York university is one of the Russell group and ranks highly in academic terms. It may also be on of the most photogenic.
The university is built around man made lakes with numerous accommodation colleges on campus. Clearly the design allowed a modem spacious area to live in.
As one might imagine there are numerous academic buildings that are not so photogenic however the large Central hall often described as the spaceship building makes interesting viewing. 
Some of the lake views look almost like a painting . And the various bridges across the water have lighting that someone has really thought about.
York university is certainly worth a trip with the camera ! 
This was not the result most fans of either side predicted. Many Bees fans, maybe half , would have taken a point before the game. The reality was that a resurgent Brentford side played their best football this season and possibly for a few seasons and dominated the game from every angle.
Overall Brentford were brilliant more than Stoke were poor. Brentford need to carry on with this tempo and maybe Stoke need to jettison a few players simply past their prime .
Lastly I loved seeing the great reception Ryan Woods received . Nice Brentford fan behaviour for players we respect . And a privilege to see not only a few minutes of Peter Crouch but also him posing with young fans after the game and again the nice Ealing road reception he got when warming up.
Neither side will go up nor down this season and it will be interesting to see where they finally end up .
Football food is far from idyllic. In general nonleague clubs serve better and cheaper football fare. One of the best food items is served at Met Police football club. They play in Esher at Imber Court and participate in Evostik Southern League Premier South and are well worth watching .
They have recently started serving The Full Hogburger. For £5 you can have a superb burger cooked properly in a toasted bun. But on top there is a large sausage cut in half , cheese, onions and a thick slice of back bacon. Tasted delicious. They do not serve chips but there again you hardly need them. If there is a criticism it is that the burger is huge and not so easy to eat. This is a real meal! Football league clubs might learn here
During the second half of the recent game versus Bolton, the view over the Ealing Road stand was as good as any I have seen in years watching Brentford. So instead of photographing Neal Maupay rampaging through the Bolton defence , I spent 5 minutes capturing this beautiful moon. 
When we move to Lionel road I will miss hugely Griffin Park and moments like this will forever be remembered. 
These three photos were taken only a few minutes apart and using different exposures. Don’t let anyone ever say it’s easy to photograph the moon. Sometimes you get lucky and some of the trees behind the Ealing Road stand can be seen in front of the over exposed moon making an interesting image.
Ridiculous fact number one for Xmas eve is that only 3 championship teams are spelled the same way in Serbian…. one of those is Brentford! My favourite is Lids…. 
I am always curious as to the motives for street art . But in this case who is Daphne? Is she real? A TV character? A quick search through google reveals the answer. Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Maltese journalist who was assassinated October 16th. Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese journalist, writer, and anti-corruption activist, who reported on political events in Malta. This street art was a random scrawl on a wall near the seafront. 
Wikipedia and others report her journalism as “In particular, she focused on investigative reporting into government corruption, nepotism, patronage, allegations of money laundering links between Malta’s onlinegambling industry and organised crime”.
On 16 October 2017, Caruana Galizia died in a car bomb attack close to her home, attracting widespread local and international reactions.
In Dec 2017 three men were arrested in connection with her murder and 45 journalists have established The Daphne Project to conclude her investigation.
This story will continue to run. In May 2018 two laptop and three hard drives were handed over to German police by her family. The original belief that her laptop was destroyed by the car bomb was wrong as that laptop had not been used for two years. The family had refused to hand these over previously to the Maltese authorities.
A shrine to her of flowers and candles has been regularly destroyed and replaced.
Heidelberg is a town around an hour from Frankfurt. A pleasant town it seems although an hour to see it is not extensive. A few photographs to give a flavour of what you might see.
The large Police sign amused me a little in comparison with the minute street sign. The deckchairs in the NH hotel reception were fairly unusual. Simply changing a photo to black and white takes you back 50 years or more. The low clouds over the river give an aura of spookiness. 
Usually when I post musings and photographs after a game I go through and find my best 20 action photos and write a few words around these. Here I want to do something a little different.
Things have not been good recently at Brentford. Not many good results, some social media distractions amongst fans and generally the mood of optimism that was with us a month ago had partially evaporated. There was ill-advised talk that Thomas Frank had only a few games to save his job ( ridiculous I know) and many ideas regarding team selection (myself included). This was an important game in the context of where the season might go from here.
Griffin Park at sunset in November
We all know Brentford won 2-0 and although there were a few scares along the way, Brentford were the better footballing side and generally had the higher work rate. Something very different struck me strongly yesterday, perhaps I miss this sometimes, but Brentford are a real team. They worked hard for each other and have a true bond with the fans. The bond is important. We learned this week how strong that bond can be and the results of a good bond with the sad news emanating from Leicester city. No doubt I will post more comments and photos during the week, but these are the ones that captivated me . They are not my best action shots, these will follow, but these show the real emotion and bond between players, fans and the manager.
In the context of the season the result and the performance was critical and the obvious bonding between fans and team will be important in the months ahead. Brentford are a good team, a young team, mistakes will be made (by players, manager and fans) but lets keep this tight bond going.
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 