Red and Green and Claret and Blue...

So, I’m sitting here now watching the Milano-sanrémo cycling race, and it’s time to update you on the past lot of goings on here. The broadcast may be in French, but at least I have a supply of fruchocs and wasabi peas. No, not at the same time...

RED: Was Red Nose day over here and this is a far bigger event than in Australia as they raised some £50m+!! That’s pretty impressive, despite not seeing anyone in the street actually wearing a red nose. Plenty of folk wore red as that seems to be more of the done thing. As you can see, while I didn’t wear a red nose, at least the bike did - yep, they have faces over here!

42kms to go to San Remo and the breakaway only have a lead of just over 2 minutes. The peleton should catch them in this time, but anything’s possible. The Italian countryside and coastline is amazing, and so is the village/township they’ve just been through...

GREEN: It won’t have taken you much to realise that this was St Patrick’s Day. The Londoner’s don’t do too much to celebrate as they’re not Irish and really don’t need any reasons to drink more - so I was told. It didn’t stop three of us having lunch in the nearby pub with roast of the day sandwiches, a pint of Guinness and a round of ‘golf’. This continued in earnest after 5 as we all migrated to the same pub. We enjoyed an evening of Guinness, ‘golf’ and frivolity as we came up with different ways to get the Guinness hats off the ceiling, which you can see in the pic above on the left. That’s Laurence and Mike with theirs on the right. A fun evening with a few too many pints of the "black stuff".

32kms to go and the gap is down to 58seconds. Armstrong is lurking amongst the front of the peleton. The breakaway are picking up their speed too, but I doubt it will be too long before they’re caught...

CLARET & BLUE: These are the colours of Aston Villa Football Club, the club that a certain father-to-be brother supports. Several of us took the train out to Birmingham for the day to enjoy the pubs at Aston as well as the game between Villa and Tottenham. It's also a very old club as you can see here.
After some fun getting into a pub near the ground in which a small bit of scamming had to be done, we headed into Villa Park for the match. I scored a sideline seat right at the front of the stand, so enjoyed some good close-up action throughout the match (as you can see here), which Spurs won 1-2 with a rather impressive display, so bad luck Bro'.
Afterwards it was back to the pubs with Paul, Paul, Helen, Petter and a couple of others to wait for the crowds to die down and make the train trip back to London that much more relaxed and comfortable. As you can see it was another dodgy little local pub that we found ourselves in, and one where we needed to keep our heads down a bit as the Villa fans weren’t too happy about losing - we’d just put a dent in their plans to make the champions league.

The breakaway has been well and truly caught, and the peleton has gone nuts! Riders breaking away in all sorts of groups. It’s no longer a peleton, but just a long procession now as the speed has really picked up! With less than 20kms to go it’s all happening... The peleton has split into two large bunches as the speed increases again with less than 10kms to go... A fall in the last 5kms, and it looks like a lone winner will get there. The sprinters had other ideas with one nicking the win by 3cm!! That's a scary margin considering it's 298km from Milan to San Remo...

[Naturally, I'd prefer to be out riding, but I've re-injured my back during St Patrick's Day tomfoolery (which was after the Villa trip), so it's back to more Network Spinal Analysis this week. Amazing just how much the human body can endure, yet how fragile it can be at the same time.]

Mixed Bag

The football bit continued during the week with two more games to attend:
One being the league game on Wednesday night, which was a great 4-0 win, and the other was Thursday night and the u/18’s in the FA Youth Cup, which they lost. Both games were entertaining.

Friday night was supposed to be a few quiet ones with the work crew, but turned into quite a bit more... As they say, the best nights are those that aren’t planned.
Well, there’s no way I could have planned this one!

About a week ago, the zip on the pocket of my windstopper jacket started to peel off. I took it into Kathmandu and they said that they could get it repaired. So, this Friday I took it in with the idea of leaving it with them to have it fixed. Instead, they just gave me a brand new one - Score!!
On the way back to work (I’d done this during my lunchbreak), I discovered a bookstore. Yep, I just had to go in. I found and bought Homer’s Odyssey for 2 quid - second score!

Right, back to the night out that wasn’t-supposed-to-be. I say that, because my intention for Saturday was a very early start to go mountain biking... “best laid plans”, eh? Anyway, in the early hours of the morning after a fun night out with some of the work crew and meeting a couple of nice girls, I headed home. No tubes left running, so onto the nightbus I went. The bus takes quite a while and isn’t really all that noisy, so it wasn’t long before I dozed off.
Waking up a couple of stops past mine, I jumped up and off the bus - only to realise that I’d left my bag on the bus with both jacket and book in it. Naturally, I realised this the moment the doors closed and the bus pulled away... The next bus at that stop pulled in and I asked the driver where the ‘67’ was headed. He said he’d take me there, and we headed off in ‘hot pursuit’.
Naturally, when we got there, there was no number 67 there. He suggested the nearby bus station and gave me directions, so off I went.
"Nope, the 67 doesn’t come to this depot”, I get told, before being given directions to the right garage via another bus. A short bus trip and I’m at the right garage.
After finding and going through two 67’s, I eventually get asked what I’m doing. Long story short, I end up at the lost property office to discover that the bag with jacket and book hasn’t been turned in, and I take up the offer to wait a half hour till all number 67’s come in. No luck, and so I head home at around 4am.

A rather slow and relaxed Saturday ensues before the arrival of Shar in the evening.

Sunday, we head out to Covent Garden for a catch up and to check out a few of the outdoor stores (including Kathmandu) for a replacement jacket. I end up with a North Face windstopper one in a cooler colour, and we meet up with Shar’s friend Juliana in a nearby pub to while away the remainder of the arvo and evening.

Monday, and the folks at work, after having a bit of a laugh over my bus tracking/hunting exploits eventually convince me to ring the depot. I don’t know why, considering that all the 67’s were in and none had my bag on them... Still, I ring. And, yep, they have the bag and jacket, but no book!!
So while we all scratch our heads about the type of person who takes your bag, then hands back the brand new jacket and keeps the cheap (but intellectual) book, I’m kinda chuffed that I now have two jackets. It was still a sh*t day at work on Monday, but at least it had one good moment to it.

They Call it Football

You could say that this weekend was a ‘Football Weekend’.
As you may recall last year, my housemate, Paul and myself volunteered to assist with the distribution of Tottenham flags in the Wembley Stadium. Well, we did it again this year because neither of us had tickets to go to Sunday’s League Cup Final between Tottenham and Manchester United. It was going to be the closest that we would get to the game, so why not? It was a good day out with a free lunch in the Wembley staff canteen and we both scored one of the flags. We were happy, so after this we headed off to Leicester square to meet up with some friends who were out and about in central London. Oh, and if you’ve ever wondered how they do the grass patterns on the pitches have a look at the above pic.

A while later in a bar playing pool I got a phone call from one of the folks from the group of us at Wembley. He just wanted to get my permission to forward my phone number to Anna, who is the marketing manager at Tottenham that had organised the flags. Not a problem, and no, if you’re thinking that it was because of some sort of ‘chemistry’ between Anna and myself, you’d be wrong. She rang shortly after to inform me that as a thank you for Paul and me, they had arranged tickets to the Cup Final for us.
It’s not what you know...
To say we were well chuffed would be an understatement. It certainly improved our mood for the rest of the evening, which was about to improve yet again.

We ended up in a pub just off Bishopsgate, and while chatting with some scots that had come down for the cup final, I saw May-Lis walk past outside. I ducked outside to say hello, and she informed me that she was about to meet up with Petter at a Steve Perryman night. Five minutes after parting ways, I got a call from Petter saying that he could get both Paul and myself in to the event.
You may recall that I met Steve Perryman briefly at a book signing just before xmas. To recap: he played for Tottenham from 1967 through to 1986, playing nearly 1,000 matches and captaining the side to 5 of the 6 major trophies won by the Spurs during his time.
The event itself was pretty much a buffet dinner, with Steve as a guest speaker, and included both a signing/photo session as well as some question and answer time. A good night all up really. He was a good speaker, interesting and was not boring at any stage. He happily obliged with photos and signing before the night was over.
Certainly a good way to spend the eve of a cup final!

Sunday was a fairly slow, but a somewhat early start as we met quite a few folk at a pub in Whitehall for breakfast, and the fun started from there. Eventually, we left to head towards Wembley at around midday. A fun trip on the tube and train as we encountered a group of Manchester fans along the way - it did get rather rowdy and made for an entertaining trip up to the stadium, before we headed up Olympic Way to the stadium (left). Such a great buzz in the masses of folks heading there - the food stalls, souvenir stands, street vendors and fans of all sorts. There’s no match like a Cup final.
The match itself was a bit of a rollercoaster on the emotions as both teams had their chances to win it, but unfortunately it eventually came down to the dreaded penalty shootout to separate the two teams. Spurs day it was not - even wearing Dig’s Spurs pin didn’t seem to help...
No empty seat next to me this year for the old boy, but not to worry, the guy who was sitting next to me was good fun as we chatted, cheered, jeered and sang away for over the two hours of game time.
Once over, Paul and I regrouped to head into Wembley Central for a (very good) curry while the crowds filling up the tube station thinned out...