Gutting

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

;)

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

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.