Yesterday I spent a freezing cold afternoon watching Bitton AFC play Welton Rovers in the Western League. It was proper amateur stuff and, with no exaggeration, made Bath City look like Barcelona.

There can’t have been more than 100 fans in the ground, while the whole of Bitton town appeared to be in the clubhouse.

It was my first visit to The Recreation Ground (in no way to be confused with Bath Rec). My first impression of the pitch was amazement of the slope. If it snowned, you could go sledging – it was that steep.

The game was poor and I am unsure whether this was just a bad match or just the norm for Western League. Welton scored the only goal of the game, midway through the second half. There wasn’t even a corner until late in the game.

The Welton keeper was unable to take goal kicks (literally), and had to get an outfield player to do the honours. He was almost as useless with his hands and nearly humiliated himself by struggling to catch a simple ball from his own teammate.

Still, Bitton failed to even test the goalie over the whole 90 minutes, which annoyed the locals; particularly one elderly fan who summed up the keeper as "he can’t catch and he can’t even kick".

An interesting day, but I won’t be rushing back anytime soon.

I won’t bore everyone too much with my Crimbo stories, so don’t worry.

My sister, inspired by Nigella Lawson, decided she wanted to take charge of the Christmas dinner this year. Her being a newbie to the kitchen, and me not being a fan of turkey, I was very surprised and impressed with the results. It was certainly better than the food at the work Christmas party.

Unfortunately, I will be unable to return the favour next year. I am no Gordon Ramsey. I’m not even a Jamie Oliver. I am a RUBBISH cook, and until Bird’s Eye start making microwave Christmas meals, I am staying out of the kitchen.

The afternoon was spent on the Wii and terrorising the Issy the cat. Somebody bought her a pair of novelty antlers. It was very difficult getting her to keep still so we could attach the gift to her head, but after the threat of using staples was issued, she agreed to wear them and no person or animal was hurt. I think she was so full of turkey and tired, that she just agreed in order to get some peace and quiet.

There was no way she was going to wear them

In the end, she just gave in

As usual, Christmas telly was rubbish. I was forced to endure EastEnders. What a horrible programme. The Royle Family was brilliant and the only decent thing on TV.

Boxing Day, I went to Twerton Park to receive my pressie from Bath City – a 2-0 win over Dorchester. It was bitterly cold. I nearly got frostbite on my toes and fingers and even contemplated calling mountain rescue to save me from the Arctic conditions. Never mind, I’m off to Bitton today to watch another game of non-league football – and yes, it is just as cold outside!

dear santa bates,

all i want for christmas is blackpool’s manager, simon grayson in charge of leeds. here is a story i found about him.

i don’t want adie boothroyd. i don’t want gus poyet. if you get mr grayson, i will be a very, very happy little boy.

i know blackpool don’t want mr grayson to go, but i want him and will be very, very sad and almost certainly throw a major tantrum if we don’t get him.

if you buy mr grayson for leeds, he can get us into the premiership, win us the champions league and that world cup thing manchester united won yesterday.

i would also like a new stadium, cristiano ronaldo, lionel messi and fernando torres, but i know they may not all fit on your sleigh.

i will leave you some mince pies under the chimney as well as some carrots for michael ricketts the donkey

thank you very much

sean

Not too sure what to think of this one…

He’s only lost the last 5 games after a good start to the season. As an ex-Leeds player, I think he deserves a little more respect if I’m honest. Well, if Ken Bates is your boss, what do you expect? Something had to be changed though.

I’ll judge whether it’s a good decision when I find out who the new manager is and how he does. Ideally Billy Davies or Ian Holloway will get the job, but I hear Gus Poyet already has his name on Gary’s desk.

I think the players need to take more responsibility. No doubt, when Leeds get a new manager, they will go on and win a handful of games. It’s the same with Harry Redknapp at Spurs and Sam Allardyce at Blackburn. No one man can make such a change in a short space of time. These over-paid pre-madonnas need to look at themselves. They won’t. Nothing will change and things will get worse before they get better.

For the first Saturday in a few months, I didn’t go to football. Instead I spent the afternoon in my flat with Jeff Stelling.

The man’s a legend, and on days like these, where the weather is cold and your team is being beat in a London ghetto, it’s not a surprise why there are so many armchair fans.

While at work today, I had the task of collecting material for my annual appraisal. The idea behind these is to make sure you are doing your job properly and not spending your days messing about playing solitaire (and to identify further development needs etc etc…)

I now have a portfolio crammed full of stuff, which proves I do a little bit more than simply feeding the hamsters who power the network servers by running in their wheels.

Last year, the cover sheet for my folder looked like this

This time, I am under struck instructions NOT to include a cover sheet again.
Guess I won’t be using this then…

OK, due to demand from some colleagues, here’s a review of the work Christmas party last Friday (the food side of things, anyway)…

I won’t name the place we went to for fear of embarrassing them. I have been there a few times before and the food is normally very good.

The Christmas dinner was done as a carvery. We would all queue up, like we were collecting school dinners to get our meal. Normally this would be fine, but school dinners cost £1. This meal was almost £25…

I wasn’t too impressed with the food. I was only given one sausage and three slices of turkey. The vegetables tasted like they were from a tin. For £25, I expect my peas and carrots to be hand grown by Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, not hand delivered by Dwayne at Radco. And I only got one sausage.

My stuffing was more like dog food, the turkey dry (although that’s probably normal) and I was only given one sausage (sorry, did I mention that already?)

The starter (tomato soup) was very nice; although as it was so spicy, it was more like a curry which has been put in a blender. Chris, who is yet to sample an Indian more spicy than Chicken Korma, struggled to finish his.

After the main course, I had ice cream. Nothing special, but to be fair, I could have gone for more exotic choices. Ice cream is ice cream, and while you can buy it in Somerfield, it made me happy.

Despite all this, a lot of people were pleased with their meal and we all had a good night. I suppose I’m just a miserable bastard who doesn’t really like Christmas dinner at the best of times. Maybe next year I’ll have curry, pizza or just stick this in the microwave…

I thought I would do a quick blog, in case you were worried I was trapped in the coach in the middle of a flooded Devon field…

My prediction for a City win was wrong, so the less said about that the better. I still had a good day out in Torquay – not all the locals are like Basil Fawlty.

I solved my Saturday night dilemma too. Simon came round and we watched the Barca-Real Madrid game while drinking Sheppy’s cider.

I was also able to find out all about X Factor, thanks to Claire sending me live updates. I was surprised Owen/Eoghan/Eggnog got booted out first and disappointed that the annoying Alexandra woman won. Never mind… Geraldine McQueen for Christmas No.1!

Sunday wasn’t as fun. The afternoon was spent in Asda. It is just under 2 weeks until Christmas Day, but it may as well have been Christmas Eve. The shop was absolutely packed and full of shoppers desperately grabbing everything they could from the shelves. Have I missed something on the news? Is a deadly hurricane heading towards the West Country? I see no other reason for such panic.

Considering I’m travelling from Bath to Torquay in a minute, this isn’t great news.

“Mr Evans urged motorists to travel only if the trip was absolutely necessary.”

It’s the FA Trophy 1st Round – of course it’s necessary!

In the early hours of Saturday morning (well, about 10am – still far too early for a weekend), I leave the warmth my flat to head to the cold suburbs of Twerton, where I will catch a coach to Devon to watch Bath City play Torquay United in the FA Trophy.

Torquay are in a higher league to Bath, but City have been on a recent run of decent results. Maybe it is the start of madness, but I just have this feeling that we are going to win. Call it a crazy hunch… whatever.

If we lose, this blog is forgotten about and my false prediction will never be mentioned again. If we win, I will be acknowledged as not only a dedicated Bath City fan, who has the upmost faith in his team, but as a pure psychic.

Come on City!