Update on That Tree

And so another storm comes along. It rips down our back fence and gate, exposing the park beyond and Charlie’s eyes light up at possible escapes (temporary work including cable ties stops the gaps for any potential escapes).

It steals Nathan’s motorbike cover and deposits it in lands unknown, probably never to be seen again.

Yet it only managed to dislodge a few apples from the strange local tree. It still hangs on to most of them on its spindly leafless branches.

Come the apocalypse, when everything else on the planet has died, that bloody tree will still be standing with most of its apples attached.

Why Roger Craig Not Being In The Pro Football Hall Of Fame Is A Disgrace

I’m not going to lie, I am a massive fan of Roger Craig, and therefore my viewpoint might be slightly skewed, but I’ve tried to be as objective and fact based as I can.

I was a fledgling San Francisco 49ers in the early to mid-1980s at the time when there was the first big push for the NFL to get in to the UK market. Channel 4 started showing coverage, weekly and monthly magazines started to be published and there was a weekly magazine collection than built up knowledge of the game, with a binder to collect them in. All the (then) twenty eight teams were covered, the history, the big players, the rules of the game and more. The NFL Record and Fact Yearbook appeared in WH Smiths and Dillons.

There were a lot of fans of the Bears, Dolphins and Raiders, the 49ers were probably next. When we played our own version of American Football in the school playground using a tennis ball, the other kids all wanted to be the Quarterback, whether that was Dan Marino, Joe Montana or Jim McMahon, or they all wanted to be The Fridge. Not me, I wanted to be Roger Craig. I wanted to be the running back who would just blast my way through the opposition, or catch the little yellow ball thrown in my general vicinity.

As it was, when I went to University and put pads and helmets on for the first time, I was only the right build and speed to play a lineman, left guard on offence and nose tackle on defence. My heart was never really in it after that and I gave it up after a year.

But Craig was the player I admired more than any other. How he would high step his way over, around or through tackles was amazing to me, and when he wasn’t handed the ball off, he would pop up open in the middle of the field five or ten yards past the line of scrimmage to be able to catch the ball for another first down. On a lot of teams he would have been the superstar, but playing on the same team as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Ronnie Lott it was going to be difficult to be the main star. And there was a stellar supporting cast as well around him on offence, Tom Rathman, John Taylor, Brent Jones and the outstanding offensive line — Sapolu, Cross, Harris, Paris, and McIntyre. The whole package is what made the 49ers so great at the time.

And yet it seems that Craig has been overlooked amongst the players from that great team insomuch of just what an integral part of it he was. What having a player that was a threat as a runner and a receiver. The first really great dual threat back of the west coast offence. The player that defined the role that so many other running backs have come to emulate since. Without him playing in that role, it wouldn’t have been so easy to open up all the other offensive threats the 49ers had. It was difficult for opposing defences to double team Jerry Rice or John Taylor with a safety or line-backer, because they had to keep an eye on Craig either rushing or catching from out of the backfield.

Part of the issue to why he is continually overlooked is the low-key way the 49ers organisation seems to value his contribution. He eventually made it into their hall of fame, but somewhat shockingly they haven’t retired his number. Number 33 should be hanging with the other all-time greats from the 49ers.

Some have said that this is because of his fumble in the NFC Championship game when the 49ers were going for the three-peat, and his departure to the Raiders for the following season can point to that if you want to read it that way (bearing in mind nothing much is said of Jerry Rice’s drop in open field at 3–3 in the Divisional Playoff game shellacking against the Giants in 1986). Others will say his stats don’t add up in the same way. More would argue that he didn’t have the longevity, or the achievements. All of which could be considered if given a cursory glance, but none of which bear up to deeper scrutiny.

That so many 49ers fans would say that he shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame is shocking, and quite frankly, petty. That so many fans of the game disregard him is sad. He is the archetypal rushing and catching running back that teams so desire today. Some of those of a similar ilk that came after him have already made it to the Hall of Fame. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have, but I am saying that Craig should be in there with them, and should have been in there first.

The first big reason why Craig should be in the Hall of Fame is the 1985 season. He became the first player to gain a thousand rushing yards and a thousand receiving yards in the same season. Something that has only been emulated twice since. The first by Marshall Faulk who is already in the Hall of Fame, and the second of those this year by Christian McCaffrey, who commentators are already talking about being a future hall of famer in only his third season. As the first player to do it, Craig should be in the Hall of Fame as well. Especially when you add to this the fact that in that year’s Superbowl he became the first player to score three touchdowns in a single Superbowl. A record that hasn’t been beaten, and he now shares with four other players (twice with Jerry Rice). He also recorded a rushing and receiving touchdown in the same game, something only five other players have managed in a Superbowl. The season also saw him finish as the NFL leader in receptions, the third and last time this had been achieved by a running back. His 92 receptions was a record for a running back at the time. It has been broken since, but none of those who have gained more receptions have averaged more than ten yards per catch as Craig did that season.

It isn’t as if that season was the be all and end all of his career either. Three years later he had another season where he broke two thousand yards from scrimmage. In the 1988 season he led the league in scrimmage yards, and the NFC in rushing average, and was voted as the NFL MVP, the NFL offensive player of the year, and the NFC offensive player of the year. He was the first running back to have a hundred yard receiving game in the Superbowl, a feat only matched by two other players. He became only the fourth player in NFL history to record multiple two thousand yards from scrimmage seasons. Thirty years later only thirteen others have managed this feat.

There is a view that he wasn’t consistent enough and didn’t have the stats required to make the hall of fame, yet this just isn’t true. In his first seven seasons with the 49ers he broke a thousand yards from scrimmage every year, leading the team in scrimmage yards in four of those seasons, including in his rookie year. There was only his final, injury shortened season where he failed to break a thousand yards.

With the 49ers he won three Superbowls, played in five NFC Conference finals, and played in the playoffs in all eight years. In his single season with the Raiders, and two years with the Vikings, he played in the playoffs every year as well. There aren’t many people who play in the playoffs eleven years on the trot, and less that have done so when that was every season of their career. In addition to this he picked up four NFL offensive player of the week awards, was elected to the Pro Bowl four times, and is the only running back elected to the Pro Bowl as both a full back and a half back. He was in the All Pro teams twice, and was selected to the NFL 80’s all decade team. With the 49ers he was awarded the Len Eshmont award twice.

From a 49ers perspective he is in the top five in so many of their all-time stats categories:- rushing attempts, yards, touchdowns, hundred yard rushing games all-time, hundred yard rushing games in a season, thousand yard rushing seasons, receptions (he’s also tenth on receiving yards), scrimmage yards, touches, yards per touch, total touchdowns (and eleventh on total scoring), rookie rushing attempts, yards and touchdowns, rookie receiving touchdowns, rookie total touchdowns, rookie total points. He led the team in rushing five times, receptions four times and scrimmage yards four times. No other player in 49ers history is in the top five of so many statistical categories. To put in to context his two two-thousand scrimmage yard seasons for the 49ers, in the team’s history he has half of all the times it has happened. Only Garrison Hearst and Frank Gore have managed this, and then only once each.

From an NFL career perspective, he is in the top fifty in rushing attempts and yards, fifty seventh in rushing touchdowns, top fifty in total scrimmage yards, top forty in total touches, top hundred in receptions and top ninety in total touchdowns. There are only forty eight running backs in the NFL Hall of Fame, of those forty eight; Craig has more rushing yards than twenty one of them. Not only that, but he has more receiving yards than eleven running backs in the Hall of Fame have rushing yards.

When you then look at his playoff stats, everything bumps up a few levels. He is top ten in scrimmage yards and total touches, and top twenty in rushing yards, attempts and touchdowns, and receptions, and twenty-second in total touchdowns. There isn’t a player who is eligible for the Hall of Fame above him in scrimmage or rushing yards that isn’t already in the Hall of Fame.

Then there is his Superbowl stats, he is still equal first in touchdowns in a single game; second in most points in a single game; third in single game receiving touchdowns, total touchdowns and yards from scrimmage, sixth in rushing attempts and career points, seventh in rushing touchdowns, career receiving touchdowns and single game yards from scrimmage; and eighth in rushing yards and receptions.

There isn’t a single eligible player with a catalogue of achievements and statistics to match Roger Craig who isn’t already in the Hall of Fame. The fact that Roger Craig hasn’t already been elected into the Hall of Fame is a disgrace. The fact that he is only just scraping into the semi-final stage of the voting each year is a scandal.

So next year when the voting season comes round, make Roger Craig the first name on your ballot paper. Vote early and vote often, and get him his deserved place in the Hall of Fame.

The Day After

I was woken up by someone banging on the hotel room door. It wasn’t even half past nine, so I could have done without that the morning after the late night heart-breaking loss of the 49ers in the Superbowl. But it did mean I was awake in time for breakfast. It was a nice bright day overlooking Albert Dock when I braved opening the curtains. I took my time getting ready before heading up to Lime Street for my train.

I’m there in plenty of time only to find out all London trains are up the spout. They first say there is a security incident. The announcement over the tannoy says in the Watford area. But staff on the concourse say it is an emergency services incident and it is in the Winsford area. I’m told it would be quickest and best for me to get on any train going to Liverpool South Parkway, and from there get one of the rail replacement coaches they had going directly to Crewe, where I’d have a variety of trains to choose from to get to London.

As the train leaves Lime Street it goes through a long section of track that is surrounded by high limestone walls or tunnels. They cease and there is a brief interlude of industrial areas before the track rises slightly. As I look out either side of the train all that can be seen are a sea of chimneys, and the tips of rows intersected by other rows of terraced houses, as far as the eye can see. It is only broken up by the occasional factory chimney, lonely church spire or tower or an ugly looking tower block.

The chimney vista is gradually replaced by whole house as the line dips down (or perhaps the surrounding land rises). The terraces become more broken up and spattering’s of artexed thirties semi-detached houses can be seen amongst the terraced rows. It must be a vista seen in a lot of industrial cities across the country, but it has never looked so obvious to me before.

Liverpool South Parkway has a scrum of people trying to get on coaches bound for Crewe. The drivers seem to be overwhelmed by the volumes and people are shuffled between coaches, sometimes more than once, before we set off on the congested road to Crewe.

It was appropriate for a coach coming out of Liverpool to take a magical mystery tour. This one covering all windy minor ‘A’ roads in Cheshire. Despite being told it was a direct route to Crewe, we stopped at three random stations in the middle of nowhere, including Winsford where the incident happened to cause the chaos. It was over ninety minutes before I saw a road sign mentioning Crewe.

Nearly two hours I was on that coach. I hate coach travel, the air isn’t the same, and I start to feel all claustrophobic and sick. The constant inane wittering of scouse women sat all around me wasn’t helping either. Seriously, no one cares that if you knew you’d be on a coach for so long you would have put proper clothes on and not be in your pyjamas and dressing gown. Why on earth did you think it was a good idea to dress like that to start with?

I was definitely glad to get off the coach. There was ten minutes before a train my ticket would allow me to catch, and it was in on the platform. But the guard made everyone wait out in the cold breezy station until a minute before the train was due to leave before they opened the doors for people to get on. Once moving they announce that they are sorry for the late running of the train. It wouldn’t have been late if you’d opened the doors earlier you halfwit.

Three and a half hours is the shown journey time for this train. I groaned at that, but found a seat in the randomly placed first class, and for a few stops I was the only person in there, and so set about doing some writing. The beast of a bag I had, now had my rucksack inside, and was still able to fit in the overhead racks for the return journey. I wasn’t blocking the aisles this time and everyone’s happy with that.

I looked up when there was an announcement about a delay getting into Wolverhampton station. They just said they were being held and should be underway shortly. Looking out of the window it was probably going to be as soon as the driver could persuade the train “it’s OK, we’re only passing through, you’re not going to be stuck in Wolverhampton for ever.”

Later we crept into Birmingham New Street where another four carriage tin pot train was going to joining ours. Once it had been we spent the next fifteen minutes crawling through a very dark tunnel. Although it could just have been Birmingham at twilight. I don’t think there’s much difference.

By this point I wasn’t sure just how far behind schedule we were, but there was a rumour that someone was going to be coming around to take breakfast orders soon.

As it turned out, the train was only ten minutes getting into Euston. I walked across to St. Pancras playing the dodge the kamikaze pedestrian game they so love playing in London.

I bought a ticket from the ticket machine next to the barriers down to the Thamestink platforms. I put the ticket into the barrier for it to spit it back out saying “seek assistance”. Seriously, WTAF, I have literally bought this ticket twenty seconds before putting it in the barrier that is next to the machine I bought it from. Why on earth are you telling me to seek assistance? Have your ticket machines and barriers had a falling out and they’re taking it out on the customers? Or as with the rest of your tin pot train services, are they just garbage? It probably explains why your barrier operative just holds the barrier next to her open permanently. Because they know that either their barriers can’t read, their ticket machines can’t write, or both.

Having exhausted topics to write about and mindlessly scrolled on the phone for as long as I could I was left with looking up and down the train. It is quite a sight on the new Thamestink ones. They have no doors separating the carriage, and so on nice straight pieces of track you can sit in your seat, lean into the aisle and see straight up to the front of the train, and turn and do the same to the back of the train. Something that kept me occupied for at least ten minutes.

By the time I get back to Three Bridges it’s eight PM. I’ve been travelling for eight hours, which with the seven or more hours I’d travelled to get up to Liverpool yesterday means I’ve been travelling for more than fifteen of the last thirty five hours.

At least I can have a lie in tomorrow. No? What do you mean it’s Tuesday tomorrow. Goddamn work.

One Quarter Too Many

It’s a Sunday morning and that’s the alarm going off. Normally I would say there’s no need. But this Sunday is different. For a start the date is a palindrome, it’s 02/02/2020, something we haven’t had in over nine hundred years. It’s even a palindrome if we use the silly date formatting the damn yanks do. Then it is also Groundhog Day, the American version of St Swithun’s Day over here for randomly foretelling the weather. More famous as a film than the actual day now.

But neither of those are the reason I’m up at the same time I would be to go to work. No, today is the Superbowl. Another American import that a lot of Brits don’t like, or don’t understand. For me it has been a regular part of life for thirty-odd years (not thirty odd years). The late-night Sunday (UK time) game is followed by the traditional day off afterwards. It’s the first day I book off with a new year’s worth of annual leave entitlement. And as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, my team – the San Francisco 49ers – are in the Superbowl this year. (Woo and Hoo!)

For the first time though, I’m not going to be sat at home watching it by myself after everyone else has gone to bed. The last time the 49ers were in it seven years ago, I watched us lose and the only comment from my other half at the time the next day was “why didn’t you record the half time show?” No, this year I’m off to Liverpool to meet up with a group of other 49ers fans to watch it in Shooters Sports Bar in the Bierkeller.

Of course, with it being a weekend and being south of London, there are engineering works and it is a choice of a rail replacement service for part of the journey into London, or a circular route on a slow train. (Did I mention it was Groundhog Day?) Being lazy, plus the fact I am taking a two-foot-high stack of magazines up to Liverpool for one of the other fans, meant that I took the circular route without a change. It was odd to go from Three Bridges to London, but to go through Crawley (where it didn’t stop) and then Horsham, Dorking and Epsom up to Clapham Junction instead of through Gatwick.

Victoria now has step (and escalator) free access to all underground platforms, but what it doesn’t tell you is to use them down to the north bound Victoria line it involves three different lifts and a walk halfway to Pimlico. Coming off at Euston was a lot more straightforward.

The train from Euston to Liverpool Lime Street was run by Tinpot Railways (sorry, what? LNWR, if you say so) and despite the fact the train was stopping at anywhere that had a station (and some places that didn’t), it was only made up of four coaches. I’d booked a first-class ticket as it was pretty much the same price and I’d be guaranteed a seat. Well as long as I could find first class that was. It was hidden randomly in the middle of the second coach.  It didn’t have any proper luggage racks, just overhead space, which just wasn’t big enough for a beast of a bag filled with magazines. So, it spent the journey sat in the aisle. When asked if I could move it, I refused to put it outside of first class next to the entrance doors where someone could just whip it away. I did say I could put it on a spare seat, but as there weren’t many of them that wasn’t going to be a goer either. It stayed in the aisle.

After one station, as I’m sat there in jeans and t-shirt, writing in my notepad in my cheap first-class seat, a snooty woman stops by my seat to speak to me.

“I assume anyone can sit here, it’s not just for those with first class tickets today is it?”

“Don’t know, but I’ve got a first-class ticket, so get off your snobby high horse and don’t make assumptions.”

She’s left first class. I can only think it was to go and find the guard to moan to him about the riff raff they sell first class tickets to. I didn’t see her again.

At Lime Street I met Marc and handed over all the magazines and headed to the hotel on Albert Docks. The hotel is good, but my room was quite a distance from reception, thankfully above ground, as if it had been on a lower level, I might have thought I’d walked to Birkenhead.

I watched the Tottenham game as I did some more writing. I didn’t want to get out too early, mainly because there is always the danger when a load of blokes meets up to watch sports that it will descend into a very messy night. With the game not kicking off until 11:30 and due to go on until after three am, there is pacing needed if I am going to remember the score the next morning.

I head to Shooters only to find no one else has got there yet, and find out they are at The Grapes, but about to be going to food. Google maps has The Grapes as only a couple of hundred yards away, so I head off, but as is usual with Google maps they aren’t accurate, and it takes ten minutes to find the place. To top it off, on the way some random scally sidles up to me and asked if I wanted to buy a very suspicious looking wrap of cocaine. After refusing, he told me he didn’t normally do this whole dealer thing, but he needed another three quid so he could get his bus home. I’d lay good odds that those wraps he had were full of flour.

A number of hungry looking 49ers fans were waiting for me outside The Grapes – Graeme, James, Dipak, Mike, Jimmy, Marc and Simon – and we headed off to get food. On the journey to Pizza Hut, another dodgy scally sidled up to Dipak to ask if he wanted some coke. There must be something about middle aged blokes wandering around in 49ers shirts that screams “they must want to buy drugs”. Weirdos.

Paul joined us in Pizza Hut, and then we headed en masse to Shooters. Others joined the party there, Martyn and his mate, Andy, plus a number of others I didn’t recognise or know, and there were other 49ers fans who weren’t there as part of the Empire GB group. It didn’t take long for the bravado of doing silly drinks started, Dipak insisted on a round of Irish car bombs, which seven others joined in with, but this potentially messy start to the evening gave way to a bout of photo taking with Empire flags, and the drinks calmed down.

Sat there before the game started, I felt I was slowly descending into a sense of dread, nothing to do with the game itself. More to do with there being lots of people there. I feel like I want to run away. Head back to the hotel and watch the game by myself. I suddenly feel out of place and just want to hide. And the game and the proper madness hasn’t started yet. I’m really not used to watching games with other people, and as the game would evolve so would my realisation that I hate watching games with other people.

Game time.

The 49ers win the toss and defer and kick off. The defence has come to play and hold the Chiefs to a three and out on the first drive of the game. Our first drive saw us get into field goal range and then stall, taking the three points and an early lead. 3-0

The Chiefs second drive is more successful, and they get all the way down to the endzone and take the lead. 3-7. Our next drive doesn’t go well, Jimmy G throws an interception, where it might have been so much better to just take the sack. We manage to stop the Chiefs fully capitalising, holding them to a field goal. 3-10.

It was at this point that the commentary team on Sky were piercing my consciousness. They had Josh Norman as part of their team. The more I saw and heard him, then the more I came to the conclusion that he dressed like, looked like and was channelling the spirit of Wu-Tang’s sadly departed ODB. All that was going through my head for the rest of the game every time he spoke was “Hey, Dirtee, baby I got your money.”

Back to the game and our next drive saw the 49ers score their first touchdown of the game, as Kyle Juszczyk caught a pass and did a diving superman impression into the end zone. 10-10. We forced the Chiefs to punt on their next drive, but there was some odd clock management from the 49ers, and they ran out of time to be able to score at the end of the half. It had looked like we were in scoring range as Kittle caught a bomb, only for it to be called for offensive pass interference. Probably the correct call, but if it hadn’t been called, it would have been unlikely to have been challenged or overturned.

Having a look around the assembled 49ers fans at the half, I was making a note of the Jerseys worn. There were a couple of Garoppolo and Bosa jerseys from the current team; a throwback to our last Superbowl appearance with a Kaepernick jersey, but there was more of an eighties throwback theme going on. Montana, Rice, Rathman and me wearing Craig – about who it is a disgrace that he isn’t in the hall of fame. Something for me to have a diatribe about in a future blog post.

The half time show started with Shakira and a troop of dancers in red body suits, all with the left leg missing. Now, I’m all for making sports / leisurewear for the less able, but really, is every single leg amputee missing their left leg? I wasn’t really following what was going on, but I glanced up and tin foil man was on the screen, doing a bit of mumble rap before popping himself back in the oven. Then a miniature Empire State Building appeared with King Kong hanging off it. Whoops, no, that’s J-Lo. King Kong might have been better. To be fair so would Donkey Kong as well.

As this was going on, Mike had a sudden panic as his phone which he thought had been on the table in front of us had disappeared. It didn’t last long before he remember he’d plugged it in on the stage. Meanwhile on stage in Miami there were a load of kids, one of whom seemed to be being forced to sing whilst in a large bird cage. As for WTF happened after that was anyone’s guess. It did seem as if it had turned into a really shit episode of Strictly Come Dancing.

What a relief, it’s game time again.

We had the ball first in the second half, and as our first drive of the first half had it stalled near the red zone and we settled for the field goal and a three-point lead. 13-10. On the next drive Fred Warner intercepted a Mahomes pass, his first post season interception, and we had the ball back in great field position. We drove down the field steadily and Mostert crashed over for a touchdown. 20-10. The spirits of the 49ers fans kept on rising through the third quarter, and when Moore intercepted Mahomes again at the beginning of the fourth quarter it felt like BOOM!! And as the Chiefs had been looking dangerous on that drive it settled the nerves that had been coming to the surface.

Our next drive never really got going and we ended up punting, but there was an undercurrent of frustration with the officials over some perceived missed calls. There did look like there was a blatant offside ignored on third and fourteen. On the next play there was a debateable helmet to helmet hit on Garoppolo. On the next drive the touchdown was called for the Chiefs. The replay was inconclusive, so they said there wasn’t enough to overturn the call on the field of a touchdown. But if the call had been called short, it wouldn’t have been overturned either. 20-17.

The next drive didn’t start at all and a quick three and out gave the ball back to the Chiefs. There appeared to be another call missed on a hold on Bosa on a Chiefs third and fifteen, and the play was completed, and the Chiefs drove all the way down for another touchdown. 20-24.

Heads were dropping all around me, and it got worse as we ended up going four and out on our next drive. The Chiefs marched down the field again for another touchdown. 20-31. The bar was a sea of despondency, heads in hands, heads on the table, and suddenly there was a great deal of noise from around the outside of us of Chiefs fans who had been anonymously quiet prior to the last eight minutes of the game. The Chiefs had overcome a ten-point deficit to end up winning by ten points or more in a playoff game for the third time on the trot in these playoffs. (Did I mention it was Groundhog Day?)

The fat lady was warming up to sing, and when Garoppolo threw his second interception of the night the game was up. The Chiefs did three kneel downs and a hail Mary out of bounds to bring the clock down to all zeroes.

The season appears to have been one quarter too long for us, well eight minutes really. They are a young team, and there is a lot of promise that we can come back stronger next year, but there is a recent history of losing teams in the Superbowl suffering a hangover the following season. I just hope that isn’t the case, but it might be difficult to surprise teams the way we have this season.

It was a disappointing night, but in retrospect we did a hell of a lot better than we would have expected at the start of the season.

When I woke up the following morning, I hoped it was all a bad dream, but opening the curtains showed I was in a hotel room overlooking the Albert Dock and the 49ers had indeed lost. The season was an overall success, and if there had been one quarter less of football in the season, we would have won the lot.

Pevensey

Saturday morning comes around too quickly again. With no writing for, or any other plans in the household, it left an opening for a day out somewhere. When the curtains were flung open and there was actual sunshine outside, it meant we could go somewhere that didn’t necessarily have cover.

One of the options for the previous Sunday had been Pevensey Castle, and it got promoted to the “A” location this week. I charged the camera and we got the car prepared, as we would be taking the whirlwind of doom – Charlie – with us. It’s a fair old trek down to Pevensey, but a third of our journey time was getting out of Crawley. It was a long slow trek up to the Pease Pottage junction of the M23. It looked fine as we turned to go past the K2, but we ground to a halt just beyond its entrance.

The lights on the roundabout were letting about three cars through at a time, and the two lanes merging into one were causing the queue. It wasn’t helped when we all had to try and part like the Red Sea to let a fire engine through. To what appeared to be a broken-down car behind the cones. I know the AA advertise themselves as the fourth emergency service, but there’s no need for broken down cars to call one of the first three out.

We pulled up a Pevensey Castle and Charlie nearly garrotted himself in trying to get out of the car. If it had been a higher drop down from the boot he would have been dangling.

Pevensey has had a fort on the site of the castle since Roman times, and it has been used, and updated through nearly every period in history since. The current village of Pevensey grew up to the east of the castle grounds; grounds which are pretty huge. The south east corner house the remains of the actual castle and its moat, but that only takes up a small fraction of the grounds surrounded by the outer walls.

The large grounds were a perfect area to let Charlie off the leash for a bit to have a run around. He was off investigating and sniffing every blade of grass he could. To enter the castle proper, he had to go back on the leash. The castle itself is in a fairly ruinous state, as comes to be expected when it comes to English Heritage properties. A few rooms in the towers were still intact, and Charlie wanted to investigate all of them. Alas with little or no heed to poor Helen on the other end of the lead. He was quite determined to try and drag her down several flights of stone steps. However once in a room, being a dog, he was less keen to stay in the rooms and look at any of the displays or information boards.

Only one of the towers was in a good enough state to allow visitors up to the top of it. It wasn’t that tall a tower, but it gave good views of the countryside all around the castle. What couldn’t be seen from the tower was the sea. Anyone knowing Pevensey today may think this is an obvious statement. Yet, one of the displays in the castle shows it being built on the coast. All the land of the salt marshes between the castle and the sea now has been reclaimed in the last four hundred years. Where the cliffs at Dover and the Seven Sisters are gradually eroding, the land in between them has been reclaimed from the sea.

After Charlie had tried owner-cide on every set of steps in the castle, I exited through the gift shop (guide book and fridge magnet – no pens), and we were back out into the grounds. We headed to what had been the Roman west gate, and out into what happens to be a different village – Westham (Latin name WestHamNil).

We walked past some lovely looking bowing Tudor cottages and through the churchyard of St Mary The Virgin church. A squat looking church with a stubby, but substantial tower. From what I could see from the outside, the church has some very nice intricate and colourful stained-glass windows. We carried on and headed back around the outside of the castle grounds’ walls.

It was a footpath that was still showing the signs of all the recent rains, and it appeared to be trying to revert back to being a salt marsh. It tried to claim one of my trainers on a couple of occasions – the downside of liking to wear slip-ons. Whilst trying to avoid some of the deep mud a tree by the path tried mugging me, catching hold of the camera strap and aimed to pull it out of the camera bag, almost adding me to the garrotting victims today.

The pub opposite the castle entrance and next to the car park advertised it as dog friendly, and so we went in to get some lunch. It may have been dog friendly, but the yappy little poodle, also called Charlie, wasn’t. The food was very nice, and the time spent there meant that spongefeet Charlie had got most of the mud and damp out of his paws before getting him back into the car for the journey home. Which was a lot better than the outward journey, and it was another nice day out.

And Then There Were Two

Regular readers will be fully aware of the general lunacy around one of the three pets in our household. There have been numerous posts containing madness and mayhem relating to the dog from heck (like a milder version of hell, with only minor indiscretions) – Charlie. It may not be so obvious that there are two cats in the household as well, one male – Sniffles – who eats nearly as much as the dog and who looks permanently stoned, when he’s not laying in the middle of the road cleaning himself; and a female – Willow – who has a purr volume akin to a jumbo jet, and likes swiping her claws at both of the others.

These are the first pets that I’ve ever lived with, having managed to avoid having any pets until I was forty six; I inherited three when moving in with Helen. Dogs have always scared me; some of my earliest childhood memories are of dogs appearing as if out of nowhere and biting me. And I’ve been indifferent to cats. I’ve never really noticed how entertaining it can be watching them.

Willow is the one that does some of the strangest things. She acts as if everyone and everything is there purely for her own amusement. Mainly fluff she would gracefully appear on tables, over fences, upon beds in a fluid and silent way. She would bring dead birds, shrews and mice to the patio. She would bat the dog around the nose if he wagged too close to her. She would start the punch up with her brother. She was the fussy one, only wanting to eat if the bowl was in the right place, a place that would change from hour to hour. She would turn her little nose up at something she had been eating just seconds before. The one who would find a spot in the house and use it as her personal toilet.

Yet the thing that was the oddest would be her coming into the living room, slowly making her way behind the TV, along the radiator, across to the coffee table, onto the sofa, and then up on to the back of it, walk around it before settling down directly behind me, turning on the thunderous purring and start to lick the back of my head.

She had become even fussier with her food recently, hardly eating at all. Not even tempted with tuna or smoked salmon. Multiple flavours and makes of cat food, even her favourite crunchy little biscuits. Even if she did eat it was only a tiny amount. She was going out less and less, and only ventured upstairs to pee on the bath mat. And she suddenly felt much lighter and bony.

So last Saturday, after having worried quite a bit about her, Helen took Willow to the vet. And it wasn’t good news; she had lost about twenty percent of her weight in quite a short period of time. There was a hard lump in the intestines that was causing Willow pain, and would have been making her not want to eat. They gave her a steroid injection and some special regenerative food. They also gave options of what could be done.

Willow took to the food quickly and ate well and often once the injection had kicked in. However, eating and lying on the kitchen table was all that she was doing. There wasn’t anything else happening. She just wasn’t herself. Helen was left with a choice of what to do for the best. An operation had been mentioned, but there would be no guarantee on being able to remove the tumour or a recovery. The steroid injection had worked with a view to reducing pain and enabling her to eat, but there was no other normal life being shown. There could be regular injections, but that just seemed cruel.

So with sorrow it was decided it would be best to have little Willow put down. And so an appointment was made with the vet for last night. When the cat carrier appeared, so did a spark of her personality as she fought against being put into it. It is amazing how big a cat can suddenly become. On the short walk across to the vet she wandered around inside the carrier, unable to lie still as she had been doing most of the day outside of the carrier.

 But once at the vet, and out of the carrier she was calm again, and lay on the table. She was examined again and the tumour was confirmed, and the vet double checked that putting her to sleep was what was wanted. There were a couple of minutes where the vet went to get the necessary items and then the procedure started. Using clippers some hair was removed from her right front leg. The noise of the clippers set off her renowned skittishness for a final time, but as soon as the clippers were turned off she was calm again. There was no sign of any struggle as the injection was made into the vein in her leg. And it was quick, and strange as she slipped away with one eye closed but the other wide open but suddenly empty.

Then it was on to the details that you don’t suppose you ever need to think about. What did we want to do with the remains? Did we want to make out own arrangements, or did we want the vet to arrange everything. I had never thought about there being a specific pet crematorium, but it made sense as there are pet cemeteries (or infamously pet sematary – Willow coming back as an evil soulless version of herself is something that would give you nightmares).

What did we want to do with the ashes? Did we want to have them to keep or scatter ourselves, or to have them scattered in the woodland around the pet crematorium? Who knew there were so many options? We left the vet to sort out the arrangements, with just the decision to make on the ashes.

Helen thought she was being silly by being upset, but why shouldn’t she be. Willow had been part of her family and household for twelve years. As I pointed out, that was longer than any relationship I’d ever had. It felt a bit odd carrying the empty cat carrier back home.

I’m not sure what my own feelings are, I’m fairly unemotional where death is concerned when it is human, so it is difficult to up that for pets. It’s a shame, but such is life. I’m just trying not to let my usual black humour come to the fore too much. (Saying that, when the vet was going through the options, I was thinking that perhaps in another country there may have been a line that said “yes, we will take care of it for you, I’d just advise not getting any local takeaways for a few days”.)

We wonder whether the other two pets will know or notice that Willow isn’t around anymore. Sniffles did look a bit more stoned and confused this morning and couldn’t decide whether he wanted to be in or out. Is he thinking to himself “where’s my sister?” He did appear to be looking around the house for her. Charlie is probably already bemoaning the fact that there was no cat food on the table that he could snaffle if no one was watching. Little does he know there won’t be any cat food going spare on the table going forward.

I will miss the little ball of fluff, even if it does mean there is no more guarding her whilst she is eating to prevent Charlie snaffling. No more of her appearing at the back door just seconds after you have closed and locked it, to bellow to be let in. No more waking up in the middle of the night to hear what sounds like a pneumatic drill on the bed and wondering how the hell she had got into the room. And no more being licked on the back of the head whilst watching TV.

Origin

It did look as if it might not rain on Sunday, so we headed out for our first English Heritage trip of the new decade. Having looked in their guidebook for the year it is curious to see what an exclusion zone there is around Crawley, the nearest property in any direction is about a fifty minute drive, and then there are a dozen or so between that and an hour. We had looked at three options, but went for the safe one in the fact that unusually for an English Heritage site it was complete.

There were a number of route options available to us as well, the quickest being the longest, as mainly motorway, but we chose a less boring route that took us through Oxted and Westerham and then up towards Downe, and Charles Darwin’s house – Down House. The final few miles were along some very narrow and muddy roads, which thankfully didn’t have any tractors careering along in our direction. I’ve seen wider footpaths.

We knew we had made the right decision when we got there as the rain appeared just before we got into the car park. The rain continued apace, and therefore we passed on having a look around the grounds and concentrated on the house itself. First stop was the café for lunch, or in my case breakfast having not surfaced long before we went out. After refreshments it was time to wander.

The downstairs of the property is laid out as the family home would have been. It is all fitted out with original furniture and a lot of Darwin’s property, which his family loan to English Heritage to display. This includes a good collection of books, still in their original Victorian bindings in leather and cloth. Collections of poets’ works and novels of the time, plus a varied array of scientific works. There are plenty of interesting items to be found.

Upstairs is laid out more as a museum to Darwin and his life and works. There are a couple of rooms laid out as the house would have been – a bedroom and dressing room, and a children’s playroom, but the main focus is him.

The first thing that you come across as you get to the top of the stairs is a long display case. Inside are dozens of taxidermied exotic birds he had collected in South America. As with a lot of the house and displays there isn’t much natural light allowed in, and the house lighting isn’t bright in order to preserve as many of the exhibits as possible. Little torches are supplied on top of the display case for people to use, and when they are it is amazing how vibrant the colours of the birds inside are.

The story of his life, the voyage of The Beagle, and the release of the famous “On The Origin Of The Species” made much more interesting reading than expected. The previous sentence was really all I knew about Darwin, but there was so much more behind it.

He had gone to university to become a doctor, but dropped out with an aversion to blood and treating patients without anaesthetic. His father then sent him to study to be a priest, but he dropped out of that as well, and ended up with an interest in Geology and nature. He got his berth on The Beagle more by luck than judgement, and was nearly not taken when the captain – Robert FitzRoy – thought he would be unsuitable due to the shape of his nose. I was surprised by just how long the voyage was and how many places they went to, I had thought it was all about the Galapagos Islands. Plus I thought he had gone when he was much older, not when in his twenties.

Then there was his family. The Darwins had an ongoing relationship with the Wedgewood family. His father had married Joshua Wedgewood’s daughter, then Charles had married Emma Wedgewood – his cousin, and one of his sisters had married one of Emma’s brothers. He had ten children and a lot is made of the fact that he enjoyed having a relationship with them, in contrast to the stereotypical Victorian father standing aloof and distant from the family.

Then there was the book. He had published his journals from the voyage of The Beagle, but by the end of the 1830’s he had written “On The Origin Of The Species”, but he didn’t submit it for publishing until 1859. He spent twenty years studying, and working on his theory so that he would have any answers to those who would question and oppose his work. He only came to release it due to the fact that another scientist had sent a paper for his review which followed many of the same arguments, which had been drawn up whilst studying animals in Eastern Asia.

He carried on researching and publishing until his death in 1882, with his final published work being on worms, which he had been studying for fifty years and for which the wormstone in the gardens of Down House was erected by one of his sons.

There was a lot to take in and we’d been there for two hours, but with it still raining and being in the winter months the gardens would need to be visited another time. The exit was through the gift shop, and yes the guide book, pens and fridge magnets were involved.

On the way back we decided we’d go a different way, not fancying the same narrow roads we’d approached on, only to find a completely new set of narrow roads instead as we wound our way past Biggin Hill, and down to Caterham. At which point we decided we’d nip in and see Marc and Allan. It was going to be a surprise visit. It was certainly a surprise magical mystery tour as we missed the turn off up to their village and ended up on a ten mile detour of the Surrey countryside in the pouring rain before getting there.

They were surprised to see us, especially as we were knocking on their back door, as that is the only way I can ever remember which house in the block theirs is. The cat flap is a big giveaway. It was good to catch up, as we hadn’t seen them since July. Then it was back home in the dark, only for the rain to stop once we got home.

Forty Years On

As I have mentioned in numerous previous posts, The Jam’s “Setting Sons” is my favourite album of all time. So when From The Jam announced they were doing a fortieth anniversary tour where they would be playing the album in full, I snapped up tickets immediately. Six months later and it was time for the gig.

I’m someone who usually carries cash on me, I don’t rely on cards, but despite having less than a fiver I thought I’d be fine at the Hawth, only to get there and the merch stall to have a sign saying cash payments only. The bar didn’t do cash back so it was off to find a cash point so I could get the tour t-shirt.

I arrived back just in time for part of the first song of the support act, who were The Vapors. I’m sure most people will have heard of their big hit – “Turning Japanese”, but could you name any of their others songs? It’s OK, I’ll wait.

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Bored now, they had two other chart “hits”, with “News At Ten” and “Jimmie Jones” both peaking at number forty four. But as they played through their other songs, including “Waiting For The Weekend”, “Cold War”, “Daylight Titans” and “Letter From Hiro”, both Helen and I wondered why they didn’t have more success than they did.

Granted, there were only half the original band, but they had drafted in a new drummer, who looked as if was thoroughly enjoying himself, and they had a replacement guitarist in the shape of what looked like an over enthusiastic YTS boy, who turned out to be the son of the lead singer. It was suggested that he looked and acted like we would expect Dan Punnett to if he was in a band, so it was amusing to find out his name was Dan as well.

They were really good, and so this morning I’ve looked to get a “Greatest Hits” or “Best of” by them, only to find that to get a CD copy of such a thing would set you back more than seventy quid. MP3 download it will have to be then. There were quite a few in the crowd who would have been able to answer the query about other songs as they sung along to the whole set.

There wasn’t much of an interval before From The Jam came on to the stage, and they weren’t messing about when it came to playing the album, they walked on the stage and the opening chords of “Girl On The Phone” started up straight away, no spoken into at all. In fact there were very few spoken interludes during the playing of the album. Bruce said “how you doing” after “Private Hell”, and Russell mentioned their tour to Australia the previous year where they had seen a Woolworth’s store before they launched into “Saturday’s Kids”, but that was it.

It was wonderful to hear the whole of the album played out live in the same order as the album. It was also eye-opening to listen and hear just how many of the topics covered within the lyrics of the album still have such relevance today, forty years down the line.

Once they had finished playing the album, they did a couple of more acoustic style tracks where Russell and Bruce sat down to play “Mr. Clean” and “Liza Radley”, before they discarded the chairs and bounced into a greatest hits routine. “Town Called Malice”, “Down In A Tube Station At Midnight”, “Start”, “In The City”, and “That’s Entertainment”, before they left the stage. The encore saw them do “David Watts”, “Strange Town”, and finish on “Going Underground”.

It was a bit more difficult to concentrate on the second half of the gig. This was down to the army of fifty-something year old bald (mostly) c@nts wearing the uniform of Fred Perry, Ben Sherman and Harrington’s, moshing and fighting. They really should know better. They crushed people at the front of the stage, ignoring the fact that they were women or disabled. They fought amongst themselves, and some couldn’t stay upright because they were too p155ed. One of the said meatheads was wearing a very fetching pastel lemon Harrington, on which he had fresh blood stains all down the back. It’s difficult to concentrate on the band when there is the danger of getting bowled over by a bunch of overage, overweight, selfish pricks.

However on the whole it was a good gig, From The Jam were as good as ever, but Bruce does look older than his days and very thin.

I wouldn’t mind seeing them again, but perhaps not stood down the front this time, not just because of the balding babies, but because this morning I can’t hear a thing after been stood that close to the speakers for a couple of hours.

Don’t Pinch Me

NFC Champions.

Not something I, or many other 49ers fans (if they are honest) would have thought possible before the season started. Breaking even at 8-8 would have constituted a success after the car wreck of the last six seasons of dross. But the team managed to go out and win the first eight games of the season, and expectations across the fan base have been raised, and I’ve been destroying my fingernails ever since.

We ended up losing three regular season games, and all of them were on the last play of the game, and they were all games we could have won. By the same token we won three of our remaining eight games on the last play of the game as well. Our record could have easily been 16-0 or 10-6, but it ended up at 13-3 and made us the number one seed in the NFC for the playoffs.

We made the number one seed by four inches. Four inches further and the hated Seahawks would have been in the end zone for a touchdown and the win. And instead of being the number one seed, with home field advantage and a rest week in the playoffs, we would have been playing away from home six days later on the wild card weekend as the number five seed. The margins have been that fine this season.

The more the season has gone on, the more nervous and withdrawn I have become. Apart from the pick six I’ve withdrawn from the GB Empire Facebook group more and more. I haven’t been involved in the game day threads. The group has seen such a surge in positivity, something that hasn’t really been seen since that group was set up over five years ago as the Frequency 49ers group.

I’ve retreated in to a shell to try and not tempt fate. To try and not raise my hopes too high for fear that if I come out and cheer “we’re going to win”, then it will have the opposite effect and jinx the team instead. I’ve done it enough times in the past with all sports teams I support.

So when we kicked off last weekend in the divisional round of the playoffs against the Vikings, I was pretty much watching through my fingers. Yet last week’s game was a masterclass of smash-em football. After an early touchdown drive for the Vikings we just steam-rollered them. Rush, rush and rush some more, eating up the clock and grinding them down, and on the other side of the wall having a brick wall defence, just repelling all attacks.

There has been a clamour since that performance around the team, about us being able to easily beat the Packers. I’ve heard them called the worst 13-3 team in history, the poorest number two seed ever; I’ve seen the fact that we gave them a good thrashing in the regular season raised as a pointer to us doing the same this time around.

But I was still worried, the Packers had managed to find a way to win thirteen regular season games, and they hadn’t lost since we had given them that beating. They had held off the Seahawks in the divisional round, a team we had struggled with twice in splitting the season’s series this year. Being somewhat downbeat I was worried that the season would come to an unremarkable end, I couldn’t bring myself to say we would win for the fear that I would cause us to lose.

So I was overjoyed that the season hasn’t ended yet, apart from a few minutes in the fourth quarter, it was another dominant performance, another rush heavy and solid defence outing, the second in successive weeks as far removed from the famed West Coast offence that the 49ers brought to the fore in the eighties as it was possible to be.

The 49ers have made the Superbowl for the first time since 2013, our only loss in the big game. And we are playing the Chiefs, who have looked pretty damn good in their two playoff games, coming from double digit deficits in both to win by double digits in both. Patrick Mahomes has been making some pretty unbelievable plays, and the early markets have the Chiefs as Superbowl favourites.

Something that suits my nature, keep it low key as I spend the next two weeks not daring to say out loud that we could win and worrying myself about what might happen.

The GB Empire group had already been making arrangements to meet up in Liverpool to watch the Superbowl, even before the NFC Championship game, and only now that we have made the Superbowl have I booked to join them. I had delayed thinking that it would be inevitable that the 49ers would lose if I had pre booked tickets before we had got there. That and the fact that I didn’t want to shell out a load of money on travel and accommodation to sit there in 49ers gear watching the damn Packers’ fans cheering on their team in the Superbowl.

Talking about 49ers gear, that is another worry to me. Unlike previous seasons where I’ve been festooned in jerseys, caps, coats, trainers, jewellery etc., I haven’t been wearing any gear at all during games this season. Should I therefore keep this incognito support up, or change the routine and go in full regalia for the Superbowl, and potentially put the mockers on. Not that I’m in the slightest bit superstitious of course.

That’s the lack of faith I’ve had, that the wheels would fall off at some point, especially at the “semi-final” stage. I suppose that’s what you get for years of being a Spurs fan.

Dosa Do

We hadn’t been for a curry as just a couple for ages. The curry house randomiser hadn’t been dusted off recently, and we pretty much had the same thought about getting a curry at the same time on the Saturday afternoon.

We didn’t actually bust the curry house randomiser out though, as there was a Crawley curry house we hadn’t been to before. The Dosa Club is on Langley Green parade and apparently has been open for four years, yet we had only heard about the place at the back end of last year, and we’d not been there before so we thought we’d give it a try.

I rang to book a table only to be told they didn’t do bookings, it was a turn up and see if there was a table available type of place. So we did just wing it and there was a table spare for us.

The menu at the Dosa Club is southern Indian and Sri Lankan, and it has a very different menu compared to any of the other curry houses I’ve been to before. They take their name from their signature dishes – Dosas – rice and lentil pancakes with different fillings. They brought us a jug of water without being asked, and took an order for starters and left us to choose mains.

I had mutton rolls, which were amazing and a lot more appetizing than they sound, and Helen had the Gobi 65, which was coated cauliflower, almost a cauliflower pakora if you will, but it was really tasty. Definitely the tastiest way to eat cauliflower I’d come across.

For mains, Helen went for a Dosa, which was a massive pancake with chicken as a filling, and a range of different chutneys on the side. I had a Rothu, which was a naan chopped on the grill and mixed in with chicken, onion and chillies. Both were different and really tasty, with just enough of kick to keep my inner spice monster happy. The mango lassi was lush, smooth and creamy, and the gulab was delicious.

And best of all it was cheap. Only just over thirty quid for two people for three courses. It did help that there were no alcoholic drinks on the bill, but it is a soft drink only establishment, it was definitely worth the money. (Which has to be paid in cash as there are no card machines.)

We were the only non-Asians in there, which is always a sure sign that the food must be good and true to its authentic roots. We will have to go back to try other things on their unusual menu.