New season

The football season is upon us again and tonight I went to see Chesterfield play Sheff Utd at Bramall Lane. It was nice to be able to walk to the match, and see Chesterfield play the sheffield team for who I have the most affinity. Met up with s and we both had a great evening and enjoyed the football. Unfortunately, after an impressive first half, Chesterfield began to struggle against the pace and precision passing of United and lost 3-1. The worst point was losing pacy forward, jamie Ward, who pulled up with what looked like a hamstring injury. He was causing United problems and led to our equalising goal, without his presence we looked mediocre up front. New signing Jack lester impressed, and worked tirelessly up front, but to little avail due to lack of support and decent crosses.

How I bought the Neon Bible and other stories..

Went into town on saturday, and I really enjoyed my morning wandering around. Sheffield is an excellent place. Went to the urban deli for a bit to write and drink, and I got a text from phil asking if i was going to the chesterfield match. I didn't realise we were playing at home, and i had my mind set on a relaxing day, so decided not to go. After the abysmal performance i'd witnessed on wednesday it was not a difficult decision to make. Next it was time for a trip to fopp, always a dangerous shop for me as i always buy more than i bargained for. They didn't have the limited edition arcade fire album, but i did come away with 2 cds (anthony and the johnsons and low) and 'children of men' novel. Had to go to a bigger store for the arcade fire album, more on that later. Wandered down to the crucible to pick up a ticket for 'the cherry orchid' and noticed that the lyceum is showing 'the alchemist' which i read recently, so i got a ticket for that too. Feeling rather cultured with my theatre tickets, i decided to wander up to the millenium gallery where they had a free abstract exhibition on. There were some striking pieces, but one particularly caught my attention. Maya Roos had created a giant 'portrait' of coloured lines and boxes influenced by an image captured from norton disc clen up application. I was amazed that this huge piece seemed to be painted directly on to the wall and asking a curator I discovered that it had taken three weeks to paint by a team of three and at the end of the exhibition it would be sanded off and the wall repainted. The transient nature of this work made me admire it more. Got home and saw the football results come in, lamenting a further chesterfield defeat. A managerial change can be the only answer to this dreadful slide towards relegation, the last few games have been void of any ideas and passion. Phil was in agreement, and yesterday Roy graciously stepped down from his managerial role. I'd've preffered to see whole sale changes to the backroom staff instead of promotion of assistant manager, but we'll see if the performances turn.

Ok, so the Neon Bible, the second album from arcade fire. Sorry if you had to read so far if you were only interested in my review, and if you're not interested then you can stop reading now! Their first album, funeral, was my favourite album of 2005, barely a flaw on it, quite superb, so it's always a slight worry whether a new release would match the standard already set. After a few listens i think it is close to reaching those high standards. The neon bible is distinctly arcade fire, yet different from funeral. Produced like some overwhelming symphony the songs form a score of melancholy of the futility of life, or more accurately those bodies that seek to bring meaning, politics, religion. Yet there is some sense of upbeat within the tunes that make you want to dance too. The layers of instrumentation are really quite superb, without becoming some pompous over produced nonsense, they manage to balance grandiose church organs, harmonic choirs, flowing strings, bombastic brass, with guitars and drums. Some of the church organ sounds are immense, apparently recorded at some church, you can imagine some giant gothic cathedral with a bank of a thousand pipes springing forth from some huge organ. Certainly a top candidate for album of the year. And it's making my dreadful commutes all the more bearable as I blast it out from my iPod.

Getting a new job

Seems like I'm not the only one dissatisfied with their current job. Dave Beckham has signed himself a new contract to play for LA Galaxy, teaming up with the great Alexi Lalas of crazy goatee sporting, guitar playing, slightly rubbish american footballer to score against England fame. It's not about the money, but about the football. I too would like to help with the promotion of the 'beautiful game TM" in the states and was pondering the chances of securing a multi-million dollar contract. I was chatting with my cousin suggesting I could try something akin to the infamous Ali Dia the worst player to have ever featured in the Premiership. His agent wrote to the then Southampton manager, Graeme Souness, pretending to be African football legend George Weah. The letter spoke of his cousin, a senegalese international star. Graeme was impressed and gave Ali a contract, and he soon made his debut appearing as a subsitute. He really was terrible, so bad in fact that he himslef was substituted sometime later! If I could pull off a similar trick with a Beckham-esque contract, I'd be sacked after a week, but £1/2M in pocket.

Was invited to a meal with m&e yesterday, a farewell meal for s before her return to university. It was delicious and I always enjoy a nice meal. M had even made some ice cream which was very good indeed.

in case you were wondering

i forgot to include anything about football in the previous post. Well that is in part because there really wasn't much to say. In fact scrappy goal, scrappy match pretty much sums up the chesterfield game. Watched brewster's millions on sunday, one of those classic 80s films you watch as a kid and think are amazing, but probably don't really stand the test of time. I'm happy to report that I think it did stand the test of time, whether or not War Games, Flight of the Navigator and DARYL do too, remains to be seen. Brewster's millions was also a film i remember chatting about with john on a journey to school as we both enjoyed it, I guess it also made me feel a bit like i was getting old too in a strangely nostalgic way. Church was better as there was quite a number in attendance and after the coffee morning it felt like the vision was beginning to become apparant. We've been joking along a 'pirate' theme in church meetings for quite sometime since steve had suggested we all came to a service dressed as pirates as some school kids were coming to film a methodist communion service for an RE lesson or something. The joke was to claim that this was the methodist way. For a while our minister wasn't sure if we were joking, and then with the recent 'international talk like a pirate day' I highlighted the youthblog post lamenting the lack of pirate liturgy. Well JT announced that he had been working on a pirate themed service and that he would be delivering it next sunday, so I'll look forward to that!
Awe planning meeting last night, and although I thought that it was a bit of an effort and that ideas weren't really flowing, when I wrote up the ideas today they did seem to be crystallising together. The theme is advent and we started by looking at some 'input' to the idea of advent:

• eschatology
  
• realisation of christ in us
  
• when/do we expect christ to return?
  
• what do we expect on christ's return?
  
• does it make a difference to what we do/how we act knowing that He will return? eg jesus is coming - look busy
  
• is advent and adventure?
  

and the train of thought took us into something along the temporal aspect, the waiting, the finite time we have on earth and how we use it. Hopefully itshould spark some intersting discussion.

grrrr my keyboard has had it, the space keeps sticking and it's making it difficult to post. I need a new o ne.

Beer, tea and football

Yesterday i went to the cask and cutler beer festival. It was, as expected, very good. I sampled quite a number of the beers on offer, and my favourite of the night was gaucho from the salamander brewery. Unfortunatley it had soon gone and replaced by another brew. When they have the festival they have a stack of casks in addition to the hand pull, and it amuses me when they go round with the watering can watering the towels draped over the top.
In contrast this morning was a church coffee morning round at Peter's house. He is one of our more elderly members, but is always very quick with his dry humour. Most people at our church are tea drinkers (maybe that's what makes us methodists!) and on asking what people would like to drink Peter said "would anyone like coffee, I guess I ought to make some with it being a coffee morning". There were a few takers, but the tea drinkers far exceeded them. It was also a good chance to talk about where we are going as a church, and how our thoughts might help in the current circuit review. The conversation was really useful and we plan to undertake some conversations within the circuit and also with neighbouring circuits. My feeling is that although we have a vision we want to offer the 'circuit - or whoever' and that there are probably people who would want to buy into that vision and help us attain that critical mass of people tomake it work, most people feel too committed to their own 'local efforts'. People are busy keeping their own walls from falling down without trying to build somenew ones, to use a metaphor. Perhaps this is true in general for methodism, instead of pooling circuit resources, individual churches are too busy maintaining their own local efforts, though i acknowledge in certain places these are working really effectively. But if we want to stop the decline in numbers then brave and difficult decisions need to be made on plant. There maybe less people, but these people are probably very passionate and unfortunately they probably become drained by the efforts of maintaining plant or church. These people should be freed to dream dreams and work in effective groups, without feeling obliged to maintain the status quo.

Chesterfield - headline makers!

Every now and again going to a football match is a magical experience. Tonight I went to see chesterfield vs premiership West Ham in the league cup. When me and Scott arrived the atmosphere was already electric, so much different from the slough of despondancy that is usually around the ground during league matches. Tonight there was a buzz, a chance to pit ourselves against one of the top teams. However the match couldn't have started worse, after a bright start chesterfield conceded a sloppy goal, hazel heading into the path of Harewood who volleyed a shot straight into the goal. Instead of opening the floodgates, west ham seemed to sit back, perhaps bemused and at a loss of what to do when leading in a match, being such a rare occurance this season. Chesterfield continued pressing forward, and winning the ball in midfield. Niven and Allott seemed to latch onto every loose ball, and some of the movement opened up the west ham defence with ease. Despite being 1-0 down at half time, I was feeling quietly confident with the performance thus far, and in the second half the persistancy paid off with a great goal made by Folan. Green managed to push his shot onto the post only for Larkin to latch onto the rebound and put chestefield level. Chesterfield continued to put west ham under pressure, and when the experienced sheringham came on I was a little wary. Sheringham is such a professional, you could see him organising the team and a passion to win, thankfully the rest of the team didn't seem to be sharing his vision. The crowd were superb, cheering every throw and corner, none of the usual beration of players, just a forward feedback loop of hope and belief in the players, which encouraged the players to perform better, encouraging the crowd to cheer louder, etc etc. Finally a ball broke loose from a free kick and Folan stabbed the ball home for Chesterfield to take the lead, looking at my watch I was astounded to see that it was almost the end of the match, the game had really sped by. A couple of nervous minutes were seen out as Chesterfield maintained the lead to record another famous victory. Into the last 16 for the first time in 41 years. A superb football night, though I fear my throat will be rather sore in the morning.

Football triumph

So on Wednesday, Chesterfield humbled Man City in the league cup, winning by a tremendous strike by Niven. Really superb esult, but I wasn't there to witness it as I'd decided to represent cvm at the student church search bbq. Oh well. Still the bbq was ok, though I don't know how successful it was on our part. When me and andrew arrived there were masses of people representing all manner of churches and christian societies and we felt a bit overwhelmed, so i don't know what the freshers felt like. There were people with fancy t-shirts and enthusiastic extrovert representatives who didn't seem to mind in butting into conversations. Me and Andrew decided that if we'd given this some more thought we could've grown those little chin beards sported by the more 'cool christian' characters and also devised tactical maneouvres in order to speak to students who weren't already affiliated. Pincer movements to catch students as the arrived, or at the end of the food queue where they could be ensnared food in hand with no way of escape!
Instead we spotted someone with one of our flyers and chatted to her with kevin from our circuit. James, our minister and uni chaplain also introduced us to a couple of other people interested in methodist churches.

The food was terrible too.

Quite excited as today I'm going to London to visit a friend and also see the superb monkey swallows the universe.

Garage junk

Another fairly busy weekend, and again no jobs acheived around the house. Though I had already got some things sorted during the week, mowed the lawn and tidied the lounge (which included sorting out my cds where I came across some cds that I thought had been mislaid, but they were just hiding in the wrong cd case). Highlights included watching chesterfield beating rotherham, not an especially good match but I got to meet a fellow blogger whose blog I have been following for a while. So I can now add phil to my 'blogger eye spy' book. Then in the evening I went to see this very enjoyable film, little miss sunshine. It's hard to describe this film without giving away plot details, basically it's a comedy looking at the fuitility of the success of winning.
Spent Sunday afternoon with Dave sorting out some of the stuff from cvm that has been stored in my garage since selling the old building. It has been decided that we no longer need the items, especially in light of having no place of our own, so we are now ebaying and freecycling the items. Another church in the circuit was interested in some of our items, including metal cupcoards, so we were able to get those delivered which made much more room in the garage. All other items were then re-packed into the garage with items we are freecycling near the front and stuff for skipping near the back. If anyone reading this is interested in having/making a donation for the following please contact me in the comments: rangemaster cooker (huge double oven type thing), old filing cabinets that fail H&S regulations, dining table and 6 chairs (ideal for 80s decor), drop leaf table, set of two drawers, ancient microwave, deepfat fryer, various flight cases.

BSS, football and MSTU

An eventful weekend, which is good, but not so good for getting jobs done around the house. So it started on Friday night when i went to the leadmill to watch broken social scene. This is a band from Canada that is a collective of members from a number of canadian indie groups, and they play some very fine tunes. I saw them earlier in the year in manchester, and again they put on a great show. They really seem to enjoy playing their tunes and there can be up to 9 people on the stage at any one time playing guitars, brass, strings, percussion or singing. It's a great spectacle. However, I do think that they enjoy themselves a bit too much and sometimes their tunes can become self indulgent as they repeat 'movements' from their songs endlessly. It can become tiresome.
Saturday I pop into Hillsborough to do a bit of shopping before heading to chesterfield to pick up scott. It's raining, quite a lot, and I get very wet. Before I return to my car I get a few things from the supermarket, on leaving the shop I put my hood up and somehow catch my glasses and my lens goes flying across the floor. I retrieve it and think, great, just what I need, cos I'm off to watch england, I can't see to drive to old trafford, let alone be able to see the match. There must be an opticians in Hillsborough, so back into the rain and I trundle along the street, but I can only really see shops on my side of the road, those opposite are not too clear. Thankfully I come across an opticians who fix the glasses, it's just the screw that had gone. Eventually at chesterfield I decide to print a map of the side roads around old trafford, so that I don't have to pay astronomically for car parking, using my dad's computer. He has dial up, it's slower than reading 'cartography for beginners' and drawing the map yourself. Eventually, map in hand I pick up scott and head for the match. I really enjoy it, despite it being a simple walkover. Andorra really are terrible, but watching the movement of top quality football players is a real joy, you just don't get the whole picture watching on tv, and you certainly don't see that movement at Chesterfield matches! It also amused me that the name of the Andorran 'keeper was Jesus. Jesus saves, or at least not in 5 instances here.
Leaving today, a nice service in the morning at church, where a hymnal error had the keyboardist literally playing from the wrong hymn sheet. We had H&P, he had SOF and starts playing 'o little town of bethlehem' once the error is discovered the correct hymn is found, and no-one knows the set tune, but by some bizarre coincidence the tune of 'o little town of bethlehem' actually fits the words of the chosen hymn, it works quite well! This afternoon me and andrew went to listen to some sheffield unsigned bands playing a mini festival on devonshire green. monkey swallows the universe were playing, and they are superb. I can't praise their debut album highly enough. The set was unfrotunately let down by some really terrible mixing, throughout the enitre gig the cello was making horrible noises whenever a bass note was played amongst other levels being all over the place. That aside, the tunes still stood out as being spectacular. Hopefully they will merit a wider audience sometime soon. Check them out if you can.
Photos: football set
mstu set

Acrington Stanley.....who are they?

Exactly!

Everyone who grew up in the eighties will be familiar with the lines from the milk advert, claiming that if Ian Rush didn't drink milk, he'd be playing for Acrington Stanley. I remember my dad telling me of the days when Acrington Stanley used to be a league club, and today a bit of history as they win their first match after gaining promotion back into the league last season.

Chesterfield, however, score five goals whilst I decide to go for a walk instead, as I'd already paid to see them once this week. A goaless mid-week draw, which certainly showed a lot of promising signs for the season. I can't remember the last time they scored so many goals. I think four is the most I've seen them score in a game.

So where have i been in my blogging lapse, well not doing anything of note. Another walk on monday evening after work along stanedge edge was particulalry stunning. A bbq at house group on thursday was a nice relaxing time. Though most of my time has been spent reading, I'm really enjoying this current novel and only a few more pages left to go.

Another fine start

Last year on aug 6th I blogged that chesterfield were top of the table, well they've gone and done it again this year, though their name stands them in good stead for alphabetical favourability, taking the top spot from Port Vale, who start with a lowly P.
Of course it is early days, but this is a very good and promising start, hopefully this season they can keep the momentum and not drift into mediocrity once relegation has been seen off.

Football thoughts

I really enjoyed some of the carnival atmosphere that was generated by the fans, particularly the tunisians who seemed to be on every street corner in munich, singing, dancing and waving flags. There was nothing threatening about their behaviour. Likewise these Japanese fans we met outside the stadium at kaiserslauten were in great spirits, and these fans seem to continue to cheer no matter what is happening on the pitch. Unlike the tense england fans, who if aren't berating their openants are berating their own team, tension only broken by the scoring of a goal. I did miss the match of the day analysis at half time, watching matches in germany resulted in some odd half time moments, including the use of borris becker as a pundet interviewing franz beckenbaur! (Though i get back and itv have shane wharne to talk about australia - what next...)

Whilst waiting for the game at the stadium in munich there were numerous loops of adverts on the big screens, one from fifa showed ppl from around the world playing football, with the slogan football unites and intimating that it was the solution to all the worlds political woes. This in addition to an advert for the official world cup 'hymn' and the following mass throngs coming to 'worship' at the stadium, made me wonder if they are trying to make football some quasi-religious experience? No doubt a full stadium and remarkable football, especially the euphoria of a late winner can really move a person and lift their spirits, but does it really promote worldwide unity, something i consider to be a kingdom value. Yes a lot of people speak the language of football, and yes it is easy to play with people from all cultures and backgrounds. But it also seems to promote this inate tribalism, that I particularly note in english fans, but am sure is present the world over. Phrases like 'our boys' and 'us' and 'them' mean that sometimes the football team embodies the kind of nationalism where one considers their nation to be superior to another. This is also seen at local level in national football too, and it is this aspect of football that increasingly bothers me, especially when i hear some of the chanting directed at opposing fans. It seems to be full of narrowmindedness, and not at all the all-encompassing unity that fifa would have us believe football embodies. I'm not against passionate support, but when it comes at the expense of decency towards other nations, or even our own players then it just highlights the flaws in the religion of football. I'm not saying that any faith has this issue sorted, and I often wonder why such tribalistic nature seems to exist, what I long for is a world where everyone is equal whether jew, gentile, free or slave, male or female, straight or gay, all loved equally by god.

world cup holiday

So since my last post I have driven almost 1,800 miles in my little fiesta. It has been great and we all had a good time, with the weather being absolutely superb throughout. The journey started early on saturday morning from chris' house in hemel hempstead, taking an early ferry from dover. It was just like travelling on a duck pond, and the sky was a lovely blue, so nice that we spent the journey sat out on the deck. A little nervous about travelling on the opposite side of the road to wat I am normally used to, but it was with ease that I made the transition as we headed to our first campsite just outside calais. It was a great campsite, with really friendly and accommodating staff, who I could communicate well with my pidgin gsce french, even asking if they would be showing the football, to be shown into the bar and greeted with a huge plasma screen. The england game vs paraguay was ok, at least we got the win that was required, despite a relatively poor performance. Another early start on the sunday saw us leave at 6am, and travelling across france and into germany near saarbruke to campingplatz clausensee, a six hour journey, that was a comfortable ride, though expensive on the toll roads. This campsite was our favourite, and it was a shame that I never paid attention in german lessons that we had to rely on the staff's english to communicate. Even chris, our most highly decorated german speaker, having at least a gsce, would usually speak in english when his services were called upon, much to our amusement. Not only did this camp site have a huge plasma screen for our football televisual delights in the air conditioned restaurant, they were also serving bitburger, a beer, in special glasses. These glasses came with an embossed shirt number, and should a player with corresponding shirt score in the match whilst you were drinking, then you got the beer for free. Adding an extra bit of excitement to the games in which we were just neutral viewers, and also enabling us to become familiar with a number of players. The great Golmohammadi being a fave of mine as this number 4 shirt wearing Iranian defender was the first to react in a crowded six yard box to convert a loose ball after a corner against mexico. The site was also close to Kaiserslauten, host of one of the tournament stadiums, and it turned out that australia were playing japan at the stadium on our free day. The camp site had put on a coach that we took to the town, and enjoyed the atmosphere in the fanplatz. There was a real carnival atmosphere, with local radio dj comparing various warm up acts pre and mid game. Including a set of football tricksters from japan, demonstrating incredible ball skill and balance, and at half time some scantily clad pop duo causing great adulation from the mainly male viewers. The aussies went wild after the dramatic turnaround of a 1-0 deficit to a 3-1 victory, with huge amounts of dancing and singing to aussis songs post match, including some AC/DC!

Three nights were then spent in ingolstadt at the azur campsite that we termed the mosquito dump after being bitten all over whilst watching the brazil match in the tv marquee. This campsite was chosen mainly due to it's location which we used to travel by train to munich and nurnberg. In munich we watched the tunisia vs saudi match live in the stadium with the tickets procurred earlier this year. There was a great atmosphere, and the stadium really is quite magnificent, both from outside and within. Situated on the second tier above the goal, we felt close to the action and a great vantage point for three of the goals. Dissapointingly the saudi's conceded a late goal, as that was the team I had picked to cheer. They had such a great chance fora victory.

In Nurnberg we took enjoyed the atmosphere from within the fanplatz, which was fairly tense throughout the match, and the crouch goal seemed to have more of a sense of relief then celebration, though I was able to complete a bit of a crouch robot dance.

A last night in campingplatz clausensee, broke up our journey and it was nice to see the familiar friendly faces, before setting off for the final leg back to england on saturday. Of course leaving time to watch the matches on tv. There are plenty of pics in my flickr set. Spending a week in europe watching football and enjoying temperatures in the 30s, what a great time.

Peter Crouch(ing tiger)

Went with v to see my m+d on tues as my cousin was around too. Started watching the england match and then headed over to scott's to watch the second half. We were chatting about our upcoming trip to germany whilst watching the match. However the highlight was when peter Crouch scored and did this weird robot dance celebration:

It was hilarious. I checked technorati and it seemed that people were going crazy over the dance. It seems it is a dance he performed at some charity party hosted by David Beckham, and some footage was circulating on t'internet, so he parodied himself.

What a star, this guy is brilliant, not only does he look like some gangly giraffe when coming onto the pitch, but he can actually play pretty well and score great goals. I hope we see more of the dance during the world cup. I know for one, I shall be recreating the moves whenever england score!

What was that you tried to say?

Despite the wonderfully warm weather giving way to grey skies and rain for the weekend, I still had a great time. On saturday me and v went to Lancaster to meet up with my cousin, after a meal and a drink around the town we went back to their house to watch a quite superb FA cup final. From the comedic west ham goals giving them the advantage to the sublime strike from a hobbling gerrard, it was incredibly enjoyable for the neutral. The extra time period provided amusement watching player after player succomb to their physical limitations and fall to the ground, or even hopping! A shame it had to end in penalties, but the result was inevitable as the advantage swung right into liverpools grasp after that wonderful strike from gerrard.

After the match we headed into Blackpool, a journey which saw us pass a group of jubilant boys stood at the bottom of their garden, bare-chested, waving aloft their liverpool shirts. They looked so happy, and I honked my horn and gave a jubilant punch of the air as we went past. The reason we had gone to blackpool was to see radiohead live. I was quite excited to see them perform live for the first time, and was particularly pleased that the set was heavily weighted to the kid a and amnesiac sessions. Before the performance began we managed to find a good vantage point near the wheelchair viewing platform. V was able to stand on the lower regions of the slope to enable her to see, I noted the presence of 10 video projectors on the lighting rig and was very impressed when the back curtain fell to reveal 10 screens arranged in various keystone formations. These were used to project visuals and also live footage of the band from various angles. The music sounded great, and it was interesting to see the way such sounds are made, viewing jonny greenwood amidst a bank of sequencers and effects pedals.
Both jonny and thom played drums, guitars and keys, just highlighting their musical adeptity. New material on the whole sounded good, apart from one I found quite boring. Ranging from piano led anthemic melencholia to a track that saw thom playing drums, that sounded quite punky. I've submitted a review to teletext, but i guess they'll have many such reviews, and without a digital camera I may not be able to record the review should it make the teletext grade. So just or you, I shall include it here!

The anticipation of seeing radiohead live, came to an end as a curtain fell revealing 10 screens in varying keystone formations. These provided a visually stunning backdrop with live projections of band members. Playing a mix of material from all but their earliest album, radiohead displayed their musical diversity moving seamlessly between guitars, keys, percussion and banks of sequencers highlighting their musical genius. New material was well received, ranging from anthemic melancholy to injections of a guitar heavy vitriolic objurgate. As Thom dances, you realise that this isn’t just music to make you feel miserable, but contains a hope within.

Also I must let you know that siobhan has updated her blog about her time in Kenya.

Update - I have got some photos from the radiohead gig from v and have uploaded some of them to flickr.

World Cup

The tickets have arrived, and i've completed the itinery for our stay in germany. I'm really looking forward to it, especially the opportunity to see a live match, even though it is tunisia vs saudi arabia. At least the stadium will be magnificent!

Talking of the world cup, sven certainly pulled a huge surprise by including Theo Walcott. It is certainly strange to include such an inexperienced youngster, however highly rated he may be. I don't think he's even played in the premiership yet. I guess proven strikers like Marcus Bent and Defoe must be very annoyed with the choice. I think one of the reasons he is chosen is that it will cause such a media furore, in fact just look at increase in blog references. This has taken the interest away from rooney, allowing him some more space for recovery. Also, any potential opposition will have almost no information on the teenager, and will possibly cause them some tactical worries.

Posts that contain Theo Walcott per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Second best

Was dropped off tonight near cricket inn road and i walked in to town where I met v. She had brought my trainers, which was great, these new shoes I have for work/up coming wedding, need walking in and they were really hurting my feet. We then trundled over to the town hall where a great throng of people had gathered to wave at the jubilant sheffield united team. Because there were already so many people there it would be impossible to make a local tv appearance of anything more substantial than being a mere pixel. However we waited for the open top bus to arrive whilst being deafened by kids blowing these air horn things. Things that amused me about the occasion were the groups of people around the town hall selling all manner of shef utd related 'goods' from celebratory t-shirts to the more bizarre and poorly selling red and white furry snake things on a stick. They looked rubbish! Also there were people selling balloons shaped like the premiership trophy, let's put this in perspective for a moment, chelsea are the premiership champions, shef utd have merely been promoted to that division. The other thing that amused me about the event was the team holding aloft the tiny silver plate that marked their runners-up acheivement in the championship. Took the bus up to crookes and picked up my car, it works again - yay!

The car is fixed

Had to walk up to the garage yesterday and inform them that my car was broke and could they please fix it, then had to work out which construction site I could get to easiest from a train station. What a pain. Got the train again this morning, but am now informed that the car is fixed. Hooray. Just in time, as tomorrow I am working as a poll clerk for the local elections, and without a car the journey to the polling station at such an early hour would've been quite a chore. The annoying thing is that the money i'll earn as a poll clark, which I was aiming to put towards my israel trip, will now be syphoned straight into car repairs. Boooo.

Later today I'm going to attempt to become a tv star again by watching the sheffield utd promotion winning team parading around sheffield city centre. Local news star here I come!