Amy Williams gold medal skeleton bob 2010

AMY Williams gold medal skeleton bob 2010 edit
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Well that was exciting!
Sport is sometimes just amazing

Ashes to Ashes

Ashes Win.
Well blimey and no mistake England won the Ashes. Well done everyone. Bad luck Ozzies. there's always next time.

Ronald NO!

690 things to do with 80 Million pounds.

I know life doesn’t work like this but you know for once couldn’t 10% of this huge sum go to those who really need it rather than to some anonymous middle man.

Turn,Turn,Turn.

pickup closeup
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Poetry of Lists
Monaco GP:
Saint Devote
Beau Rivage
Massenet
Casino
Mirabeau Haute
Grand Hotel
Mirabeau Bas
Portier
Tunnel
Nouvelle Chicane
Tabac
Louis Chiron
Pisicine
Rascasse
Anthony Noges

"Rain not tears"

Lewis Hamilton World F1 Champion

Well that was exciting. well done Lewis. Don't leave it to the last corner next time!!!

By far the greatest team the world has ever seen

Charlton 1-3 Barnsley.

That's all you really need to know. How else would you rather spend the afternoon .

But no we had a pint, a pie, sung our version of the red flag, abused W*dn*esday, chanted the praises of our wonderfully multicultural team and won for the first time in a while.

The mighty Tykes did cause us some turmoil as they scored in 3 or 4th minute and as any fan of a lower league side will know this isn't always a sources of joy, as it's impossible for Barnsley to defend a 1 goal lead for 85 minutes thankfully they banged in 2 more and apart from a wobble when the Robins got one back we controlled the goal playing not bad football. Oh and the pies were good!

Football questions:

Why apart from at village fetes are football matches the only public occasion where they tell you the attendances?

Why do I need to know this?

Why did Charlton make their ball boys walk out into the centre circle and stand in a circle in the pouring rain while the pa played that pompous music from the Champions leagues?

It was really risible and pointless.

UPDATE: GRRRRRRRRRRRR! I've just read the Observers "coverage" of thematch now I know football fans have thin skins but would it kill them to cover Barnsley fairly; as according to the un-observant the story of the match wasn't that we walloped Charlton the story is that robins lost, according to the Guardian group no team other than Moan united outside London are allowed to win. It would be really nice to have the paper I read actually just say that my team were any good. People slag off the tabloids but at least they cover every match as if fans of both teams might be reading.

In the red...

Good or Bad:
I can't decided if it's a bad thing that Manu U have been bailed out by George Bush? (by propping up their sponsors)
or
A good thing that Malaysia's favourite footy team have introduced socialism to America?
Now who do HBOS sponsor......

News today

Kevin keegan & Man City

He’s not the messiah he’s a very angry boy.

Man City:Let’s get this right sold by a corrupt former PM to a hereditary rulers of a country who are squandering their wealth on random money making schemes rather than investing in their people (you know education, hospitals etc). Football fans just don’t care who pays as longs as they have pretty baubles on the pitch to ogle at







Homes not house prices:

In all the wittering about house prices lately in the hours of discussion and talk the only time the quality of where people live has been raised was in a discussion on conditions in prison!

The only thing that matters isn’t the size and shape of homes, or the design of the space around them, their closeness to shops, or having good pubs or interesting local ruins, or large slightly scary trees, or strips of concrete that look like crocodiles under the bridge in the park, or seeing Simon Pegg in the street, or the rubbish lock on the bin store door, or broken stairwell lights, or not having enough parking, or even god forbid how happy your home makes you feel, none of these criteria where discussed the only thing that matters is how much it costs to buy.

Oh and I needn’t mention that poor deluded scum like me who rent places didn’t get a mention because we never do except when “buy to let” landlords and ladies are whinging about gambling away their money.



Half Baked Alaskan (yeah I know it's not a new one)
This American women who might be vice president she is Karen from Will & Grace right not only does she look like her and have that slinky hipped goodtime girl attitude her cv reads like the titbits of K’s past:
ex beauty queen,
mother of 5,
exotic husband,
mixed up in dodgy oil companies,
abusing her power to get her brother in law sacked,
woke up one morning president!

All she needs now is a deluded camp sidekick and a pill popping habit and the weeks not over yet.

Also I like the way she was picked I think John McCain thought he was ordering a sandwich so little time seems to have gone into the project “Alaskan you say that sounds good and I can have the low fat mayo and a pickle”.

The running, jumping and standing still show

Olympics

A little bit of sport isn’t a bad thing I could do with out the following though:


After someone has been training everyday since 1996 and raced 10’s of miles on her bike in the rain expecting them to say anything more “ I’ve won, ‘kin’ hell I’ve won” is stupid, annoying and totally unenlightening stop it now.

Bland glib Olympic sponsors advert:
Choice ones this time: one for a fancy watch were a little Chinese girl gets lifted up to see into the stadium by her grand dad, I have suspicions in realty some friendly police would arrest them and put them under house arrest at best.

Next is one for a phone, the creatives at the agency having all the sports in the world to choose from decided that the funkiest exciting totally cool thing ever ever is for some poxy DJ in 80’d leather jacket to mix up a funky tune from the sounds of squeaky trainers, cue the crowd goes wild.

Also bugger Damon “I don’t make cheese or want to be MP I’m the other no not him with funny voice you know the singer” Albarn and Tank girl boy why isn’t this the theme tune for every Olympics?

Come on you er er Spanish...

May be this time:
I'm not a big one for changing allegiences but the European Chamionship are on and so more in a spirit of hope over exepriences than anything else, I'm going with the Spainsh. Seeing as I've just won 0p on the Derby it's probably not worth following . Internationally Spain flatter to decieve but you never know.

We are getting the opening ceremony now which as usual is a waste of time, the football ones are always crap. The end of the champions league was just pointless the winning team drenched in a blizzard of red confetti a sort of visual admission that the sponsors never really get football.
What is this nonsense dancing fridge boxes! just start the game.....

Barnsley 0 Cardif 1

What can you say they weren't that good in fact they had only 2-3 shots on target, through the first half we were all over them. In the end we were short of a decent striker and perhaps a couple of ounces of luck. But it wasn't to be. It was fun though and those 180 mins against Liverpool and Chelsea will last in this Tyke's heart for along while yet.

It is only football but my what glories have we seen.

"After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to football"

Albert Camus

SEEEEAA POOOWWWWWEER

This marvellous graphic was created by my Bro S, who’s now officially the best drawer in our family (probably) look he’s combined 2 of my favourite things British Sea Power and the mighty Barnsley! Who by the way will have Cardiff on Sunday!
COME ON YOU TYKES!

Classy peddlers, wild boars and hard men

What we learned from tonight’s telly:
Going for Gold

Rebecca Romero won a world cycling gold medal by being truly amazing, one of the most poised and determined performance I’ve seen in while. She could well win a medal at the Olympics and if she does it will go with her silver (Friday update she actually got a Gold which makes her achievement truly amazing) for rowing from the last Olympics, which as you can see is pretty remarkable. She even managed to answer the usual gormless questions after the race.

Q. How did you cope with the pressures in the run up to the race?

A. she should have given "oh give us a break I’ve just pedalled my arse off and I'm bloody having problems breathing, wasn’t winning good enough for you, you blonde tosser".

Top stuff Rebecca.


It's all Yellow
Over on Channel 4: We had a Cook’s tour of Spain with Thommi Miers; winner of Master Chef a years or so ago. I didn’t get into her round Britain tour last year but this series is much better, it’s more straightforward. She still has her bit of rough Guy something following her around, his only job seems to be to make fires and dispatch the odd animal. I have feeling unless they are stepping out, Guy may not be in the next series.

The food was great, they were in Castille this week so we got beans, boar and of course Saffron. The saffron harvesting stuff was very good, I don’t mind the old “my new friends José and Maria” shtick it’s the best way to do cooking programmes. Top dishes today were some excellent saffron meatballs and wild boar stew.

I think I’ll pass on the aubergines in honey for breakfast. It is a puzzle Spain is a country with great ham, black pudding, eggs, bread, mushrooms, beans, coffee and oranges but can’t make a decent breakfast!

ps. The Saffron pickers all had incredible yellow fingers; they looked like chain smoking navies.
Next week will be even better as they hit Galicia and the North West, mines a goose barnacle!

Cajones Update:
Just back from the shop and have met the hardest bloke in South London. I was walking back minding my own business, when a guy stumbled past stopped, called me a “c**t” and threw some curls of kebab meat at me and stumbled off.

Now I’m not the world’s greatest fighter (in fact I’ve never had a proper fight as adult) but I wasn’t going to kick off as the bloke in question was only 3ft tall (a person of restricted growth is the modern term) and quite how he’s lived this long acting like that I don’t know, the cheeky get.

Last Night's TV

No Relief in sight....

Started watching Sports relief, but the good causes aside it was rubbish. Top Gear has finally turned into the Chuckle brothers (without the jokes). Simply come dancing is just getting dull, the Parky and Ross talk off was tedious beyond words. One of the main problems was that the sport angle which makes for worthy but dull TV at times. The BBC's idea of a sporting joke is some one in the crowd at sunderland wearing in an afro wig. Sport is rarely shown in the way that fans interact/enjoy it, there's no joy or excitement, obsession, anger, wit, humour, in the presentation no one takes the mick out of stars, it's one big boys club.

I hear good things about football Am (but I've never seen it) but even people as bright as Clair Balding never feel free to bring that extra spark to sports shows. So we get Gary Bland Linneker, Gaby professional but dull Logan. It probably comes down to the fact that the sporty types at school were always a bit dull being able to do "keepy ups" spared them leering to tell a joke or have something interesting to say and so when they get to MOTD it's just more of the same worthy dullness.

Which may be what's wrong with Sports relief, the whole thing lacks the excitement of great sport or joie vivre of great entertainment. It was just dull. Also I've never seen why they have to support charities in Britain as well as developing countries. It always smacks of pandering to the small minded and mean spirited. We are plenty rich enough to fund all the youth work and drugs counseling we need in Britain if we choose to, let this sort of money be spent on those who really need it.

I also watched a documentary about the chieftains on BBC4 which was interesting, I now know all I need to know about them. It was a bit strange mind as it made out that they existed almost in a vacuum, no mention for instance of the Dubliners, Christy Moore etc.

Also the main man Paddy Maloney had one of the those sad comb overs like Bobby Charlton that he started when he was in his 20's and has always kept ; if only he'd just shaved it off then ,he would've looked like a musician in all the pictures not a coach driver.

There were some scenes of the Corrs in the film, who are strikingly attractive women (I know this isn't news but they are striking).

ps the sourness towards sport relief isn't because I had a dentist pulling my face around yesterday afternoon honest, it was just all a bit meh!

Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0

Whilst basking in the glory I did get a bit annoyed about the FA over here.

Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0

Brighten my Northern Sky...
or how I watched the game in the gloom.

Picture the scene a tense match, so tense I had to take a turn round the block during half time to calm down. So when we score I jump up and my can/arm smashes the light into the ceiling breaking bulb and fusing the lights.

Which tripped the whole fuse box, off goes the telly, cue frantic searching for a fuse and my torch etc while trying to get the freeview box to warm up again. Thankfully we had still scored when the telly came back on again, so much for long life bulbs though.

Here's a good instant mash up based on another bunch of stubborn northerners, 300 aside anyone.

BARNSLEY 1 CHELSEA 0 (NIL, NOWT, ZERO, ZILCH)

Barnsley 1 Chelsea 0

Liverpool 1 Barnsley 2

WE WON..... Jimmy Tarbuck your boys took a hell of beating.... football the worse game in world, few things outside your private life can drive you to distraction like football. During the Tykes heroic defeat of d'Reds ,just as our final goal went in the BBC broadband broadcast went down leaving thousands of Tykes scrambling for the Tv remote.

Anyway enjoy this vintage stuff (football programme) I found from the last time we met. All I can remember of the game was that we went on coach to Anfield (on a school night) and my Mum and Dad came which was unheard of . It took us hours in the fog on M62, listening to "Don't you want me baby" .We got to the match late and we held them to draw. They stuffed us on the return to Oakwell but we won this time. You'll notice award winning author Ian Banks use to turn out for Town.

film of the match

News Round up!

Booze Britain: According to one paper today "Britian is being destroyed from within by drunken teenagers" and I thought it was Al-Quaida and single mums.

The Olympics: The Chinese are whingeing that people are making the games political; they always where! For some reason the Olympics is the most political sporting event going, more so than even the World cup. If it wasn't a huge polictical event the Chinese Government wouldn't be spending billions supporting it. It's shameful of us all that so much support is being given to such corrupt totalitarian government.

Consumer update: Tescos et al aren't cheaper because you always buy more than you went for, they are really slow at serving you, horrible places to be and if you don't have a car they couldn't give fig for your custom.

Transport news: Still no improvement to my morning train; overcrowded and stopping randomly (slow) the same goes for every other one in Britain.

maybe, just maybe.....

Blimey!