Whitey Grandad

Are you judging by results or by performances?

There's a bit of everything in there. A lot came from southern Essex and some from the West Country.

So I suppose that makes the immigrants the exogenous ergophilic?

I'll take that as a compliment. I built a crystal set when I was about fourteen (using a germanium diode 'cause crystals were, like, soooo uncool) and when I put the headphones on I got Radio Caroline! I was really thrilled, but then I found out that I could get Radio Caroline and nothing else. I stripped it down to just headphones and a diode and I could still get Radio Caroline. Not surprising really, we lived 100 yards from the sea and the ship was only 4 miles away. We used to see all the DJs hanging around in Harwich waiting for the service boat.

It changes depending on whom I am addressing. I was born in North London, spent my childhood with a broad East Anglian accent and I've been around a bit since then.

The Queen copies my accent, don't ya know.

I used to have a box of valves in my attic from my younger days. I threw them all away a couple of years ago. Probably a foolish thing to do. They weren't particularly historic, mainly ECC83s and that sort of thing. The letters all had a meaning, E was 6.3V heaters, C was amplifying triode and so on. The first transistors followed the same system so an OC71 was an amplifying triode with zero heater volts!

Have I missed one? One goal from two league games, or three goals from three games against teams in the same division. Let's not do ourselves down without good reason. I do tend to agree with your argument, though.

Not all of them, just the football ones.

Almost worth it just to see Jenny Agutter get her kit off.

NAh, we'll just run up massive debts instead.

Somebody has to. These people are the guardians of public standards and without them society would either decay into anarchy or freeze into a police state.

And the solution? (You realise that I may have a personal interest here).

Ok, we're not playing as well as we'd like at the moment but nobody could be so simple-minded as to assuming the tthe rest of the season will follow the first two weeks? All the independent football commentators seem to think that we're going to be fine and we're the bookies' favourites so I would give it another few weeks before we all start slitting our wrists and beating our chests. On the evidence that I've seen I see no cause for concern. We are obviously short of a couple of players and I'm certain that the management are aware of this. One of the problems with loan players is that there is no continuity from one season to the next.

Have you only just noticed?

There was one enormous divot that Kelvin had to replace where he had taken a goal kick. I suppose it's due to the relaying over the summer, but we did have a bit of rain yesterday.

They didn't take that long to warm up. They were quicker than Windows takes to boot up.

The odds do not represent the probability of that event happening, they show the amount of money that has been placed on such an event, hence they reflect the expectations of the punters.

My grandchildren liked Toy Story 3, if that's any help?

The team will look a different in a few weeks time. And nobody wants to be way out in front at Christmas, those teams always drop back and are lucky to make the playoffs. Chill folks, the party has only just begun!

A few years ago we went over on a Sunday from Portsmouth for a daytrip, fast cat both ways with P&O but Brittany Ferries run Portsmouth-Caen, Portsmouth - Cherbourg and Poole-Cherbourg until the end of October. We went up to Arromanches for lunch, Coleville cemetery and Bayeux for the tapestry. A great day out. On the same crossing a couple of weeks before, I was going down to the car when another passenger looked out of the window and said 'Hm, looks a bit different from the last time I was here'. He didn't look older than 50 but he had been on an LST that had got stuck all day on the beach between tides. He said that they found out that if they stopped shooting at the Germans then they would stop shooting back so there was nothing they could do except wait.

I was in a bar in Paris for the 50th anniversary of the landings. I met an american chap there called William J. Perret (I think). He was an 18 year old coxswain on a landing craft on Omaha (I think). He said he had been at Slapton Sands, D-Day, Guadacanal (or was it Iwo Jima?) He sent me a package with some facsimiles from the day. If I can find them I'll let you have copies.

It takes far less land to grow food than it does to grow meat. The trouble with this veggie stuff is... ...it tastes like sh!t.

What do we want? - Instant gratification! When do we want it? NOW!

Never mind the question as to whether Davies pushed Fonte, ask yourself why two of their players were unmarked on the 6-yard line.