Few photos from today. FA Cup round 1 Met Police v Crawley Town. Great game. Will post tomorrow about that but here is the mascot and we now know his name!! PC SO Steve. This has to be the most unusual mascot in the world. He goes around talking to the children and playing football with them!
Sad after losing
I am gently amused today that having done this blog for around 15 months now, and blogged about all sorts of things, football through to literature and travel, that the most hits on my blog in one day have come from me posting a handful or words and a single photo of a really odd football mascot yesterday.
Anyway today a return to sanity and a nice trip to a National trust property in Esher in surrey. A grey day, rain in the air, mostly drizzle, but a real autumnal feel to the day. Not so many people there, but a nice walk around the lake and through the woods. Lots of mushrooms and the trees looked nice, at least those retaining their leaves. Worth going here? Maybe. as a member of the National Trust it is of course free but otherwise to pay £7 entry, maybe not.
Mushroom Concoction
Usually none of the family are fond of spiders but last week I kind of came to admire them. Watching them spin webs in the garden connecting plants and pots to make amazing works of art called Webs. The intricate patterns and their patience suggested that ADHD does not exist amongst the spider fraternity. A few photographs to demonstrate their artistic triumphs. By accident I partially destroyed one of the webs, maybe even this one photographed here and I felt rather guilty.
Spider
I do try and be positive about football particularly as it costs good money to get in, in fact this game cost 12£ to get in ( only 2£ for children), 2.50£ for a programme ( not really worth it, full of adverts and little real information or news) and 3£ for a burger. But this really was one of the worst football games that I have seen for some while. Let me try and itemise my grief:
In fact this game was one of the most dire games I have seen for many years. Even at this early stage of the season I can confidently predict that both these teams will be at the wrong end of the table.
On the positive side though, this is a great little ground to watch football in but it does help if you a Sat Nav to help you meander your way to the toilets. They are complex to find. Worth a visit, but maybe on a different day. I will come back later this season and see whats changed.
Clarke Masters, Havant goalkeeper. Ex Brentford
Chaos at Waterloo station tonight around 6.30 with trains not able to stop at New Malden . The reason. Well a complicated story that I have pieced together from the Surrey Comet website and Twitter. Who knows the accuracy but here we go. It seems that on the northbound platform a man dropped his mobile phone down between train and track. He tried to retrieve it and was advised strongly by the guard that this was not the best idea, death and all that. He was told that when the train moved off it might be possible. This did not fill him with joy and he argued with the guard, maybe even punched the guard as the train began to move off and fell down between train and platform. He was airlifted to hospital by an air ambulance but it seems does not have life threatening injuries. If half of this is factually correct the moral of the story is do not risk your life for a phone but just go to Carphone Warehouse the next day. Crazy behaviour.
For me it meant that having queued to get a train at Waterloo heading to Motspur Park for 25 minutes, and then not being able to get on, and seeing the same happen on another platform, went home on the Northern line to Morden. Despite most trains being cancelled and the rest severely delayed, other than we kept being informed that this incident had happened at New Malden ( A man has been hit by a train was the rhetoric used), there were no SouthWest Train staff on the platform at all to offer either assistance nor advice. The simplest thing to do would have been to stop folks getting onto the platform. The queue was five deep and a lot of pushing from angry commuter types was going on and raised voices. I remain unimpressed. Two photos. One from Surrey Comet and the other from my I Phone showing a little of the chaos at Waterloo.
Lastly well worth going to this blog to see more photos of the New Malden adventures
http://oddpupil.org/photos/airambulance/
And the Surrey Comet where the news hounds will sniff out more intrigue and adventure and chaos in New Malden
Platform 1. Waterloo. Around 6.30. Crowds building
Air Ambulance arrives in New Malden
Burlington junior school is a primary and secondary school deep in the suburbs of New Malden in Surrey. By chance it sits less than 300 yards as the crow flies from our house. When our daughter was 4 we took a look around and made a decision that this was a good school and more importantly the right school. We were not wrong. Our daughter now 11 years of age leaves the school today after 7 years to venture into secondary school next term. What have we learned? Firstly that this school nurtures children. Yes, there is the flurry of excitement to get good SATS results, yes, the homework is annoying at times, but at all times the children are encouraged to be children. School is so much more than rote learning. It is about socialisation and working out how the world functions. The teaching experience has been good with many examples of excellence. Looking back would we change anything? I dont think so.
We have watched many of the children grow up in a lovely manner and for our daughter we took a photograph each first day of the school year. So the first one was taken when she was almost 5 and the last one today when she is almost 12. Without doubt the biggest change is in Year 6 ( when the children become 11 years old and some even almost 12 years old).
So please enjoy seeing these changes and it is going to be a strange old walk tomorrow for the last time to Burlington Junior School. Thankyou for all your kindnesses.
5 years old. First day at school
Last Day
I think we all know that there is a lot of raw talent out there, but exactly how much only gets measured when a school is brave enough to put around 90 year 6 children into a complicated production. Auditions were held and fairness played a role as the major 12 parts are played by different children each of the two nights. The scenery and props were truly brilliant and the simplicity of what was done was mesmerising. There was humour, a few forgotten lines ( but over 90 minutes hardly any), bravado, great acting, great delivery and great singing. The teachers have clearly put a lot into this production and it showed. Local residents from a home for the elderly were invited, parents, friends and importantly children in all the other classes. There were so many good performances that one could not , even being unbiased, pick any special one because they all were. the audience loved the pirates, loved the dancers, laughed at the jokes. A few photographs just to remind us what a great evening it was.
It is all rather silly really but we do try and grow a few things in the garden and are spectacularly pleased when this proves successful. We have a Strawberry plant which gives fruit each year and we do battle with the squirrels to get the fruit before they do, a Redcurrant tree/bush which for some bizarre reason has provided one string of reducrrants this year and some potato sacks. Today we picked our potatoes and there was a nice crop. Furthermore they tasted delicious. So although there is no chance of us going into competition with Tesco, it is a little bit of fun and we can eat the rewards! The real problem we have comes from the squirrels but also I suspect the urban foxes of which we have many culprits.
Potato Crop 2012
As we all know the weather has been awful and there are many examples of flooding all over the country, it is not a great example but it is an example of flooding that I cam eacross yesterday in Fareham. The car park of the Holiday Inn hotel was flooded, as were the fields opposite and numerous other places. The flooded Tennis courts were in New Malden.
Flooding in Fareham
The weather held out today and a great sports day took place. All the children had races and took part, some won and some lost, but fun was had. Parents came along, more mothers than fathers, and cheered their children on. Teachers smiled, and even raced against each other, tumbling over as the finish line came into sight. A nice day. A great tradition.
chris1957
Arcticterntalk.org 