Arcticterntalk.org

The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world

Archive for the tag “football”

Oldham 0 Brentford 2


An interesting week but one sadly that ended with me getting up at 4 am to travel to Heathrow and head for Dublin for a day of work. Why saturday? good question but the Irish often hold meetings then and I agreed to give a lecture on ADHD. Actually it all went well over there, nice audience and nice people. but to be waiting for a taxi booked for 5 am when it did not turn up was not idyllic. the guy rang me and said where was I, to which i replied outside my house. He was somewhere else, anyway then he arrives and the next piece of joy when he tells me in a very foreign language that this is his second day in the job and he has no idea how to get to Heathrow! now at 5 am i am cutting it quite fine timewise, thinking who else would be on the road. Well it all worked out. security at Terminal 1 did their best too to make me late. They stopped a sikh guy as he had what looked like a keyring and instead of just pulling him to one side and getting on with it, they stopped the whole security queue from moving. Anyway got picked up in a nice Mercedes limo and whisked off. Central dublin was so empty.

Return flight  in the middle of the afternoon meant no football for me today and that is painful, so no photos to upload. The tannoy announcer at Heathrow made me laugh as he sounded just like the ” compare the meerkat, compare the market” voice. Flights both ways on BMI who have that look of an airline in freefall. The staff are all generally morose and they seem to stop flying to where I want to go (Glasgow, Leeds, Durham Teeside) and initiate flights to where no-one in their right minds would want to go, places with Kazakstan, BAKU and tripoli, all come to mind. flight was maybe 60% full at best.

Brentford seemed to have played well at Oldham. They were 1-0 up and Llera got sent off for two yellow cards, but then Weston got a second. Season is looking good. If we can win a few home games then things could be interesting.

Kim may have reached Honduras by now. she had a wretched flight series with a 8 hour stop over at Newark, amounting to overnight and then a 2 hour delay on the final flight out of Houston but still seems happy on her blog.  www.seniorbushe.wordpress.com. We will see her in about a month when she has qualified as a trained Scuba instructor.

The last produce from the garden was eaten tonight, before you get excited, they were 5 small strawberries from the eternal strawberry plant. We leave it out each winter where it gets rained on and snowed on and frosted, yet comes back stronger the following year. Our potatoes also seem to be growing somewhat, so homegrown charlotte potatoes for xmas are planned.

During the week had a few nice meals out. Red Peppers in Esher is worth a mention and Reds in Wimbledon and using my lovely Taste card getting 50% the food bill, it is quite cheap to eat out except when wife decides to have copious quantities of vanilla vodka………….

Finally work has been busy this week. I took part in a debate over ADHD at the UKAAN meeting at a venue that was next to the Savoy hotel, called IET Savoy Place. Great venue. Old fashioned lecture theatre with modern frills. Loved it. Am becoming increasingly fascinated with ADHD and things will be interesting next year when more adults start getting diagnosed with ADHD.

Brentford 1 Preston 3


Sadly a really one sided game. Preston were a big strong team with a number of undesireables and frankly way better than us. We all had great hopes of this week but 1 point from 2 home games says it all.

Wycombe 0 Brentford 1


Bees win again. thats five wins from 7 games and we remain 4th. It was a sort of reserve bees side as they have maybe 6 players who are probably first choice who would have been playing. a brief summary of the game might be this: bees were much the better side, they won with a penalty that was ridiculous for wycombe to give away. Lee made some world class saves in the second half and in the end we were hanging on. Charles and I had the pleasure of some dubious dire conversation behind which included gems like ” he knowingly knew” and ” wycombe is almost in wales”. These were also two of the more interesting comments. In fact change conversation above to monologue.
Sunday was walking the greyhounds day. Elena and I had some type of Scooby doo greyhound called ” ariel”, who leapt as high as she walked in front! Sweet dog though.
Looks like the rubbish weather we are promised this week, the tail of the hurricane from east USA is arriving. Windy and rainy. You will certainly notice the difference from Mexico. Animals all remain well and Shadow is a fairly competent catcher of moths and butterflies in case you need those. Would like advice re Hedgepig’s diet. What else can he eat except mealworms and cat food? Garden slugs maybe?
Hope all well.

Windows


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.

Walsall 0 Brentford 1


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

Brentford. The greatest football club in the world


Uwe Rosler. A pointing sort of manager

Uwe Rosler. A pointing sort of manager

As they say ” we are too big for this league……the barcelona of the lower leagues”. Nonsense really but what a great start to the season yesterday. Brentford winning 2-0 against a decent yoevil team. Crowd of 6300. Great atmosphere. Team played well, worked hard and we saw one of the best celebrations ever seen at Griffin Park. double somersault and flip from Shaleum Logan, the right back who scored the second goal. A little story here. He was given a free transfer from Man city end of last season and is a bit like Ijah Anderson ( if anyone remembers him). Was frozen out at Man city and was not allowed to train with the first team ( suspect some things we dont know about). First goal was a penalty from Gary Alexander who was wearing what charles cruelly described as a turban ( 7 stiches from training accident, presume not a fialed lobotomy). Team were high tempo, and one of the most high tempo games seen for a long while. Yoevil, decent side but not brilliant finishers. Richard Lee made 2 good saves, and has emailed me again to ask if I mind him putting the photos I took and sent him on his website. Of course not!
So based on that have been in a very good mood all weekend. We walked 4 greyhounds today, all would audition well for Scooby doo, ears up and very lively. Tonight off to see Harry Potter in Esher.Another good thing is that we have this card called Tastecard ( costs £30 per year) and gets you 50% off food bill in lots of reastaurants. It is expanding big time and many that we go to are now part of this scheme. No catch at all. Tonight we will visit Red Peppers in Esher before the film.
I have to report a lost tortoise in Paley street. Charles tells me that said tortoise, large size, was allowed to roam and cannot be found. He also denies eating a crunchy cornish pastie with legs……..how exactly inside a house can one lose a tortoise? Questions may be asked!
Charles is coming to Spain with us when we go end of august, for a week. His car has problems, a clutch cable we think and Gary is going to sort him out otherwise he is fairly stuck!
More Brentford thoughts. Jake Reeves was not going to have a squad number but was given number 40, and made his professional debut yestreday and is superb!

Saturdays are back to normal


Football has returned. Went to a Brentford friendly today away at Aldershot. Crowd not bad for a friendly about 1300 with 250 Bees fans there. I like Aldershot as they dont try and stop me taking my photographs. Brentford look like a decent team this season, and in fact the existing players, O’connor, Bean etc are the ones that look poor. We have a loanee from Celtic with thousands of followers on Twitter, we are assessing some French player from FC Lens, we have a great centre back from some German side……… and so on. Bees won the game 2-1. Maybe the most one sided game I have ever seen. Have posted a few photos to keep you amused but try looking at the penalty photo with Richard Lee going the wrong way!
Other than that weather lovely here in UK, back to T shirts. Hedgepig is starting to be more friendly, houdini is on form, but some horrid animal in the night knocked down and broke a Sunflower I have been growing. It has been a good year though for Sunflowers and we have 3 heads harvested with seeds already……..so have planted another.
Elena was delighted as our potatoes have grown, not many ( and have cost a fortune, could have bought about 40kg from Co-Op for what our little tubers cost.
I did realise something sad today though…….. the NHS will try and pay me my pension in less than 2 more years……must be getting old. But looking forward to eating the food harvested from the garden tomorrow, when Charles comes over. Potatoes,Strawberries and Rocket…..
On the down isde, the young foxes are causing havoc, stealing all sorts of things in the garden like trowels etc and so noisy.

Northumberland


Arctic Tern. Dinner in beak

So much news to update that it is difficult to know where to start, so will work backwards over last 2 weeks.
Just back from a week away, mixture of work and holiday. Was up in Harrogate for a psychiatric congress that is always good fun. Get to meet colleagues and do some work and have a few drinks…………however there is a good chance that I halved the average age in Harrogate. I came down for breakfast the first morning and it seemed the whole world had gone grey overnight. Some great little snippets of conversation like a lady asking another, using the same intonation as you might ask ” more tea vicar?”…………asking ” more medication dear?”……
I travelled up by train which was actually quite fun. The train from Kings Cross was packed even on a sunday and allegedly was going all the way to Inverness,8 hours worth of train. In fact at its first stop, York, which suited me as that was where I was getting off, they said “all change”! Cue, grumblings and moaning…..
The next train a cross country train to Harrogate, actually looked like, sounded like and was about the size of a bus. It also went to stations that sounded like they came straight out of Camberwell Green. Try Poppleton,Starbecks………
Anyway Harrogate was lovely, weather warmish and the congress was really good. All against my iniitial expecatations. Took a little trip to Brimham Rocks, an amazing place where one climbs over these prehistoric looking rock formations. Some of the children there was performing death defying leaps between rocks with no parents in site…….I took Tea at Betty’s, an old fashioned tea shop, where the waitresses all look like they came from Upstairs Downstairs or a Jane Austen novel. Tea and cakes are nice, really nice, but not cheap and one might want to remove a few noughts from the bill. Then up to Newcastle way and that allowed a last trip of the year over to the Farne Islands. All the birds had gone really with only a few stragglers left. Saw 2 puffins on Inner Farne Island and they have stopped landing on Staple Island as all the birds have gone. The Arctic Terns were even good natured, or as good natured as they will ever get. The news from there is that they have had 36,000 pairs of breeding puffins this year, same as last year, one pair of swallows (?) and 9 pairs of Mallards…………
Drove back down this afternoon. A mere 350 miles on a friday evening, meeting lots of roadworks and traffic. Took around 7 hours of driving.
Brentford have continued to do well in all their friendlies, beating two non-league teams away 10-0 and 6-1, beating Stoke at home 1-0 and drawing 0-0 with Watford. This is so encouraging that I am going to see Aldershot v Brentford friendly tomorrow! So some photos may appear…….
the only bad news was that arrived home to find that someone is trying to sue Yasmin for an accident in 2006. Yasmin was stationary when hit from behind and shunted forward to hit the car in front. It seems that a little creativity has been applied to this story and a claim for almost 3K. Hmmm…….will be an interesting court case if it ever reaches there. Will take advice from eldest most-legal daughter, who has been out-argiung me for almost 30 years. And a law degree as well……

Rain


Well the weather in Mexico sounds rather better than here. Rain and a lot of it most of this week. Very little news to report. The highlight of today was stopping at a garage to buy a sandwich on the way to the Hilton hotel in Southampton and being delighted to find that they sold not only hot burgers, but hot southern fried chicken burgers!
Now the Hilton hotel not only charge 3.30 for a cup of tea (AKA a tea bag) but now charge for the pleasure of parking the car there, another £3. Now its not even my money but my employers, but still the principle applies. So I will not be going there if can be avoided.
Brentford have signed a forward on loan from Celtic…………am getting quite excited about this season!

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