The9

As yet I haven't managed to decode the logic behind the sometimes incredible uses of "there" "your" "to" and "are", nor the random application of apostrophes to words. I think the problem is that there is no logic involved, though I don't doubt some use those versions everywhere, and the serendipity that they're probably right more often than not is good enough for them. It's a good job I know you know how to spell "miscellaneous" as well.

I already know what to do for both, and I don't need to be told repeatedly once I've got it - but the occasional reminder doesn't hurt, and I put up with the repetition because the airlines have no way of knowing who's been before and who hasn't. As far as cross-channel ferries go, I'm checking out where the lifeboats are first and then heading for the bar, even though I'm pretty sure if I ever need them the answer is "half of them are already in the water still attached to the ship", just like I'm not entirely convinced the brace position isn't just designed to kill you outright and preserve dental records. Snopes anyone ?

All good points well made, encompassing the broad spectrum of xenophobia, yob behaviour, cultural ignorance and tactical and general idiocy that encompasses TBBM (the bloke behind me) at football. Everyone's got one. Except the board bashers, there's no-one behind them so they don't even have the self-awareness from laughing at TBBM.

Apostrophe noted, and there's another grammatical argument regarding an "s" after " s' " right there. I don't, and regard it as a debate about style.

Yeah, when you look at the geography of it, would Elorduy have gone to London to buy kit then made his way up to Sunderland to get a ship to Bilbao ? Seems a lot less likely than departing from Southampton, which is much nearer London AND more convenient for Bilbao. I'm no expert on 1909 passenger shipping routes or maritime history though.

I read up a few things on this when we played them in the summer, and I've seen variations on Sunderland/Southampton as the docks where Elorduy was waiting AND variations on whether Athletic Club (Bilbao) or Atletico (Madrid) got it first, and also one article which claimed Atletico Madrid were a junior club offshoot of Athletic Bilbao, which seems somewhat unlikely given the geography and social history of the areas, if not the club names. The only consistencies across the stories are Juan Elorduy wanting Blackburn kits (their previous colours) and failing, so getting some red and white stripes from somewhere instead, and then giving them to at least one of the current La Liga clubs. But definitely not Gijon, as they already had those colours. I'm still hung up on Charles Miller's South American tour and the similarities between the Saints sash kit and Peru's kit, tbh.

You know perfectly well that's only a tiny fraction of the utter drivel I could post. Ten photos per post, PAH !

I think any "personal touch" benefits from that email are rapidly diminished by the unprofessional, error-laden email itself, which conveys a terrible image of the club. Also, now we've established that there's no seating plan, no table, etc. to be produced (silver and upwards), it's surely sufficient to explain that there are security aspects to having people inside the office area (as opposed to the pitch-side "bowl") and the club would like to confirm their identity in advance to save inconvenience on the day. Basically, it's "your name's not down you're not coming in" for the office building, which clearly needs to be worded by a communications professional, not a miscellaneous email monkey : "your names not down your not cumin inn". I don't understand the attempt to make out the club thinks the fans in the seating areas somehow lesser beings, because there is no need for them to be individually identified as they're not entering the club's administrative area.

I think this thread needs more mentions of them getting their kit from us. Amazingly, the Bilbao Wikipedia page seems to have changed the origin of their shirt in the past 3 days from Saints to Sunderland (again). That Juan Elorduy has a lot to answer for. Athletic's website has nothing about the kit story, just a bunch of stuff about English influences in it's formation : http://www.athletic-club.net/web/main.asp?a=2&b=3&c=0&d=0&idi=2

Makes her feel a little fuzzi inside ?

Can you imagine the health and safety on that one ? "We want a banner". "No". Hilarious.

Minty's all about the what not. It's also good to see there's always an angle regarding how much work people do in their lives. Or not, as in my case this second.

But I bet he was REALLY TALL as a 10-year old.

I like that you felt the need to put "working life" knowing full well that if you didn't I'd be all over your pre-working years like Hannah with the shop's Fairtrade chocolate. See kpturner, THAT'S ("that is") an in-joke. A mildly unfair one at that, too.

You don't think "can you clarify "that's"" was amusing or ironic ? You think Michelle genuinely doesn't know the meaning of the word "that's" and was attempting to legitimately ask me to clarify it, rather than drawing attention to the fact I'd used apostrophes without clarification in the clarification of the apostrophes ? ... Oh wait, am I whooshing now ? This is so confusing. No, I've come full circle by addressing it and now it's irony or at least self-aware parody again. The only way I could improve this is by putting a superfluous apostrophe in the word apostrophe's. ... or is it ?

He's usually glowing (on the OS) about people he's about to drop. I think he does it to keep their confidence up, has no-one else noticed this yet ?

"Athletic". So named for their English heritage. But interesting.

She's not, she's the Michelle that the hospitality I went to last weekend was for, somewhat bizarrely. PS "whoosh" ?

Yeah, that bit where they (nearly?) set the thing alight accidentally looked like a bunch of laughs. Pretty bloody pointless, though I admire the planning that went into it.

I refrained from clarifying both "that's" and "it's" as I didn't want to interrupt the interruption. Call it artistic license. Or licence, if you think there is an actual licence somewhere and that it is a noun. I am assuming that Mr Mornington Crescent has tipped you off to read this ?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they got it from Umbro. Coincidentally I'm sure (even though Umbro have been big on tradition and finding tenuous reasons for elements of kit design recently), the shirt is identical to Saints with different coloured arms and cuffs - and manufacturer logo, sponsors, and badge, pedants. I actually like ours better, even though I regard us as more red and white than white and red. Their green away kit absolutely rocks though and I was mildly perturbed they didn't wear it at St Mary's.

Interesting, we just did what I thought was "Bronze" for the Barnsley game, although I didn't book it. We had a two course buffet meal, paid bar (very few queues and they did table service and ordering in advance for half- and full-time) and we got a programme, team sheets and free water, tea and coffee. We sat out in the top half of the Itchen. Just text my mate who has replied far too quickly for my liking, turns out it was Silver on a special rate. So that's what you're missing, and there's no reason for me to have posted this now.

I think once you have been told ONCE whether the exit is behind or in front of you, that there's an inflatable life jacket under your seat, the straps tighten like this, you blow the tube to top-up, it comes with a whistle, you should remove high-heeled shoes before going down the slide, which turns into a life raft in the event of a water landing that oxygen masks will drop down and you should fit yours before assisting anyone else what the brace position is on the card in the back of the seat in front of you and that the lights on the floor show you where the exit is in an emergency (that's all from memory), then you don't REALLY need to pay much attention to people going through the almost exact same routine every time. I still pay attention because I'm the kind of anally-retentive pedant who wants to know if they've changed something, but from a realistic perspective, the chances of a scenario occurring where you have the remotest chance of doing most of those things or surviving should they ever be relevant are so remote that it really doesn't matter. It's not a waste of time, but it's a pretty unlikely set of events that makes it useful. I don't get a safety drill every time I cross a road or drive, and that's WAY more likely to kill me than a plane crash. Feel like I've jinxed myself now, great.

Scanned back through the thread looking for his responses, must have missed it. EDIT : Oh yeah, he does say "and your grammar" in the bit which is in italics but shouldn't be. I'm not getting into the spelling/grammar thing (EDIT : oh yes I am!) - if I spell the phrase "I would like to eat some cheese" by using the words "You're crap and you smell of fish" I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the grammar, but I have used pretty much all of the wrong letters nevertheless, and the meaning is completely unintelligible as a result of using the wrong letters, not due to the sentence construction.

This thread is about banners, not songs anyway, there are already two other threads about songs floating around - one for tunes on the tannoy before kick off, the other for actual songs to sing.