Sparkster.net

German rugrats 4-0 England babbies

2009-06-29T21:34:00.001+01:00

Gutting

Many toys out the pram and thumbs sucked red raw tonight :(

A weekend in Walsall

2009-06-28T23:15:00.004+01:00

I had a lovely couple of days up t’north, seeing Claire in Walsall. There was no trip to the football this time (the players are all on holiday). Instead, we enjoyed each others company, and I received a tour of Walsall town centre.

The weekend was over far too quick though – I cannot believe its time for work again tomorrow morning. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.

I rounded off my excellent weekend with a trip to the Dolphin, where I met Simon and enjoyed a pint of Pedigree, while discussing the recent football and cricket activities - as well as Michael Jackson.

However, I am now very tired - thanks mainly to a combination of early mornings, travelling and hot, muggy weather - if there’s going to be a thunderstorm, get it over and done with!

All we’ve had these last few days have been random droplets of rain and flirtations of thunder. In anticipation of the mother of all electrical storms, I’m unplugging my PC and AV equipment from the mains on a nightly basis – all for nothing.

On that note, it’s time for bed.

The penalty king

2009-06-26T22:10:00.002+01:00

For the last two weeks, I have been avidly watching Stuart Pearce’s England U21 side in the European U21 European Championships.

They have been doing very well of late, and I have been happy to report good things to friends, colleagues and anyone else I can get to listen to by inane drivel.

The England babbies played Sweden in the semi final this evening. All was going well at half time - England winning 3-0. I even muttered the words which no football fan should ever say “nothing can go wrong now”...

45 minutes later, England had let in 3 goals and were looking defeat and a trip back home, straight in the face. I was not at all pleased, but strangely not at all surprised.

After a tedious 30 minutes of extra time, it was a penalty shoot out. This caused memories of 1996, 1998, 2004 and 2006 to come flooding back – not to mention numerous disappointing shootouts involving Bath City and Leeds which I have had the displeasure of watching.

In a state of despair, I did something I have never done before. I turned the TV off. I walked away from the laptop. I set the mobile phone to silent. I then did the washing up and got changed. When I returned, some 8 minutes later, I was delighted to see England had won!

I have NEVER seen England win a shoot out (for some reason, I can’t remember the 1996 Spain game), but have seen far too many defeats on penalties. I now hold myself solely responsible - Pearce, Southgate, Batty, Beckham, Vassell... you are all forgiven – it wasn’t your fault.

Therefore, from now on, every time England find themselves in a dreaded shootout (which they will), I have no choice but to leave the living room/pub/ground where I am watching the match, and hope and pray England win – which they will, as I am a jinx and will not be present.

Chamone!

2009-06-26T21:50:00.002+01:00

Not only did Michael Jackson’s untimely death cause Google’s servers to stumble; it also brought down everyone’s favourite website for black comedy and inappropriate jokes, Sickipedia.

While on the website today (for research purposes only), I was presented with this error.

It seems so many people out there are also trying to do ‘research’ on the king of pop... you sick, sick bastards.

Watch out, Stelling

2009-06-21T15:28:00.003+01:00

In my latest bid to get Jeff Stelling's job on Gillette Soccer Saturday, I have agreed to take over the ‘live updates’ service for Bath City FC next season.

This basically involves updating a website of any goals, sendings off and general referee debacles seen at any normal Bath City match, as they happen.

With the help of a fellow fan, who did some PHP coding for me, I have created a new website which will include all the fascinating information – cityupdates.co.uk

Melt down

2009-06-21T15:18:00.002+01:00

When rummaging around in my kitchen for food the other day, I noticed I was running a little short of groceries. It was time to do a ‘big shop’. To avoid one of life’s major stresses – traipsing around a Bristol-based superstore on a Sunday afternoon – I arranged for Asda to delivery to my flat.

All was going well – I even managed to find a voucher for free delivery. The problem arose when the groceries arrived and I began to unpack the frozen food – mainly pizzas and ice cream (all healthy items, naturally).

While the products were supposed to be frozen, they had actually thawed out. Now either the driver had left these items in the glove compartment of the delivery van, or the onboard freezer had broken.

Needless to say, with a tear in the corner of my eye, I threw the pizzas and ice cream in the bin. Asda refunded me for all the frozen items, including some ready meals, which, by luck, appeared to remain frozen and I will probably eat at a later date. It was a very sombre moment – the coffee ice cream is normally so nice.

Incidentally, if anyone wants to risk salmonella in return for free pizzas and liquid ice cream; feel free to raid the dustbins outside my flat.

Sleepless

2009-06-17T00:39:00.002+01:00

It is far too hot to sleep tonight.

What's worse; the local foxes are screaming again. It sounds like The Animals of Farthing Wood performing an X-Factor audition for Simon Cowell.

Mark my words - I will be buying a horse, a horn and a pack of hounds in the morning.

Mmmm... barbecue

2009-06-15T23:18:00.001+01:00

Scottish cattle being struck by lightning and half cooked... must have taken place in Cowdenbeef (sic)

;)

Release the hounds

2009-06-15T22:44:00.004+01:00

I will be off to bed shortly, where I will be hoping for a good sleep and not to be awoken in the same manner I was the previous night...

It must have been 2am when I was disturbed by a loud screaming from outside. In my dazed, half-asleep state, I thought something terrible must have been happening on a nearby street.

As I woke up and acquired my senses, I realised the screeches were not as a result of murder, rape or Cristiano Rolando tripping over a stray twig and grazing his knee. They were, in fact, the sound of foxes – either fighting, mating or simply entering a ‘who can scream the loudest and wake Sean up’ competition.

If the same occurs tonight, I will be buying a pack of hounds in the morning and releasing them the next evening to track down and put an end to the noisy bastards.

I may end up with one of these rugs in the next few days

Wolfenstein 3D

2009-06-14T18:03:00.003+01:00

While browsing the PlayStation Network, I was pleased to see that the classic PC game, Wolfenstein 3D had been made available for download.

This is one of the first games I owned for the PC and brings back lots of memories.

A lot of games you re-discover and play years on, often turn out to be a disappointment and not how you fondly remembered them. Wolfenstein is not one of these.

The graphics may not demand a Radeon TNT Exterminator 5000 (or whatever a decent video card is), but this is more than made up for in terms of game play, which cannot be rivalled, even by modern day standards.

The game may be very pixelated, with the Nazi’s bleeding red squares when shot, but it still feels very violent. This makes me think I was probably too young to play it when I first got hold of the Shareware copy all those years ago. I seem to remember my mum didn’t like it, and I often found myself repeatedly pressing the ESC key as I heard her climbing the stairs towards the spare room which housed our PC. On hindsight, I don’t really blame her.

Even in 2009, I still find myself getting a little scared and jumping while opening a rusty blue door to find myself staring down the barrel of a gun, branded by a crazy Nazi. Then there are the rabid Alsatians, which still remain the thing of nightmares.

A great game and well worth the £3.99 I paid to download it.

A day out in London

2009-06-11T23:27:00.006+01:00

Yesterday was a ‘team building exercise’ at work... well, a trip to Wembley Stadium, for Karl, Adam and myself.

I left work with Karl and we made the trip east towards the nation’s capital. Due to tube strikes, we were expecting traffic problems of mammoth proportions – we were not wrong.

To cut a very long story short, we made an extremely difficult trip through the streets of grid-locked London all the way to Victoria Station, found Adam who had spent the day in Kent, and then drove through further stalled traffic, all the way to Wembley Stadium; pissing off fellow commuters, cyclists and pedestrians along the way. Karl’s driving may have been a little erratic, but we were not prepared to miss the England game. Plus, what’s wrong with a little Grand Theft Auto: London in real life?

A typical London traffic jam
Note the selfish **** in the white van blocking various rows of traffic!

Looking back on things now, I don’t for the life of me know how we (or rather, Karl) did it. In a massive, unfamiliar city – the only recognised street names being those on a Monopoly board. Rush hour. Tube strikes. No GPS signal. A missing friend. A lesser man would still be lost now!

On our London tour, we drove through the very richest areas of the city – the kind of place all the wealthy pop stars and football players live (and bankers used to). We also drove through the ghettos of London (where the bankers live now) - lots of dirty looking grocery shops and cafes, which look like they would infect you with the plague if you ate there; all below flats with boarded up windows – no doubt housing 1,000s of illegal immigrants. It was certanly an education! I wouldn't like to walk those streets at night though - or the day for that matter.

We got to Wembley a tad late, but found our parking spot and ran to the stadium, only to find England were already beating Andorra 1-0. I read that manager Fabio Capello wanted an early goal, but he could have waited until we arrived!

We were more than relived to find our seat, but had to go on the hunt for food. Stupidly, we didn’t wait until half time, and while waiting to be served our £9 box of chicken & chips, Karl and I heard the sickening sound of the home crowd cheering another England goal. If there’s one thing worse than witnessing your team conceding a goal, it’s missing your team scoring one! Luckily England went on to score a further four, so we were not deprived of all the excitement.

All in all, an enjoyable evening. Things could have gone better – we could have got there pre-kick off, enjoyed some good food, a couple of pints and watched the whole match. However, things could have been a lot worse – we could have missed the game! It is a credit to Karl, a nice cab driver offering directions, and pure luck we got there at all.

We finally got there!

I was eventually dropped back home in the early hours of Thursday morning. I was in bed by 1.30am – way past my bedtime and extremely late, especially for a school night (it could have been worse, I heard the Bath-Wembley coach didn’t get in until nearly 3am). Needless to say, I was late into work this morning. God knows what time Karl and Adam got home, or how they both managed to be in the office at 8am. Copious amounts of Red Bull, me thinks.

An increased offer

2009-06-09T09:54:00.001+01:00

After lengthy discussions with work colleagues, we have upped our original offer for the purchase of Newcastle United.

We now believe we can scrape together a massive £10.00 GBP, some old dusty CRT monitors and a Tesco Clubcard.

The Clubcard has 38 points on it, which is more points than Newcastle won in the whole of last season.

The old, worthless monitors appear to be a like-for-like exchange for some of the useless, slow players currently on the wage bill.

A potential purchase

2009-06-08T12:26:00.001+01:00

Just read this article

I'm interested by the line

"Interested parties should contact Newcastle United at admin@nufc.co.uk (or Keith Harris at Seymour Pierce) for further details."

How much should I offer? The contents of my wallet is 51p plus a Tesco Clubcard. Do you think that is good value for Newcastle United Football Club? Personally I think owner, Mike Ashley, will be getting a fabulous deal if I offered that.

A clean slate

2009-06-07T23:01:00.001+01:00

My laptop has gradually been getting slower and slower – all those visits to the Bath City Forum and the BBC football website had clearly taken their toll on the systems registry. Therefore, I decided do what any young, out-going person should do on a Friday night – reinstall my operating system.

It is now running a lot quicker, although I was annoyed about the excessively long time it took to re-install all my old programs, update Windows and copy across all my documents and files. There is still a lot more to do, but I think I can live without Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue and SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom for the time being.

No one likes us we don't care

2009-06-07T22:56:00.005+01:00

Am I the only one who is pleased with England’s 4-0 win over Kazakhstan in the World Cup Qualifiers? We won, but the way the media and pundits carried on post-match, you would have thought England had just lost 4-0!

I am not sure what the pundits actually expected from the match. Do they regard Kazakhstan as a third-world country, full of one-legged players with webbed feet; therefore demanding England destroy their inferiors 32-0? Kazakhstan were a tough opposition that had to be beaten. Maybe they wanted champagne football. The state of the pitch meant that even Barcelona would struggle to play exciting football.

England play Andorra on Wednesday at Wembley – a match I will be going to. On paper, Andorra are inferior to Kazakhstan. This makes me wonder what England can possibly do to please the blood-thirsty, knife branding journalists. Personally, I would expect nothing short of a 117-0 win for England. I want Emile Heskey to score a hat trick and then fly out the stadium, land on the moon and bring us all down a piece of cheese to eat with out £25 box of chicken and chips.

I guess it could be worse. I remember not too long ago, England beat Macedonia 1-0, leading to fans believing the World Cup was theirs. Let everyone think we’ll fail – the same attitude the Spanish media took pre-tournament in 2008 – we all know what happened then!

In other sport news, I am delighted that Jenson Button has won another race, moving even closer to the Drivers’ Championship. Even this didn’t stop the media from moaning though, who accused Button’s ongoing success as ‘boring’ *bangs head against wall*

I also enjoyed the Twenty20 game this evening, where England did well beating Pakistan. Let’s wait and see what the media make of that... Man of the Match, Luke Wright, obviously cheated and is a disgrace to his country and his equally useless team mates.

Power shield

2009-06-03T22:37:00.004+01:00

With the warm weather already upon us and temperatures set to rise even more, I have been forced to take drastic matters in the ongoing fight against spiders and creepy-crawlies.

I refuse to keep my flat windows closed during the summer evenings and night, simply because of the threat of ‘bug attack’. Therefore, I have purchased and installed window netting which should block any creature trying to gain unauthorised access to my property.

Of course, the netting is not a deterrent to the bird-eating spider, giant vampire bats or lions. I am, however, yet to see any of these in Bath, so am probably ok.

Lord of the flies

2009-05-31T14:52:00.004+01:00

Talk about flies around shit. Typical Sky Sports – grooming Sir Alex yet again.

Also, is it just me, or does he always sound like he’s drank a whole bottle of Jack Daniels?

The spirit of Father Jack Hackett lives on.

Going nowhere

2009-05-31T13:39:00.003+01:00

Yesterday didn’t go exactly to plan.

We were intending on travelling down to Taunton to visit the Sheppy’s cider farm for Simon’s birthday.

However, upon joining the M5, we hit possibly the largest traffic jam I have ever had the displeasure to be stuck in.

It was hell - stranded in the middle of Somerset without food, water or a mobile phone signal. The car didn’t even have an AM radio, so we were unable to listen to the FA Cup Final. The only entertainment was watching fellow travellers wandering aimlessly along the lifeless motorway, climbing the embankment into fields and even walking their dogs. It was a very surreal experience.

We finally reached the turn off to Taunton, almost 3 hours later. With further traffic trailing all the way into the town and the farm soon to close, we had to cut our losses and drive home via Yeovil. A very disappointing day out.

Starving and thirsty, we stopped off at a lovely village pub just outside Shepton Mallet. There I enjoyed a lovely chicken pie and a pint of Thatchers in the early evening sun. The landlady saw fit to ID me for the alcohol. Luckily, I was carrying some - had I not, the day would have been made even worse. I don’t really think that was necessary anyway – if The Inbetweeners has taught me nothing else, it is that you can purchase a beer or a cider with a meal, even if under-aged.

We then drove back to Bath where we met Simon’s friend, Tim. It was decided we would end what was overall a very frustrating day, by the canal at The George Pub in Bathampton. A very nice evening, which almost made me forget about the disappointment of earlier.

Things got a little silly at the end of the night when someone decided to remove letters from the specials blackboard to form naughty words. We contemplated modifying ‘Cucumber’ , leading to funny results, especially as it preceded the word ‘Shavings’, but decided against it (the chalk was hard to remove). We were all disappointed by the fact the pub didn’t sell ‘Scunthorpe Pie’

Most of us left the pub relatively sober. Tim, however, had been drinking some very expensive whiskey, which resulted in alcoholic fumes filling the car on the drive home. Anyone who entered the car not drunk, left the vehicle a little closer to an intoxicated state.

The treble

2009-05-28T23:30:00.003+01:00

Following in the footsteps of the true champions, Barcelona, I too secured a highly prestige treble of victories in football competitions this season...

Firstly on the Bath City forum, I succeeded where Alex Ferguson and Manchester United failed, by defending my European title in the European Predictions League, to finish as champion for a second time.

I also won the office league on the Premier League website on both the Fantasy Football and Premier League Predictor.

If only I’d put money on all my guesses!

Felicidades Barca!

2009-05-27T22:35:00.004+01:00

Alex Ferguson, Eamon Holmes, James Nesbitt, Chappers, Angus Deayton, Edith Bowman... your boys took one hell of a beating

CAMPEONE! CAMPEONE!
OLE! OLE! OLE!

Buena suerte Barca!

2009-05-26T22:02:00.002+01:00

The very best of luck to Barcelona in the Champions League Final tomorrow night!

Apparently being English means I should be supporting Manchester United. Not sure why this is? While Man Utd have some players of English nationality, I hardly see how Nemanja Vidić, Cristiano Ronaldo and Carlos Tevez can be of benefit to England!

I am a fan of the England national side, Bath City, Leeds, Barcelona and, for 90 minutes last Sunday, Aston Villa. I am not a fan of Manchester United.

Come on Barca - make me a very happy chappy, putting the icing on the cake of Newcastle United’s relegation by winning The Champions League.

Bullying in the workplace

2009-05-26T21:08:00.000+01:00

I was welcomed back to work with the discovery that my colleagues had swapped all the keys around on my keyboard. Therefore the first half hour was spent playing jigsaw puzzle, rearranging them back to their correct positions.

Later that day, the torment got worse when a spider was captured in a jar and brought into the office. The spider’s entrance lead to my departure - hiding in the bushes outside the office and not returning until I was assured by phone call that the 8-legged beast had gone.

One of these days I’ll kill them all...

Back to reality

2009-05-25T22:22:00.002+01:00

After a week off work, not doing much, but having a really nice time with Claire, I’m back in the office tomorrow.

Unless our work syndicate have won the lottery (and failed to tell me), I guess it’ll be a few more months until I’m off again.

Ganning Doown

2009-05-25T22:01:00.004+01:00

The last few weeks I have followed the demise of Newcastle United with a series of “Relegation Watch” blogs. I have been asked by a few people why I have a dislike for NUFC and why I wish relegation upon them...

Out of all the teams in this season’s Premier League, no club deserved to be relegated more than Newcastle United. This is not because of individual games, or even this season alone, it is a series of errors and mistakes which have occurred over many years at St. James’ Park.

I have not always disliked Newcastle United. In fact, like many, I admired them under Kevin Keegan during the late 90’s. They were everyone at school’s second team, and even those who were not huge fans of football, like myself, were aware of the success in the north east.

More recently in 2002/3, Newcastle had a wonderful season in the Champions League, reaching the quarter finals. By that point I was a massive football fan, and while Newcastle were not my team, I enjoyed following them throughout Europe, drawing similarities to Leeds’ Champions League campaign two seasons previous.

The first signs of trouble at Newcastle, and indeed a large step towards my dislike for the club and the fans, occurred at the end of the 2003/4 season. Sir Bobby Robson, one of the greatest men in football and a perfect gentleman, guided The Toon Army to 5th place in The Premier League, narrowly missing out on a place in The Champions League.

The Newcastle fans were not happy with the fact their club had failed to infiltrate the ‘Top 4’ and on the last day of the season, shunned and criticised their team and great manager. At the same time, Leeds United fans, whose team had been relegated after a nightmare of a season, congratulated their players and manager in scenes which resembled that of a team who had just won the league.

The start of the following season was average, but far from disastrous. Still, this was not good enough for the self-proclaimed ‘best fans in the world’ who demanded their great manager be sacked. Robson was not backed by the then chairman, Freddy Shepherd, who met the fans’ demands and sacked the great man, without loyalty or compassion.

Newcastle then preceded to work their way through three managers; Graeme Souness, Glenn Roeder and Sam Allardyce; each finishing in respectable positions and even reaching the latter stages of the UEFA Cup.

Still this was not good enough for the fans, who showed little patience, demanding the manager be sacked, even resorting to barricading themselves in St. James’ Park in protest of the board’s failure to sack Allardyce.

In a desperate attempt for success, a king’s random was spent on unimaginative signings, including £17million on Michael Owen - a figure which other clubs would struggle to justify spending on their entire team.

The fans were crying out for the messiah, whether it be Kevin Keegan, Alan Shearer or Ant & Dec. They eventually got their wish and Keegan joined The Toon during the 2008/9 season, keeping them in the Premiership.

As always, things were not as simple as that, and chairman Mike Ashley brought in Dennis Wise to oversee transfers and in turn, undermine Keegan. Predictably, this went wrong, resulting in bad signings being made, popular players departing and Keegan leaving the club in August 2008.
The 2008/9 season was a farce. More money was thrown at the team, more farcical mistakes from the chairman, more heartless performances from the players and more cries for further change from the ever-fickle fans. Then, fittingly on April Fools Day, The Toon Army finally got their wish. Alan Shearer was appointed to keep his beloved club in the Premier League. Despite having no managerial experience, the deluded fans were ecstatic – the messiah had returned.

As we all know, Shearer failed to keep Newcastle United in the Premier League and The Toon Army were relegated to the Coca Cola Championship.

The fans are already talking about giving Shearer the job on a full time basis, despite being unproven, and winning the league. They are obviously unaware of the fact most established Premier League sides who are relegated to The Championship rarely bounce back at the first attempt, and more often than not, find themselves in League One – Leeds, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester, Wimbledon – the list goes on.

So that is why I wanted Newcastle down - overspending, arrogant, incompetent chairman; fans with ridiculously high expectations, delusions and shameful disloyalty to players and managers. Good riddance.

Newcastle relegation watch #6

2009-05-25T15:08:00.002+01:00

The nation is recovering this morning after joyous celebrations in towns and villages up and down the land, all enjoying The Newcastle United Relegation Party.

I was lucky enough to be one of the 42,585 fans at Villa Park who witnesses the relegation of the self-proclaimed “Premiership giants”. How we laughed.

Here are some pictures and videos from the celebrations...