Whitey Grandad

Use the miles for air tickets. I'm in Bermuda at the moment. Two return tickets for just over 13,000 miles and that includes all the airport charges and taxes.

I'm not whelmed by the thought of Adkins but we are in desperate need of getting this whole sorry affair sorted. If he's the best that we can get then he'll have to do.

Get a room.

I was driving back from Paris to Le Havre with my wife. I turned the radio on to hear that one of the towers had collapsed. Shock and disbelief. I've just realized this evening that it was the day before our wedding anniversary, 12th September. We reach 40 years tomorrow but my thoughts are with all those who never had the chance to live the lives that we have experienced.

The designer of the Vulcan (and the Lancaster), Roy Chadwick, worked for Avro at Hamble and lived at 38 Chessell Avenue, Southampton, from 1922 to 1929. There is a blue plaque on the house. http://www.wingweb.co.uk/biographies/Roy_Chadwick.html The Avro company was founded by Sir Alliott Verdon-Roe. He is buried in the graveyard at St. Andrews Church, Hamble. His son Geoffrey Verdon-Roe founded the Vero companies that used to be dotted around Southampton.

A Vulcan was used as a testbed for the Olympus 593: http://www.2av8.co.uk/pages/xa903/xa903c.htm The Vulcan was powered by four earlier Olympus models: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Olympus

In the early 70s I used to work with a chap who came from Bristol. He told me that in his day there used to be a petrol station just off the end of the runway at Filton. Then one day a Vulcan had to overshoot the runway and applied full power at very low altitude just as he was passing over the station. Apparently everything was blown flat and all the petrol pumps were left dangling on the end of their pipes.

Wouldn't a giant Toblerone be better? You can sometimes get special offers if you buy three.

That's what happens when you change managers. It takes a couple of transfer windows to get the team that the new one wants, and you get left with a heap of rejects that he doesn't want to play.

It may just be me, but most of these names leave me distinctly underwowed.

Bless you.

As we thought. Just where is Staplethorpe exactly?

I can wait.

The danger with all this 'WOW' business is that when we all do find out there is a danger of us all being underwhelmed. This has Ford Edsel written all over it.

Oh, very good.

That was a fairy ring. It's where the fairies gather round in a huddle.

It's difficult to say after just a few minutes playing time, but it's going to take some time before he's a confident, dominating, fully-integrated essential member of the team.

Has she left too ???

I blame the multiball. We've never played well when we're using it.

No worries. My big worry is that we've seen all this before. For once, I really thought that we were on the way up but we appear to have slipped backwards at least three months.

There must be something wrong with me. I agree with all of the above.

I agree with every word you said, and yes, I had the misfortune to be there. I was trying to inject a little feeble humour into a very depressing week. I'm off out of the country for a couple of weeks and by the time I get back it had better be sorted, or else. And for what it's worth, I thought we were worse than you described.

Looked far too tense, lacking confidence, trying a bit too hard perhaps. But that could be said of all of them.

Don't hold back '76, tell us what you really think.

Of course it must reduce sales, but it's difficult to determine by how much. It's simple-minded to think that people will buy tickets in advance instead of on the day. They won't, they'll just do something else. Whoever took this decision knows nothing about the mindset of the typical football supporter.