England – onetruekev

A Couple of Little Things

Why is it that when we go somewhere else apart from our own sofa to watch an England game, they are always such a crushing bore and usually not a great result? And is it just a coincidence that these games are the ones that are being shown on ITV. There appears to be a pattern emerging from recent tournaments. It did leave me wondering whether one of the channels hidden away in the upper reaches of the Sky channels is dedicated to watching paint dry. Just interested for alternative viewing for the next England game ITV show.

If the game wasn’t very good, it was a good gathering. Lots of Italian fare on offer. Pizza, dough balls, garlic bread, mozzarella sticks etc. I suppose it’s one way of getting the Italians involved in the world cup. I couldn’t resist asking Simon (pronounced See Mon) how Italy were getting on in the tournament in their easy group (consisting of themselves, Scotland, Peru, and New Zealand). He didn’t look impressed, not amused. Not that sarcastic me cares.

And if the game was bad enough, they left the same channel on, and so I got subjected to the first episode of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, in this lifetime. I failed to see any celebrities, and feel that none of those there should get out, in fact it would do many people a favour if they just landfilled the whole site with everyone still in situ.

There are some tacky TV ads featuring players at the World Cup, but none of them are as bad as the radio ad for Muller Rice. They have Declan Rice, and they sing Rice Rice Baby. If I ever find the person responsible for that shitshow then there may be a prison sentence coming in my future.

Anyway, Saturday morning came, and the long running bugbear about Maccy D’s breakfasts annoyed me again. When you customise an item, it costs extra to add items (obviously, fair enough), but it doesn’t reduce the price if you remove items. If it costs 80p to add an egg or sausage to a double sausage and egg McMuffin, then why doesn’t it take the same amount off when you remove one? I always customise mine to remove the egg and add an extra sausage. Both items show as being the same price, so why get charged extra when all that has been done is in effect a swap of one item for another of the same price? It’s just a way to rip customers off again.

It isn’t as if they are putting the extra money towards staff training. Even basic reading skills would be a bonus. If the order clearly says eat in, why is it not on a tray. Why is it in a crappy take away bag?

And since they removed the self-service area for serviettes, condiments, straws etc. why are none being added to the bag? Why are they staring at me as if I’m some kind of mass murderer if I ask them for a serviette and some salt.

I get it, they don’t want to be there, but by the same token, I don’t want to be having to speak to you. But if you make the decision to remove these items from self service then you have no right to be looking at customers as if they are a piece of shit.

And as for the arrogant teenagers in there. No, it fucking well isn’t your seat. You are not Ronald McDonald. If you are that desperate to sit in the seat, I am in then you can wait until I am done (granted I may now take even longer to eat my food than I was originally planning on doing). Or you can fuck off and find another seat.

It’s Coming Home To Roost

I haven’t had the most successful time watching England in the Euros. For the first game we were travelling, and we caught the last five minutes by accident as we popped into a pub to use their facilities to change before going for afternoon tea. There was talk that England had played well, and they won, so it was all good. (Though it needs pointing out, at the World Cup when we missed a game due to travelling England won 6-1.)

Back at home, for the next game against Scotland it had been arranged to watch it with neighbours at their outside bar. The weather put paid to outside, and a kit clad me watched the most insipid crock of shine up your buttons with brasso possible. It needs to be pointed out at that stage of the competition I hadn’t been sat watching a game where a goal had been scored whilst I was in the room. Games had had goals, but only when I went to eat dinner, or had nipped to the toilet. This kind of anti-goal technology continued for a bit but started to ease off. First it was at the stage where I only saw goals scored that were penalties. It took until the end of the second group games to see a normal goal scored live (well on TV) in front of me.

The game against the Czech Republic was due to be watched at a different neighbour’s house, and there was a different kit busted out. However, a knee injury for Helen meant we watched it at home by ourselves. Another fairly insipid display followed, although a 1-0 victory saw England win their group without conceding a goal, and a Croatia victory saw Scotland go out, so all in all it was a fairly good night.

The so-called group of death’s final group games were thrilling, with the scores changing so often it meant at some point during the game we were lined up to play against each of the four sides in the group. But as the final whistle blew, you might have known, it was going to be Germany.

On a side note, it needs pointing out that none of the much-hyped teams in the group of death managed to win their first knock out games. None of them got to the quarter finals, let alone the final.

It wasn’t a positive vibe before the game, and again watching at home, there was even less positivity as the night went on. The pundits were all giving the team, the selection, and some of the players (Harry Kane in particular) a good slagging. Then in the last fifteen minutes of the game England scored through Sterling – at that point, our only scorer in the tournament to date; a few minutes later Thomas Muller was through, one on one with the keeper and I was already saying FFS when unusually he put the ball wide (renowned lunatic Uri Geller later claimed it was the power of his mind that forced the ball wide, fucking attention whore). And then Harry Kane scored, it was 2-0, and England had beaten Germany in a tournament knock out game for the first time since the 1966 World Cup Final. Heady days indeed.

Watching the quarter finals, and I wasn’t sure who I was watching on the Saturday night. They claimed to be England, but they won the quarter final comfortably 4-0 against Ukraine, with Harry Kane getting two, Slabhead Maguire one, and Jordan Henderson getting his first ever international goal. There were scenes I tell ya. Can’t ever remember a knockout game seem so serene. At that point I am going to assume that usual service will be resumed on the Wednesday night in the semi-final.

Elsewhere Absolute Radio is doing Three Lions-mageddon, similar to Whamageddon at Christmas (with Last Christmas), where if you hear the original version, you have been Roared! It was badly breached on the Saturday night as the neighbours played it half a dozen times very loudly. (Though to be fair, some of the Absolute presenters had been playing it on their shows anyway).

I wasn’t surprised the neighbours were playing it on repeat, as they couldn’t have been with it by the time the England game ended. I heard Andy shout about making Whiskey Sours mid-afternoon, and then at 17:22 he shouted “Jager bombs”, which is never going to end well nearly three hours before kick-off.

There were a lot of them there as well. You could see them arriving from midday, not sure how many thousand there were there by kick off, but surely, they can’t all have been relatives, and they must have been bussing strangers in from the surrounding villages.

Watching the football, and there have been a lot of games at Wembley. Hisense are one of the main sponsors. However, being in the UK they have totally the wrong name. Nothing relates to Hisense. There is a severe lack of sense, especially from the Government. A name such as Nosense, Losense, or Non-Sense would be more appropriate. As long as it’s not common-sense as there is absolutely positively none of that here.

England reverted to type for the semi-final, and it seemed as if Gareth Southgate and the team were taking their playbook from Jose Mourinho – The Tottenham years. Lots of sideways passes with no end result, careless play letting the opposition score from a set piece. A scrappy goal, a few minutes of concerted pressure where they couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. Then a dubious penalty award with more than a hint of a dive. That we missed, only to scoop in the rebound. Then we stop attacking, defend deep and let the opposition attack all the time. Fortunately, the depleted Danes couldn’t grab an equaliser and England limp into the final.

If they do carry on in the vein of their semi-final performance, then they won’t win. Which would be very Spursy.

And as for some of our fans. For crying out loud, stop booing the opposing side’s national anthem. It just fires them up more. If you have a laser pen and point it at anyone then you should be subjected to the industrial laser Auric Goldfinger nearly cut James Bond in half with. And which kind of fuckwit brings fireworks to a football match? Yes I am talking to you pyrotechnics twat.

One of the downsides of reaching the final is that I’m not going to be able to watch it whilst playing on the computer in relative peace and quiet in my living room. It will be mandatory fun in someone’s garden. I would like to point out that the other match where I was made to do that was the tiresome 0-0 with Scotland in the group stage. No one needs that as a final game do they? I’m sure it would be better for all concerned if I were confined to a locked room to watch it by myself.

So, what about the result? Well, nearly sixty million people have been jinxing it since before the semi final finished. It’s Coming Home! Playing it, singing it, saying it, just fucking stop. Stop putting the cart before the horse. Being cocky twats about it isn’t going to help. We’re not good at this stage of any kind of tournament, so adding tons of unnecessary pressure and expectation isn’t going to help. I’ve been swearing at pundits and commentators to shut the fuck up for the last two weeks. I’m not going to stop now.

Plus, we’re playing Italy. A team with a much better record of winning tournaments than we’ll ever have. A team that has looked like the best team in the tournament all the way through (OK, maybe not for the first 75 minutes of the last sixteen game against Austria). They’ve beaten Belgium – ranked number one in the world (yes, I know the world rankings are a crock of shite, but still). They’ve managed to outlast a very good Spain side who would win the tournament if they had a top striker. And for all the play-acting and dark arts England managed to use against Denmark, they aren’t in the same league as the Italians at it.

I’m not going to say that England have no chance, and without a doubt I’d love England to win, and want England to win, but I really can’t see it. (Too many years of supporting the ever flattering to deceive greedy bastards Spurs – thank fuck those years are over.) I’d love to be proved wrong, but I can see the Italians nicking it in extra time.

It’s Just Facts And Figures

Our tour around England (and a brief passage through Wales) this year could be summed up in a number of lists. I could sit here and type the list of castles seen, or towns visited. It would fill a lot of space, but they would just be lists. And taken away from the context of the trip we made writing about every little nook and cranny we found ourselves in could take nearly as long as the trip itself.

I could compare it to last year’s trip, taken over a similar period. But that would probably just end in a long rambling rant about the weather this year. It did rain a lot, but on the whole we didn’t let it dampen our spirits too much (ba-dum-tish). Or let it water our spirits down either. (I’ll get my coat.)

I’ve thought about how to try and put this together for a few days since getting back from our trip, and finally decided to go with a mainly figures based look at what we did. But to start it off, a simple statement of fact.

England is a wonderful country, full of beautiful countryside, magnificent buildings and amazing history.

It’s popular and easy to fly off to warmer climes, and there are plenty of countries with all the above as well, with a lot less chance of rain. However I think it is a shame that the country we live in is overlooked as somewhere to visit. Millions of tourists come to this country from overseas to see what we have on offer; we should really do the same.

We clocked up 991 miles this year, perhaps with another detour, or if there had been less rain we might have broken the thousand barrier again. The mileage was broken down over 41 legs over 14 days. Some stints were over 100 miles at a time, others only 2 or 3. Pretty much all of them pointed out two damning observations of road travel.

The roads are full of imbeciles who can’t drive. Such as those who are allergic to their indicators; or others who think it’s acceptable to turn right from the left of four lanes cutting straight across those in the correct lane to go straight on; and of course those who have had all their mirrors stolen.
Local councils and the Highways Agency have given up looking after road signs. Nature is claiming them all for itself. There are more road signs covered by foliage than not nowadays. They assume that everyone uses sat-nav and think no one needs signs anymore. Well we do, so get your tree trimmers out and clear all that greenery out of the way. Muppets.

We used 6 hotels, having them more as a base to explore from than overnight stops as we’d done previously. It made life a bit more relaxing, but again showed up a damning observation. Hotels only pay lip service to environmental issues. None of the half flushes work at half capacity. Towels are changed regardless of how neatly you hang them up (or hide them). Plastic cups are replaced daily despite being in perfect working order. And no matter how much you turn the temperature down on the taps, the water is always too bloody hot.

Every major location we went to was linked to a big river. The importance of being able to transport goods was shown to be the catalyst for settlements to be made. We could see 6 major rivers being the reason for what we had gone to see being built. And in the case of the River Severn, it appeared time and time again as it meanders through and dominants the topology of western England.

The Romans understood how important waterways were, and they built roads. Straight roads at that. A lot of miles were done on roads following the routes the Romans had placed there nearly two thousand years before. Especially on the Fosse Way and Watling Street, but also Ermin Street, Akeman Street and Via Devana.

Watling Street also saw two ruins of former Roman settlements. Wall, near Lichfield was a stop off point, and a part of the old town is kept as a visitor site. The other – Wroxeter is a bigger site, and largely unheard of. The part on display there now is a reasonable size, but in the fourth century it was the fourth largest city in England behind London, St. Albans and Cirencester. It was the same size as Pompeii. Whilst the poor unfortunate souls of Pompeii were killed by a volcano eruption, the city was preserved as was for future generations to find. Wroxeter just went into decline as the Saxons broke it up and used a lot of the stone for building elsewhere. The current village is tiny, and if you blinked you would miss the turnings to it. There is a lot of the old site still there under the fields, being deliberately left to prevent damaging it.

There were Roman remains in other places we visited as well, and even pre-Roman remains. And then remains from every period of history since as well. That is one of the great things about England, there is a lot of history, a lot the result of conflict; and with conflict comes damage.

The damage is obvious in most places. We visited 22 English Heritage or local council run historical sites over the two weeks. Of them all, only one stands fully complete as it was built, the curiosity that is Rushton Triangular Lodge. All the others are either complete ruins, or have only parts that are as they were originally built. 5 abbeys and 5 of the 9 cathedrals we visited had fallen foul of the reformation and were partly destroyed or had reduced in size with the dissolution of the monasteries.

Of the 9 castles, only 3 still have any of the original buildings in use now. First the War of the Roses claimed its victims (such as the never completed Kirby Muxloe Castle); or the English Civil War got them, with old Royalist castles being made uninhabitable by having the roofs pulled down (Goodrich, Kenilworth and Ashby de la Zouch all having the obvious signs of where the roofs used to be).

From a distant a lot of the sights look forlorn, unconnected piles of stone. Yet when up close you understand the sheer scale of how large they would have been when fully built. How they managed to build such structures without modern tools and in the timescales they built them in, is a marvel. Especially when you look at how long it takes us to build straightforward blocks of flats or houses nowadays.

Having driven 991 miles wasn’t the full story, there would have been the 70 or so miles we would have walked over the fortnight as well. The exploring of towns, cities and countryside. Of finding that bowing woodwork of the Tudor framed building stuck in between a Georgian townhouse and a seventies concrete monstrosity. Then there will have been the thousands of steps up and down old ruins, to the top of castle keeps and to the depths of cathedral crypts. Many of which have no handrail for your safety (or in my case to help pull myself up, or support myself down). And the narrow and low passages and doorways show how much as a species we have grown in height (and width) in the last 500 years. I would have ended up as a hunchback in medieval times. Even Helen had to duck for some of the doorways. I wonder how the knights managed to negotiate them in full armour.

Between all the activity, and dodging the raindrops (in no less than 19 downpours), there was the need to eat and drink. 11 restaurants, 9 cafes and 21 pubs (plus a night club). From a cup of tea and an ice cream, to a three course meal, or pints and shots, all bases were covered along the way, even to the extent of a missing breakfast one morning.

Then there were the people. Family and friends were met in Leicester, Nottingham and Chester, and it was good to catch up with them. But elsewhere, most of those we came across were friendly, and content in what they were doing. Willing to have a conversation, being happy to help. At any attraction the people working there, the majority of them volunteers, were proud of what we had gone to see. They wanted visitors to come and see the buildings that they loved and cared for. They could tell you pretty much anything about it too. From the teenager welcoming us to Lichfield Cathedral, to the octogenarian tour guide at Worcester Cathedral, and all those in between, they were there to help and answer any questions you had, but at the same time they didn’t intrude if you were happy to do your own thing. It felt good that there were so many people who were enthusiastic about England’s history. It was a good two weeks, and we crammed a lot into it. It was sad that we had to stop, but it is nice to be at home. There are plenty of places to see within a couple of hours of where we live. It’s the same for us all. Get out and have a look around. We live in a wonderful country.