Use It Or Lose It

Regrettably time is short, so I have to turn down L. 'Use it or lose it' L tells me, which makes me sound like the local telephone box. Later.

Bike. I try my new route again. It's a 1.5km longer but only takes about three minutes more because there's no Asda roundabout, no Raynesway roundabout and no bridge over the A52 but already I'm nostalgic for my old route. the new one’s not exactly pretty, it goes past a lot of factories, the road surface is really grimy, there’s lots of lorries and I had to stop at the railway crossing this morning.

I also used the heart rate monitor again with much more success, now that I know that, like a lot of good things, it works better when wet. 155 maximum, 137 average. Is that good? I've no idea.

No one overtook me today and no women to flash my lycra at but as usual plenty of drongos. I did have fun tailing a chap along the cycle path, he looked a serious cyclist but he’d got a huge saddle bag on one side of his bike, which seemed to make it lean quite alarmingly. Don’t how he managed to keep it all upright in the wind.

It's less fun on the way home because there are not one but two attempts on my life. Firstly coming through Spondon I suddenly spot a drongo on a MTB coming towards me at 90 degrees across the line of traffic. He lurches in front of me, I brake, skid but hold it together and avoid hitting him. He cycles off down the road, as if nothing had happened. Bobble hat, no helmet obviously and no lights either. I assume he also had headphones on but didn’t get chance to check. After I had regained my composure I catch him and overtake him. I think about berating him but decide not to, riding like that; he’ll be flattened before the years out in any case.

Then to cap it all when I’m descending into Risley, head down, battling the wind. I see a flash of yellow and look up just in time to see a runner in a yellow bib coming towards me in the cycle lane, again no lights, we even light our collie when we run. Again I swerve at the last minute and just miss him. Pillock, didn’t he think of getting out of my way, he must have seen my lights. His bib is only good when it’s got car lights to illuminate it.

Get home and have a freaky experience with L. She bites on some seed or something and a horrible blister appears inside her mouth. This takes the edge off my warm down but 'use it or lose it'...

Later, we walk to Beeston and I have four pints at Scottish night, as its St. Andrews Day today.

Odd Morning

It's been an odd morning.

Odd happening number one. L offers to help Son with his paper round but it means he has to get up before (gulp) 7am. He accepts.

Odd happening number two. I shout Daughter to get up and she replies 'Thanks' and not 'Go to hell I'm having another half an hour' or words to that effect.

Odd happening number three. The bus driver gives me change and not in 5p coins, in notes.

They say that mobile phones may cause brain damage. Too late. Looking at the various specimens on the bus this morning with them jammed against their ears, it's already happened. Mobile phone girl is in full flow, recommending to her friend that she get herself a Wonderbra. Then after a pause, and this is major moment in everyone's lives on the bus today because she never pauses, she sheepishly say 'Oh. Didn't realise you always wear one. You look great in it, it really suits you.' Creep.

This week in the post I've had a renewal notice from Camra for our life membership that 'runs out' on 01/01/2008! So I ring them up in a rage, expecting to be told that life no longer means life and just like criminals you are ‘free’ after so many years but apparently no, it's their fault, a computer error.

Squash. So bad were my opponents blisters after his 'wrong shoes' moment last week that he reckons he's been wearing slippers all week, even in the supermarket.

I lose the first nine points without returning a decent ball. I finally get going or perhaps his arm just gets tired after so much serving and we split the rest of the points in that game, which obviously isn't enough to save it for me. Things are much better in the next which I win easily. I lose a close third but then win an epic fourth 16-14. He's not happy about that. The decider is close but I lose out. That does him in and he concedes the next game when I'm 12-5 up, he's never done that before. I assume he's saving himself for the last game which he duly wins. So I lose the match 3-2 and the night 4-3 but I'm pleased with that.

Another ale from the Cottage Brewery in the pub, very nice this week. One and a half pints. Home to L and a glass of red and some 'real' slag. L says I need the red wine to cut through the cholesterol in the Spanish Omelette and chips, healthy chips though.

Lists

I try an experiment today and borrow L's heart rate monitor to see how much effort I'm really putting into my cycling. It’s bloody annoying because I have to keep stopping because it keeps turning itself off. In the end I just give up on. Then a few miles into my ride I glance at it and see that's its working again. This time it stays working. I realise that it needs moisture to make the contacts to my chest and therefore once I got a sweat up it was fine.

One other thing I discover today is the point of 'child on board' stickers. Subject to what I thought, it's nothing to do with people saying 'look at me I've got my leg over and got someone pregnant'. Yeah, big deal. They are actually a warning to cyclists. This is because anyone with a child on board is liable, at any moment and without warning, to take their hands off the wheel to club an errant child, and therefore the vehicle is likely to veer into the curb and crush a cyclist. This I discover as I hop up onto the pavement to avoid a 4x4 full of the little people.

I also try a new route today, a detour via Spondon station, which kind of works but needs a few refinements.

I make it to work, alive, according to the heart rate monitor at least. The only data it gives is a total time, which is irrelevant, and an average, which was 138. It doesn’t store the maximum, which is what I really need, so I might have to mount it on my handlebars so that I can keep my eye on it.

L and Doggo run. Today's altercation on the park is with a cement mixer, they really are out to get him at the moment.

Paul Jewell is unveiled at Pride Park. Which sounds good to me, or it might if we can understand him, as it's a Scotsman out and a Scouser in, so we’ll still need an interpreter. He’s good at promotions, which is the main thing. How good he is at miracles remains to be seen but if he pulls one off he'll be a hero. Just like Billy... err wonder what happened to him. His first team selection will be interesting, Earnshaw anybody...



L says she's rather fond of Paul Jewell. He's on her legendary 'would go on a dinner date with but wouldn't shag' list. Which is quite a long list from what I can gather. This doesn't tally with the proven theory that men and women can't be just friends, so if L's not telling porkies then it'll only happen if PJ's hot for her. Doubt we'll ever find out the answer to that one.

I bike to the pool. Where the girlie in lane one is being far too nice to me, saying 'hello', 'after you' and other pleasantries. I know her game, she's trying to psyche me out. L reckons she probably fancies me. Hmmm. L needn't worry, the girlie's on my 'would swim with but wouldn't shag because she's better at front crawl than me' list.

I skip dog class and take Doggo on a brief run to guides, brief because we're running late. Not that we expect the guides to kick out on time. They don't, fifteen minutes late. Which means fifteen minutes of listening to the mindless gossip of the people waiting to collect their offspring.

Home for curry and a couple of glasses of red wine.

Dare To Be Different

It's very pleasant on the bike this morning, that's despite the fog, the dark, and the fact that I have to battle one of my old foes. He comes hurtling past me, on the wrong side of the road in Stapleford. I let him go because, as I've already discovered with him, he's crap going up hill and true to form I catch him on the hill in Sandiacre. It’s a real struggle to stay behind him, he is crawling so slowly, but I don't intend going past him only for him to whiz back in front again on the flat. In fact after the hill, I sit up and have a drink and let him get well ahead, knowing I can reel him in again on the next hill after Risley. This really worries him and I can see him looking back over his shoulder, looking well confused. Serves him right, he shouldn't be so competitive, he should be chilled out, like me. So I catch him on the next hill but still I don't go past him, I just use him for a bit of pace making until he turns off in Borrowash.

Derby County have had a huge clearout, nine other members of staff have followed Billy Davies out of the door. One of the many gripes about Davies is that he created 'jobs for the boys'; he emptied Preston of staff when he came here. I think Derby have pushed them all out before they got chance to jump ship. Not sure if there's anyone left to take charge on Saturday.

All the talk now is of who will be next. They'll be a queue, because there's good money on offer, whether they'll be anyone good in it is another matter. The self-proclaimed 'Special One' Jose Mourinho has already turned it down, saying 'I ain't that f***ing special'. I imagine he didn't really say that but it amused me. I hear the Pope and God have given similar reasons.

Paul Ince is hot favourite but interestingly Paul Jewell is refusing to rule himself out. I still think we'll be in the queue behind Birmingham for his services, though.

My computer is doing bizarre things this morning, it kept telling me that it couldn’t deliver my emails so I kept resending them but obviously it was lying because L ends up with four identical 'good mornings' from me.

Late afternoon and Alex McLeish quits the Scotland job. The talk is he's going to Birmingham. Hmmm interesting.

I get home and run with Doggo. I fall off the curb and twist my ankle. Unfortunately I can't blame him; he was nowhere near me at the time.

Back home I have a reviving plate of pasta and then we're off gigging. That is if you can class going to the soulless Concert Hall as gigging. We are off to the 30th anniversary of the Human League and the 25th ish anniversary of their classic album Dare.

Support is by a band called OneTwo who I had never heard of, which is surprising as its basically Paul Humphreys of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Claudia Bruecken of Propaganda. Their competent if a little dull set consists of mostly tracks from their album 'Instead', but they also play Orchestral Manoeuvres classic 'Messages', although not as well as the band themselves did it earlier this year and they finish with Propaganda's 'Duel'. They are very well received by the crowd, despite Claudia's appalling dancing.



Another track they played was a cover of 'Club Country' by the Associates. This was done as a tribute to Billy MacKenzie who would have been 50 this year had he not committed suicide in 1997. MacKenzie who was already suffering with depression, overdosed on prescription drugs in his father's garden shed, after the death of his mother.

So to the main event and a huge backdrop of half the original Dare cover, of the three surviving members, covers the stage. Phil Oakey comes on stage, looking more and more like Christopher Walken in manner and dress, each time I see him. They launch straight into Dare, in its entity and in order. The problem is, it's immediately an anticlimax because the first three tracks of the album are well known live favourites anyway so the occasion doesn't really happen until 'Darkness' is played. Now had they thrown in a few pre-Dare rarities first then that would have whipped up the expectation straight away. How about opening with something like 'Girls And Boys' which was the first League Mark 2 single anyway.



'Do or Die' is my favourite track off Dare and I haven't heard them play this since the Hysteria tour in err.. 1985 was it? but tonight it falls a little flat. It doesn't help that they seem to prolong the instrumental bit in the middle and Phil and the girls disappear off stage for no apparent reason.

It’s side two of the vinyl that makes the night. The three tracks that merge together on record, the brief 'Get Carter' (that Phil milks for all its worth), the fantastically haunting 'I Am The Law' and a sensational 'Seconds', with great graphics. For the first time they crank the bass up and you can feel the walls of the auditorium throb. You want them to stop right there, rewind and do all three of them again. Brilliant.

Throughout the crowd are very static (standing but barely dancing) and very quiet, none of which is helped by the staid venue. The bands last three visits to Nottingham have all been to Rock City, so it seems an odd decision to downgrade to the Concert Hall this time. I only saw the last of the Rock City gigs in December 2005 but the atmosphere was fantasic. People's attitudes are different at places like Rock City, tonight you get the impression that people have nipped out to grab a concert in the gap between Coronation Street and their evening cocoa and they'll be really pissed off if they're not back in time for the Ten O'clock News.



'Love Action' and 'Don't You Want Me' round off Dare and then we get a totally instrumental Hard Times, purely so the gang can do a clothing change. Then we have a run through of some of the hits starting with the Lebanon and finishing with 'Fascination' and 'Mirror Man'. Regrettably there are no surprises.

The encore starts with a storming 'Being Boiled' and concludes with the immensely annoying 'Together in Electric Dreams'. Which is not even a Human League track but they always play it.

Oakey's voice was excellent throughout and the band weren't bad but still an awful lot was on tape but the three best tracks of the night were by miles 'I Am The Law', 'Seconds' and 'Being Boiled', unfortuantely non of them feature the girls. Who were their usual dancing, singing slightly off-key, selves with numerous costume changes. Perhaps too late for a career move but time to go solo Phil?

The problem with playing your classic album first, as I discovered with Orchestral Manoeuvres this year, is that whatever you play next is going to be an anti-climax. Also, although I thought it would, playing the album in order doesn't work either because there's no surprise, everyone knows what's coming next. What both bands should have done for a retro-tour like this is play it as if it really was the Dare tour (or the Architecture & Morality Tour) e.g. play what you would have played in 1982 on that original tour. Which in the Leagues case would have meant drawing on stuff from 'Travelogue' and 'Reproduction'. They could possibly get away with a few tracks that were close to that period e.g. 'Fascination', 'Mirror Man' and why do they never play the wonderful 'Love You Too Much'? It just doesn't seem right when you mix in stuff from twenty years later. Just my opinion.



In 2005 they did a greatest hits set, is there any point in doing the same thing every year? Go on surprise us. Just because 'Dare' sold millions doesn't make it a classic album, it's a classic album simply because it is! If you see what I mean. 'Travelogue' is a classic too, now there's a thought...

Go on Phil do it, 'Dare' To Be different, I can see it now...

'A crow and a baby had an affair...'

It Was Fun But Not Very

It took 55 minutes to get to work in the car today, no quicker than by bike and whole lot less fun.

The big news is of course that Billy Davies has parted company with Derby. His departure seems to have less to do with the football side, although obviously that hasn't been very good, and more to do with the fact that the new chairman, Adam Pearson, had had enough of his whinging. He's lucky he's only been here four weeks the rest of us have been listening to it for eighteen months.

I didn't hear it, but the final straw seems to have been the post-match interview that Billy gave on Saturday, when he badmouthed the chairman about the lack of investment after Saturdays game. After which a showdown was inevitable. When they met this morning, I imagine Billy said something like 'Give me £40M to spend on players or I'm off'. Then after Adam Pearson had finished laughing he would have said 'Close the door on your way out'.



So see you then Billy, it was fun but not very. As they say, the only way is up or in this case down and then up again.

Daughter supplies some excellent gossip via L, who she's sworn to strict secrecy in case I 'bloody well blog it' but she tells me anyway. Mothers eh? You just can't trust them.

Well I daren't blog it anyway because if I did Daughter will exact revenge on me, I think she's still mulling over the horse's head idea in her mind. Instead I'm thinking of starting a 'secret' blog on the side for such gems. L's already given me a name for it 'A blog on the dark side'. I like that.

Dog class and it's a fairly easy Grade 4 type course tonight that Doggo has no problems with. So it's a good evening in that respect. We collect L from yoga and head home, where L does a rather spicy chilli.

Bricking It

A slight headache but surprisingly not too bad. I feel a bit rough but it's more of a curry thing I think. I start to get romantic with L but have to abort. Very unlike me.

For the first time for ages we go Orienteering, at Watermead Park in Leicester, home of the Woolly Mammoth. Unfortunately Doggo remembers what it's all about. L does red, I do blue. The Brown looks very tempting, one less control than the blue and 10k in length but I resist. Doggo looks grateful.

It's a very easy course and therefore some fast times are posted. We finish 35th out of 44. Not terribly impressive. We are a massive 23 minutes behind the winner but I imagine that he didn't have to stop to pick up his dog's dump, or have to take a detour because his collie couldn't get over a high gate or have to go hunting for said collie when it refused to push through some overgrown undergrowth. Although to Doggo's credit he was sat there waiting for my return but being the heartless owner I am I pulled him through the undergrowth anyway. Afterwards, we have hot soup and coffee before returning home.

L does roast gammon for Sunday lunch, very nice. Then it's Broadway. This week's film is Brick Lane which is based on a novel by Monica Ali.

After the suicide of her month, Nazneen, a young seventeen-year-old Bangladeshi girl, is sent to England for an arranged marriage to Chanu, a supposedly ‘educated man’. The film then picks up sixteen years later. It is now 2001 and we find Nazneen living in a council flat on Brick Lane. Her existence appears to be miserable, her 'educated' husband is nothing of the sort and means nothing to her, her only joy her children, her only escape is writing to her sister back home.

Her first step on the road to escape from this life is when she starts a job sewing clothes from her flat. This brings her into contact with the westernised Karim, at which point married women's syndrome kicks in and she's on her back almost before she's finished sewing the seams on her first batch of jeans.

Then 9/11 happens and everything changes, Karim changes and surprisingly her husband seems to change too. Originally he appeared to be an immensely dislikeable character but he turns out to be slightly misunderstood and in the end rather likeable. He wants to take the family back to Bangladesh but Nazeen realises that it's time to deal with her life and make her own decisions. He returns alone.



The film has been criticised for ducking the issues on what is a sensitive subject. However despite trying hard not to offend anyone it has still been seen as a controversial film by the Bangladeshi community and has even been met with protests. It's difficult to comment as I have not read the book, so I don't know if the book takes a softer or a harder stance than the film but if you're making the film of the book then you can't really come to conclusions that the book doesn't.

It is though a very enjoyable film, an insight into a life with very little freedom but it's perhaps telling that it didn't provoke much debate from L and I, unlike some of the films we've seen recently.

Once at home, I get to complete what I aborted this morning.

32 units, not bad considering I think I had 15 on Saturday night.

The View From The Patio

A pleasant lie in but we still get up fairly early for us, to go out and stock up on meat from the farm shop and spices from the Indian shop. All life’s necessities.

Daughter drops a late rescheduling of her evening on us. The sleepover tonight is off and has become a party instead, finishing at around 10pm. Bugger. Means our plans for L to meet me after the match in Derby will have to be scrapped so that we can collect her. Daughter informs us she’ll be absolutely fine walking home on her own. Ahemm. As the well-known author and sometime poet Rae Earl would say ‘HELLO?’ Fourteen-year-old girl walks home alone in the crime capital of the World. I don't think so. Mind you Rae would also have said to her Mother, ‘Didn't girls do that sort of thing when you were young?’. Well yes, of course they did but some of them took liberties and turned it into a holiday, in somewhere nice like Margate, for sixteen years, enjoying the patio from the wrong side.

I take Doggo for a ball session on the park and then I get the bus over to the match. Daughter has arranged a lift home from her party, so L will be coming over to join me after all.

According to Sky, Derby have had the lowest number of shots in the Premier League at 99. Now 99 sounds bloody good to me, I certainly can't remember more than a dozen or so. Where do they get these stats from? They must be confusing us hacking the ball out of play for a shot.

In the match, Derby play very defensively but it works well and they look a much better side. Chelsea are a total bore, plenty of passing it around but they don’t really press us. They seem to be waiting for us to make a mistake. Which we duly do after only eighteen minutes and give them the lead. All their England ‘stars’ get booed every time they touch the ball, as apparently is the case all over the country today but they don’t look bothered. If they felt any guilt over Wednesday night they would at least look miserable, they don’t. A lot of the crowd have probably turned up to see Frank Lampard, they needn’t have bothered, he didn’t, just like he didn’t for England.

Second half and Billy must have induced some oomph into the lads because we certainly have more shots than Chelsea. Then Kenny Miller takes a Dean Leacock pass on his chest and coolly lobs the Chelsea keeper only for a linesman's flag to wrongly flag him offside. Then soon after Shevchenko clatters into Giles Barnes from behind, a certain yellow card but the referee waves play on and Lampard, suddenly realising there’s a game on, strides away with the ball and hits the post with a shot, only for Wright-Phillips to tuck home the rebound. Daylight robbery. As Barnes limps off, the referee, seemingly racked with guilt, gives Derby a succession of decisions in their favour but the wrong cannot be righted. Not even when in injury time, Essien who had only been on the pitch for fifteen minutes is dismissed for elbowing Miller in the face. Nice.

I meet L off the bus and we go to the Flowerpot. Not such a good beer selection tonight, L tries a Cider that although 6% isn't that pleasant. We rescue the evening by discovering that if we mix the 4.3% Stout with the 10% Thomas Sykes ale we get a cracking beer, and a dark one at that.

We get the Red Arrow home again; it was early of course and pop for a curry at Savera, which is rather good.

Damn Made The Wrong Choice Again

We're out for a meal tonight, so I decide not to bike in order to get home in enough time to exercise Doggo a little. So I get a bit of a lay in this morning. L starts something and I finish it.

Its sods law that because I'm not on my bike the A52 will be more hell than usual. Luckily I catch the travel on the TV before I leave which tells me that a BMW has reshaped the central reservation somewhere between Stapleford and Nottingham. So I avoid the A52 and go through Ilkeston instead, although the radio now said it has all been cleared, shame they hadn’t told the TV people.

Having gone in the car to try and get back in time to exercise the dog, when I get home he seems content to just play in the garden rather than do a run with me. However his enthusiasm soon turns to total apathy, of course this happens only once it's too late to take him out for a run.

L gets home and tells me to put my cold hands down her front to cool her premenstrual chest. You can see why I'm with her. That's the kind of girl I like.

L gets kitted out in skirt and boots, phoarr and we head over to Derby on the bus. There’s a guy on the bus on his mobile and we are transfixed by his conversation. He seems to be arranging a girl for tonight and seemingly another one to come around to his place in the morning. On top of that he’s also on the phone to his Mum arranging his Sunday lunch. Talk about getting your life sorted.

We do Mexican tonight with some friends. The menu is a little dull but then all Mexican’s are, never really any surprises. I have nachos to start which are done quite differently, certainly not out of a packet. Very good. I opt for chilli for main, predictable but I’m starving and this dish is usually huge. The chilli is very good but comes in a pot which takes up most of the plate and hence it’s a small portion. At the other table they are getting huge sizzling fajitas. Damn made the wrong choice again. The chilli though is very good. I'm still hungry, so need a dessert. Unfortunately the cheesecake is minuscule; they must have had a special knife to cut it that thin. In the end, a good meal, nothing out of the ordinary and not enough of it but that’s just me being a greedy pig! All washed down with two bottles of Rioja Tinto, which was very good. That’s two bottles just between L and me. One is just never enough but two is sometimes a bit excessive. Our friends, who are not big drinkers, have a bottle of white between them, which is an event in itself. They even come on the bus, so that they can go wild.

The Man In The Oversized Shoes

I'm on the pub run, so regrettably I have to take the car in today. The upside is a bit more time in bed, time to indulge.

It's cold, so it would have been a refreshing bike ride. It's so cold in fact that I have to scrape the ice off the car windscreen. The traffic is awful; it's a total pain being in the car. It doesn't actually take that long; I just think I'm becoming more intolerant of it.

Last night's result costs Steve McClaren his job as England manager. No one seems to be giving him any credit for his superb tactics that restricted Croatia to three goals. Billy Davies would understand.

As none of the home nations have qualified there are calls to bring back the Home International Championship, now that would be worth seeing, much better than the European Championships but doubt it'll happen because it makes too much sense.

Cottage pie for lunch, the pub seems to have a bit of a Foxfield thing going on, loads of their beers. The 4% bitter that I have is quite good.

When I get home it's raining, not much but enough for Doggo to refuse to play ball in the garden. I would take him for a walk if he looked keen but he doesn't.

My opponent turns up for squash with two new racquets, a new sports bag, and new shoes. Five years spending in one go; bet he felt faint after that. Turns out his shoes are a bad idea, too big. He makes a right din as he clatters around the court in his oversized shoes. Unfortunately it doesn't hamper his performance as he opens up a 4-0 lead. I pull it back to 4-2 and it would have finished 4-3 had I not upset him by calling one of his shots 'down' before he hit it. This annoys him so much, he pulls back the deficit and wins the final game. Big tactical mistake!

He's on the beer tonight as well, so we have two. Howling Ale from Cottage's Whippet range 4.5%, almost dark.

Get home and L is creased, barely awake. She goes to bed while I have the pasta she has left for me.

The Wrong Trousers

L is almost too tempting this morning and she also appears to be quite lively but I am strong. She's looking lively and that's all before I’ve even put my lycra on. Well not actually my lycra because my fast drying lycra is still, well fast drying, slowly and looking like it will be for the rest of the week. So I put her lycra on instead. Perhaps that's why she's so alert this morning.

It's bleaker than yesterday but I opt for a cold drink instead of a hot one and regret it, in the end I could have done with a drink of hot plastic. It's a bit foggy in Nottingham, so no one notices that I’ve got the ‘wrong trousers’ on but it's pretty much cleared by the time I get to Derby. Still no one notices, so perhaps they suit me.

No one seems to notice my incorrect attire on the way home either, that is until I'm powering up Derby Road, overtaking most of the losers queuing in their cars. Then one of them winds down the car window down and at first I think the female passenger is going to point out that I'm wearing girl's lycra. Although perhaps I have her wrong and she's a fellow cyclist, having a day off, who's going to compliment me on my hill climbing technique. However I'm wrong on both counts. All I get is a blast of music, which would have been nice had the occupants of the car not had such bad taste in music. I think it was that girl who sounds like she's named herself after a venereal disease. Rihanna is it?

I head for the pool, which is quite busy and for once I stay out of the fast lane, away from any psychos out to humiliate me.

There’s a fairly 'big' game tonight, well only big because all the FA Cup replays were last night. Thankfully McClaren leaves out Beckham and surprisingly Robinson too, but everyone agrees it's the correct decision. As for the timing, well his replacement Scott Carson would perhaps have benefited from more friendlies and less watching Robinson from the sidelines because with only eight minutes gone, a Croatian shot bounced just in front of him and Carson does a Robinson and parries the ball into the roof of the net. Perhaps no surprise as he was understudy to him at Leeds as well as at England. He's obviously taught him everything. I kind of suspected it wasn't going to be a good night when I noticed McClaren had pinched Billy Davies's 4-5-1 tactics, right down to the dodgy defence.



Six minutes later it got a whole lot worse as the Croats serenely dribbled the ball around Carson and rolled it into an empty net as the defence embarrassingly appealed for offside. Hilarious, I was very disappointed that I had to leave it and go out but dog training is more important.

Dog training goes incredibly well. Doggo is good if a little blasé. Between runs I check the latest score on my phone. Blimey, I'm surprised to see that England have hauled it back to 2-2. Particularly as Lampard scored the first of them, a penalty, which must have been his first touch of the ball. I am stunned he wasn't replaced at half time.

It turns out though that the devious Croats are just toying with us, they march down the other end of the pitch and score the winner. It was to be expected I suppose. England always scrape through by the skin of their teeth in the last game, so their luck was bound to run out eventually.

What surprised me though was that, after the draw was made, people said it was an easy group and they're still saying it now. Ok it could have be worse but Croatia, Russia, Israel, and England appeared to me to all be very closely matched average quality teams, unless of course you have an inflated view of England's ability. So it was always going to be an exciting four way battle and so it proved. We were wrong on one thing though, Croatia are not as closely matched as we thought, they are miles ahead of the rest of the group.

You would hope this defeat would trigger major changes to the structure of the game in this country but no one is holding their breath.

Get home for Salmon curry and a bit of Bleak.