envelope, marked with the official stamp of the Guatemalan Football Federation, to Oscar. “Thanks” said Oscar, taking the envelope “More likely they want to tell me off for not giving you a red card”. As well as being a foreman at the sugarcane fields, Oscar was also a referee. Not just any referee, but the most respected referee in Guatemala. Normally he refereed in the big games at Guatemala City, but the previous week he’d been refereeing a local game in his home town of Quetzaltenango. Luis the postman had been playing for one of the teams, and was a renowned dirty left back.

Not all of Oscar’s refereeing was on such a low scale, though, only last year he had refereed a world cup qualifying game between Columbia and Paraguay - the first Mestizo Indian to referee a world cup game of any kind - and most prestigious of all, had run the line in Rio as Brazil lost to Argentina. Now what could the GFF be writing to him about now?

Oscar tore open the envelope as he walked into his house. “What is it?” asked his wife, Alicia. “My God” said Oscar “They want me to go to the World Cup - to South Korea. The actual World Cup.”. “Oh yes?” said Alicia ”And what will they pay you? You see children? They want your father to travel half way around the world to be a referee, but what will they pay him while he doesn’t work at the sugarcane fields? How are we supposed to live while he travels the world. And how long will you be gone while you are playing at your football refereeing? Maybe they won’t give you your job back when you come back, eh? And who will pay for the flight? And where will you stay?”. “No no, Alicia, listen. It says here I will be there for only a month, they will pay all my expenses, and I will be paid $1,000!”. “Ah! And you will no doubt spend it all on those Korean whores!” Alicia flounced out of the room. But it was good news. $1,000 was a lot of money, as much as Oscar would normally earn in three months, and he would no doubt be given leave of absence from the sugarcane fields.

And he was given leave of absence. In fact his boss slapped him on the back and poured him a drink. “We must celebrate!” he said “You bring great honour to Guatemala. Surely the President himself will be proud of you! Just bring me back a souvenir. And don’t spend all your money on those Korean whores!”.

It was nearly the end of May when Oscar arrived at the airport in Seoul. In his left hand he held his suitcase, newly bought for the occasion, in his right hand his passport. In his inside jacket pocket was a letter from President wishing him luck and congratulating him on the honour he was bringing to Guatemala. “Senor Perdomo! Senor Perdomo!” He heard someone calling his name, and saw a man in official-looking uniform holding
a sign with his name on. He headed in the man’s direction, but as he did so another man approached him, and handed him an envelope, saying “Take this. You’ll find it interesting” . The man was gone before Oscar could even see what he looked like. He clutched the envelope in the same hand as his passport and approached the man with the sign. “I’m Oscar Perdomo” he said. “Ah welcome Senor Perdomo, your car is waiting, follow me”. The man took Oscar to a car, and off they drove.

The whole thing was overwhelming. The modern city of Seoul shone in comparison even with Guatemala City, the car Oscar was driven in was the most luxurious he had ever sat in, and the hotel room he was now sitting in was fantastic. It had its own bathroom, a fridge full of different types of drinks, a telephone, a television, a radio and a bunch of flowers and a welcome bottle of champagne on the large bed. Oscar was not used to such luxury. He sat on the bed and turned on the TV. Incomprehensible language poured from the speaker. Korean. Oscar picked up the remote control and started pressing buttons. No channels in Spanish that he could find, but he found an English news channel which he could just about understand, talking about the start of the World Cup. Oscar took out the three envelopes he now had in his inside pocket: the letter from the President, the envelope the strange man at the airport had given him, and a third envelope that had been handed to him at the hotel reception, emblazoned with the logos of FIFA and of the World Cup. He opened this envelope first. Inside was a detailed schedule. First there was a briefing session to take place on the following day, and a reception in the evening. At the briefing session Oscar would learn which games in the first stage he would be required to take part in.

Oscar opened the second envelope. Inside he found a note. And some cash. He counted the cash. $1,000. Oscar was puzzled. they were paying him already? In cash? Or was this just some spending money? Oscar unfolded the note. He read it. It said: “On Sunday June 9th, in Daejon, you will be the assistant referee in the first round match between Italy and the United States. If you rule out an Italian goal for offside you will receive a further payment of $10,000”. Oscar was amazed. $10,000! It was a huge amount. More than he would normally earn in two years! But he was a professional. He was honest. he had made his reputation as an honest man. he was representing his country. The honour of his country. But.. He stopped. How could they know the schedule? It had not yet been announced? What if this was a test?

All sorts of thoughts ran through Oscar’s mind, and by the time of the briefing session the following day he had hardly had a minute of sleep, despite feeling totally exhausted after all the hours of travel and all the excitement. At the briefing session all the referees and linesmen were advised on FIFA’s priorities. Advised to watch for shirt pulling, for diving and for players who would try and cheat and intimidate them. The schedules were announced. On Sunday June 9th, in Daejon, Oscar was to be the assistant referee in the first round match between Italy and the United States. Oscar was shaken, but said nothing, nodding his ascent and shaking hands as he was introduced to the Belgian who would referee, the Dane who was running the other line and the Argentinean fourth official.

The days went by, and Oscar watched some of the opening games, attended especially organised events, before he travelled up to Daejon on June 8th. He told no one about the note. $10,000! It was such a lot of money! What should he do? By staying silent was he not already complicit?

The day of the match came, and Oscar arose with new resolve. He would not cheat. He would not wave his flag unnecessarily. he would call it as he saw it. He was an honest man. He could not be bought.

The match kicked off. Italy were attacking at his end, his half of the pitch. He pointed his flag the right way at throw-ins, he pointed at the corner when it was a corner, at the six yard are when a goal kick. An Italian dived - he waved his flag. An American fouled an Italian - he waved his flag. An Italian was offside - he waved his flag. Everything he had hoped for came through. There was no goal to rule offside, no opportunity for him to make a controversial decision. At half time the game was 0-0. The second half kicked off. Little happened at his end. Again he waved his flag when an Italian fouled, when an American fouled, for corners, for throw-ins. Nothing difficult, nothing controversial. At the other end, in the Dane’s half, also little was happening. Nearly 90 minutes gone and it was still 0-0, and then - a goal! But no! The Dane had his flag up! Offside! The Italians complained. The Italian coach remonstrated - but the goal was disallowed. The game finished 0-0. Oscar thought- no, surely not. But surely - what would be the point in bribing only one linesman?

Oscar left the field as quickly as possible. He avoided his Danish colleague and left the stadium as quickly as possible after showering and changing. But back at the hotel there was another envelope waiting. He sat on the bed and opened it. Inside: $10,000. And another note. “In the second round you will be assistant referee for the match in Seoul between South Korea and Sweden. You will disallow Swedish goals for offside, and you will receive a further payment, this time of $20,000”. $20,000! In round two? But how could they know? All the first round games had not been completed - neither Sweden nor South Korea had yet qualified. Oscar was astonished. Clearly the whole thing was fixed. Clearly bribery must be rampant. $20,000 - add that to the $10,000 - no the $11,000 they had already paid him that would be $31,000. Over 200,000 Quetzales. Ten years’ wages. Oscar thought, and thought some more. If the whole tournament was corrupt why should he care? With luck he would have to do nothing, as he had done in the previous game and he would be rich. Alicia and the children could have things they could not afford before - a new car, a computer, new furniture, and he would have to do nothing. He would retain his honour, the honour of Guatemala, and they would still pay him. So he resolved.

As predicted (or fixed, as Oscar now believed) a few days later Oscar was running the line in the second round game between South Korea and Sweden. In the first half South Korea scored at Oscar’s end, whilst Sweden equalised with a penalty at the other end, where a Tunisian watched the line. The second half came, and Oscar knew that this was when his resolve would be tested. at first Swede Korean. At the other end, the Koreans attacked, hit the post, the Swedish goalkeeper saved. Corner after corner as the South Koreans tried desperately to wrap up the game, while the Swedes resolutely defended. But, inevitably, the moment came. The Swedes broke a quick attack, the ball breaking forward quickly. A Swedish forward ran forward, heading for the Korean penalty area. Another Swede ran forward. “Don’t pass, don’t pass” Oscar found himself praying. The Swede shot. The Korean goalkeeper saved. Oscar stopped sweating. The game continued in the same pattern, with the Koreans attacking, the Swedes defending, unable to hold on to the ball. With only a minute to play, of course it happened again. The Swedes broke into attack. Again a Swede ran forward, with another player sprinting forward into space. “Don’t pass, don’t pass” Oscar prayed again. The Swede passed, Oscar hesitated, the other Swede scored. Oscar was frozen. He kept his flag down. The Argentinean referee looked at Oscar quizzically. Oscar remained stony-faced, frozen with nerves, as angry Korean players shouted at him. The goal was given, and in what seemed like only a few seconds time the final whistle blew. Oscar left the field. He was both proud and nervous. He had allowed the goal, he had remained honest. But the people who had promised the money? What of them? Oscar felt nervous.

Back at the hotel Oscar was approached by a FIFA Official. The Official handed him an envelope. Oscar looked at it nervously. “It’s your pay” said the man from FIFA. “We do not need you for any more matches, you may return home”.

Still nervous, Oscar arose the next morning. He switched on the English language TV channel. The programme was looking at the previous day’s game. Over and over again the Swedish goal was shown. from every angle, at normal speed, in slow motion. There was no question, no matter which ever way you looked at it, the goal was offside. It should never have been allowed.

Weeks later, back in Oscar heard a car hooting outside his house. “Come outside” he heard Alicia call “Look at the new car I have bought with the money you brought back from Korea!”. Oscar wondered outside and looked at the shiny new car. “For Christ’s sake Alicia” he said. “Did you have to buy a Volvo?”

© David Abse 2006

My work at RedBubble

2010-06-08T13:04:00.000+02:00

More publicity for my new venture

2010-05-20T17:15:00.002+02:00

If you haven't visited www.matelles-art.com yet, taken a look at the artwork, bought a t-shirt or two, then it's probably time you did.

Matelles-Art

2010-04-19T11:55:00.001+02:00

Matelles-Art: a new business in the South of France, selling artwork, T shirts and lots more. Bookmark the site and come back to see more.

Cardiff or Montpellier? Supporting is not a crime.

2010-03-05T10:06:00.000+01:00

You don't have to spend a fortune to be successful football team. The combination of greed and incompetence that City have suffered under successive (no surprise) greedy and incompetent ego-maniacs like Hammam and Ridsdale has seriously damaged the club. The amount of money both have taken OUT of the club is a disgrace (forget what the players are earning), and the stupidity of those running the stadium project (Ridsadale, Borley) and getting the club further into debt when it couldn't afford it is beyond any level of acceptability in a normal company (banks excepted). Ridsdale pays himself a million a year, Hammam took out millions in fees and god knows what else. The stadiujm project was under-budgetted for by AT LEAT £7 million and relied on unrealistic projected retail investments. (Monorail, monorail, monorail).

Our crowds of 19,000 every game SHOULD be generating a profit - and would be if it were not for the debts that need servicing. IF we make it to summer without going into administration, our best players will go, and PMG (who own most of the club and have borrowed on the back of some players' transfer values) will get some of their money back. Our team will be severely weakened and we will be lucky to be challenging for anything other than relegation.

To see how it should be done read http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/4764/38/. Thank god I now live nearer to Montpellier than Cardiff so can get to watch some decent football while those buggers in Cardiff break my heart.

To add to the WSC story Costa is a SERIOUSLY good player with an alarmingly hard shot, the ability to skip past players like they aren't there. Spahic is the sort of sweeper you rarely get to see - one who can read the game so well it doesn't matter that he is slow. Jeunechamp is a terrific left-back, wearing number 27 (of course) so you can fantasize that he's a City fan, whilst Pitau is a ringer for Craig Middleton.

Meanwhile Montpellier's young players are well represented by Ait Fana, representing the young local community's multi-cultural nature, French mixed with north African. Just like the crowd (incidentally a few less than who go to cardiff's home games - 17,000 odd): the Ultras who sing behind the goal all match long, letting off flares behind a banner that says "supporter n'est pas un crime" - "Supporting is not a crime".

Viva la Paillade, but viva les Oiseaux Bleues.

Bloody Blogger

2010-02-17T15:10:00.000+01:00

What's wrong with FTP? Why can't I host my own site? Tossers.

Do it do it do it do it do it the bristol stomp

2010-01-27T14:16:00.003+01:00

PSSSSSST! Wanna buy some T Shirts?

2009-11-09T23:38:00.003+01:00

Get original Toosh T shirts and art at MySoti. Look out for more designs coming soon, and let me know if you are interested in a T shirt/picture/ colour/design/combi you can't see on the site- I'll sort it.

Gary Socrates Lives

2009-10-06T09:52:00.002+02:00

But does the Ponderer? An interesting thought. No more Thin Blue Line (ever? who knows?) which mean the motivation to write the Ponderer column 5 times a season is gone, and thus less stuff on this blog about football. Meanwhile I am continuing with Socrates' Story (Follow the story at http://twitter.com/Socrates_Story). Writing a novel on Twitter? Am I mad? Quite possibly. It is an interesting challenge. Trying to make each bit fit into 140 characters. I have cheated several times by not using full stops, by finishing on character 138 or whatever. I think that's ok. I like the idea of having my own rules, and not sticking by somebody else's randomly made up rules. (See this: http://www.twitip.com/how-to-start-a-twitter-novel/). I read this and decided no: why have a plan? That's for those who have an idea what they imagine the finished product to look like. I prefer letting the plot develop slowly and naturally. There are two problems with this method though: You get some days where very little happens. I don't want to do too many tweets every day, so some days very little happens. Ah well, tough. The other, bigger, problem is remembering what went before -- I don't have a plan, or a document to refer to, so therefore it is hard to remember things. For example, I have had three characters so far: Two of them have told the story in first person. Have I given their names? I can't remember! Somehow I will have to check on this. The only name I have for sure is Larsson. And he's gone. Oh well, if I can't remember, no one else will...

So what else... I will carry on with this blog, with things as and when I want to. There are various things I want to get down in writing - some connected to cardiff City, more not.

For example - advertising. I have become interested recently in advertising, mainly because I started to notice how it has changed during the recession. So many more adverts are for money services - insurance, loans, trade in your gold (Have you got any spare gold lying about your house? Didn't think so...) and so many of these adverts are SO bad. there are so many assumpions made about people it makes me squirm. Price comparison websites advertise every couple of minutes it seems (somebody needs to set up a price comparison website comparison website - there's a fortune to be made there... hmmm, Dragon's Den here I come) whilst other insurance companies boast how they are NOT on price comparison website "Thanks but no thanks". So go to "Go compare the meerkat supermarket dot com" (Seemples? No Stupeeds). It doesn't matter which one you do, but bloody hell it's boring. So which one do you go to? the one with an annoying singing moustachiod Italian? The one with the bloke from Dragon's Den? The one with the meerkat? The one with people who step in and out of a computer? the one with the morons - sorry, 'ordinary people' - advertising how easy it is to use, or do you ignore all that and take Paul Merton and Stephen Fry's advice? (Bloody hell they really have devalued themselves by being in that ad haven't they? BIG mistake). Or do you take the advice of Stephen Merchant (tosser - I used to like him) and shoot arrows at some porcelain dogs (What is that ad for?). Horrible isn't it? Even worse, you could be a lonely sod with no life who has to dial 118 118 to have someone to go out with tonight (that is what they are advertising isn't it? Or have I missed something?). What really really pisses me off about all this advertising is the low level it is pitched at. People can't be that stupid can they?

Alright, alright I know they can, but please get this drivel off my TV. Try and pretend people have brains, or make people aspirational for brains at least. And as for Fry and Merton, I think you've blown it.

The story begins here... (Start at the bottom, twitterers)...

2009-08-26T17:19:00.005+02:00

Follow the story at http://twitter.com/Socrates_Story

But he looked worried. He looked down. Even I could see that through the semi-drunken haze I was in, through the haze of the poorly lit bar.

So this man was right. But in contrast to me, he was clean, clean shaven, short haircut, wearing a nice suit and tie, CLEAN CUT. Sharp. Neat

But close. I looked like someone with no job, a drunk, no money no prospects, nothing to lose. Well I suppose I looked like I was. Not good

I should explain that. I looked a wreck. Tired, I guess. Dirty? Maybe. Unshaven. Shitty clothes. Needing a hair cut. Down and out? Not quite

But he sat down at the table and started talking quietly to me. "Do you want a job? You look like you might need a job. Some work for money"

I thought maybe he might want a game of pool, or that maybe he was drunk and wanted to pick a fight, or -who knows? - wanted to buy me drink

When the man came up to me in the bar I hadn't any idea what he was going to say to me and where it would all lead. But I guess you never do
But he looked worried. He looked down. Even I could see that through the semi-drunken haze I was in, through the haze of the poorly lit bar.

So this man was right. But in contrast to me, he was clean, clean shaven, short haircut, wearing a nice suit and tie, CLEAN CUT. Sharp. Neat

But close. I looked like someone with no job, a drunk, no money no prospects, nothing to lose. Well I suppose I looked like I was. Not good

I should explain that. I looked a wreck. Tired, I guess. Dirty? Maybe. Unshaven. Shitty clothes. Needing a hair cut. Down and out? Not quite

But he sat down at the table and started talking quietly to me. "Do you want a job? You look like you might need a job. Some work for money"

I thought maybe he might want a game of pool, or that maybe he was drunk and wanted to pick a fight, or -who knows? - wanted to buy me drink

When the man came up to me in the bar I hadn't any idea what he was going to say to me and where it would all lead. But I guess you never do

First game of the season...

2009-08-22T20:35:00.001+02:00

Not for Cardiff City, but for me, when I can watch the home game against Bristol City on Sky. I expect us to lose. We usually do when we're on TV. Especially when it combines so many important things: my first game of the season, on the telly, local derby. I'm afraid it means we have no chance, sorry.

Being Jewish. Race v Religion

2009-07-05T16:59:00.004+02:00

The recent legal ruling regarding Jewish identity in the UK is really interesting (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/03/judaism-chief-rabbi-jonathan-sacks) with the Court of Appeal ruling with regard to the Jewish Free School's (JFS) refusal to allow a child into their school because they felt he was not a Jew in accordance with Jewish rules - because his mother his mother was not a Jew, despite converting to and practicing Judaism. I have particular interest in this because my position is the same to some extent - my mother was not born a Jew but converted to Judaism, to please my father's mother before their marriage. The difference for me is that I have never practiced Judaism at all, preferring to live my life as a practicing atheist. In a similar situation to this child, however, when I married my first (Jewish) wife 25 years ago, my ex-father-in-law-to-be (what a great title) checked with the then Chief Rabbi whether I was a Jew and would therefore be allowed to marry in an orthodox church. He ruled I was a Goy (not a Jew), and we married in a trendy reform synagogue in Knightsbridge. Anyway, the appeal court ruled that such a 'qualification' to be a Jew (having to have been born a Jew by a Jewish mother) is a qualification of race rather than religion, and therefore the decision JFS to refuse the boy entry into the school was therefore in breach of the UK's race laws.

The Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Saks is up in arms, hating that he (and the Jewish religion, as he puts it) can be called racist - but he shouldn't be. The fact of 'being Jewish' has long been decided by others - by anti-semites, by racists. The Nazis never cared about strict hebraic qualification rules, they defined a Jew any way they wanted. Those racists here in France attacking Sarkosy for being a Jew don't care either about Judaism's own religious/racial rules. The Jews have historically (and perhaps understandably) tried to maintain the 'tribe of israel', and have opposed marrying 'out' as they put it, and it is clear to anyone with a modicum of sense that if you define any group of people by a familial/linear method you are defining a 'race'. It is not really something you can argue about. It may be that you are doing it because of a rule defined by religious texts, but why was that rule set? Surely to maintain the Jewish purity of the tribe. No?

This has not ever been anything often challenged by anti-racists throughout the world (nor anti-semites), nor (when it comes down to daily life) by most Jews. Most Jews have a strong sense of their identity which is not defined by religion, but by history. This is a landmark ruling that I hope gets upheld at the High Court, the House of Lords and all the way to Europe - it could have a major impact upon the Jewish community in the UK and beyond.

Why is this important? OK, take myself, and take this young boy trying to get into JFS,(I am still amused by the Free in Jewish Free School) and many other people throughout the western world who might define themselves as Jewish, or even HALF Jewish, by race rather than by religion, knowing that racists define them as a Jew, and Orthodox Jews define them as non-Jews. When we live in a world where racial hate exists, we, the half-Jew/Jew/non-Jew want to know who will protect us and who will not, who is on our side, and who is not - and thus being a 'half Jew' is not a comfortable identity to hold.

It is perhaps time for the Jewish community to grow up, and open its arms. I have no problem with other people identifying me as a Jew, it is only the Chief rabbi and his ilk who seem to have that problem. I think the Court of Appeal is righjt. It is a view that IS racist.

Integration

2009-06-21T14:29:00.001+02:00

So many things linking together via simple bits of internet software - blogger, twitter, facebook and what else can I integrate. My twitter update now on the right of this blog, and it tells you exciting stuff like I am going for a picnic right now. I'm just waiting for everyone to get ready. At the moment it's only me and the dog who are ready. Mind you, the dog's always ready.

And no Cardiff news at all at the moment. Boring stuff about the new stadium (yawn), but no new players as yet, no one sold as yet. 

As for twitter, I don't really get it. I guess if i used my mobile for updasting it it would be even more dull (and expensive). But some people I don't know are 'following' me. I feel like I am being stalked. Or is that storked? Anyway, I have the feeling that there are people who surf twitter just looking for entries that chime with them, and I said the right things. One person is a yoga freak, and I think she's following me because i mentioned Buddha. But it was only in the context of Human League and their song 'Being Boiled', which i was listening to - ironically on a very hot day.

Gary Socrates End of Season stuff - sorry it's late

2009-05-21T17:17:00.001+02:00

Gary looks forward (when we’ll be looking back)

Normally I look sideways, but this time it’s different. Just one point in the next four games will guarantee us a play off berth (or birth, he said, pregnantly) – and we might already have secured this by the time you read this – and there is still an outside chance of (say it quietly) automatic promotion.

No, I don’t really think we’ll go up (not after watching Cardiff city for 45 years) , but whatever happens next season is going to be different. Either we go up and suffer a ridiculous year of humiliation in the premiership, with just one victory over an injury-riddled Hull City to our name (after they’ve had two players sent off and it was an own goal anyway), or we’ll stay in this division, in our new Ikea stadium, with half our team gone – if the press are to be believed. Ledley will go to either Wolverhampton or Stoke or Everton or Middlesbrough or Sunderland or some other godforsaken town that has a top-tier team. Johnson will go to somewhere similar, McCormack will end up at Celtic playing with his boyhood idols (and Willo Flood) and Chopra will go somewhere with a betting shop.

Leaving us with a bunch of players who just might manage to escape from relegation to the old third division. Whatever way you look at it, I reckon THIS year, our last at Ninian Park, is going to be one of those years we look back on, and say “Those were the days.”

Flying elbows

What’s wrong with Crystal Palace? What’s wrong with Warnock? Well, Warnock is clearly a dodgy transsexual toe-rag with the morals of a scallop, and always has been, but why on earth were his team so keen to kick the hell out of us, and elbow poor old Roger Johnson into the hospital? Was it partly because their weirdo manager was saying how wonderful he thought Cardiff were before the match? Was it because Warnock is still employed by Sheffield United? Was it because (and I say this as someone who lived in North London for over 40 years) they are South Londoners? Probably that’s the answer. I always remember the Palace fans calling Cantona a “dirty northern bastard” after his famous kung fu kick at Selhurst Park. North? Marseille? Bunch of weirdos – they deserve Warnock.

Ninian Sell Off

As predicted, Mr Ridsdale hasn’t missed a trick, and all ambassadors have been offered a chance to buy a bit of plastic (known as a ‘seat’) from CCFC for £20. You also have a chance to buy a bit of the pitch for another twenty quid, if you need to re-turf your back garden (although I don’t know what you’ll do with the box and the certificate), and you can get your name in the programme for a mere tenner. Alternatively you can write a nice letter to that nice Mr Turton who edits this rag – oops, sorry, I mean esteemed journal – and you can get your name (if you can spell it) into TBL. For only a fiver (Oi, Andrew, cut me in for half of this!). Meanwhile, there’s some dodgy bloke outside Ninian Park selling things that are “Limited Addition”. I’d guess this bloke failed both his English AND his Maths GCSEs.

Old shirts

Apparently everyone is going to be wearing old City shirts for the last game at Ninian, and I shall be there wearing one of my ancient imitation shirts too. Not sure which one though, as this seems a damn fine time to sell the rest on Ebay.

Money money money

Not that I am obsessed by money or anything (but I can go on for hours about how the pound-euro exchange rate is killing me), but you have to wonder about the wealth of our fans. I know you save a few quid by standing on the Grange End, but is the only reason you do this so you can throw your spare pound coins and mobile phones at Swansea players? Or refs? The Jacks’ keeper De Vries was reported as saying he could have made a few quid from what was thrown at him: “I could have picked £250 up at the end to be honest,” he said. Instead, he was picking the ball out of the net. Mind you it would be hard to pick up all those coins with goalie gloves on. De Vries also noted that in Holland someone had thrown a banana at him. Down at the Jacks’ stadium he normally only gets thrown lucky heather… (Sorry).

Purse strings

Ha! You thought this bit was about money too, didn’t you? But you’d be wrong. Instead it’s about Darren Purse, who it looks like will be playing his last game with us shortly. Strange really, he’s clearly had a fall out with Jones, but without anyone lined up to replace him it’s strange he’s going to leave (along with Roger Johnson if we don’t go up), whilst we’re prepared to offer some sort of contract to those old crocks Kennedy and Scimeca. On the other hand maybe jones HAS got someone lined up. Whatever, cheers Darren, many thanks for what you’ve contributed, not least your song: “De-de-de-de-de-de- Darren Purse, Darren Pu-urse, Darren Darren Purse..” One more round against Ipswich?

Internationals

Amazingly this year we have had players for us from a huge variety of countries: Obviously Wales, England and Scotland, and not surprisingly both parts of Ireland, but also: Greece, Finland, Poland, Hungary, France, USA, Holland, and Norway. That’s an awful lot of countries, isn’t it? But here’s athough, whilst some of those are easy, see if you can work out who the players from each country are… (Extra points if you guess who was born in Norway without looking it up).

Awards Time

Yes it’s the end of the season, and it’s time for the awards that all city players are waiting for…. The Garys. Stuff the Player of the year nonsense, or the points things that appear elsewhere in this esteemed organ (ooh-er) THESE are what count. So here goes:

• Best American: This is a tough one, but after much consideration, the award goes to Eddie Johnson
• Most Unpronounceable Name: A lot of (stupid) names in the hat for this one, including Konstanwhatisname , Quincy Awuso-whatever and Miguel Comminges, but it has to go to Gabor Gypes. Easy to write, impossible to say. Strangely none of these guys have their own song.
• Best Goalie: After due consideration this was not awarded
• Best Norwegian: Ha! Did you think I’d give the answer away THAT easily?
• Best Irishman with an Italian name but really born in Norway: I think that might be a clue…
• Best Hair: Kevin McNaughgton. But only sometimes. Sometimes he has silly hair, sometimes he doesn’t. It’s confusing. But fun.
• Best TV Character: Quincy
• Best Sack: Erwin
• Biggest Burke: Chris
• Most Popular Name: Johnson
• Best Character From A Jane Austen novel: A close one, but this goes again this year to Darcy Blake
• And once more, that old favourite: Best Locker: Davy Jones

Ninian Park Memories

2009-02-06T13:53:00.003+01:00

The Editor of TBL asked me to write something about my Ninian Park memories, but then decided to cut the thing to one paragraph. So here's the whole thing. What the hell.

I have a confession to make. I have no great affection for Ninian Park and I won’t miss it when it has gone. This is almost certainly mainly due to the fact that growing up in London I saw more away City games than home games, but also due to the fact that, given this distance, I have always thought it wasn’t the best of stadiums. On the other hand I have worked out that I have watched about 200 odd games at Ninian Park, and have plenty of memories, which I guess is all the Editor of TBL asked me for.

As a kid we used to come down to Cardiff regularly, to mainly visit my grandmother who lived in Cathedral Road, but also for holidays in Ogmore by sea, and (most of all) for my dad to take me on the bus from Cathedral Road to Ninian Park. For a hardened Londoner like me (I was at least five years old) this was a lesson. On the bus I remember the signs saying “NO SPITTING” – unlike anything I had ever seen in London – were people in Cardiff more likely to spit? Yes, my dad the chest doctor explained, miners and ex-miners with lung diseases. I felt small. At the ground I heard a shout and saw a waved fist “SCOULAR YOU’RE A JEW!”. As a Jewish boy growing up in North London in a community where Jews were aplenty, this was news to me: “Is Jimmy Scoular Jewish Dad?” I asked. My dad, looking forward to a City match, had to quickly explain to me the nature of casual anti-semitism. I got it, some years later.

I can’t remember who won. I can’t actually remember whether that was my first game at Ninian Park (certainly not my first City game, my less-than-perfect memory tells me that was away to Charlton, when my father told me that Barry Jones was our “Dangerman” and I pictured Patrick MacGoohan in one of my favourite TV shows. But certainly those were the days of Toshack and Clark, and Don Murray and Brian Harris – with whom my dad became friendly. And I know I sat in the grandstand with my dad – who still sits there, whilst I go around the ground to sit on the bob bank.

Other memories…. Of matches I saw, I can remember seeing Ronnie Moore score – knocking one in the Grange End whilst (for reasons I can’t remember) I sat in the Canton Stand. I remember Gil Reece scoring two goals against Oxford when he had the wind with him in the second half, I remember Pikey scoring after running the full length of the pitch, I remember (my favourite) Nathan Blake scoring a cracker from 30 yards out, and then shooting every time he got the ball – and nearly scoring every time he got the ball. Then I remember the excitement of going down to Cardiff for the FA Cup 6th round game against Luton, only to find out the bastards had sold Blakey to Sheffield. I remember everyone running onto the pitch after winning promotion against Scunthorpe, I remember that unforgettable defeat of Leeds, and I remember (well it was only last week) holding the mighty Arsenal. But mostly I remember a lot of boxing day draws: 2-2 against Torquay when they wore our revolting yellow away kit (the one that looked like it had bird shit on its shoulders) and 0-0 when I took my son to his first match, aged 6, on a freezing boxing day afternoon against Chester City. One of the worst games I have ever seen, with the only excitement when Carl Dale hit the bar. “Why’s everyone stamping their feet?” asked my son. “To keep warm” was all I could reply, “there’s nothing to get excited about on the pitch”. And despite all my subsequent attempts, I could never get my son interested in football after that terrible start. My wife, on the other hand I converted to City first time out. “Do I really have to come?” she asked, as we spent new year in Ogmore by sea, our first trip together. “Oh yes” I replied, knowing that a home match against Exeter City, would inspire true love. But even I didn’t expect the 6-1 win. And we (Andy Jordan) even scored Exeter’s one. 6-1. I haven’t seen anything like it since – and nor has she.

OK, Ninian Park’s not so bad. Even if you do have to piss against a wall, can’t get a decent cup of tea and we bloody hardly ever win. The good news is that when we move the long distance to our new ground across the street, we’ll surely still have our white flying visitors swirling overhead, and for a moment we’ll stop shouting “Bluebirds” to be the only crowd outside of Brighton to shout “Seagulls”.

The Ponderer: Latest TBL column - October/November 2008

2008-11-14T11:33:00.005+01:00

Johnson is quick quick slow

Yes, we’re back to that old discussion about useless City strikers, and this time we kick off (which is more than he does) with Eddie Johnson. Johnson has owned up on the Echo that he’s finding things in the Championship a bit harder than he thought it would be. Says Johnson: “One of the most difficult things I have noticed is the pace at this level, the pace of the Championship is far quicker than the Premiership. The Premiership is a very technical division because it’s very quick and yet slow at the same time.” Well, that’s clear, isn’t it. The Championship is quick, but the premiership is very quick, but it’s very slow and the Championship is just quick and not slow and is quick, but not as quick as the premiership, which is slow. The Championship, he says “is boom, boom at 100 miles an hour”. Which means, I guess that the premierhip must be about, say, 150 mph. Or 30 mph. Or faster than the speed of sound. BOOOOOM! Not just “boom, boom”. See? Clear isn’t it?

And as for the game against the Jacks: “the game was too fast for me”. But he doesn’t say what speed, or whether he heard a “BOOOM!” so let’s assume it was a bit faster than the 100 mph the Championship normally is – say 120 mph – still not as fast as the Premiership? Because you see the Premiership is quick and slow at the same time. Obvious really. Anyway, it will be alright in the end, when as the season draws on, as injuries kick in, the whole team slows down to walking pace – just as long as they are quick at the same time.

Bye bye Thompson, Hello Bothroyd

Well, Steve “the Thommohawk” Thompson has gone. No longer will we have a hard-working big centre forward who rund around but never scores goals, but can sing a good b-side to a cup final song. Instead we’ve got classy ex-Coventry, Arsenal, Wolves, Stoke, Charlton, Blackburn and Perugia striker, Jay Bothroyd. Blimey that’s a lot of clubs, he must be older than Methusalah. But no, Bothroyd is only 26, four years younger than Thommo. And his goal record? According to that wonderful resource soccerbase, 223 games in total, and 42 goals. Much better than Thommo at 348 games and 71 goals. Thommo’s average is only 0.204, whilst Bothroyd’s is 0.188. Wait a minute. Hang on, hang on, that means that Bothroyd’s record is WORSE than Thommo’s. Surely not? Can’t be possible, can it? To get rid of one centre forward because he doesn’t score goals to replace him with another who scores less? What sort of idiot would do something like that? It’s alright though, we’ve got Eddie Johnson, whose average so far in his 12 games in British football is…..0.00. That’s right, 12 games, no goals. Thank goodness for top scorer Ross McCormack, with 103 games and 30 goals, an average of 0.291. Which is almost respectable, but I hate to ask the question: How many of those were penalties.

Four strikers foretold

Jones promised us four strikers this year, and according to Peter Ridsdale, he’s delivered: Bothroyd, McCormack, Johnson and that other bloke. Which other bloke? You may well ask – it turns out to be Paul Parry, who has massive experience of playing as a striker (at least a dozen games last year wasn’t it?) and is another massive goalscorer with an average of 0.163 (56 goals in 344 games).

Er… this was not quite what we expected when Jones talked about us taking great strides after last year’s FA Cup final (didn’t someone have to get shot if we didn’t?), and, to be honest, I for one did not expect to be rewriting similar sort of nonsense to what I wrote a year ago about the lack of depth in our squad – already exposed just a few games into the season. On the face of it, our midfield looks our strongest area of the team, but with Injuries to Scimeca, McPhail, Ledley and Darcy Blake at various points, it all looks a bit thin. Our squad appears to be 23 deep – but this is including Aaron Morris and Erwin Sak and Jonathan Brown – three kids who Jones really doesn’t want to use yet (or perhaps ever – if you think about it the only young player who has come through and been regularly used is Ledley, everyone else has been sold off, and frankly it’s hard to see how or why City turned down £6m for Ledley, which is reputedly what Stoke offered for him). Our squad is too thin, the suspicion is that it’s worse than last year’s – we’ve lost Ramsey, Fowler, Hasselbaink and Loovens (and Gunter) and haven’t noticeably replace them with anyone better. So far Comminges looks just about ok (given he’s a right footer playing left back) and McCormack occasionally looks very good (although in the games I have seen he also has long moments of mediocrity), and I’ve already talked about Johnson and Bothroyd enough. So this leaves our other new signings: Heaton (who seems ok – not convinced either way yet), Dennehy (not played) and Gyepes – who hasn’t played and no one can pronounce. Excited? No, nor me.

I have to admit that this season I have a horrible, horrible feeling of doom. Which I think will persist until we buy in at least three more players: a goalscorer, a midfielder and a defender. But who knows, I could be wrong.

How DO you say that?

We now have two players whose name no one can pronounce: Comminges and Gyepes. I honestly do not believe that this is all part of a Jones conspiracy to take our mind off all our other players, but it is driving me kind of mad.

Now, Comminges is from Guadeloupe, which is part of France (honestly, despite being 3,000 miles away from the French mainland) and as you may have noted from the TBL editor’s jealous comments, I live in France, and have double-checked with French people on how to pronounce his name: the general consensus is that it should rhyme with “singe” (French for monkey” and therefore should sound “Commanj” (think “Banjo” then take away the “o”). Meanwhile, during the Swansea game Sky insisted on calling him ‘Commingez’ (to rhyme with ‘Domingez’), others have called him “cummings”, Jones apparently calls him Commingay whilst the Echo asked him, but found his accent impenetrable and printed his answer as “Commergschz” . I think you’ll find, however, that I’m right. Comminges is also the name of a town in the Languedoc. Guess where I live.

As for Gabor Gyepes, this is clearly a harder matter: Despite an internet messageboard suggestion that the proper pronunciatioin is “Zsa Zsa”, the general consensus is that the correct Hungarian pronunciation for Gyepes is something like “Djeppez”. But further research leads me to discover that Gyepes actually means “Grassy” however, so perhaps we could call him that. Or “Dopey”….

Finally

What's that coming over the hill? Just when you didn't expect it, the return of Michael Chopra. It's all very exciting except that I have a horrible feeling of foreboding about all this. of course that could be all about something completely different, like the bottle of wine I'm about to open.... Cheers!

Searches

2008-11-02T15:16:00.005+01:00

One of the things I love about monitoring my websites is seeing who goes there, and seeing how they got there. I particularly like seeing what people were searching for in google or whatever to get to my sites. For this blog I notice recently there seem to be an enormous number of people wondering what the origin of the 'bluebird' symbol is - which is gratifying, because it means that article is getting a wider readership than its original TBL publication, and the other thing people have been searching for recently is "Alan Lee booze" - which is entertaining, although given City fans' experience "Alan Lee fags" would be a more appropriate search (of course he may well have cleaned his act up now he's at Palace).

Web monitoring also leads to you to be able to identify some other very strange people who read this blog for their own reasons, and in one case in particular enabled me to pass their IP numbers to the police.

But apart from Alan Lee and Bluebirds, most people come to my blog because of a google picture search for one thing or another. I got an awful lot of hits for the Tintin in Iraq picture I posted ages ago, and recently somebody or other has been fascinated by my photo of Place D'Olivet in Ganges. Unfortunately Blogger is misbehaving today, so no random picture of Tower Bridge atttached to this blog entry as planned.

Unbelievably tactless

2008-10-11T14:14:00.003+02:00

How can this happen? There are just far too many people around with no brains in the world, iperating without any sensitivity or intelligence, in positions of responsibility.

Some of them even get elected to important posts - Mayor of London, President of the USA just to name two - which I guess tells me all I need to know about the human race.

Well, the sun is shining, and there is Wales v Liechtenstein ion the TV later, so not everything's bad in the world.

Ganges 1900 - 2008 Place Fabre Olivet

2008-09-09T10:13:00.001+02:00

Ganges 1900 - 2008 Place Fabre Olivet, originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

This year the 1900 festival in Ganges was spoiled by the rain. Like many others we ran for shelter as the rains came down on the fantastic horse show. Well, we had seen it last year. On the plus side i realised that wearing glasses saves getting your eye poked out by umbrellas, and it was nice seeing the Place Olivet without cars in it. It's been strange weather in france this summer - not enough consistant sun. As I write this it is cloudy, despite my computer telling me that today's forecast is 28 degrees and sun... Oh well.

Summer at the City

2008-08-05T10:59:00.025+02:00

A new season is upon us. Only seconds ago we were at Wembley (and no I'm not over it yet, thanks for asking) and now a new season is about to kick off. But meanwhile it has hardly been quiet down at Parc Ninian this summer. Whilst building of the new stadium has continued (not sure about those blue tiles - it's starting to look like a public loo - I suppose in keeping with tradition of the bob bank's famous old urinals), Cardiff's management have been excelling themselves in various ways.

A million quid?

You wouldn't mind if it was a million quid for a new striker, but for Publicity Pete Ridsdale? You've got to be kidding. Half a mill salary (Yes, just like you I'm thinking I'm in the wrong business), topped off with a half million bonus. For bloody what? For gettting of of Sam the Sham? Wooly Booly is all I can say. But that's alright, he'e "put it back in the club". Now hang on a minute, I'm not that stupid, what you mean is that a large chunk of City shares have been handed over to Ridsdale. For no reason at all except that he can get away with it.

Old and new strikers

Fowler pissing off to Blackburn was (probably) good news. City weren't likely going to sell any more 'Fowler 8' shirts anyway, and he was unlikely to play either.

The Hasselbaink mismanagement joke is another story. Another case of Mr Ridsdale either being incompetent or a liar. Put it this way - either Ridsdale really thought Hasselbaink had agreed to forego a year's contract (and a year's pay) for no consideration at all, and without putting it in writing - which is what Ridsdale says happened,or Ridsdale is telling porkies. Either way, it's another example of Publicity Pete fucking up, whilst "at the helm" (Lord save us).

Also spectacularly well-handled have beedn the non-signings of Boyd from Rangers (never was going to come), Bent from Charlton (can you blame him?) and Cooper from Dallas (Would have gone to Rosenberg anyway if they' let him leave - and only likely to ever join us at Christmas if we're looking like proper promotion hopefuls). Incredibly badly managed public relations (whose fault? Half a million bonus anyone?).

Meanwhile, no one is getting over excited at the signings of McCormack and Bothroyd, not least because it is clear from Motherwell internet messageboards that most of them were glad to see the back of McCormack, whilst the scoring records of both strikers just about match of to Steve "Transfer-listed" (sorry that should have read "Thommohawk") Thompson. Bloody hell. Anyone want to put money on Parry ending up as top scorer again? Oh yes and we're all extremely excited by the signings of Kennedy (Too old, Palace reject), Comminges (OK, a back up left back), Dennehy (reserve Everton centre back with NO league appearances to his name), Heaton (a 12 year old reserve goalie) and "glue hands" Enckelman. That's right, I haven't got over the FA Cup Final.

Going..... up?

Despite all the club spin (top six place, promotion this year before we get in our new stadium etc.) you may have noticed various experts in the press publishing their opinion on where we'll finish. NOT ONE believes we'll finish in the top six,and all have us somewhere between 9th and 12th. Personally I reckon 13th - so even I don't think we're going down, unlike someone I know who thinks that not only are we going down, we'll also go into administration. See? I'm being positive here.We've still got a good midfield, even without Ramsay (although I am not clear why Scimeca was offered another contract), with Rae, McPhail, Whittingham and Ledley - hoping we can keep him given that there's still a couple of weeks until the transfer deadline. Our defence is OK (but really probably not as good as they are being made out to be - if they could be taught to pass it might help), and we actually now have a couple of forwards - but no one thinks they'll set the world on fire. So there it is. Mid table mediocrity is the best we can expect. But they key thing, ok course, is ending up above (and beating) the Jacks. Sorry, but it's true.

Anyway I look forward to being proved wrong in April, when Bothroyd knocks his 30th goal of our season in to guarantee City automatic promotion.Or McCormack. Or Thompson. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Sorry, only joking - as they say football is a funny old game. But really, not THAT funny.

Wembley Flag

2008-05-12T16:51:00.002+02:00

A Languedoc Bluebirds flag was a definite necessity for the FA cup final- so here it is.

I never felt more like singing the Blues

2008-05-09T18:29:00.002+02:00

Wemberley

“We’re the famous Cardiff City and we’re going to Wemberley, Wemberley!!”. It must have been a hell of a shock for the many City fans arriving at Wembley for the semi-final to discover that it is actually spelt “W_E_M_B_L_E_Y”. Mind you, this has foxed England fans for many years now, who believe that they support a team called “Ingerland” who play at “Wemberley”. T’s amazing they ever get to a match. I can imagine them wondering for hours around London looking for this mythical “Wemberley”, ignoring all directions to “Wembley Central” or “Wembley Park”, “Why isn’t our national stadium on the tube?” they cry.

Wear the shirt

God but it was fun going to the semi final and watching City win. Unbelievable. I can’t believe I was there, and can’t believe I’m going to be there again on May 17th. But there I will be, with overpriced ticket in my sticky hands, happily shelling out for overpriced programmes, beer and pies. Little change will be had from an obscene amount of money I am not prepared to divulge (you may remember that I live in France).

One of the key decisions that needed to be taken for the semi final was what to wear. Which was my ‘lucky’ shirt? Should I wear a shirt I had never worn before? Should I wear my as yet unworn 2007/8 city shirt or my old city shirt from the 50s? or the one from the 60s? Or should I wear my 1927 club shirt? This year’s model? Lst year’s? maybe I shouldn’t wear a City shirt at all? To be safe, before I left France I packed every possible option, and on the day, fortunately the weather took care of the decision. With snow pouring down the decision was easy: I would wear them all.

But now I am left with an even bigger problem. Having forked out a million pounds or so for a special commemorative City shirt (black, of course), AND a commemorative 1927 club shirt my choices are even wider. AND, to make matters more complicated Mrs Socrates is coming to the final as well, and she wants to know what shirt she should wear. How should I know? I am having my own sartorial and superstition nightmare – don’t bring yours in too! Do I stick with the lucky three shirts I wore for the Barnsley match, or do risk a new shirt? What’s the weather going to be like? It’s lovely and sunny here in France, but London in May? Who knows? But I think that’s it – leave it to the last minute, let the weather decide . It may not be feasible to wear all six shirts – no wait a minute, that’s seven, I forgot about my new ‘Robin Friday’-style stripey shirt - I intend bringing, but who knows? It may snow again.

My biggest fear is that we’ll miss the game while Mrs S is still unable to decide what to wear to the match. Just as long as it’s blue. Or black. Or maybe with yellow and white stripes…. Aaaargh!!

Money

According to the local Welsh press City have made over £2m from their FA cup run in prizes, gate money and TV rights, and that’s beore they get to the final, sell lots of extra new shirts, loads and loads of season tickets etc. God the whole thing must have made millions. And yet what is Mr Ridsdale saying? “All our players are for sale”. Bloody hell. “All the players have a price”. OK, he says the price has gone up, but by how much? And does anyone really want to buy Steve Thompson?

Optimistically I had hoped that next season we might have a few new players, not a few less. But there you go.

FA Cup strikers

One of the stupidest decisions I have seen Dave Jones make (and really there haven’t been that many) was playing Parry in the West Brom game. The previous week I had been chatting with a number of City fans who all unanimously agreed that Parry needed a rest. He had played (up until then) virtually every game, and ran and ran and ran. Shirley the sensible thing to do before the semi final was to give the man a rest? This turned out to be horribly prescient, as Parry was, as you know, injured and has missed loads of games since then, including the semi final, and all of us are crossing our fingers that he is fit for the final.

Meanwhile, it seems there is an outside chance of Robbie Fowler making a comeback for the final – or at least being on the bench. Hard to believe, but there you go. Jones has expressed a worry though, that Fowler hasn’t “done any running”. However, this didn’t seem to affect his game before the injury, and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink has played almost an entire season without doing any running…

We’re all grateful though that we can turn to the services of Steve “thommohawk” Thompson. What has happened to him since his bananaboat injury? I know he never used to score goals, but he always looked like he was useful, like he served a purpose on the pitch. Now he doesn’t even serve a porpoise. (A contender for pointless surreal pun of the year?).

As for Warren Feeney, it is such a blow he’s cup-tied, when he’s doing so well at the moment in the league. Altogether now “We’ve lost that Warren Feeney, oh that Warren feeney, we’ve lost that Warren Feeney now he’s gone, gone, gone.. Woah-oh-oh”. Ok, technically he hasn’t gone. Yet.

Losing in the league winning in the cup

Our recent form has been really lousy, especially against Scunthorpe and Wolves. But generally our away form this season has been pretty terrible, apart from in the cup. City haven’t managed ONE away win in 2008, and in their last 12 away games have managed one win and six draws. Meanwhile during the same period City have won four cup games away from home. Strange, but true.

Sweet FA and lovely Michel

First the English FA announces that there is no way City would be allowed to play in the UEFA Cup should they win the FA Cup. Then Michel Platini (what a great player he was) the current head of UEFA announces that UEFA would be very unhappy if the English FA didn’t let Cardiff play in the UEFA Cup should they win the FA Cup. The English FA thinks about their bid to hold the World Cup in 2018, and thinks about the support it needs from UEFA, and then the English FA announces that if City win the FA Cup they will qualify for the UEFA Cup. Yippee.

The the following item appears in the paper: “Former FAW secretary Alun Evans says the FA's plan to allow Cardiff to play in Europe if they win the FA Cup is a "backward step" for Welsh football.” The Mr Ridsdale throws his toys out of the pram and says Cardiff may leave the Welsh FA then.

What a load of nonsense. Maybe Mr Ridsdale needs to note a couple of things:

1. Alun Evans has always been an annoying tosser who makes outlandishly stupid statements that the welsh press love to quote.

2. Alun Evans is the FORMER FAW secretary. So who cares?

Cup final songs

It’s always nice to finish on a song. So I assume that all of you have heard the latest hit single recorded by a very famous person who none of us have ever heard of featuring the fantastic lines “at the helm is Peter Ridsdale” (stop laughing at the back, boy – no – you, with the Leeds shirt, stop it). Anyway, I’ll be singing along. Not with that pile of shite though. I really like the Helen Love/Super Furry Animals cup final song: Cardiff City Superstars. Get yours here: http://www.ccmb.co.uk/superstarswembley.mp3

I also quite like this: Leighton James Don't Like Us:

O Bluebird of Happiness

2008-05-09T15:06:00.002+02:00

Why a bluebird? Sams criticism of our nickname and mascot, and symbol
of the club Im sure has set many thinking. We are the Bluebirds, and
we want to stay the Bluebirds, and were called the Bluebirds
because.....

Well, many fans (who have read Graham Lloyds excellent Cmon City)
will have an idea that Citys founder Bart Wilson got the name from a
play The Blue Bird by Maurice Maeterlinck, a Belgian playwright and
poet, which was playing in Cardiff at the time Wilson changed the
shirts to blue, the name to Cardiff City, and we entered the football
league. What many wont know is that Maeterlinck is actually that
famed elusive character - a famous Belgian, who wrote many symbolist
plays, stories and poems (over 60 volumes) and was a winner of the
Nobel prize for Literature in 1911. But why Maeterlinck? (Who was more
likely to be an Anderlecht supporter than anything else), and why this
play? Perhaps it helps to know that the play was an allegorical
fantasy conceived as a play for children that denies the reality of
death - a tale of two children searching for the Bluebird of
Happiness - actually written in 1909, with the shadow of World War 1
looming large. It also helps to know that the play was extremely well
known, and had been made into a film a number of times, even by 1920 -
the most notable being in 1918, by surrealist/symbolist French film
director Maurice Tourneur.

The search for the Bluebird of Happiness is perhaps the key to all of
this. For, it transpires, the Bluebird is not (like Im sure many of
you, like me, thought) a mythological creature, but a real bird, an
inhabitant (mainly) of America, a relative of the plain old thrush,
and historically it is said(this apparently originates from Shamanism)
the Bluebird brings happiness, joy and contentment. All birds are
messengers to the Great Spirit. Therefore, whenever you see Bluebird,
ask for happiness and your prayer will fly to Sky Father on the wings
of Bluebird.

Thus the symbolism of Therell be blue birds over the white cliffs
of Dover..

and the probably less well-known:

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

(Blue Skies - Irving Berlin, 1934).

There have also been other lesser known songs featuring bluebirds, for
example Bluebird Of Happiness as sung by Frank Sinatra, and
Bluebird sung by Anne Murray.

Of course the symbolism of the bluebird was not lost on Bart Wilson,
nor on others at the time - for example Sir Malcolm Campbell, who
named his famous world-beating car The Bluebird

So, the Bluebird is a symbol of optimism, of hope and of happiness.
Not something, I would suggest, that Cardiff should lose. Its a shame
that the history and knowledge of the symbolism of the bluebird has
all but disappeared, but I would suggest that the problem would not
have even arisen had the most famous bluebird tune gone Therell be
bluebirds over the grey slates of Grangetown..

And whats Sams alternative to the Bluebird? A dragon. Whilst no one
would argue that the dragon is a fine symbol of Wales, and a magical
symbol, like the Bluebird, that invokes the history and magic of
Wales, it is hard to forget that the dragon was slain by that Maltese
symbol of England, St. George, and who needs reminding of that? So
lets stick with a positive symbol, a symbol of hope, happiness and
joy, a bluebird.

And perhaps we should forget all the debates about whether the
Bluebirds should run out to the sound of the Super Furry Animals or
Catatonia or The Manic Street Preachers, and go back to the days of
Bart Wilson and run out, as they did in those days, to the sounds of
Happy Days are Here Again.

Whatever the tune, I know what well all be shouting:
Blooooooooooobirds!

The Final Countdown...starts here

2008-04-08T18:52:00.002+02:00

Guess where I was on Sunday.

England are you listening

Keep your trophy glistening

We're coming in May

To take it away

Walking in a Cardiff wonderland.

What a weekend. It's hard to believe it, but the Bluebirds have reached the final. Yes the FA Cup final. So many good things about that....

Que sera sera

Put the champagne on ice

we're going to Wembley twice

Que sera sera

All Blacks

2008-03-17T20:32:00.002+01:00

City will be wearing black at Wembley for "good footballing reasons" according to the official website . They think wearing white shorts will cause them "considerable difficulty with regards to distinguishing which players to pass to". From what I've seen this season the kit colour hasn't made any difference to this. At Colchester last Saturday, despite wearing all black, this seemed not to improve passing to the right player.

But it's the "lucky kit", obviously. Until they lose. Then the lucky kit will be a different one. Let's hope that's at the Charity Shield, eh?

WEMBLEY!

2008-03-17T20:28:00.002+01:00

We're the famous Cardiff City and we're going to Wemberly, Wemberly, Wemberly

Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, we're going to Wemberly.

Socrates is going to Wembley, his knees have gone all trembly, la la la la, la la la la.

Good to get all that out of the system.

Art Wanted?

2008-03-02T22:15:00.001+01:00

I kind of like this widget, but Blogger doesn't seem too keen...

America, Jesus, Islam and France

2008-02-28T11:58:00.004+01:00

Just a few images I found on the internet that mused me this week:

Reach out and touch toast. Ever seen John Waters' "Pecker"? Great film. "Full of Grace!".
Nor me.

They'll never find Osama

I agree. Absolutely.
See above.
Now this is more like it.

Bricks, the FAW. And what the hell is wrong with Blogger?

2008-02-22T18:54:00.005+01:00

Fancy a brick? For a mere sixty odd quid you can buy a brick from Cardiff City with your name or some other text on it. Like "Jones Out!" or the more surreal "I like cheese" or my personal favourite "Je ne regrette rien". Sadly, despite this exciting innovation no one at CCFC has learned to spell: "Seperate the two lines with a coma" the website advises. (click here). Presumably this coma is induced by watching one of City's FAW Cup games. Interestingly (more interesting than the game) the Newport side that knocked City out of the FAW cup featured more players with City first team experience than the city side did. But then again they did have a range of ex-Bluebird heroes such as Jason Bowen, Lee Jarman and damon "Not a Girl" Searle. Great stuff.

Meanwhile Blogger is driving me mad I tell you. Can't cut and paste properly any more, things moved around so that words get split. Bloody hell, it's almost enough to make you go back to WordPress. Anyway, I've changed to black because I got sick of the sight of my old Blog, and i thought that might help things, seeing as how I'd played with the html. But no. Now I just have a black, depressing Blog. Strangely still popular in Belgium. Hello Belgium! Get a life!

More unedited TBL stuff

2008-02-22T18:25:00.002+01:00

Doomed

As predicted in the last issue of TBL, Jones has been sacked and the bluebirds inevitable tumble to the bottom of the table has continued. Thank god I didn’t have any money on that. But what changes has the wily Mr
Jones made? Has he brought in new players? No. Has he instituted new tactics? No. What has he done? Played Parry up front. That’s about it really, apart from playing Gunter for a couple of games before flogging him to Spurs. But Parry up front? How has that worked? It’s not like it hasn’t been tried before – and failed miserably. Can anyone explain it? The worrying thing is I don’t think Jones can, eithe

r: he has one tactic and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It clearly helps though when we’re all calling for Jones’ head. So “Jones out!” I say.

One thing Jones really is inconsistent at – and I challenge anyone to dispute this – is buying/picking strikers. Chopra – brilliant. Jerome – fantastic. Fowler - er.. Hasselbaink – hmm… Byrne – ha ha ha. But he does get points for selling them for lots of money. We got loads of money for Jerome and Chopra (I make it about £9m – what happened to that money eh?), and as for the reported £500,000 for Steve McLean: What? Half a

million? Bloody hell. It is reported that Sturrock at Plymouth who managed him before (crucially before he broke his leg) really rates him. As someone I know said, it’s a shame we didn’t have an old bit of rope he used to tether his dog with that we could flog him. (Cheers Darren).

But as another person I know says, it may turn out that McLean comes good at Plymouth, like Lee at Ipswich. On the other hand, why was Fleetwood let go? How many goals has he scored at Forest Green? 175,000? How much were Crew prepared to pay for him? £28? I may be confused there…

Robbie Fowler’s tragic
He wear’s a tragic hat. And when he signed for Cardiff he said “oh no there goes my back”. Strange to hear that D

ave Jones was on a radio phone in recently attacking David Giles’ attack on Fowler in the Western mail. (And if you find a clumsier sentence in this issue of TBL please write to the Editor). It’s hard to believe Jones wants him for another year even though he can barely walk – unless of course the reported £15,000 plus a week deal depended on appearances. Or maybe Fowler is Jones’ landlord and he doesn’t want him to get too upset about the stains on the wallpaper.

Genius supporters

The recently reported story of the City “fan” (or as ably described by the Echo: “football thug”) being banned from football grounds for another five years after breaking his existing ban to watch City v Wolves. Colin Cody was originally banned for six years after his involvement in the little bit of bother at the famous Leeds game in 2002. Adding to his genius credentials he was locked up in jail in 2004 after driving a van into the front of Fairwater Police Station, shouting “I did it for the Soul Crew”. The first thing he does after coming out is to head for Ninian Park. In addition to his banning order and a 12 month community rehabilitation order, Cody was ordered by the judge to take part in “an enhanced thinking skills programme”. An “enhanced thinking skills programme”?? It makes you think, eh? Actually it turns out this is a real programme, and appears to have been pioneered in Gwent. I used my thinking to work that out. Well, actually, it was Google. Same thing really.

New Kit Old Kit

Having realised that many people preferred to buy an old fashioned shirt from TOFFS, or to stick “Fowler 8” on the back of an old blue T Shirt which looks vaguely like an old city shirt from 1953 (or was that only me?), City have decided to cash in and asked fans to choose a “new” badge and shirt, based on old-style options. Unsurprisingly fans chose the 70s style shirt with the stripes that is most associated with the photo of Robin Friday sticking his fingers up at the Luton keeper he’s just beaten, and chose the last but one badge – the one that Hammam got rid of th

at everyone liked. However, I predict a problem in replica shirt sales etc: many people have already GOT the 70s shirt and won’t both to buy a new one, and many people have still got their pre-Hammam mugs, keyrings etc, that they can now get out of their drawers. Or carry on using because they never cared that much anyway. Also, you can already buy a fake old-fashioned style stripey shirt from the club shop, made of cotton and costing less than a new replica shirt. So why would anyone buy a new replica next season? Especially when a blue t shirt is so much cheaper. And that “Fowler 8” might last another season yet.

The (non) return of Earnie and the story of the messageboard

Want to get a story in the national press? Make up a silly rumour and spread it on the Cardiff City Mad message board. Personally, I haven’t looked at the messageboard for a long, long time (so if you see anyone called Gary Socrates posting there it’s not me – it’s happened before), but it appears a lot of people do, including the local south Wales press, when they’re short of a story or two. “Earnie’s coming back to City on loan” writes some fantasist authoritatively on the messageboard, then the rumour gets printed in the Echo or the Western Mail. Next thing you know it’s on the BBC website (because those hacks haven’t got any better way of getting stories than scanning local papers) and someone’s phoning Earnie and he’s denying the whole thing, and Paul Jewell’s making comments and so on. It’s easy see. It was on my blog this summer where I wrote how stupid transfer rumours were, and that there was bound to be a rumour soon that Hasselbaink was coming to Cardiff after Leicester had knocked him back. See what happened? (Actually I deny all knowledge and refuse to take the blame for that one). On the other hand, have you heard the story about Bellamy coming to city on loan? No? Nor me. Yet.

Transfer window

Out of the transfer window (Aaaaaaaaaaaargh! SPLAT!) goes Byrne, Gunter and McLean (no-one else as I write). In comes….. Enckleman. A premiership goalie with loads of experience. Well. Not really: Since Blackburn signed him in November 2003 he’s played a grand total of 3 games. Awe-inspiring, eh? It’s not that I think we desperately need new players. Well, no, actually it is. Hasselbaink is no good, Fowler is injured and possibly finished, Sinclair and Scimeca don’t look like making an early return, and with these players out and gone it is clear we’re short a full back, a goalie (maybe – see above), and a forward. Up front we’ve got Parry, Hasselbaink and Thommo. With Warren Feeney to return to fitness sometime in February, it is rumoured. In midfield we’ve got cover from the kids: Blake and Ramsay, but our squad is getting really threadbare. And if the rumours about bids for Ledley, Parry and Thomson finally happen before the end of January we’re unlikely to replace any of them with anyone worth signing. Now that number 44 (Gunter) has gone, the highest squad number is now 36 (Hasselbaink). But that’s misleading (it’s his age next birthday) because the following numbers are all missing: 9, 17, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, and 35. And number 31 is 17 year old youth goalkeeper Josh McGuiness. We’re doomed I tell you. Jones out!

City star in World Cup

2008-01-23T19:15:00.001+01:00

Cardiff coach Charlie Cook has been called up to play for the Turks and Caicos islands in a qualifier against St Lucia. 35 year old Cook(unfortunately nothing to do with the ex-Chelsea star Charlie Cooke) lived there for a few years and qualifies – and has played for them before. They’ve picked him because he turns out regularly for Grange Quins. After this call up,expect Dave Jones to give him a game or two, and then try to flog him on to
Spurs.

A quick bit of internet research into the Turks and Caicos Islands football team is ranked 168^th in the world. The FIFA website says that Beaches FC are top of their league, while their own website at www.football.tc, gives you the news that Turquoise look like winning the 2006/7 season. Hmmm, there’s a well maintained
website. Also, down the bottom of the site is the following message:

"CALLING TC ISLANDERS - YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU

If you originate from the Turks & Caicos Islands and are playing soccer overseas you could be eligible to represent the Turks & Caicos Islands in future international competitions. Click here for more information."

Unfortunately, there's nothing there to click – which is why I guess 35 year old City coaches get called up.

TBL won’t pay me to go and write a report of the crucial St Lucia game, so if you want to follow Charlie Cook’s fortunes you’ll just have to sort it out for yourself.

New Design

2008-01-08T18:30:00.000+01:00

I have also decided to blind anyone who tries to read my blog.

and can I really mess with the fonts like what Blogger say, as it were?

Hey, we'll soon see.

Widget

2008-01-08T10:56:00.001+01:00

This post to my blog is done via a new widget on my dashboard. Life doesn't get more exciting than that.

There is no reason in England's dreaming

2007-11-22T16:13:00.000+01:00

The English are a strange race. I say this as someone who considers themselves to be half English, but obviously I am not strange. They have extraordinary - I was going to say 'faith' but that's wrong, no they have extraordinary arrogance about themselves. Obviously this includes their hapless football team, not to mention their rugby and cricket teams, but also about other aspects of the 'English Way Of Life'. I obviously have to deal with the football first. I still can't believe how much they screwed up. I will admit that the other night, when Israel won and gave England their chance to qualify (with only a draw at home) I though how sweet it would be for them to lose to Croatia (even though I can't stand those anti-semitic nazis), but I never believed it would happen. I even thought at 93 minutes with the game over that Andorra were going to score an unlikely equaliser against Russia to put England through, just what normally happens to those lucky buggers. But no, the dream came true. OK, accuse me of Schadenfreude (especially as Wales were managing a draw away at Germany at the same time), I can take it. It's just the way the English are so smug. They feel they have a right to qualify for the European Championships - and the World Cup of course - if not a right to win the damn thing. Why? The England football team have not been as good as many European teams now for many years - Germany, Italy, France, Croatia, Holland, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic - all of these teams (and possibly some others: Turkey, Russia, Greece...) have performed better than England on a regular basis. But, the English wail, we've got such great players: Gerrard, Rooney, Lampard, Ferdinand, Diver - oops, I mean Owen,... yeah, yeah, yeah. And to a point this is true: these are good players. But the Italians, French, Dutch etc all have good players too. Some of them better. And this is pretty obvious, since many of them actually play in England, so you would think the english might notice. They also might notice that the bloke who played that glorious through pass for Olic to score Croatia's second goal plays for Arsenal .... reserves.

Some respected commentators (good lord, including the normally intelligent David Conn) are suggesting the fault is that too many foreigners play in the Premier league. No, the problem is far more obvious than that: the players are not as good as they think they are - and their manager is truly hopeless. If you think about it, if English players were any good, far more of them would be playing abroad, for big teams like Barcelona, Real Madrid, Milan etc. But no, only Beckham plays abroad (for the high powered LA Galaxy) and we all know about that. Apart from that there was Hargreaves in Germany, recently - but that's because he's really German (or Canadian, or Welsh) and otherwise there doesn't seem to be a lot of foreign managers desperately looking at British talent. Except for the perennial bizarre rumour that Barca want the terminally incompetent Lampard.

But it is not just in their attitude towards sport that the english have their unfounded superiority complex. With the ongoing industrial and political disputes here in France, it has been interesting to read what the English viewpoint is. Generally, commentators keep repeating, thye French way of life is impossible, they are due for a major economic disaster to befall them, and that Sarkosy will lead them towards the Thatcher/Blair light where everything will be perfect. It is true that the French have economic problems - there is a large debt, and a problem with a large Black economy because of the perceived high levels of direct and indirect taxation. But the full picture is more interesting. Those same reports might mention in passing that French workers are the most productive workers in Europe for the hours they work, but for some reason the commentators believe they should stop doing reasonable 35 hour weeks with decent lunch hours, and work the British way. Forgetting that British workers (actually the reports usually say English, so let's stick with that) are the least productive hourly. Actually, this is usually mentioned in a different article slagging off trade unions and again in a different article praising Polish workers - which is a different article again to the one complaining about all the immigrants taking jobs away from the english. (Hmmm, that sounds similar to the football argument, doesn't it?). And as for debt, no it is true, the UK does not have the same level of debt, on the face of it, to the French. Except that that is not quite the case really, because UK debt just doesn't show on paper - because instead of the normal method of borrowing favoured by most countries (and people), by borrowing money from a bank and repaying plus interest over however many years this has been greed, successive UK governments have raised cash by selling off the family silver. The french may owe money, but at least they still own their schools, hospitals, government buildings, government departments - and their army while we're at it. In the UK all of this has been parcelled over to the private sector in a PFI initiative. Whilst France might get further in debt, the UK is going to end up with nothing to borrow against.

But of course the English are right. Who on earth wants a two hour lunch break? Who wants a 35 hour week? Who wants decent holidays? Who wants excellent health care? Who wants an excellent schools system? Who wants to retire at 50? Who wants protection for the poor?

The UK relies more and more upon the private and voluntary sectors to deliver services and to support its vulnerable people. The argument that the public sector is not able to deliver such services as well surely no longer holds water? The evidence is all around that privatisation of public services, and the subsequent demoralisation of state staff by depicting them as lazy incompetent wastrels, and paying them low wages for what are deemed 'low-value' jobs (i.e. teachers, firemen, nurses) has been a disaster. Thatcher, followed by Blair and now brown have laid waste to England. The English boast of the success of their economy (whilst growth levels tumble and unemployment rises) at the same time as complaining about how awful things are: floods, the price of petrol, foot and mouth, the NHS, teachers..... and yet the English really think the French aspire to be like them. Well, maybe a few do in Paris, as they look at their wages in comparison to the UK. But who can afford to live in the UK? Fewer and fewer. More houses needed, population getting older...

The French have problems. The English have problems. Meanwhile the French have great public services, great wine, great food and a football team that qualifies for the European Championship. The French know this. Do the English?

Robbie Fowler's magic...

2007-11-07T17:58:00.000+01:00

I should be supporting an exciting team that splashes out enormous wages for huge stars, instead I find myself supporting a bunch of duffers with two very old slow, lazy duffers up front. I think it's time to start with Thompson and McLean. Alternatively get Feeney back from the Jacks, and Green back from the Donkeys. Did someone mention Jason Byrne? Is he still here? Aaaaargh!.

At least Feeney's got a good song.

le Ponderer returns

2007-09-18T12:29:00.000+02:00

Just like TBL, it has taken a bit of time for me to sort myself out and get back to this. Months have passed and so little has happened in Cardiff City land (not to mention in mine).

From now on I will be writing this stuff from the sunny south of France, where the Socrates’ household is now based. Ah, this is the life, 35 degrees centigrade, a cool glass of the local white wine, I bit of bread, cheese. C’est la vie.

On Strike

Meanwhile in the home of the greatest football team the world has ever seen (they sing it so it must be true) interesting things have been happening. Chopra has gone off to premiership pastures, but City now boast a squad with 7 strikers. Really: Fowler, Hasselbaink, McLean, Feeney, Greene, Byrne and Thompson. Seven strikers. Two who earn a fortune and don’t play (at time of writing), one who plays and has managed to score one goal from the 247 chances presented to him, another who sometimes plays and might score one day in the distant future (but not for us, nor probably the Jacks, another who the manager thinks is too ‘raw’ (what does he want? Cooked strikers?) another whom no one is sure the point of, and another one with a broken leg – who is on the transfer list. And this doesn’t count Parry, who of course IS NOT a striker, but Jones seems to think can play up front. So no surprise then to City still linked with another truckload of strikers, including Davies at Oldham, Howards at Derby, and Vine at Birmingham.

Personally, I have noticed quite a lot of other forwards doing well, whom we should be watching, including Alan Lee at Ipswich, Rob Earnshaw at Derby, Michael Chopra at Sunderland, and not to mention non-league high scorers Leo Fortune-West at Cambridge and top scorer with 5 goals from 4 games for Halifax – Andy Campbell. To top that, I even saw Richie Wellens score two goals for Hartlepool the other day.

Jimmy Floyd

Of course anyone who bothered to read my last post several months ago will have noticed that I pooh-poohed the idea of City signing Hasselbaink. Mea Culpa - I was wrong. Let's also hope my assessment of his performances so far (bloody useless) also prove as wrong.

Fowler

I gather 3,000 Fowler 8 shirts were sold out of the club shop in one day. Apart from the fact it is hard to imagine the club shop being able to cope with that many orders, that’s a hell of a lot of shirts (especially for someone who hadn't kicked a ball when those shirts were sold), and I imagine a few more were sold thereafter. Also seen on Ninian Park terraces have been Number 8 ‘God’ shirts, in lieu of Fowler’s standing at Liverpool. Of course, there’s even more profit in these shirts, as they only have three letters on the back, but whatever, the margins are going to be better than for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. I assume though, that all these shirt sales won’t pay for much more than a month of Fowler’s wages.

Of course Fowler and Hasselbaink weren’t our only summer signings, we signed some other players too. There was that bloke from Scotland, you know, what’s is name, and the other bloke who used to play on the left for England but plays on the right really, and there was that bloke from Sheffield and I think we got a keeper or two. Oh yes, and an Italian left back from Plymouth. Team of stars, we are.

Money money money

The other interesting thing that happened in Cardiff this summer was all the stuff about the £30m, £31m, £32m, £15m, £16m debt we have (please delete as applicable). We’re hardly alone in this, but football clubs really have become home to a bunch of corporate scoundrels on a major scale. Ridsdale’s record is not an enviable one, and as for Sam the Sham, what can be said? Mind you Woolly Bully was a great song. What do you mean that wasn’t him? Another illusion shattered.

Who owes whom how much though, is the interesting thing. And what for? Cardiff have SOLD over £15m worth of players in recent times (Chopra, Earnie, Jerome, Gabbidon Collins etc), and spent very little. Where on earth does all the debt come from? I think it may be time to start a revolution.

See, I’m getting all French already.

Internationals

For the first time in my life I have paid the Sky shilling so I can watch football whilst here in France. First night I get to watch Wales win and England lose. Should have done this years ago. But what I want to know is how come Germany have made Bryan Ferry their manager, and how come a Christian Panda scored the winner? Those missionaries have got a lot to answer for. Surely a panda should be Buddhist? Ignoring the Wales Germany game (as should be done by everyone) the Slovakia game was also magnificent. That Bellamy chap looks good. We should sign him. And that Ledley bloke on the left wing.

Loans

With Feeney of loan to the Jacks, it is hard to know who to feel sorrier for. On the other hand, what on earth were we doing paying £150,000 for a player whom we loan out straight away to Swansea? The strange thing is that we haven’t borrowed anyone ourselves, especially a defender, given the injuries to Purse and McNaughton. But then of course I forget, like everyone else, that when it comes to loans, outside of the premiership there isn’t a deadline until later in the year. Some time in November I gather, by which time the temperature here might have cooled too much for me to be typing in my swimsuit. There’s an image that you didn’t need, eh? Anyway, the other interesting thing about the Feeney loan, was that while the BBC was reporting it had happened, ICWales was reporting that the deal had fallen through.

Further press accuracy was provided by Sky, who was reported that Jason Byrne’s contract had been terminated. Which I gather it hadn’t. I bet that gave him a hell of a fright though. Bloody hell, can you imagine it: you get home from work to reado on the news that you’ve lost your job… Excuse me… who can I sue?

Time wasting all over Europe

I refer to Facebook, of course, that internet time waster enjoyed by many. Anyway, I joined a couple of months ago, mainly as a way of keeping in touch with people I no longer see who live in the UK (have I mentioned that I live in France?). This includes several City fans, but one thing I never expected was an invitation to become one of Earnie's friends on Facebook - why I don't know - _but I couldn't resist accepting. But from looking at his profile I learn he's considering a move _to Charlton and is a Scientologist. I'm sure that proves some unwritten rule_about not knowing too much about your idols. I am deeply disillusioned. I assumed he was a Buddhist, with a long held desire to return to Cardiff. Oh well.

A little pizza history

We have made one or two new friends here in France, including our local pizza man (of course). As well as making some damn fine pizzas, he is also a major Marseille fan, and an appreciator of Chris “magic” Waddle (as he was apparently known in France. Anyway, in appreciation of me emailing him a link to a Youtube video of Waddle and Hoddle singing Diamond Lights I received an invite to join him at the Velodrome in December, for the game against Liverpool. I will be forced to sit in the Marseille end and shout abuse at some scousers, but I am sure I will get over this trauma.

And a big "hi" to my lovely lying Belgium audience.

City not Signing...

2007-06-16T17:21:00.000+02:00

In the last few days IC Wales has completely run out of Cardiff City transfer stories. So much so they have resorted to reporting who Cardiff are not signing. So far this has included ex-City captain Graham Kavanagh and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink. You can see how the various reporters are working. Sitting in their office someone notices Hasselbaink is available. "Reckon City will sign him?" the hack says to his colleague. "Maybe, let's phone Ridsdale". So they Phone the club, get a denial, and there is there story. In the case of the Kavanagh non-story they phone Kav's agent too, who tells them that he hasn't had a game for a few months and might be interested if a team like Cardiff came in. Bang. An exclusive: "City Rule Out Bid For Kav". Pretty weak.

I am hoping that this is all happening in alphabetical order, and am looking forward to the shock headline: "Bluebirds Deny Interest in Zidane". And suddenly we will have re-signed Leo Fortune-West while the press have their back turned. Mind you, that might be an improvement on Thompson. Or Byrne.

I hope we do sign someone new, but I am getting the sinking feeling that as players and agents are approached by Mr Ridsdale they have a tendency to react like any other normal person - to run away as fast as they can keeping their hands tightly on their wallets.

Conversation overheard

2007-06-13T19:32:00.000+02:00

"So I said to her, if you're going to get a vibrator don't get one bigger than, mine. 'Cause I don't want to feel inadequate. And she said, alright then, I'll just use the battery"

Hello Belgium

2007-06-05T15:11:00.001+02:00

One fascinating thing about running your own website is that you can keep track of all your visitors. Every now and then when I have the off free moment, I find it interesting to do this: to check which sites are referring most visitors, to check whether links on other sites are being used etc. Sometimes some interesting but useless things crop up. For example, when I used to work at IVAC we realised that the CIA were a regular visitor to our website. I suppose they were really interested in the voluntary secdtor in Islington. Or they were so stupid they confused IVAC with IRAQ. They rhyme if you say it the American way. Obviously.

Which brings me to the fascinating fact that I seem to get a lot of visits from all over the world from people typing "toosh" into their search engines. I have absolutely no idea why they would do such a thing. My guess is they are looking for someting racy - but when they get to the toosh website are severely disappointed to discover nothing more exciting than this blog. Recent visitors have been from Italy, Japan, India, Holland and Belgium. Most fascinating is the thought of someone in Belgium typing "Gary Socrates London" into their search engine. Clearly a Cardiff City fan. There couldn't be any other explanation, could there?

Some people are strange.

Anyway, I found the above picture whilst looking for an image of Tintin, and given everything so far mentioned, I thought it worth putting here. Great isn't it?

Adding a comment a lot later on, more people come to this website because of the Tintin picture than anything else. How did that happen? I blame Google

Paris in the the Spring

2007-05-30T21:26:00.001+02:00

Orangerie - Monets, originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

Just back from a nice few days in Paris, for our wedding anniversery. Very rainy, but we had a good time. We saw Lucy and Chris, and limited our gallery visiting to the Picasso museum and the Orangeries. I went to the Orangerie many years ago, but I do not remember it having the effect it had on me this time. The paintings downstairs - especially the Cezannes and the Soutines, but also the Matisse were a fantastic start. The Monet waterlilies nearly made me cry.

I have lost my camera's battery charger - dog knows where - so only had my mobile phone to take pictures. Chris had been showing us his panoramic pictures, and this inspired me to play - especially at the Orangerie, but also elsewhere (see my flckr site for more silly photos - including one of the man juggling in the rain with a goldfish in a bowl on his head).

We ate (too) well, and enjoyed ourselves a lot. Soon, touch wood, we will be in France permanently.

2006-7 all over in 2006

2007-05-10T12:53:00.000+02:00

It's not been much fun being a Cardiff City fan in recent weeks. At the start of the season I hadn't expected much, and so I guess I got what I deserved. But after being top of the league, six points clear for a couple of months I think we had a right to expect a better finish than we got. We finished 13th - worse even than my predicted 9th. We did not win one single game out of our last nine, and in that run only managed two draws - the worst EVER finish of a season for Cardiff, in over 100 years of existence. Watching them was dreadful: I saw games at home, and away at Derby and QPR and it was awful. Our players seemed lost, lacking in cohesion, with no confidence, and some with - at least it seemed - with little motivation. True we had several injuries. True the players that came in were not good enough (especially Byrne and Walton). But the young players that came in - Gunter and Blake especially - did well, whilst more experienced players: Whittingham, Thompson, McPhail - just looked a waste of space.

And I guess Jones has to take the blame to a large extent, just like he rightly took the credit when we were top of the league. He managed to motivate that team into a confident group of players, passing the ball crisply and accurately, and beating all comers. Fantastic. Some of the best football I've EVER seen City play. But a few months later the team is completely demotivated. Quite apart from the injuries, Jones fell out with Alexander (after mucking him around with stupid contract offers it seems), after falling out with others earlier (Weston, Barker) and started saying things to the press that were of a different tone. Instead of backing players up and keeping things in the dressing room, Jones started publicly saying things about players that could not possibly help. I have to admit the treatment of Alexander, plus negative comments about Parry contrasted with public praise for Forde (who looks decidedly average, if not dodgy) has swayed me. Chopra stopped scoring, Thompson stopped looking like he could ever score, Whittingham started looking like he'd prefer to be playing for Villa reserves, Gilbert disappeared altogther, Ledley came and went. And we ended up the season with 8 strikers, none of them looking any good, except perhaps Green, who looks like he might have a future. But Byrne? useless. Redan? Hopeless. Campbell? Past it. Thompson? Couldn't hit a barn door. Ferretti? Gone. Glombard? Rubbish. Feeney? You're kidding. Which leaves Chopra, who has a mimimum fee release clause so will, no doubt, be gone this summer to the likes of Man City or Everton.

Seeing what Alan Lee has done at Ipswich is also worth noting: 17 goals this season. Jones didn't rate him. I am seriously concerned that Jones can only manage half a season. Only one other team has been top of the league at the end of October and then not even made the play offs, ever. That team? Wolves. Who was their manager? Dave Jones. Hmmmm.

I guess he deserves another season, and maybe I'll be taking this all back this time next year. I hope so, but I doubt it. With reportedly 17 players to leave and little or no money for new signings I guess next season we'll be playing with a lot of our kids. Ihope they are good enough. 17 to go is a hell of a lot, though - unless it includes loans. Without loans we only have a squad of 25 - and that includes more than a couple of teenagers who have never played.

On the positive side, Chopra's goals made me £72.50 at the bookies, plus another £20 from Earnie. Cheers boys.

I should also note that today is, according to Peter Ridsdale, 'A Historical Day', because all the money is now committed for the new stadium. Whoop de doo. £58m on a new stdium, and £5.80 on new players? Entertainingly, he also said that 'today is a day to saver'. Is that a Super Saver Pete?

Things I did do

2007-04-23T11:04:00.000+02:00

Oh it has been a long time since i wrote this Blog - if you don't count the last entry. Went to Tintern Abbey, which is kind of beautiful and not-beautiful at the same time - it is amazing because of the contrasts, the setting and the size. I'll put a photo here but there's a lot more on my flickr site here. Ignoring the farcical bollocks that is Cardiff City v Sunderand, we went on to Shrewsbury, which was surprisingly really nice. We stayed in the most up-itself hotel in the world, The Pwince Wupert - advice, if in Shrewsbury stay somewhere else. They park your car for you, but otherwise the service is crap. Cold cooked breakfast, not enough towels, a tiny TV you can't see from the bed, capped off by ceilings charmingly lopw. It's a beautiful old tudor building that royalty once stayed in, but Christ they must have been short. After two cold breakfasts and me banging my head for the twentieth time we moved to Cromwells - a nice wine bar with rooms upstairs for half the price of Pwince Wupert.

Anyway, after that we went to Warwick (far too many w's in this blog) and went to the castle. Very nice but incredibly over-priced and commercialised. It was no surprise when we found out that it is owned by the Tussauds group, who own all the big theme parks like Chessington and Thorpe Park. But enjoyed watching the trebuchet being fired (cool) and the birds fly (see here.)

The weather was amazing, and has renained so until today, when it has finally clouded over and spots of rain have fallen out of the sky. Saturday I had a really nice day out in the pub with friends, comp[letely ruined by a football game in West London. The half time entertainment was interesting though. See things getting a bit sticky on the pitch below.

Meanwhile I am working a couple of days a week at Elvis, where I last worked 7 years ago. This time I am working on freelance rates which means I earn 50% more for two days' work than i did for five days then. Which is good. I am also entertained every morning by the lift, which is made by Schindler. Schindler's Lift. I still don't know why no one else thinks this is hilarious.

Oh well.

Things I didn't do

2007-04-23T11:02:00.000+02:00

Go to Paris

Watch Cardiff City win

This Blog

The Big Fish

2007-03-27T17:39:00.000+02:00

It has been hilarious listening to the radio the last couple of days hearing England fans complaining about how rubbish they are, and how McClaren should be sacked and Lampard dropped and Rooney too and.. and... and....

All that wailing drowned out the sad cries of Wales supporters, who lost 1-0 to Ireland. Not that terrible sounding, but Welsh people are not renowned for their optimistic viewpoint, so no surprise to hear a lot of moaning people coming back from Dublin. On the other hand, as a friend pointed out, this is the first time in living memory that Cardiff City would in all likelihood beat Wales in an imaginary game. Obviously Cardiff would get Ledley and Parry back, but then Wales do have Bellamy and Giggs. Not a lot else though. Simon Davies? No?

Anyway, both Wales and England are taking on the Big Fish this week, with Wales at home to San Marino (not much call for tickets I hear) and England away to Andorra. Andorra are rated 163rd in the world according to FIFA. A quick background check into Andorra's form tells me that they have actually won two games since their inception in 1996, beating Belarus 2-0 in 2000, and Albania 2-0 in 2002. More recently (October 2006) they lost 7-0 to Croatia.

Wales' opponents, San Marino, are ranked 196th (it makes you wonder who all those nations are between 163 and 196 -England? Wales?) and their team was established 6 years earlier than the Andorran team in 1990. Their best ever victory (only victory actually, but who's quibbling?) was a 1-0 win over Liechenstein in 2004. More recently, last September they lost to Germany 13-0. Interestingly, Liechenstein are ranked one place higher than Andorra, and their best ever victory was against Luxembourg - a magnificent 4-0 away victory in 2004. On to Luxembourg: they are ranked in between San Marino and Andorra at 178. Their biggest victory was in 1948 when they thrashed Afghanistan 6-0. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you: Afghanistan are ranked just behand Luxembourg at 179, and their biggest win was in 2003 against the well known nation of Kyrgyzstan when they won 2-1. Bloody hell, fancy having to make up a country just to win. Anyway, following the trail it turns out Kyrgyzstan is a real country and they are almost a proper team, being ranked 145. Fantastically their biggest ever win was against the Maldives in 1997, thrashing them 6-0. The Maldives, however, spit on the likes of Andorra with their lofty ranking of 158, and their best ever win was against (I love this) Mongolia, who they absolutely hammered 12-0 in 2003. Really. 12-0. Mind you you should note their 17-0 defeat to Iran in 1997.

Anyway, on to Mongolia - we're back down to 184, and a cracking 5-0 against Guam in 2003. (Honestly I am not making these up). We're reaching low, low levels here, with Guam ranked down at 199 in the FIFA rankings. But don't think this is the end, no no. Before moving on we should note Guam's biggest ever defeat which was when they lost 21-0 to North Korea in 2003, but the game I wouldn't have minded seeing was the Guam victory over Pohnpei (no I don't know who they are either) in 1998 where they won 16-1. Really. 16-1. A team SO MUCH WORSE than 199th in the world Guam they lost 16-1. So let's find out about Pohnpei: It turns out to be one of the four federated states of Micronesia (honestly - look on the right) and their team is not affiliated to FIFA. They have never won a game, although in 2001 they did celebrate a 1-1 draw at home to Yap (another of the Micronesian islands), and (as Wikipedia says - where else did you think I was getting this stuff?) some say they are the worst football team in the world. City have just signed their striker. Warren Feaney.

And there are no easy games in football, as they say. Except for the Scots, who play Italy tomorrow. Piece of cake.

"Sorry Steve, with Chops out you're the one we're relying on for goals"

2007-03-21T10:50:00.000+01:00

The pressures of the promotion chase is clearly getting to the players, as this picture of Steve Thompson shows. Thompson is one of those strikers that everyone refers to as "hard-working" except when they are called "bustling". What this means is that they run around a lot ineffectually, scoring very few goals for someone in their position. Alan Lee used to hold this role for Cardiff but has since moved on to Ipswich where he has somehow transformed himself into that other rare breed of forwards - a goal scorer.

To be fair to Thommo (or "The Thommohawk" as he likes to be known as - stop laughing at the back there) he really DOES work very hard, and unlike Lee wins a lot of balls in the air, which he even manages to head in the right direction. And if the alternatives are Byrne, Campbell or Redan then Thompson it has to be. Not sure about Green though, he looks a pretty good prospect - running fast, winning balls in the air, taking players on and all that stuff. I'm sure someone at Cardiff will soon knock all that out of him - or we'll sell him. As for our other two forgotten forwards, Ferretti and Glombard, clearly DJ has decided they are a waste of space. Glombard I saw at Norwich and he was hopeless, but I have never seen Ferretti play. Rumours have it that DJ thinks he is a bit of a wuss. Despite all these forwards, the story is that DJ is trying to sign Feaney from Luton, who is another "hard-working striker" in the mold of Thompson. Has any team ever had so many strikers that were not good enough to play?

Bay City Rollers

2007-03-21T10:40:00.000+01:00

Could this look ever come back?

This comes from the story that the Rollers are suing their old record label who owe them millions of pounds. Their excuse is, apparantly they "didn't know who to pay". Come on! It's Eric, Woody, Derek, thingy and the other one. We all know that. Altogether now: "You got to give a little love, take a little love, be prepared to forsake a little love.."

How terrifying is it that I remember any of these lyrics? I wasn't even living in the country at the time.

House

2007-03-20T13:25:00.000+01:00

Our house is on the market. The good news is that it is worth more than we expected. Estate Agents are beating our door down to sell it. There are not enough houses on the market, we are told, so it's a sellers' market at the moment, despite the fact everyone keeps telling us the market is about to collapse. It is looking like we are selling at exactly the right time: which is unusual for us, given our past history. Now the fun is tidying up, getting rid of old stuff, dealing with estate agents..... Aaargh!

Derby, Commentary and SuperTed

2007-03-18T18:25:00.000+01:00

Yesterday we went to Derby. I am supposed to write this game up but am suffering from a lack of will. May do it tomorrow, along with my bit about how shit the on line service has become. I have been involved in an email exchange with the people who run the Cardiff City website - some people called Premium TV, because they have now 'upgraded' the site so that they have security protected the videos they show. This has also affected the online commentary, and it now means that no one can listen to the commentary unless they have an up to date PC - as opposed to a Mac (like I use). Of course they are losing pennies on people watching highlights on YouTube (except there aren't any on there), and of course they will lose £££ because of people like me cancelling their subscription and asking for their money back. Ironically Cardiff won an award recently for their website. I think they should give it back.

It makes absolutely no sense, except for Microsoft who make a fortune out opf this, and the people who sold them the new security system. Cardiff lose people listening to them, piss off their own supporters and gain precisely nothing.

The fact that they actually don't have to link the commentary to the video service (who cares about the videos anyway?) hasn't occurred to them.

Anyway, apart from the awfulness of yesterday's match, we had a nice trip out, and it was nice to meet Mike Young, of Superted and other cartoons fame. I'll paste in a superted picture above here - except he's probably copyrighted them all and will sue me!

Anyway see more here (Mike's website) and here(kabillion.com). Cartoooooooooooooooooons.

Stop Lottery Money being spent on Olympics

2007-03-08T00:08:00.000+01:00

Go to this http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Defend-funding to sign a petition against lottery money all being blown on the Olympics instead of the voluntary sector. I wish they would just get rid of the Olympics altogether - I don't mean just in the UK, I mean everywhere. What a complete waste of time and money. Unlike football, obviously.

Mind you, our prime minister is not exactly renowned for his listening skills, is he? Remember the couple of million marching against the war in Iraq?

Privacy

2007-03-05T19:04:00.001+01:00

Privacy, originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

I was training today at West Norbury Library (as you do). This was the Gents toilet. Fortunately I only needed a pee, but - call me fussy if you like - I don't think the yellow and black tape gives much privacy.

Thinking about it I am glad there wasn't anyone using it when I took the photo.

St David's Day

2007-03-01T14:08:00.000+01:00

A hand goes up in front of me as Arsenal keeper saves penalty

2007-02-21T00:23:00.001+01:00

A hand goes up in front of me as Arsenal keeper saves penalty, originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

Yes: a fun evening out at the Emirates watching Cardiff's under 18s team lose 3-2 to Arsenal's lot. The most surprising thing on the night was the crowd: over 11 and a half thousand. Second most surprising was how good Cardiff's youth team were, especially as they didn't have Blake or Gunter, who instead played against West Brom tonight.

The chanting was especially fun. The 1927 club in full voice singing vartious Cardiff songs, responded to by five year old Arsenal fans shouting "Who are ya?". "We're Cardiff, we're barmy, we're cheeky to our mums". A fun night out.

Pub Quiz

2007-02-14T17:29:00.000+01:00

Naturally when the Quizmeister at the Dartmouth Arms asked each team to choose a category for questions I made sure our team's category was Cardiff City FC. Naturally when he asked the question about where the Mighty Bluebirds (OK he didn't use that phrase, he is a Stoke City fan) originally played, where another sport was normally played, I gave the correct answer of Sophia Gardens - where Bartley Wilson's Riverside Cricket Club's football team first played in October 1899. Naturally the drunken idiot quizmaster said I was wrong and gave the answer as "The Baseball Ground" - former home, obviously, of Derby County. Why do I know these dull facts? Because I read fascinating books by Graham Lloyd and Richard Shepherd, of course, giving all these important bits of useful information. And a quick bit of reading of Graham Lloyd's Cardiff City's history (A Hundred Years of the Bluebirds) gives me the interesting information about where the confusion comes from: when Cardiff City moved into Ninian Park in 1910 they had to do a deal with the local Council so that the ground could be used in the summer off-season for baseball matches. There you go.

I knew I was right, and yet I was happy to keep my cool. Unlike another time when an idiot running a pub quiz in Highgate refused to accept my answer to his question about who had played for Scunthorpe United and captained England. My answer, Ian Botham, was both clever and correct, but he insisted I was wrong and that only Kevin Keegan was the correct answer to the question. Fool. I was quite embarassing (K tells me) in the manner in which I disputed this. But this was a long time ago.

I should add that the Dartmouth Arms is a very nice pub, with good food and a great fun quiz. The pub owner/manager who runs the quiz is actually extremely nice and very entertaining as quizmaster, despite supporting Stoke City. And I could tell from a mile off that as a kid he wore Adidas football boots. Which meant I got a point for that, even if I got none for Sophia Gardens: the correct answer. I may have already mentioned this... The image on the right is of Cardiff playing (Dirty) Leeds at Ninian Park in 1952. We hope to keep being Leeds 'bogey' side this Saturday, when we play them again at Ninian Park. I won't be there, unfortunately, but I will probably be listening to Richard Shepherd's commentary.

No Soul At The Ricoh Arena

2007-02-11T20:15:00.000+01:00

Many modern stadiums have no soul, and the prime example of this is Coventry's Ricoh Arena. I used to like their old stadium at Highfield Road, but their new plastic stadium several miles out of town next to the motorway is a horrible place. It has no atmosphere at all, and it is very hard for the crowd to generate an atmosphere, even at an eventful game like yesterday's Coventry v Cardiff 2-2 draw. The Coventry crowd only sang their traditional Eton boating song once or twice, only bothered with a half-arsed chorus of "sheepshaggers' at the Cardiff fans (must try harder), and spent most of the 90 minutes booing. Even when they were winning. They seemed to derive particular pleasure at booing our goalkeeper, Alexander, for having the temerity to put his face into their forward's boot. Very strange. The boos stopped, strangely, after Cardiff equalised (leading to Cardiff chants of "You only boo when you're winning"), but started up again when another player pulled Alexander's shirt.

Funny really: they probably had a justification to boo a couple of things: they had what looked like a decent goal disallowed, and they have a bloody hoprrible stadium and the weather was crap - but their boos were pretty random. Although, to be fair, they did result in Loovens getting booked for sod all in the first half, as famously useless ref Graham Poll booked him under pressure from all the boos, and this ended up with Loovens getting sent off for a second, justified, yellow card, which removed our ability to defend, and meant the game was a draw, rather than the unlikely win Cardiff seemed to have stolen after Whittingham's great second half shot into the top corner of the net.

But it's a horrible stadium. And 16 year old pom pom girls don't improve the view at half time. As you can see from the photos here. Ah well, another fun day out with Cardiff City. Next its a trip to the Emirates to see the youth team lose to Arsenal's under 18s, a week Monday.

Snow in Holloway

2007-02-08T11:25:00.001+01:00

Snow in Holloway 8/2/07, originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

Serious snow here today. The country grinds to a standstill. I struggle on. Working at home is so hard sometimes. Tomorrow though I have to drive the car to Enfield. I hope the snow melts. I hate scraping it off. Maybe some kids will take it off for me to have a snowball fight. You never know.

Here they are

2007-02-05T15:58:00.000+01:00

It's a bloody disgrace.

Socks away

2007-02-03T13:51:00.000+01:00

What on earth? The good news is Cardiff winning three games on the trot, after an awful 14 match run of no wins at all. Also the legendary 52 points now achieved after last night's Sky-fesr 2-0 victory against Barnsley makes us safe from relegation. If you are wondering why a football fan is relieved his team is safe from relegation when they are only 1 point off second place, you know NOTHING about supporting a football team, and probably are either uninterested in football altogether or have spent your life supporting someone like Man U or the Gooners. Not a PROPER team.

The bad thing is our TV shame. Not our normal fighting or riots or anything like that, but our socks. Yes, thats right, our socks. As Ledley and then McNaughton lay supine on the pitch, close ups of the backs of Cardiff players legs as they stood around watching physiotherapists do their thing revealed that Cardiff have the name of the city, in Welsh, printed on the backs of their socks. But, horribly, instead of the properly spelt 'Caerdydd', there on all the players socks (all 22 plus 6 sub socks) is printed 'Caerydd'. That's right: a 'D' missing. Pretty pathetic when you can't spell the name of your own city. We're a laughing stock I tell you.

You wonder who the sock suppliers are. Did they get them cheap in bulk from some Ebay supplier? Did they get them from the club shop? Unfortuntaely, the ones in the picture above, from the City online club shop don't show the back, so it's impossible to tell whether the ones City have been selling to fans have a similar mistake. Suspiciously though, the shop indicates they are "sold out". Hmmm.

Anyway it's apparantly not true that Swansea have got socks with "illiterate jack bastards" written on them. But only because they couldn't fit it all on.

No posts

2007-01-16T10:35:00.000+01:00

I find it hard to post at the moment - we have been having a difficult time which maybe later will get dealt with. For now I think the only things I'll post will be pointless crap about Cardiff City and stupid things. Always happy to argue about Pendolino trains though.

Nil nil nil nil nil nil

2007-01-07T21:34:00.000+01:00

Our nil nil score against Spurs was a good result: against a 'top' Premiership side who fancy their chances in the cup. But it doesn't disguise the fact that although we are playing better again (since Gilbert came back?) we couldn't score in a brothel. Chopra has completely forgotten where the goal is, and our midfield - well, Scimeca - aren't scoring either. There was a horrible season a few years ago when we drew 23 games - exactly half - equalling somebody's crap record. We of course finished near the bottom of whatever league we were in at the time (third or fourth). We've only lost two in eleven games - sounds quite good - except we've drawn the other nine.

Meanwhile Dave Jones is having problems getting anyone to come to Cardiff. Luton don't want to sell Vine, Hoskins has gone to Watford rather than us. According to the BBC Jones has ay least £1.5m to spend. But on who? We need a couple of players to liven things up.

Mind you, Flood looked quite good today: completely different from the Luton game where he looked rubbish. Role on the replay.

It was 30 years ago tomorrow when Peter sayer's goal knocked out Spurs out of the cup. I remember that he used his bonus to buy a TR7. Seems like only yesterday. Could have used a goal today. Why is a Spurs fan asking me for a ticket for the replay?

Bloody Pendolino Trains

2007-01-05T13:35:00.000+01:00

I hate them. Sitting on these damn trains that take you to the Midlands (and elsewhere - went on one to Preston earlier in the season) makes me feel nausious. The seats are too small, there's not enough legroom, the flow of air is dreadful, and the way they tip up going round corners makes me want to puke. Actually that's not completely true - it's the straightening up that makes me feel sick, I've discovered. Having done a few journeys to Birmingham recently I have discovered that the worst bit seems to be between Milton Keynes and Coventry. Why can't they build tracks straight? Or just get some nice French TGV trains?

The nonsense is that the tipping trains means they can go faster: except all that's happened is that the trains now get you to Birmingham at roughly the same speed they used to 20 years ago. I don't get it. I'm getting old and grumpy.

FA Cup Fever

2007-01-05T13:23:00.000+01:00

On Sunday City are going to have the fun of playing Spurs in the FA Cup 3rd Round. Bizarrely some City fans are excited by this. Others less so - I have decided not to go to the game but to take the easy 'Sky' option. The question is would I have done this a few years ago? Certainly I went down to Ninian Park for the Leeds game (if you need to be told about this suffice it to say - we were in the third division, they were top of the premiership, we won, and there wasn't a "riot" whatever the press say), so I guess being in Division 2 (in old money) or "the Championship" has made me a bit blasé. But also we lost to Spurs in the league cup only a couple of years ago, and last year's big trip to Arsenal was so much more exciting. (Me and my old man 'took' the North Bank). Anyway, it also seem less exciting when you're watching a team that has slipped up so badly recently and you start to believe every game will be a 0-0 draw. We haven't won in weeks, nor even scored. Our players are tired and injured, Jones seems to have no idea how to get some of them playing again. Chopra is doing a fine impersonation of Andy Campbell, and the only hope for a draw is 0-0. However, I doubt that we'll be able to hold off Spurs, and we'll be very lucky to come away with 0-2. Now the problem is getting a babysitter for J while K and I go down the pub to see the game.

Catching up on stuff

2007-01-03T22:11:00.000+01:00

As I wrote yesterday I feel the need to catch up on stuff in the blog. Not going to the pub tonight - staying in and watching Celebrity Big Brother and Desperate Housewives - so some time to do it, albeit briefly.

Christmas was cool, with all of us together. It was a really nice day for all of us. Lots of nice presents, too much to eat and nice to see my cousin Nathan and my Aunt Elizabeth, over from Washington and Virginia respectively. Shame their visit was so short.

Anyway - best Christmas Cracker joke: What animal would you like to be on a cold day?

A little otter.

The kids went away after 27th so K and I had a chance to relax, and have some fun too. This included trips to Islington shopping (sales, gift vouchers to spend etc), trips to the british library to look at maps and to the british museum to see french drawings. Lovely.

New Year's eve we went out and ate tapas in Holloway Road (much better than I remembered, I've not been there for a couple of years) and then went on to the disco at the Landseer, featuring DJ Nacho - who normally exists as just plain Nacho, the pub manager. It was fun, and we managed to stay up late, do a bit of dancing, do a lot of people (I should actually say nerd) watching, and get drunk.

This was followed the enxt morning by a trip to Luton with my old man to watch another City 0-0 draw. Eoight draws in ten games - and losing the other two. Down from being top to eighth. My start of season prediction of ninth is looking pretty good at the moment. Unfortunately I put no money on it.

Since then its been back to work - here today and yesterday, to Birmingham tomorrow, train ing next week. Pretty busy, which I guess is good, except I want the holidays to last for ever really..

Happy New Year

2007-01-02T20:38:00.000+01:00

I've not bothered to post for many days now, and I feel like I have a lot to say about Cardiff City, Gerald Ford, Saddam Hussein and lots of other things such as how Christmas went an and and and and.... On the other hand I'm going to out to the pub.

Happy New Year!

Merry Blooming Xmas Cardiff City

2006-12-23T16:58:00.000+01:00

Yesterday saw the final end of Sam I am at Ninian Park. He had to leave his own way though, causing as much stress and strife as possible. The story is he was after an extra £10m guaranteed payments if/when City get promoted and stay up. Clearly he walked away with something more than he was originally going to get. Which presumably means less for City. As I write it has appeared on a BBC website that he demanded and got a further £500,000 plus a bizarre payment of £90,000 to his brother. I am at a loss as to why he is being wished well but so many fans though. Frankly, good riddance. The argument in his favour goes: "He saved us from the dungeon, without him we'd still be in the low divisions". Well that may be true: but I have no doubt the bugger was trying to get as much out of City as possible, and I would love to see his balance sheet at the end of the day: what's the betting he leaves City with a tidy profit?

He is a strange man though: despite all the above, he loves to be loved and admired, and clearly has a love of football and an affection for Cardiff City (and their traditional cypress tree - an interesting aside: this was the Lebanese businessman's suggestion for City's logo). I wonder how long he will be seen hanging about at Ninian Park though, as life president?

As I write City are playing away at Leicester. I was going to go, but various circumstances prevented this from happening, so I'm listening to Richard Shepherd commentate (he's actually a second cousin of mine) for the City site. Leicester are on top and our character from Pride and Prejudice has just come on: Darcy Blake, instead of an injured Ricky Scimeca. And Josh Low has gone off for Leicester. I used to like Low when he played for us, but he was one of those players who fans decide they don't like no matter how well they play: a bit like poor Rhys Weston. It's a strange phenomenon. Others, like Ainsworth, are loved, despite how rubbish they are.

Anyway, ten minutes into the second half and we're not losing. Of course this means I now can't stop typing until the end of the game, thus turning this blog entry into one of the most pointless accounts of a match ever written. So although I'm writing I'll only cover the key points. Like Julian jenkins (helping Richard Shepard out on the radio) getting annoyed about Purse fouling pointlessly. That's a pointless annoyance about a pointless foul. Purse will do this until he can't run any more. Just like he will get sent off a couple of times a season and give away too many penalties.

I received my Thin Blue Line this morning. My column was pretty weak, but I have to say it was the worst edition I have read in a long time. Too much stuff on Hammam: which was too generous (back to the game: Gilbert's gone off, Alan "short arse" Wright has come on. Jenkins reckons it's because Gilbert's not fit enough to play any longer. Nor Wright. I can't wait for the transfer opening to window - joke). The worst thing in TBL was the comment about Hammam leaving us in "safe hands". Unbelievably this wasn't a joke. Peter bloody Ridsdale, "safe hands". You have to laugh or else you'll cry. Hey Leeds fans! Did you hear that? Peter Ridsdale: "safe hands"!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Jeeeeeesus. Strange below par edition all round though. Maybe Andrew's had enough? I wonder if he'll read this? And answer me? As you can see from the image on the left he's being doing this a long time. I only joined in an issue later I think. As you can see from the headline very little has actually changed at the club. Better covers on TBL now, though, and I liked the donkey joke.

This is a picture of Darcy Blake. A good looking young man, you might think. But it turns out this isn't the Darcy Blake who plays for City, but a dancer who you find when you do a google image search. I'll see if I can find a picture of the City Darcy Blake. Here you go, on the right here. At least I think that's him. Hard to tell given the paucity of phtos on the web. He seems to be playing well, but I wonder if the other Darcy Blake would be better? Back at the game, still 0-0 with 20 minutes to go. Sounds like Leicester are the better side, but we're getting the odd chance: Purse just headed a corner over the bar. Probably fouled someone at the same time.

Suddenly all over them! Sounds like we should have scored, with chances for Purse and Parry. Oops as i say that Leicester get a corner. 15 minutes to go. Leicester score: offside: phew. Cheers Linesman. still 0-0, 12 minutes to go Richard tells me.

I've killed a few minutes by uploading a few of the above pictures: it's an interesting experience looking for TBL on the web. I found this image on a German website for fanzines. Meanwhile Chopra has missed a sitter according to Jenkins, "A real chance" according to Richard Shepherd. How long to go Richard?" Inside the last minute of normal time". Thanks. Julian Jenkins very impressed with Darcy Blake, who looks "such a footballer". 3 minutes added time. Inside stoppage time. 0-0. Wright goes forward on the left. Sounds more confusing than it reads. Nothing happens. Thompson failed to control the ball (not for the first time). Jenkins is criticising our forwards' form. What's that coming over the hill? The transfer window. Into the third minute of stppage time. Swansea have equalised. Birmingham winning 4-0 at Southend. Final whistle. 0-0. A draw is ok. Better than last week by a looooooong way. And i'm glad to have done my part, without having to have run from the crisp bowl to the station. Richard's wishing me a Merry Christmas. (Well, to be fair it was to all his listeners) So Merry Christmas to him too. And all his listeners.

If it was Christmas every day it would be very inconvenient

2006-12-23T16:45:00.000+01:00

M and I discussed this today. It's a ridiculous song: "I wish it could be Xmas every day". It would be really annoying: while you m ight think it would lead to daily presents. meals etc the problem would arise: where do you buy the food from? Where would you get the presents? And if you think about it it gets worse: who would work every day? All the moslems, hindus and jews. Who wouldn't be happy at such blatent religious discrimination. In fact they would have a damn good case in law. Mind you the courts would never be open to hear the cases so that's that problem's dealt with. But there are other issues: Christmas telly every day? God no. How many "Christmas Specials" can you take? How many episodes of James Bond? And what about Boxing Day football? It would never happen! What a disaster! No no no no no no no no no no no. It doesn't work. Boxing Day every day though, there's something to consider.

Bloody cold

2006-12-19T16:13:00.000+01:00

Winter is biting. The weather's turned cold. Scraping ice off the car, hands freezing, searching for the hat to keep you warm no matter how stupid you look. Day's are short. Brrrrrrrrrr. It's a bit chilly.

Kill some snowmen I say.

Bah humbug.

Party season

2006-12-17T16:59:00.000+01:00

Friday evening was interesting. First I went to a retirement do for David Green, retiring Chief Executive of Cripplegate St Lukes. Lots of people there, including my old boss from LVSC days, and various others I was pleased to see, and one or two less pleased. Also a noticeable absence of some strategic Islington people who I expected to see there. Mind you I left at six so they could have come later. But good luck to David who is one of the most laid back people I've ever met. Nice to see his leaving present was several cases of wine.

The reason I left early was to join K at her work's Xmas party. An interesting experience: by the time I arrived they has all been drinking for over 4 hours - I'd had a glass and a half of wine. I don't think it would be wise for me to post the photos and film of K singing "American Pie" with her colleagues around the karaoke machine (I DO want to say married after all!). K said earlier that NOTHING would get her doing karaoke, and was quite sure she would not. There must be some interesting formula for different people and exhibitionism: how many glasses of wine does it take YOU to stand up and make an idiot of yourself? K's level proved to be quite high (not a cheap date), and seems to be roughly the equivalent of how much do you have to drink to be chucking up later on? My own level's probably a bit lower, but I'm also a bit shyer in front of people I don't know. Under those circumstances I believe the graph would have shown that I would have reached the 'unconscious' phase before the 'get up and sing' phase. Fortunately I started later, and therefore never quite managed to catch up.

I'll have to try harder.

Christmas Tree

2006-12-11T20:48:00.000+01:00

Here's our Christmas Tree: finally decorated after lengthy disputes between K and J. Mainly from J I should say.

I have also been sending Christmas cards (yes, yes, yours is in the post...) so I guess Christmas is really coming. I probably should think about buying presents now, I suppose.

Personally I can't wait for it all to be over. I'm a new year sort of person really, rather than a Christmas one: but I suppose a Christmas rest would be nice.

Unfortunately working for myself I've realised that the chances of a Christmas bonus are somewhat reduced.

That Old Kav Magic

2006-12-11T18:42:00.000+01:00

According to the BBC (actually I think they nicked it from the Sun): "Graham Kavanagh says Sunderland's poor start to life in the Championship may have been down to their Abba soundtrack in the dressing-room." They don't say what music Kav would have preferred, but it's a surprise to me that Keano would choose Abba in the dressing room. I had him down as a more heavy metal type, making the team march out to "The Ace of Spades". Kav I reckon is more your Sinatra type and is dying for Ray to win X-factor (I know, but I've got a 9 year old at home). But then again I am probably wrong about all of this: they are all probably huge fans of Take That. Owzabout that then guys and gals.

Dead Dictators and Birthdays

2006-12-10T20:16:00.000+01:00

Pinochet's dead. What was horrifying about this news was that he wasn't dead already. Surely somebody could have 'offed' him ages ago. That's the trouble with this world: nice people are too nice. If you see what I mean. It terrifies me that I'm going to find out that even more scumbags I thought were dead aren't yet.

One personal Pinochet aside is that the date of the coup in Chile was September 11th. Now more famous for other things, but always more famous for me as my mother's birthday.

It was also my birthday the other day, December 7th, generally better known (in the US anyway) as Pearl Harbour Day. When I was studying American History for A level just a few years ago (Oh alright a loooooong time ago) I announced Pearl Harbour Day was my birthday. Which was interesting. The next date we came across turned out to be someone else in the class's birthday. And the next, and the next, and then someone's mother's birthday, and then someone's sister's birthday etc. etc. I suppose the truth is if you get a big enough group ( I guess there were about 20 of us) it's statistically likely that this will happen. But I'm not sure, I only got an E for my Stats A level. Depressingly I told someone recently (younger than me) that I was born on Pearl Harbour Day and they thought I meant the actual day - making me 17 years older than I am.

You do the math.

Laid Back

2006-12-03T19:19:00.000+01:00

A quiet weekend. Relaxing after a pretty hard week. Saw friends today - Jem and Mimi, which was nice. Yesterday laid around, did some shopping, listened to the awfulness that was Cardiff v Colchester, had a meal and went to the pub. We needed a rest. I could use one that lasts about 5 years. I think what I really need is a million pounds. K keeps promising me she will win the lottery but has so far no kept her word. Some fool asked me why I didn't buy a lottery ticket. How ridiculous, that's not my job: my job is to sit back and moan about K not winning, obviously.

Meanwhile, Cardiff City's job seems to be not to score any goals. You know what I mean, that thing on the left here; the gap between the posts. Unfortunately, Chopra seems to have forgotten that's his job, and continually puts the ball to the left, right or over the top of the thing. BETWEEN THE POSTS BOYS, OK?

And the day before yesterday was Tuesday

2006-11-30T23:27:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-26T17:16:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-23T23:47:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-23T23:20:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-22T18:41:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-18T19:35:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-16T16:27:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-16T12:44:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-14T13:04:00.000+01:00

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)

2006-11-09T00:27:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-02T23:56:00.000+01:00

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.

My pictures

2006-10-31T17:01:00.000+01:00

I have uploaded lots of pictures to the ArtWanted website. This is one example. It's a drawing I did a Loooooong time ago of a friend I shared a house with called Mark. I haven't seen him for years. He was a major U2 fan before anyone else was.

If you want to see more please click on the link here:

ArtWanted

Pardon my French

2006-10-30T13:09:00.000+01:00

Today I have been learning how to put accents and stuff on my writing. It turns out that it is very simple to change my UK keyboard into a French keyboard - except of course the letters are all printed in UK stylee on the keyboard, so I have to get a visual 'keyboard' on screen. Which given my arduous typing is pretty hard: I normally look at keyboard and screen, now I will have to look at keyboard, screen and keyboard on screen. But anyway, let me practice:

Bonjour, je m'appelle Gary. C'est très difficile de utiliser le clavier français; parce que lettres certains est dans positions différante sur le clavier: par exemple, le m est où la ; devrait être et le q et où la a devrqit être etcetera et c'est très difficile de trouver les signes de ponctuation.

Enough of that. I had to change the keyboard back to English to find a full stop. Maybe that's why French sentences seem so long. It's especially the a and the q that do my head in. The m isn't much better.

Anyway, here's a nice I took picture of the Tate modern (even if I say so myself), which I think I mentioned we went to yesterday. They are having this amazing exhibition of fun slides at the moment. But is it art? probably not, but looks fun. J was very disappointed that the queues were too long for her to have a go. A picture on the left of the slides. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Warbrobe parked by Wardrobe Terrace

2006-10-29T18:26:00.000+01:00

Warbrobe parked by Wardrobe Terrace
Originally uploaded by Gary Socrates.

We all went for a walk today by the City, St Pauls and across the wobbly bridge to the Tate Modern, then up the Thames towards London Bridge. It was a lovely sunny day and I took some pictures. Including this one. It is of a van amongst a whole row of vans which were part of a big film crew. This is the wardrobe department, parked just by Wardrobe Terrace. I wonder if they did it on purpose?

We went for lunch at a pub by Southwark Bridge just next to the Golden Hind, and Ipswich v Luton was on the telly. Alan Lee scored a hat trick. Hard to believe. But of course I always liked the song: "Alan Lee, Lee, Lee , won't you score a goal for me, me, me, Alan Lee, Lee, Lee , won't you score a goal for me. With your left, with your right, with head or with your knee, Alan Lee, Lee, Lee , won't you score a goal for me." Never did. But he has now scored loads for Ipswich. Oh well.

I wonder if Magilton's managed to get hm off the (alleged) booze and fags?