sandwichsaint

Probably not my 'favourite' Xmas song but it's up there in the top-5, check out Clarence's vocal and sax, gone but not forgotten.

Every MOD clip this weekend will feature a row of Santa's, the tears of a face-painted clown and a tinsel wig or six. Frankly I'm thankful for these people, they save me from going to the bother and expense of dressing like a *****.

We are going to Samoens in late March (satellite village for Flaine/Grand Massif). Third time we've been so we must like it. We are a mixed ability, mixed age party of about 12-14. Ticks all our boxes, genuine 'village' location, very authentic, rather than a purpose-built high altitude village. Snow sure, lifts generally pretty good, a few slower chairs but generally v efficient modern chairs and minimal queues, at least at that time of year. Literally miles of skiing, very good beginers areas, and the rest is mainly loaded to intermediates and 'good intermediates' rather than full on blacks and off piste, though there is plenty of that as well. Not one for the 18-30 crowd, nor the dedicated apres-skiier but for families it's absolutely perfect, plenty of restaurants and bars and all in a compact village lay out. Also done Deux Alpes, an excellent beginners resort, higher up the skiing is a bit 'samey' but perfectly acceptable; it's also renowned for it's off piste if that is your thing. Big cable cars are very good and shift a lot of people out of the resort quite quickly, lifts elsewhere are pretty basic in places. The resort and the apres is outstanding, definitely one for the 18-30 crowd! Done Chatel twice, both at Xmas and didn't really enjoy the best of conditions either time, links were shut once and we had to drive round to Morzine, massive queues up from the Morzine side in the mornings. Avoriaz pretty good but one of the busiest resorts we have done, queues and cowboys in abundance. Skied Andorra a few times with school parties, does what it says on the tin, cheap and cheerful and ideal for beginners. Surprised no mentions for Alpe D'Huez? We stayed in the satellite of Vaujany, 2 minute walk, no queues and two big cable car rides from there to well over 2000m. Almost unlimited skiing, all abilities well catered for, lots of blue, lots of proper long reds and full-on blacks. Very snow sure, very sunny, very few queues and generally good lift system . Party types are well-catered for in Alpe D'Huez itself but we loved Vaujaney, very small and very laid-back. We've tended to stay away from the 'bigger' (more expensive!) resorts - I don't feel I am, but am I missing something?

LOL at this ... the 'home' end will be 80% full at best. (I know it's segregation etc but in an MLG sort of way, shouldn't their away allocation equal 10%?)

Don Bradman, golf ball, random.

Great news, remind where I can tune into their radio station?

Bit abstract for a 10 year-old?

Mackams 3 Cottagers 0 Thugs 0 Arsene's boys 3 Villa 3 I think we'll get 9 points, we might have to swap an Arsenal or a Villa for a Fulham or a Stoke but we can definitely win 3 of these 5 games. Much improved over the last few games, back 4 now looks like a unit, conceded 4 in last 6, still creating plenty of chances. We'll be relatively fresh for the Xmas slog-fest. Why not?

You could do it with money. Work around a pound being 'one', the pennies are hundreths (100 x 1p =£1) 1p = 1%, 10p+10% etc.. Work around this to get the idea 50p = 50% 50p add 50p =£1 (50p is half of a pound, a half is one part out of 2, written as 1/2, 50p and 50p = a whole one, 1/2 add 1/2 equals 2/2 etc. The equalvalencies are prob not that important at this stage, more important to understand decimals/fractions/percentages as three seperate entities - once child has an understanding of all three the links/conversions will be fairly self explanatory.

We are doing the 'Kentish Killer' in Feb, only the short version (40 miles) but looks pretty lumpy. http://kentishkiller.ning.com/ 1000 places and all sold out. Also doing the big London 'Nightrider' event in June - 100km round and through central London at night, starting from Crystal Palace at 23.30. Looks really good http://www.nightrider.org.uk/ . There are about 20 of us from work entered and we are riding for children's diabetes research.

Awesome. Geraint Thomas to win a stage?

Yep, what we're really saying is that somebody needs to look at all the regular starters in the top 5 leages in Europe and work out where they spent their time between the ages of 12-18, one point per year, and a bonus 3 points if they played for the majority developer's first team in a comp match before the age of 18. When somebody has run that one we'll be able to see that Saints will probably move up the table a little bit further and be in the top half dozen producer clubs in the country, and in top 20-ish in Europe. Bale, Walcott, Chamberlaine, Shaw, JWP; Saints academy, the gift that keeps on giving! Nice.

and Norwich too. I'm surprised his %ges are as high as they are. That's not a criticism, his all-round play has been excellent and he is obviously a key player for us. But I would imagine the chances that he's had he must be disappointed to be on 6 at this stage, we have played a lot of attacking football and created a lot of chances (we haven't had many penalties either! 1?), as long as somebody scores it doesn't really matter but it wouldn't take much for him to go on a bit of a run and he could still get to 16-20 for the season.

Forget it, if Boruc was going to play, he would have played today.

Seems to be a few that are damning Saints with faint praise today? I thought we were excellent, not withstanding the cr8p officials and the cr8p opposition we won with room to spare ... I bet on 3-0 and I feel cheated! Excellent performances all around the pitch, Clyne and Shaw really are a perfect pair and Fonte and Yos are starting to get it together, from the shambles of the early season we are now starting to build a decent back 4 - the real test(s) are yet to come but in a high-scoring season conceding 4 goals in our last 6 games is excellent going. That'll be the last 6 games where we have won 3, drawn 2 and lost 1, 11 points from 6 games, solid mid-table form. Cork excellent again, Punch now really looking like he belongs, he's clearly worked hard on his fitness and offers much more to the team than he used to. Good to see KD back and taking time out to help Yoshi. JRod's best performance in a Saints shirt, did the squad-job to perfection today - came in when he was needed, looked fit and alert, DAJFU and he will know he goes back to the bench when everybody is fit. MOM for me was RL, awesome today in the link roll, worked the whole width of the pitch and constantly provided the outlet while defending from the front. I'm surprised more people don't comment on RL's defensive qualities, today (and Norwich and Newcastle) absolutely excellent in our own box both in the air and on the ground. Terrific team performance, you get the same number of points for beating Reading as you do anybody else, job done, in entertaining style, same again v Sunderland please!

OK! 'clambered to my feet' would be more accurrate but I was one of the first up and he definitely did get a mini standing ovation, and slightly more clapping from the sedentary position. That's how good the football was, we used to sit down and watch it.

I instinctively blame the transfer committee.

I see we're still on the 70's and 80's celebrities/groupies spectrum. We're probably going to get onto the children's homes, politicians, police, judges and well-connected people's spectrum sometime next week (or perhaps not?)

Nice work. How good was Bowie at this time? I've sort of grown away from him over the intervening 40 years but he's still 'wow' when you see something like this.

Would never have got Cork. Leon Best.

Full house: Adams, Dowie, Reid it is. Players that have played for both? I'll go for the obvious, Williams and Telfer.

Home to Forest on a grey, grey day when we were just about at the peak of our slump, the year we went down from the champ (guess it would have been under the Dutch duo). Midway through the second half, totally featureless drab 0-0, Forest player receives the ball about 35 yards from goal and without looking up or breaking stride the Forest player first times it in a perfect parobola, over KD who was by no means out of position, and into the Northam net, the ball bouncing perfectly between the goal line and the back of the net. Cue me leaping to my feet and applauding widely, looking round to see maybe a third of the supporters in the Northam/Kingsland corner doing the same! Just so out-of-keeping with anything we had seen before, either in that game or any the preceeding games. Just a complete one-off, a special 'I was there' moment, I can't remember who the scorer was but we have discussed this goal on here before. I don't make a habit of this sort of thing but I would quite happily do it again if the situation arose!

Sorry, slightly ambiguous question, which 3 ex-Saints PLAYERS have managed Cov (Strachan didn't play for Saints).

Songs from my yoof? Don't know how to post 'em up (showing my age there) but if anybody's got any of these: Age 10-12 = Slade, Sweet, Bowie, Roxy Music, Elton John (yikes!), T Rex Early secondary school = Pink Floyd, Bowie, dabbled in Genesis, Jethro Tull (do they have a local connection? they were massive at my school, Hamble, without any chart connection). Start to add in Cockney Rebel, Thin Lizzy, Bob Marley, Springsteen Takes you to the end of my yoof: Pistols, Clash, Buzzcocks, Jam, Dr Feelgood, Ian Dury, SLF, Ramones. Post 'em up, kids of today, don't know they're born etc.

My fave record, played at SMS pre-match a least twice in the League 1 years. They wouldn't alllow anything like this anywhere near the Barclays Premier League.