Uncategorized – onetruekev

Rockin’ Robin

A young, Motown affiliated Michael Jackson kicks us off this time around as I reference the opposition’s nickname to make a tenuous title link again.

After the great opening day win against Blackpool on Saturday, it is back to action quickly with midweek action in the Carabao Cup. And we are playing Swindon Town, who, over the last couple of years we have had a number of dealings with, as out manager Scott Lindsey was let go by them, last year’s club captain and now one of our coaches – Ben Gladwin came from there, as did current club captain Dion Conroy, and then we have had Ronan Darcy and Rushian Hepburn-Murphy from them as well. Going the other way, one of the stalwarts of out promotion winning side last year, Will Wright has gone the other way, and he made the same start for them on Saturday as he did for us last season, with a thunderbolt of a goal. It will also give us the chance to scout their current team for any more of their contingent we might like to sign.

We last played them on New Year’s Day when we beat them 3-1 at home, somewhat making up for the 6-0 drubbing we had at their place last August. We haven’t played them in the Carabao Cup (in any of its incarnations) before. But we did play them in the FA Cup winning 3-2 away in a second-round replay in 2010 after a 1-1 draw at home. And overall, we lead the head-to-head against them with eight wins to their six, with seven draws.

Elsewhere, the managerial merry go round has started early, and Preston North End (no relation to our co-chairman) have sacked their manager after one game, and the bookies have initially made Scott Lindsey as the favourite for the job. To which all I can say is fuck off Preston. And the same for bookies.

As well as being live and direct at the Broadfield Stadium, the game is going to be live on FSS as well. For those who can’t make it to Crawley for the game, let’s hope that FSS don’t fuck up again, and actually show the whole match after their failure to do so on Saturday when they cut off after 93 minutes.

With it being a midweek evening game, there will be no getting to the ground three hours before kick-off like there was on Saturday. More like twenty minutes. The underpass still looks clean, just a couple of items left behind by litterbugs.

And in an act of obvious shithousery Swindon name Will Wright as the captain for the game. When the teams come out for the game it would appear that Swindon are wearing our third kit from last season. Was that part of the payment for the deal for Rushian Hepburn-Murphy? For us neither Fish nor Faal are in the squad.

We get an early chance, working the ball well in a tight space down the right and then switched over to the left where Jack Roles cuts inside and tries to curl one in only for it to go wide. Toby Mullarkey is showing some skills going forward and is putting in some good tackles on defensive duty.

A free kick on the left is floated to the edge of the area and headed on. Ade Adeyemo tries to delicately float it over the keeper and in, but the keeper gets back and pushes the ball over the bar for a corner. Which is played out to Roles outside the box, and he is fouled. He takes the free kick himself and drills it low and just wide of the post.

Swindon are starting to come into the game a bit more, but a good move sees Jeremy Kelly feed the ball to Rafiq Khaleel on the right and his shot is tipped round the post for a corner. Which was wasted. But we keep the ball, and it is played in and out of the box, but we can’t quite fashion a shooting opportunity.

At the other end Swindon win the ball and get into the area and get a shot off which is just wide. It did look as if we’d fallen asleep for a moment there. On thirty-five minutes we work the ball forward and Roles puts the ball through to Adeyemo in the box and his shot is close to the keeper, but it seems to go through him and squirms its way over the line and we lead 1-0.

A through ball from Mullarkey see Khaleel in the box, but he is squeezed out to the right and his shot is from a tight angle and easily saved by the Swindon keeper. Another long ball is played through to Adeyemo in the box but his shot loops into the air and out for a goal kick. There is one minute of added time at the end of the half and the half time whistle goes with us leading 1-0.

Looking on social media at half time and it would appear that the FSS feed is shit, with both wonky camera work being moaned about, and the game disappearing off screens for a bit with ‘technical issues’. The much-vaunted FSS coverage isn’t what it was cracked up to be.

We make two substitutions at half time and take a bit of time to get going. From the second of a couple of early corners Swindon have a shot which is well saved by Jojo Wollacott. From the third successive corner the shot is high over the bar and is only stopped from being the only ball of the night to disappear over the stand by coming back off the empty camera gantry on top of the KRL Logistics stand. It would seem that Carabao Cup games don’t warrant a second FSS camera at the ground then.

Finally, we get a bit of the ball and counterattack, the ball is worked out to Khaleel on the right and his shot is saved. And from another Swindon corner we break again down the right and Khaleel’s cross is blocked out for a throw near the corner flag. A bit more pressure follows, and the ball ends up with Roles after a pass from Armando Junior Quitirna. Rick who sits behind me and is Jack’s biggest fan shouts ‘Shoot Jack’ (not with a gun as some might think), and Roles obliges and unleashes from thirty-five yards straight into the top corner and we lead 2-0.

Which kind of led to the team thinking it was all over and they relaxed far too much for anyone’s liking. A couple of minutes later there was some slack play trying to pass the ball across the edge of our own area and the ball was hoovered up by a Swindon player and passed on and a shot from the edge of the area nestled in the net to make it 2-1.

The Swindon number 9 was living a charmed life. There were three heavy and late challenges which could all have been bookings, but after the third one he only got a talking to. Even on totting up he should have had a booking by now. Swindon get a free kick just inside our half and Will Wright takes it quickly and puts it into the net from forty yards, but the ref pulls it back as the whistle hadn’t gone. A couple of minutes later Swindon get a ball in the box and attempt a cross which Antony Papadopoulos (if he plays a lot I’m going to have to be cutting and pasting that name) slides to stop, but it hits his arm, and a penalty is given. Will Wright steps up to take and Wollacott makes a great save to push it round the post. The relief from that doesn’t last long though. The corner comes all the way over to the back post and it’s a free header and it’s 2-2.

Which sees us make two more substitutions. Khaleel gets a booking on the right wing for a nothing challenge. Which is a surprise as I’d assumed the ref hadn’t brought his cards out onto the pitch with him. Seconds later the Swindon number 8 goes straight through the back of Roles, and nothing is given. At all. That was dangerous, studs up, and late, and could have been a red, but waved away and only two meters in front of the lino with the white stick.

Swindon are really up for this now and they are doing most of the attacking. Wollacott is forced into a couple of saves before we get out of our own half and attack. The ball is worked to Papadopoulos (yes copy and paste was used for that) and his shot is just over the bar. Roles then commits a foul on the edge of the D, and the yellow card is whipped out in record time. The shot is round the wall, but Wollacott makes another good save, and the rebound is headed over. Another foul near the corner flag sees Josh Flint pick up a booking. At this stage the ref is just taking the piss.

But we appear to have woken up after nearly half an hour of slumber and do some attacking, with a couple of blocked shots. We keep the pressure on, and the ball is worked across from Khaleel to Roles in the middle of the park and he strokes the ball into the bottom corner from twenty odd yards out and we lead again, 3-2.

From the kick off, Swindon play it back to the keeper who hoofs it up the pitch we win it back and Roles is wiped out by another horrendous tackle, but we break and Armando crosses to the right and Khaleel picks it up and scores to make it 4-2. There is still no booking forthcoming for a Swindon player, who appear to have been given licence to kick the shit out of Jack Roles.

There are six added minutes at the end of the game and it takes until the very last one of them before the ref finally remembers he is actually allowed to book a Swindon player for their thuggery, and that is pretty much the end of the action and the final whistle goes with us coming out 4-2 winners and booking a place in round two, the draw for which is made tomorrow evening. Let’s hope it’s a good draw for us.

The crowd was announced as 2,396 with 315 away fans. It did look like there were more than that though. And the sponsors’ man of the match was the scorer of two stunning goals, and general punchbag for the Swindon players, Jack Roles.

That was harder work than it should have been, but it gave a lot of players a bit more competitive game time which is always good, and we did win. And now it’s on to Cambridge United away on Saturday.

Come on you reds.

We Need More Than Wombles

You have to wonder about some people’s mentality. I was out on Friday, just as it had turned to the afternoon. I had nipped into the shop on the local parade to get a drink. There was a teenage girl in front of me buying lots of random stuff. And because one drink doesn’t take long to scan and pay for, especially when I had already prepared the correct change to pay for it, I was walking towards the Downsman not far behind the girl.

Her mum was parked up at the side of the pub and the girl passed the bag of shopping into her through the driver side window. The mum passed her a couple of things and told the girl to throw them away. So, the girl took them, walked back across the road, and then just threw them at the base of the tree there. Two more steps away there is a bin. Her mum did shout at her to pick them up and put them in the bin. “It’s literally just there next to you.” There was a lot of huffing then involved.

But when you hear how it’s my generation that doesn’t give a shit about the planet, it isn’t. it’s the lazy entitled little shits of Greta Thunberg’s generation. And they seem to be worse in this country than anywhere else. (Even Vienna.) it is why our streets are litter strewn messes, whereas the streets of most foreign cities we visit tend to be litter free. (That and a lack of council resources to have that early, five in the morning street cleaning crews they seem to have overseas.)

And to be fair it isn’t just the younger generation in this country, it seems to be an epidemic of lazy bastards. I had my usual pre writing group Maccy D’s breakfast on Saturday morning. Pretty much every table had the detritus of wrappings left behind on them by lazy fuckwits. They managed to get their food and drink to the tables (OK, half of them probably used the deliver to table option when ordering), but they couldn’t possibly manage to take the empty bits to the bin. Which they have to walk past to get out the door. It beggars’ belief.

Although I didn’t make it to the football on Saturday (because of the stupid time of the friendly clashing with writing group), I can guarantee that by the end of the game the stands will be litter strewn hovels. People can manage to get the food and drink to their seats but can’t possibly take the litter away with them at the end. They just drop it and expect someone else to clean it up. And again most of them have to walk past the wheelie bins placed next to the bottom of each set of stairs out of the stands when they are leaving.

Why oh why are we such a nation of lazy, slovenly halfwits?

We Got A Win At The Valley

Apologies to the often-forgotten Sabrina Johnson whose lyrics have been stretched past credulity to try and cram something song related into the title.

After the great win to start the new year on Monday against Swindon Town, it’s time for my first away game of the season. Circumstances have meant I’ve missed a lot of good opportunities, and this certainly wasn’t a planned (or even thought of) game to come to. In fact, I was supposed to be on the way to Seville, but with Helen advised not to fly, that trip has been postponed until March (much like the Morecambe game we were going to go to back in October) this week. So, I’ve taken the opportunity to take advantage of the already booked annual leave and head north.

And so, today’s game is something of an epiphany game for us. (Yes, that’s a poor joke, but as it’s the only date I can use it, it could be years before another game falls on the sixth of January.)

Today’s game is against Bradford City, in the WAGMI derby. We played them in our first game of the season and won 1-0, with Will Wright scoring one of his now trademark thunderbolts. Which continued our good record against them. And had the bonus of making Mark Hughes lose his shit again. There is no Mark Hughes to annoy today as he has got the push because Bradford weren’t doing very well, especially for a club of their size and expectations.

Going into today’s game we sit twelfth in the League Two table. One place above our opponents, and two points ahead of them. So, managing to avoid defeat would keep us above them in the table. Always good. We are only three points off a play off place (although there is a lot of goal difference to make up, so effectively four points).

We got here yesterday afternoon, chilled last night and then spent the morning sightseeing. We could see the stadium from the back windows of our hotel.

Some people may scoff about being able to sightsee in a northern industrial city such as Bradford, but we found lots to take photos of. In fact, we were so busy we didn’t get to any of the pre-match drinking establishments. The inside of the Waterstones is just mental.

And someone had put a Bradford City scarf around the neck of the statue in there. It could have been replaced with a Crawley Town one, but I wouldn’t have made it up there and back down in one piece. They had books on Bradford Park Avenue as well. It’s hard to think they were replaced by Cambridge United on election to/from the league about a month before I was born in 1970.

The plan was for me to get my first programme of the season. Little things and all that. Only Bradford have completely doing programmes as well. So, I have to make do with a photo of the picture in the foyer of our hotel with a selection of their programmes over the last century.

The team coach still had its engine running as we passed it coming down the hill to the ground, perhaps planning a fast getaway.

Meanwhile the fan’s coach was parked behind the other side of the ground and had emptied and had its engine off.

Their pitch is looking quite threadbare – or should that be grass bare? I thought us having sand in one goalmouth was bad enough. If you put sand on their pitch in all the bare spots it would rival Camber Sands for the beach.

The ball was delivered to the centre circle by a little remote-control vehicle. A gimmick left over from noughties Premier League games. Perhaps we could get a little robot on a tricycle to do a similar thing for us?

We are in our nice mint green third kits, which I went to get one of when I got tickets for this game earlier in the week, only for them to have only young child sizes left. Bradford were in their traditional amber and maroon stripes. A guy sits down behind us and promptly points past my ear and tells his wife “I built that stand,” which sounded impressive until his wife replied, “Yes, I know, you tell me that every time we come here” in a thoroughly disinterested voice.

An early chance is dragged wide by Danilo Orsi, in a slow start to the game. Followed not long after by an impressive effort from Corey Addai to launch a ball over the stand we were sat in, for the only ball loss of the game.

There is some decent work after some sustained Crawley pressure, Liam Kelly plays a great ball through to Nick Tsaroulla, whose first time cross from the byline in is headed in from two yards by Orsi to make it 1-0.

Just after the half hour mark there is a ball played over the top of our defence. It looks miles offside, but the lino keeps his flag down and runs with the play. The Bradford striker puts it in to the back of the net, only for the linesman to then put his flag up for the offside. FFS, we haven’t got VAR, put the flag up as soon as they touch the ball instead of giving us all heart attacks.

Bradford are coming forward more and more and five minutes before the break they are one on one with Addai again, the flag doesn’t go up, and Addai makes a great save. Bradford are getting away with a lot more roughhousing now. Half of this team wouldn’t be out of place playing at the Odsal instead.

There are two added minutes at the end of the half, and then the half ends with us leading 1-0. The Bradford sound system seems to have unplugged and speakers near the away end, as we are only catching whispers from the announcements in the home parts of the ground.

The second half starts, but it takes a long time for Crawley to join in. Bradford get a couple of corners, a near miss, Addai goes down needing some treatment, and the ref appears to be turning into a bit of a homer. He has an inane grin plastered to his face as if he is just pleased they’ve let him out on day release. The pressure continues. There is a free kick, a long shot, another Addai save for a corner, Bradford players have taken to throwing themselves to the ground at every opportunity to win something. It certainly wouldn’t be an academy award.

Then we have a breakaway, Tsaroulla is played through by Orsi as he lies in the centre circle, but with a defender chasing him down he goes to the right-hand side of the box before shooting and his shot ends up going straight at the keeper.

Fifteen minutes into the half, the continued pressure from Bradford tells, their number three crosses from the left and it deflects off a Crawley defender and loops over Addai and into the net to make it 1-1. It has been coming.

We have a couple of chances not long after, a Tsaroulla shot is straight at the keeper, and a trademark Will Wright thunderbolt from thirty-five yards out goes over the bar.

The crowd is announced early on, 16,919, with they say 103 away fans. Who the hell was counting us in, Stevie Wonder? There were at least fifty more of us than that.

With seventy-eight minutes gone, there is some messing around trying to clear the ball out from the goal line, a bad touch sees the ball run away, and a Bradford player takes the opportunity to do a running dive over the outstretched leg of a Crawley defender and a penalty is given. Which Addai saves but can’t keep hold of and the taker bundles the rebound in, and we are now losing 1-2. No more than we deserve really for the terrible second half performance so far.

But the goal seems to wake us up. Orsi is in on the keeper and tries to dink it over him to get onto only for the covering defender to clear the ball away. We are trying much harder, but the ball doesn’t seem to stick or fall for us.

Only for there to be some great play from the left-hand side, through the centre of the park, and over to the right where a cross is put in which falls to Adam Campbell and he smacks it in for an equaliser, and it’s 2-2.

Near the halfway there is what looks to be a two footed lunge on Lawrence Maguire, and he is down for a couple of minutes injured. But the decision given by the officials is for a Bradford throw, and then there are three phases of play before the ref waves Maguire back on.

There are eight added minutes, with injuries and goals that isn’t a surprise. And we take advantage. We get a penalty, Tsaroulla is tripped in the area after a ball was played to him by Campbell. It looked soft, but I’m not complaining after some of the other dire decisions the officials have made today. Orsi takes, ignoring all the gamesmanship from the Bradford players, and strokes it into the bottom corner to give us the lead again 3-2. Cue scenes in the away end.

Bradford go down the other end and get a corner and there is breath held, the eight minutes are more than up, and in the ninth minute of eight Crawley break. The decision making is good, the passes are accurate and Klaidi Lolos has a shot which takes a bit of a deflection and goes into the top corner of the net to make it 4-2. Utter pandemonium and delirium in the away end.

The final whistle goes not long after and Crawley has won 4-2. Oh my days. It is the first sway win I’ve been in attendance for, and what a last fifteen minutes of play. A shame much of what went before was pony. But who can’t fail to be overjoyed with a 4-2 away win.

A win that puts us back up to ninth in the table, on the same points as both of the Dons, and only out of the play-off places on goal difference. Get in there.

All that is left now is to find somewhere to get the traditional post-match curry. Which as we all know will be extremely difficult in somewhere like Bradford. (We went to supposedly the oldest curry house in the UK, very nice and ridiculously cheap, starters, mains, and soft drinks for less than £25 for the two of us.)

And then next up is Peterborough United away on Wednesday night in the Bristol Street Motors Trophy. We have a couple of more nights in Bradford before heading down to Peterborough on Tuesday. Let’s get one step closer to Wembley.

Come on you reds.

Not Such A Goldeneye

I had a stye recently. I could feel it coming on and Helen said to me to go to the chemist and ask to speak to the pharmacist to give me something for it. So I did. I went to Kamson’s on Tilgate Parade, where their pharmacist said there was nothing, they could give me and to go away and dab it with a warm cloth several times a day.

Unhappy with this suggestion Helen got me to go the pharmacist at the Kamson’s next to Southgate Medical Practice. I didn’t see a pharmacist there, but the woman behind the counter gave me eye drops straight away, and so I started using them.

That was on the Monday night. Yet by Friday it was obvious the eyedrops weren’t really working and the stye had grown and I now had a yellow pus filled third eye, which I was using to great effect to freak Helen out with.

So, it was another trip, to another chemist and another pharmacist. This time at Saxonbrook in the town centre. He took one look at my eye and gave me some anti-biotic cream to put in the eye. Which is what Helen had hoped I would have got from the first pharmacist if they had been any good.

Anyway, I do love the name of the anti-biotic cream.

Goldeneye. As a Bond fan the film comes to mind. Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, Alan Cumming, et al. And each time I got the tube out to put more gunk in my eye I could hear Tina Turner’s dulcet tones singing the theme tune. And although the video game is one of the best known and best loved games of all time, I never thought of that. Mainly as my game playing over the years is limited, due to both a lack of interest and a lack of talent (the latter may well have influenced the former).

Putting the ointment in the eye was interesting. Once the first few millimetres came out of the tube it took on a life of its own and would keep coming out without any pressure being applied to it. which would be fine if it stayed in a line for easy application, but it curled up like a pack of demented quavers and kept coming out. Even shouting ‘stop porridge pot stop’ wouldn’t prevent it, only the lid going back on did.

And once in the eye, that was the cue for at least ten minutes of blurred vision under the film of ointment.

But it worked. The third eye popped and disappeared on day two and by the end of the five days recommended course of treatment, the stye had gone.

The only question I have after that would be if you only need an inch of the ointment four times a day for five days, why after that period is over is the tube still three quarters full when it is expressly stated to throw any remains away? Either make smaller tubes, or have it able to be used more than a five-day period after opening. The waste is massive (and therefore expensive).

Just stop. (and not the porridge pot variety either.)

Ran Out Of Gas

It’s the final game of the four home games in eleven days, and this time it’s Bristol Rovers, a game postponed from December 29^th due to Covid. When the game was originally due to take place, we were one place and one point behind them, with a game in hand. They lost their next game, and we leapfrogged them in the table. Ten weeks later, and they come into tonight’s game six points and four places above us, with a defeat on Saturday being their first loss since New Year’s Day. It’s all about timing.

We had bought extra tickets for Ciaran and Nathan the night before, and I was dropped off on the way home from work to collect the tickets. I also took the opportunity to get a programme, as I knew it was going to be tight for getting back to the game on time. The programme was a bit surprising, it was the one originally made for the postponed game. The date was the same, the reports in it were from games in December, the table was from December, and the squad hadn’t been updated with January moves. I did feel a bit seen off.

Anyway, Bristol Rovers, known as The Gas, but for some reason I seem to remember them being referred to as The Pirates as well. An eye patch is probably a pre-requisite for their players when their manager is around. Joey Barton being well known for having stubbed a cigar out in a team mate’s eye whilst at a Christmas party back in his Manchester City days. (Perhaps that was the reason for the December postponement – they didn’t have enough players who could see at the time).

We weren’t quite as late to the game as we had been last Tuesday, we heard the whistle for kick off, but it takes two minutes to get all the way around the ground to where our turnstile is. We get in as there is a decent chance and a shot just over the bar from the captain. And there is another chance a couple of minutes later. A promising start.

There are a lot of away fans, and as we were walking around the stadium, we could hear them chanting, “we want to go home, we want to go home, Crawley’s a shit hole, we want to go home.” Well, feel free to fuck off any time you want.

A blocked shot during a sustained period of pressure from Bristol Rovers spins out over the Ryan Cantor Club stand for ball loss number one of the day. And we get a breakaway, and Nadesan is through one on one with the keeper only to hit it straight at him, the ball to bounce back and hit Nadesan in the face and go out for a goal kick.

The next time we attack a few minutes later it finishes in a dreadful wayward shot that soars out over the KRL Logistics stand. When (or if) it landed it may well have joined the big red and white concrete football on the roundabout.

There was an injury to a Crawley player in our own penalty area, but even when escorted off the play didn’t restart, and all the players were milling about before the announcement came that there was a delay due to the ref being replaced as he’d injured himself. Cue the biggest cheer of the night from all sides of the ground. The substitution that took place for us saw the return from a long period of injury of Jake Hessenthaler.

In the 39^th minute ball number three sailed over the Mayo Wynne Baxter stand from a miscued (and a half) clearance. And then came the breakthrough. The defence went to sleep expecting an offside call, but the ball was picked up by a player coming from deeper and they ambled into the box and shot past Morris to make it 1-0 to Rovers.

There were eight minutes of injury time indicated at the end of the first half, but more were played, and with it came some of the best Crawley pressure since the early chances at the beginning of the half. For most of the time in between, Rovers had shown why they were on such a good run, and making us look a bit bad.

There was another trip to Redz bar at half time, anything to avoid the imbecilic same playlist coming out of the tinny speakers. And Crawley make another substitution at half time, and it is another return after a long time out with injury, this time it’s Kwesi Appiah, which did add another song to the chanting repertoire for the second half.

We are much more in the game in the second half and it’s a really good game. Twenty minutes into it there’s a poor pass on the edge of the Rovers’ area and they break and score to make it 2-0.

But less than five minutes later we have one back. A corner comes in and bounces around before being poked home by (according to the bloke on the tannoy) Jake Hessenthaler, but what looked to be suspiciously like an own goal from where we were sat.

I said there looked to be a lot of away fans, and this was confirmed by the crowd announcements, there was a crowd of 2,223, with 556 of them being away fans. No wonder they were able to make so much noise. At least Al wasn’t on away fan patrol all game tonight.

A couple of games ago, Morris got a booking for time wasting, but we’ve seen some dreadful time wasting from away teams, especially keepers, and there is no hint of a booking. Rovers’ keeper was just taking the piss for the whole of the second half.

With five minutes to go, ball four finds its way out over the Mayo Wynne Baxter stand after a clearance from a corner. We get a free kick a few yards outside the penalty area and Powell hits the bar with his only good delivery of the night. Despite all the time wasting, numerous injuries and substitutions there are only three minutes of injury time. But what were we left to expect from the ref who blatantly body checked a Crawley player two yards away from being able to make a tackle, and then when the ball hit him, didn’t restart with the required drop ball, but instead passed to a Rovers’ player and waved play on?

Perhaps we should stop laying on the spread of food for the officials before the match and tell them to fuck off and buy their own down the Barton.

The sponsor’s man of the match was announced as Will Ferry. And then the twat in charge of music played “Boys Don’t Cry” again. Perhaps we ought to chip in a few quid for him to buy some new tunes.

We have an away game this weekend, and then we are going to miss the following weekend’s home game against Swindon Town as we will be in Budapest, so the next game will be against Rochdale at the end of the month.

More Crawley Observations

I’m out early on a Saturday morning. It’s a writing group day which means there is always going to be a Maccy D’s breakfast involved. And being in town before nine in the morning means I get one of my cherished window seats so I can watch what is going on in the world outside.

The market – as it is – is already set out and awaiting customers. But Crawley isn’t really an early bird kind of town and there isn’t much footfall. Most of the passers-by are picking up food to be delivered – Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats, Too Fucking Lazy To Get It Yourself? (that last one’s name may not catch on) – both from Maccy D’s and Greggs next door.

The stall opposite where I am looking out is selling watches, sunglasses, and mobile related items. All at cheap knock-off style prices, and has a couple of big signs saying, “Cash Only,” so it isn’t dodgy in the slightest, is it? I’m intrigued that in one of the trays of sunglasses on display there appears to be a pair with the Maccy D’s logo on them. It takes me longer than it should to realise it’s reflecting the logo from the Maccy D’s I’m sat in. I’m not going to lie. I’m not quite at full capacity this early in the morning.

The mall is nearly empty and WH Smith has more people on tills than there are customers in the shop. Something that is unheard of as they are usually trying to shepherd you to the useless self-service tills instead of serving you. Perhaps it’s too early for them to be pretending to look busy elsewhere in the shop.

I then jump to after the Crawley game and our now traditional post-match curry at The Downsman. When we were there last week, they closed the main men’s toilets due to flooding. They were still closed due to flooding when we went in this evening. I went to the other toilet in the pub, only to find that they weren’t going to be long in being open before they too were closed to flooding, mainly due to the fact that the inbreeds in there were incapable of hitting the urinals.

From where I was sat, I could see the door of the closed toilets, with the sign on the door saying they were closed due to flooding. Now, if I wasn’t at full capacity early in the morning whilst in Maccy D’s, then there were loads of blokes nowhere near full capacity in the early evening in the Downsman.

At least half a dozen of them walk up to the door, push it several times, look confused as to why the door isn’t opening, and then look up at the sign on the door as if it had suddenly appeared since they had tried pushing the door. If there was a camera on the door then there would be a great gallery of gormless looking morons. At least one of them did it twice. Not a single one looked at the notice first, every single one of them tried the door first and then read the notice.

For all the use it is, the notice might have well read,

“If you notice this notice, then you will notice that this notice is not worth noticing.”

Mundane Is Too Mundane An Expression For This

Thursday morning saw me back in the office away from all human contact. Well, apart from the stream of phone calls obviously. The day started in a similar way to the Thursdays when I was on holiday; with a taunting e-mail from the National Lottery saying I had won a lucky dip. In the last three weeks I’ve had seven e-mails, five to say I’ve won lucky dips and the others saying important news about your ticket, which both turned out to be wins of £2.50. From occasional teasing they have moved into full on mockery now. I’m not greedy, I don’t need the sextuple rollover of tens of millions of pounds, just enough to be able to retire and never have to deal with a holiday or position management query ever again.

I didn’t realise quite how much I had written in notebooks whilst on holiday until I actually got around to typing it all up. Thursday night saw the next batch of travelogues being typed up and posted on my blog, and in the case of the Leicestershire ones on Medium as well (I can add as many, better quality, photos on there without using up all my site’s file space)..

Friday wasn’t pizza Friday this week. Instead, we were heading to a field just outside Rusper for a barbeque. This may sound a bit random place to go for a barbeque, but friends keep horses in a field here. They rent part of the property from a lunatic who uses the rest of the space to store random conked out vehicles. We have been a few times to help them sort the place out, removing ragwort (I had something else to do that day), and build stables. There is plenty of space to socially distance and so a few of us gathered.

I’d been a few times, but never walked up to the other end of the land. I haven’t seen as many old, rusted and immobile tractors in one place since news reports on French farmers’ blockades. Lots of four by fours, a couple of sports cars and various other cars are strewn in different places, most of them in danger of being completely reclaimed by nature. It is like a proper old junkyard.

It was a lovely warm evening; right up until the point where the sun started to disappear and the temperature dropped like a stone. And then the pyromaniacs came out to play building a fire, enough to keep people around it until it was properly dark and time for everyone to head home.

Saturday was wet, which suited me as I just spent all day finishing catching up on typing everything up, then linking everything to my social media, and loading the hundreds of photos to Facebook, both to my personal page and where appropriate to my interest groups (i.e. History of Leicestershire). It wiped out most of the day, as it was soon quarter to seven and time to drop Helen off at the Parson’s Pig for her to meet colleagues for a birthday meal.

I got back and had pizza Saturday, and looked at the laptop, and the next thing I knew it was nearly eleven and time to pick Helen back up. I’m sure that days at the weekend go at three times the speed of weekdays. It was the same Sunday morning, I looked at my watch and it was about eight, blinked and woke up at eleven.

Helen was taking her mum for lunch, so I had Charlie walking duties. I found out that to walk around the field at the end of the close takes exactly 571 steps and equates to 0.29 miles, which means that four laps of that (three of which used exactly the same amount of steps), three laps of the park behind the house and to and from the front door of the house works out to be two miles in total.

Whilst the final games of the Premier League season were on, I got around to collating pictures of street signs I’d taken photos of before my birthday, so were over a month old. I know we’d been away in the interim, but it was a shock to find I’d not done anything with them for five weeks. Two more collections finished – Norfolk Settlements and Forestfield Conservation Area.

I would have loved to have blinked for as long Monday morning as I had Sunday, but instead of blinking when I see the time is eight o’clock, it’s a panicked reaction as I have to get showered and into work. At which point time slowed to a trickle again and the next eight hours took four days. And then the evening went in about thirty seconds.

My mum rings me on my mobile, and she sounds all worried. “Just checking you’re alright, I’ve been ringing your landline for a few days but no one was answering”. Considering we were in most of the weekend, and at the time she said she called this is confusing. Right up until she says she copied all the numbers into a new address book last week, and she had copied the wrong number. Just leaves the question of who was she actually calling?

We’re watching the last few episodes of the last season of The Wire, and I was gutted that Omar wasn’t the last cockroach standing; he has made me laugh out loud so many times watching the whole thing from the start in the last couple of months.

Charlie has picked up two new habits in the last week or so. The first is to pick up his bowl and wander the house and garden with it, as if he is hungry, even though he’s just been fed. The second is morning attacks on my rucksack, trying to ransack it. He ignores it from when I get in, all night and before he goes for a walk, but once walked and fed he is relentless in trying to get into my bag, regardless of whether there is food in there or not.

Just Eat’s TV and radio adverts are showing up just what a rent-a-rapper Snoop has become. Seriously, get a grip, you’re showing less self-respect than Joe Hart did in the Head and Shoulders adverts a few years ago.

Speaking of things on the radio, Absolute 80s plays Wham’s “Club Tropicana” a lot. Yet it’s only recently I’ve noticed (after thirty seven years of hearing the song), that they contradict themselves in it. The chorus has the line “all that’s missing is the sea”, yet the second verse has the line “watch the waves break on the bay”.

A couple of recent meals Helen has cooked have included artichoke. To me that sounds more like an instruction than a food stuff, especially if it wasn’t chopped up into small pieces. I now can’t help but hear it as Artie, Choke!

After quite a few weeks I’ve levelled up in Jigsaw World, I’m now at level 18 and I’m called a Jigsaw Shark now. Who would have thought there could be such a thing? I’m just hoping this doesn’t mean that all the jigsaws at this level are of sharks.

Following The Story Of England

Another day, another bagged breakfast, quickly followed by a brief detour into Diseworth and the heritage centre to pick up the books I had arranged to buy and for which the staff had kindly agreed to open the place for me to get them.

Then it was on to the order of the day. Helen and I had watched the re-run of Michael Wood’s documentary (of his book) The Story Of England, which had focused around the three villages of Kibworth Harcourt, Kibworth Beauchamp and Smeeton Westerby. We were now interested to see some of the places shown in person.

This involved a drive down the M1 and then, with tightly wound up windows, through the lurg ridden extended lockdown area of Leicester (and Oadby). We headed to the old Roman Gartree Road, where we could follow it to the south east (apart from a detour through Burton Overy where the road turns in to a path) to find the Gartree. Not the original one, but the replanted one.

A long fruitless search followed, despite having a picture of it and a description of where it should stand and an OS map, we spent nearly an hour going up and down the Gartree Road, trying to find any oak tree or a sign of where there were telegraph wires (as in the back of the picture) before giving it up as a bad job and heading into Kibworth Harcourt, across the A6, over the railway and finding somewhere to park in Kibworth Beauchamp.

From there we walked through both villages following the trails shown on various information boards up around the villages. The church of St Wilfred’s was another mainly built in ironstone and lines of slate headstones. There are plenty of seventeenth and eighteenth century buildings and it is where we first really come to realise that the manor houses in the county were all three story affairs, something that isn’t the case in villages in Sussex where we live now.

The other thing that we noticed was that the old nucleuses of the villages were very much still the original buildings, and that newer builds tended to be added on as the villages expanded instead of being crammed in amongst the original buildings. There appears to be less old building torn down to make way for new builds.

After following the two village trails we went back up to the Coach & Horses for lunch, one of the places in the series where they dug a pit to look for remnants from past years. A lovely old place with low beams (dangerous to me, but fine for Helen), and an old map on the wall that was a bit too big to try and sneak out.

It was then time to move on to the last of the three villages – Smeeton Westerby. There is another trail laid out here, and we followed it out to the edge of the village where Christ Church sits, before heading back across fields to the centre of the village.

Next stop was Foxton Locks. We parked at the top car park and headed over the turning bridge and along the path to the top lock. A longboat was just entering the top lock having made the long slow laborious journey up through the full set of ten locks, one of several who were making that journey as we walked down the locks and past the closed visitor centre and over to the inclined plane.

It was starting to rain again as we approached the bottom so we took refuge in the Foxton Locks Inn at the bottom for a drink as the shower passed over. Then it was the walk back up the other side of the locks, where all the traffic had cleared and no one was attempting the steps, though there were certainly more boats moored along the tow path than when we had gone down.

We carried on, heading past Gartree prison and into Great Bowden for the first of a tale of three churches – St Andrews. The original parish church when Great Bowden was the centre of the parish before Market Harborough even existed. From there it was down through Little Bowden and across to St Mary in Arden which had been granted the licence for burials for the village and Market Harborough. The church is ruined now, with no roof, doors or windows. The large graveyard is still laid out, but all the headstones have been moved into tightly packed rows surrounding the church building, with just a couple of memorial tombs out in the graveyard.

From here it was a short walk into the centre of Market Harborough. We walked up Adam and Eve Street past the museum and council buildings and into the square containing St Dionysius’ church and the old Grammar School. If you were asked what is unusual about the church you may struggle for an answer, but when you are told it becomes obvious. There is no church/grave yard surrounding it, just street. This comes from the fact that Market Harborough came into being rather late from a historical perspective and that the church was only built as a chapel to St Mary in Arden, and therefore burials would take place there instead of the newer, bigger church of St Dionysius. It is most unusual for a church of this age in a town of this size.

A wander up the High Street shows a very similar lay out and selection of buildings to the one in Ashby de la Zouch that we visited the previous year. The Grammar School is very interesting as a stilted Tudor building, to which the brick ground level wasn’t added until some two hundred years after the upper level. I just stand there wondering how people got into the Grammar School before the ground level was built.

After a brief wander around the rest of the town centre it was time to head back to the car, get some fuel, and head back to the hotel. We ordered a curry for takeaway from Kegworth, and set off, going across country along the A4304 to Lutterworth where we got on the M1 to head north.

The curry was good, and there was enough to spread it out to cover tomorrow’s dinner as well.

For this blog post with pictures click on the link below

https://medium.com/@onetruekev/follow-the-story-of-england-9446b6aa0d2b

Leicestershire Here We Come

After a later breakfast than usual we headed off to downtown Morecambe. We had only just got there when we nearly lost mum. She had bags of jigsaws she was taking to the charity shop and was blithely wandering down the middle of the road, ignorant to the following traffic as she veered out into their path looking to see if the charity shop she wanted to drop them off at was open. It wasn’t, and so she turned around and nearly walked into the car behind her.

We found another charity shop that was open and accepting donations (most currently aren’t) and dropped the jigsaws off before heading to the front. It was a pleasant enough morning and we walked along the front to just past the town hall and then back down to a new café / bistro that had only just opened opposite the clock tower. It is very posh for Morecambe, and it was very nice, we only had a drink, but the food looked great, especially the large cheese board and meat platters that were on adjacent tables.

It was time to pack the car ready for the next stage of the journey, and there was quite a bit more than we had arrived with. After a late lunch it was off to East Midlands Airport. Not to fly anywhere, just to stay at the Holiday Inn Express there as a base for the next four nights. A nice straightforward trip along the M6 and A50.

Looking for somewhere to eat is always going to be entertaining in these only slightly relaxed post lockdown times. But we found that The Plough in the nearest village of Diseworth was open and we booked a table. This north western part of Leicestershire isn’t an area I know very well, not being able to drive most of the time I lived in Leicester, and this wasn’t on any kind of local bus route.

The pub was an old building with some newer extensions to it, and much like the village itself, it is full of character. The village has buildings from every era back to Tudor times, and the modern houses have mainly been built sympathetically with the older buildings in mind.

A large brick building

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The church of St Michael and All Angels dates back to Saxon times. The church sits just off the crossroads in the centre of the village and is a fine example of a medieval church with spire. A wander through the church’s graveyard shows how the village’s families have stayed through the ages. Lines of headstones would be set out for a single family, with some lines longer than others and then single headstones with no relatives dotted about. There was even a section set out for the burial of ashes with small square plaques set on the ground. The graveyard is still in use and two freshly laid graves were visible with just wooden crosses on them, no headstone yet.

A large brick building with a clock tower in front of a house

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The former Baptist church now houses the Diseworth Heritage trust and their Heritage Centre. It wasn’t open that late at night, but it did prompt me to look at their website when we got back to the hotel. I contacted them and they were kind enough to open up for me on the Tuesday morning, so that I could buy various books they had published. They are still suffering the after effects of winter flooding and need the floor replacing in their main hall. But for any local history enthusiast I would recommend visiting when they are back up and running and certainly buy their books, which are very interesting.

A small house in front of a brick building

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https://www.diseworthcentre.org/

On the way back to the hotel we went the long way around, first driving through Long Whatton; a mile long according to the heritage trail published by the above, most of it along the main road. The old village is in the centre and radiating out in both directions the houses become more modern. We came out just above Hathern and went into Kegworth (ignoring the new bypass) to head up to where you used to pop out onto the A453. Only to find that it is now only open to buses and bicycles. We had to turn around and cut through to the new bypass after all.

A nice gentle easing in to exploring Leicestershire.

Come In Number 19, Your Time Is Up

Anyway, speaking of Corona virus, how come it’s Covid-19 that is spreading like wildfire?

What happened to Covid-1 to Covid-18?

When were they released?

How did each of them do in their trials when released into the open in China. Were the bacteriologists that created them shot for their failures?

Has the creator of Covid-19 been given a nice new big house and a fancy car, or have they been shot because they were too successful?

And moving on, if Covid-19 is this effective, what the hell is Covid-20 going to be like?

And finally, what number is it going to be when it’s the strain that succeeds and kills us all?

Cheerful I know.