Today is the day that my car driver window went down and would not go back up. This meant that overnight I had a teatowel hanging to try and stop rain coming in and then today a lovely drive up the M3 for an hour with something resembling a gale blowing in the car. The webmaster for AFC Hornchurch sent me a nice email saying he liked the photos and would be using some of them in the programme or website.
I have just realised that the mediterannean gentleman who came with his wife and another child to pick up their daughter from West End Stage summer school in August for a whole week each day ( if you look back amongst the older posts you will find something i posted in august about this) was in fact Figo. He looked sort of familiar but it didnt click until my son told me who he was in an advertisement we saw on TV. Just having googled Helen Svedin, there is no doubt that it who they were! mind you they kept themselves to themselves and did not speak to anyone. Strangely my wife and daughter are totally not interested in this really important information!!
A very happy start to the weekend. Bees were quite injury depleted and yet gained a great away win. I woke up this morning and considered going but still feeling rather sleep deprived decided to go to a non-league game locally. Met Police v AFC Hornchurch. The curious thing is that I made the game decision based on the fact that there were a few games to choose from locally but a large Met police van with at least 7 officers inside drew up outside the house about 1 pm. As usual they went to the house opposite where they have paid many visits, would love to know why, looked at the front of the car and knocked on the door. Anyway, reports suggest Brentford played well. Donaldson, who is nicknamed Donalddinho, scored and it seems we defended well afterwards and are now 4th. Did I tell you that Bees sold Charlie Macdonald to MK dons?
But Met Police was a great game, they lost 2-0 to a fairly physical side. Photos below. You can see one where clearly they should have had a penalty with the shirt being pulled. The ballboys on the stand roof are a novel one for me. The spitting out of lucozade was interesting. I was talking to that players father at half-time. He was telling me that he played for Southend and Woking but came to Hornchurch to play first team football.
Hedgepig was having a friendly day and actually came out on Elena’s lap. A positive manic episode.
We had a look on the map to see where Honduras is. Real central America. Are you sure it will be safe there? How long will you be there for?
Yasmin took Charles back yesterday as having landed and got to sleep around 4 am,I had to be in work by 9 am. Her reward from your mother was a massive marrow and a massive portion of apple crumble. An exceptionally nice crumble that lasted only a few hours before being eaten.
Bolt seems a little out of sorts. not sure why (Bolt is our tabby cat for any readers) and may be heading for a vet visit. The only other news of note is that the window in the car will not close and needs Gary’s attention. A real pain as I cannot open it and if it slips open I have to physically pull it up to shut. This as you can imagine got me strange looks in the Met Police car park! The whole place stacked full of police officers. Enjoy the photos below!
Close tackle
Lucozade clearly not liked
Interesting football attire
Rees Noel tackles
A definite penalty. not given. Score was 0-0
Interesting place to have a ballboy
“We drove a chevvy to the Levvy but the Levvy was dry…..” American Pie I think.
We have a Chevrolet car here in spain. Something that goes under the name of Aveo. It sort of works but not really uphill, 60 kph maximum. but not exactly the large vehicles you might imagine. But at least it goes and it took us to the Mijas waterpark the other day. Bizzare co-incidence. We met the family of one of Elena,s classmates there…………who in turn had met 2 pupils from the school where the father is a physics teacher…….world is a small place.
apologies for no blogging recently but am still in spain. Southern spain is maybe a little coller than usual and definitely less busy. Pool and Beach etc. Managing to watch some of the football in the bars and charles and I saw that infamous Man u v Arsenal game. We could not believe how bad Arsenal defence was! we were in a bar with some lovely clientele best summarised as “dubious”. Gentleman with ” not guilty” tattoed across his back, which charles thought read ” mr fatty” as was written in some odd font……..
went to Mijas last night for pizza dinner and was nice to be back there. Entertained if that is the right word by Flamenco dancers………..then a guy playing some classical guitar music who was quite good.
somehow charles managed to burn himself on the beach yesterday, dont know quite how as it is his 6th day in the sun and is bright red. No jellyfish around but strangely we did see a squashed tortoise in the road outside the apartment. Bizarre. Where did it come from? First time round I presumed it was some toy but on closer inspection most definitely real. Then last night half a squashed cat in a car parking area………little lizards seem to think it fun to crawl over my foot…..but oddly no mosquitos. Am sure there are usally always some. I also must apologise for my awful spelling which is due partly to this terrible keyboard in the internet cafe. Not even a Mac!!!
anyway we return midnight thursday assuming easyjet allow…….
A game that will be remembered for many years. Not only were Brentford superb and more than a class over /Orient, but same saunders scored two wonderful free kicks that are Beckham esque. Fantastic Bees performance.
cheerleaders at brentford
My attempts to cook rice this evening ended only partially in disaster. firstly the only rice I could find was Basmati rice, allegedly by my accusers the price of gold, secondly my quantity was enough to feed the rest of the street, but ” I should have known”. Anyway said rice all eaten………….
End of week commuting to london each day. I have personally funded Costa in ropemaker St in london and personally eaten most of their Lemon Muffins ( and in consequence spilled the lemon curd filling on my suit at regular intervals). I do not know how or why people commute. Apparently the London tube carries 1.1 billion people each day and each such commuter spends an average of 40 minutes a day………It really is not a nice experience. Such a congregation of hot and smelly people should surely be banned under some sort of health and safety legislation.
Have been having Twitter conversations with Glenn Poole, who now plays for Thurrock, Blue Sq Premier south. Gist of the conversation was me suggesting Barnet or Aldershot for him.
Well an interesting day. Usual early start on crowded southwestern trains at some exhorbitant cost. Then having dropped off the little actress off to Barking. there is a first time for everything and by definition a last time. This is not a holiday destination place. The town itself looked like it had looted itself and the only claim to fame can surely be the number of fried chicken restaurants that they have there. Roughly 1 to 1 with all other shops. A pub next to the station, a Wetherspoons or similar, was packed full of people drinking at 10.30 am. On my mile walk to the health centre I was visiting, I passed a number of front doors, derelict looking with signs saying ” criminal defence solicitor”. I presume they were not describing defence solicitors who were so bad that they self termed themselves ” criminal”. These being the only sorts of solicitors gave me some indication what sort of area and problems may exist.
Barking station is also maybe the most complicated un-coordinated place in the universe. there are all sorts of trains there going to places that I had never heard of like Gospel Oak? There are underground trains and it was a mystery to work out which of the plethora of platforms they actually left from. Something called C2C trains that went almost directly to Fenchurch Station, wherever that is, I did not even know it existed outside of monopoly. Then London overground, another odd line going to places that I had never heard of. Anyway,I survived.
In the end I decided not to go as far too tired with these regular 6.30 starts. But am regretting it now. By all acounts an unconvincing performance from Bees, but 3 points. Bees went 2-0 up and then Leon Legge gave away a penalty. Talking point was that Charlie Macdonald was not even in the 16 man squad. Not sure what that means.
Nothing much happening in the news. The riots are all over, the country remains horrified that people can loot and steal from people simply for greed. They are all getting held in remand and 6 month jail sentences and the general feeling is “good”.
Houdini escaped again today in a mystifying way. Against good advice I let him out for a run in the bathroom as no time to get another ball from that awful PAH…… we watched him sniffing etc, then he suddenly disappeared…..yasmin thought we were joking but he was gone. No hamster in the bathroom. After 5 minutes he suddenly reappeared, and can only presume he got up behind the radiator into some little nook.
Elena is not best pleased today. They gave out the parts for the West end Stage show on sunday, they are doing Wizard of Oz. She was hoping for Dorothy, but has got Aunty Em (never heard of her but I assured her it was a big part…). The reality is that they all get around 4-8 lines each in this 15 minute production and then launch into singing and stage combat. She has been regaling us with stories about how they learn stage combat, fighting and hair pulling and punching.
Just looking at the stats my most popular day was when I uploaded Brentford v Yoevil photos and got a few of the players to tweet the blog address. since then mixed days. However today Aug 16th 10 views already. Do let me know who you are and what you like or hate about the blog!
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 