One Man and His Blog

So, last night, I went to a football match for the first time in over ten years, and if I’ve done the maths correctly, only the third time in my life. The match itself was pretty dull – Birmingham City against Southend, with the visitors pulling off a surprise 3-1 victory, but the actual playing was fairly uninspired. However, it was the oddities of the evening that really entertained me.

Firstly, there was the sponsorships of seemingly every announcement over the PA. When Birmingham took their early and short-lived lead a few minutes into the game, the announcer informed us (incorrectly, as it turned out to be an own goal, but never mind), "Goalscorer for Birmingham City, number 10 – Cameron Jerome!!! (…sponsored by Floors 2 Go)". I was quite surprised that young Cameron had an individual sponsorship deal, and especially that it was with a fairly unimpressive flooring chain. But when Southend started scoring, I discovered that Floors 2 Go seemingly sponsored every goalscorer. What’s more, FlyBe (a little cheapo airline) sponsored the announcements of substitutions, and somebody was even sponsoring the added time at the end of each half. Towards the end of the first half, when the announcer read out the registration numbers of two cars which needed moving, I almost expected him to finish with, "please move these vehicles immediately, thank you. (…sponsored by West Midlands Police)".

Quite aside from wondering whether these sponsorship deals actually work in terms of getting more sales – do people really go to Floors 2 Go just because they heard them mentioned every time a goal was scored at the Blues? – I couldn’t help wondering if the sponsors have to pay extra for each goal, substitution or minute of added time, or if they just had a flat rate agreed. Yes, I actually was wondering that. That’s how dull the match was.

But the true highlight of the night, for sheer outstanding awfulness, had to be the half time "entertainment". Our announcer wandered out to the centre circle to read out birthday congratulations to Blues fans who were in attendance, and present prizes to various competition winners who excitedly walked onto the pitch waving to the frankly uninterested crowd. And then, the moment that we clearly hadn’t been waiting for… It would appear that all Birmingham’s home games feature a contest at half time called ‘On Me Shed, Son’ (see what they did there?). This involves a roofless shed (sponsored, naturally, by a local home furnishings/DIY type place) being brought onto the pitch, and two punters attempting to score points by kicking five balls at the shed – one point if you hit it, three if you get the ball inside through the missing roof. At the end of the season, the overall winner gets a fitted kitchen, provided by the sponsors (but wouldn’t it make more sense for the prize to be a shed?!?).

So the announcer attempted to hype the crowd up – "Let’s have a big round of applause for the shed!!", he cried, as four men carried it onto the pitch via sedan chair-style handles on the side. The crowd reacted with a fairly unimpressed chorus of booing. This shed clearly wasn’t popular around these parts; maybe it ad once played for Aston Villa. Our two plucky contenders amassed modest but respectable scores, and then the shed was taken off the pitch again, as the announcer once again requested "a nice round of applause for the shed" and instead got roundly booed. I couldn’t help thinking that this must be something of a running joke by now; I’m assuming this competition must have been running since at least the start of this season, so regulars have probably been booing it for nearly six months now. Sadly, I was too far away to see if our announcer was smirking at the less than favourable reaction to this gimmick, or if he was fed up of presiding over the most unpopular event in town.

All in all, then, a fun evening out. Even if the football itself was the least interesting bit of it.

This blog entry was sponsored by Squeezy Cheesy Peas – the Cheesy Peas you can squeeze.

"Just give us yer f**kin’ money!"

Or, in other words, I was playing Monopoly with some friends last night. I haven’t played for several years, and remembering how the rules worked was a bit of a challenge (although having said that, the last time I’d played I’d shown very little observance of the rules and had eventually been disqualified for trying to embezzle money from the bank and set myself up as a tax exile). Of course, it was made a little harder by the fact that we were playing the Stuttgart edition, which obviously has lots of strasses and bahnhofs that you can buy, but also has all its instructions, Chance cards and what-have-you in German. (There are a large number of random items around the house in a variety of European languages, thanks to my housemate who grew up in Belgium but has obviously travelled around a bit)

Now German was the only subject I achieved an A grade in at school, but it’s amazing how quickly you can forget this stuff when you’re not using it every day. I could pick up bits of it (I think I could just about have reognised "you have won third prize in a beauty contest" had it come up) but having to get everything translated as we went along just dragged the game out a little longer. And herein lies the problem.

For a while I was really enjoying it. Everyone was buying up streets, taking Deutsch Marks off each other indiscriminately, and generally having a good laugh. But then, about the time people started building houses and trying to do deals with each other for the streets that would give them a full colour set, I got rather bored with it all (of course, this had nothing to do with me losing. Not at all. No sirree, Bob etc). Which would be fine if I could just walk away from it all, but somehow I can’t do that. So I keep playing, maybe a bit more recklessly than before, in the hope I might go bankrupt or be able to bankrupt everyone else. And then the game rumbles on for another hour, by which point the will to leave is quickly seaping away from me.

I have the same problem with playing poker – I love it up to a point and then I want it to stop, but that point is generally about halfway through the game. Doh.

Anyway, housemate eventually won, having bankrupted one of our friends (whose wife had given up some time earlier and fallen asleep in a chair while waiting for us to finish. I might try that tactic next time). I gave in, reasoning that the only way the game would end now was with me being bankrupted too, and the whole thing was finally over. I expect I won’t be playing again for a while…

There is no snow here.

Why not?!?

So let me set the scene for you: Auntie D has dropped me at the station, I’ve caught the train to Watford and changed onto the Birmingham train. It’s nearly 6 in the evening, and we’re rumbling towards Nuneaton…

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, this is your train manager speaking. In around five minutes’ time, we will be arriving at Nuneaton. When we reach the station, we will need to attach a diesel locomotive to the front of the train, this will take around fifteen minutes." There was some other stuff too, but it’s not all that relevant, so I’ll leave it out.

So we sit there while a bit of bumping and thumping goes on at the front of the train, and then we start to head off. And then, about two minutes out of Nuneaton, the train grinds to a halt and all the lights go off.

We all sit in the dark, somewhat bewildered, for a few minutes. Train crew members wander up and down the carriages. Eventually, they go to a cupboard by the carriage door, unlock it and take out… some glowsticks, which are then distributed to the somewhat confused passengers. Then they offer us free bottles of water. All very nice, but we’re still somewhat in the dark, in every sense.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, the train manager pops in after a while to explain that we’ve had some sort of power failure, they’re looking into it, and they’ll let us know as soon as there’s any news, but the PA system’s obviously down too so they can’t announce anything there. We wait a while, and eventually, after about 25 minutes, the lights come back on to cheers from the assembled throng. As the heating starts to kick in again, the train manager announces over the (now working again) PA that the diesel locomotive had had a loose connection which caused a total power failure, that we’ll start moving again as soon as it’s been replaced, and that he’s extremely sorry for the delay and inconvenience. Another 15 minutes waiting around, and finally we start moving again.

For the rest of the journey the train manager makes regular, extremely apologetic anouncements. He’s very sorry for the delay and inconvenience. We are all welcome to a complimentary tea or coffee from the buffet car. He’s very sorry for the delay and inconvenience. Although the delay was less than an hour and therefore passengers can’t claim compensation, we’re welcome to fill out a customer feedback form, available at the buffet car. Oh, and did he mention that he’s very sorry for the delay and inconvenience?

Finally, we rumble towards Birmingham. As I make towards the door, a woman already standing there turns to me and says, "What a crap journey, eh? We can’t even claim any money back." Which I thought was a little harsh, considering that the problems had been dealt with quickly, the train manager had kept us as well informed as he possibly could, and in the circumstances we were doing well to only be 45 minutes behind schedule. Then came one last announcement from the train manager…

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now arriving into Birmingham New Street. I must apologise once again for the problems caused by the power failure earlier, and the delay and inconvenience this has caused you. However, on the plus side, those of you going clubbing tonight now have your own glowsticks."

I had to smile. The woman opposite me didn’t.

So, another weekend at Auntie D’s. Enjoyable as ever, largely quite relaxed, with a trip to the market, an evening at the cinema, and (as Auntie D has already mentioned in her blog) a karaoke session with some gay men. Something for everyone there, I think.

Now, I’m not particularly good at describing things, but I’m going to have a go at explaining what Auntie D’s place is like. It’s a first floor flat with kitchen and lounge, plus stairs leading up to bedroom and bathroom. The design is such that the sloping roof leads to sloping ceilings, particularly upstairs. Built into the roof are skylights, which are rather handy but at times a little impractical. Sleeping on the sofa bed in the lounge, I’m usually awake the moment the sun comes up, and ended up having to turn away from the skylight and throw a t-shirt over my face in order to get back to sleep.

Perhaps more troublesome, however, is the skylight in the bathroom. It wouldn’t be a problem if it faced a brick wall or something, but instead there’s a large field just outside where people are often out walking dogs. The moment you step out of the shower, any passer-by could be in for a pleasant (or otherwise) surprise. Fortunately, though, there didn’t seem to be any ornithologists around, and without binoculars there would be little to see, as it were…

My housemate has just got home from work. It normally takes him around three quarters of an hour or thereabouts. Tonight it took 5 hours – of which four-and-a-half were spent between the same two junctions of the motorway.

What is it about Britain that causes the whole country to grind to a halt when the weather does anything even slightly out of the ordinary? I know the kind of winds we’ve had today are extremely rare, and if a tree gets blown down into the road there’s not a lot you can do about it, but come on – it seems every extremity of weather is not prepared for in the same way in the UK as it is in the rest of the world.

From many years of using the train, I know this all too well. Summer? Too hot, tracks have buckled, engines have overheated, cancellations. Autumn? Leaves on the track, track becomes slippery, trains have to go slower, delays. Winter? Snow (generally only a light covering possibly once in the year, but that seems to be enough to cause problems for days on end).

Funny how the trains in France – by all accounts faster, cheaper and more reliable than the British ones – never seem to have these problems… They never should have privatised the railways… Oh, sorry, turned into my dad at the end there. But you get the point.

OK. Rant over. Please disperse, people. Nothing to see here.

As I’ve noted before, if I’m busy I don’t have time to blog, and if I’m not busy I don’t have anything to blog about. It was the latter this week.

So, here are a few random thoughts that have cropped up this week:

1) There are an awful lot of people who walk through our office (and not just round the sides, sometimes straight down the middle of the office as well) without any explanation of who they are or why they’re passing through our office. Today we had a classic – a girl who none of us had ever seen before walked in and went to start using our photocopier. She didn’t get far, however, because she didn’t have a code to type into the copier to access it (this is used both for security, and to identify which department’s copying it is, so that we don’t get charged for other people’s copies and vice versa). She asked someone how it worked, and they explained that she needed to put her department’s budget code in, and she said she didn’t know what the code was and could she borrow our code ’cause she was only making one copy of one sheet, and my colleague said no, she’d need to use her own department’s code, and the girl went off to find out what it was and never returned. We still have no idea who she was or why she had descended on our copier.

2) Much as I love living with my housemates, at least most of the time, I’m ready to not live with them now. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen when I move away from here a few months from now, but I’m hoping I’ll either be able to live by myself or possibly with one other person. I’ve had enough of having to coordinate what times everyone needs to use the bathroom in the morning, I’ve had enough of chasing (or more usually forgetting to chase) people for their share of the bills, and I just want more freedom and space to myself. I’m ready to move on.

3) Last summer, before I was off ill, I got into the habit of getting off the train a stop early and walking into work. When I returned from being ill, I couldn’t be bothered. Then I decided I should start again. But the weather has been so miserable the last couple of weeks, that I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t get soaked either on the way there or back. But today was dry, so I walked it for the fist time in four months, and it felt really good. And tomorrow, I don’t have an urgent phone call to make, so I won’t have to walk at shin-aching pace to catch the train home in the evening. Which should make it more enjoyable.

4) I’m sure there was something else… no, it’s gone.

No, but it would appear that my housemate didn’t turn the ring off when he finished cooking dinner. So we’ve had the ring going for no reason for the last three and a half hours.

Oops.

I have been treated to four (count ‘em – four) Ferrero Rochers today. Three were from one of the companies we work with, and the fourth was from my housemate. I think this has doubled the number of Ferrero Rocher I have eaten in my entire life. I don’t get invited to many ambassadors’ receptions, you see…

(And no, I’m not even going to contemplate deep frying them. That would be sick and wrong. On so many levels.)

My housemate has returned from his Christmas break with a deep fat frier in tow.

Tonight our dinner was centred around chicken (deep fried), potato wedges (deep fried) and mushrooms (deep fried).

I feel sick, and our kitchen smells minging.