CHAPEL END CHARLIE

I've just seen TV pictures of the hysterical reaction on the streets of Boston to the end of this manhunt - overexcited people jumping up and down shouting USA! USA! as if they'd just won a war. The British reputation for understatement and reserve may be something of a outdated national stereotype in this day and age, but I still would hope that in a similiar situation we would react in a more dignified manner. Meanwhile 200+ people are killed in a Chinese earthquake and yet this tragic story is only placed in second place on the BBC news running order ...

Indeed. Who could look at this and not be reminded of a face?

This reminds me. As a child I recall my Dad was in the habit of rescuing a discarded jam jar from the bin, he would then cut a narrow slot in the lid, fill it 3/4 full with water (which soon became a sweet jammy smelling fluid) and then leaving it outside by the bin. The results were quite spectacular as the wasps would fly in but drown in the water before they could escape from his cruel and fiendishly deadly trap - indeed it was akin to a wasp holocaust in there! As for its usefulness in ridding the garden of wasps however, I suspect the bloody thing attracted more of them than it killed.

While idly perusing that goldmine of (sometimes dubious) information that is Wikipedia, I recently came across this remarkable image of the Martian 'Libya Montes' landscape which was obtained via the Mars Global Surveyor vehicle: Now I hasten to add that I don't believe for one moment that this image is a 'face' left by some alien species intent on scaring the wits out of we poor ape men! Nevertheless what a beautiful and eerie example of 'Pareidolia' it is. The other (better known) 'Martian Face' however sadly became rather less face-like the moment it became subject to modern higher resolution MGS imagery:

£120k a week is a hell of a lot of money to pay any player - especially a defender middling quality. But why anybody on here should think that Everton of all clubs have much more money to spend than we do is quite another matter.

Was about to post the same view. Lambert has had to play almost every league match ever since we signed him, and it shows on occasion. Now whether it is Mayuka or A N Other is debatable - but we sure need to find an alternate forward who is good enough to lift the burden off SRL's shoulders when required.

Although I have previously written off Steven Moffat's tenure at the helm of my beloved Doctor Who as almost a lost cause, I must say that the latest series is a distinct and welcome improvement over the last. The latest story 'Cold War' - set on a Soviet Nuclear submarine in 1983 - being a particularly strong episode. A tense and intelligent script, very good special effects, a scary monster, and the wonderful David Warner too - what more could you possibly ask for from Saturday tea time family entertainment? Now if you were to think that maybe the improvement in DW's fortunes may not be entirely unconnected to the fact that its producer is now taking something of a 'back seat' as regards to writing the scripts ... well you might say that, I couldn't possibly comment. I must also add that the Ice Warriors too have come on a bit since I first remember seeing them in the 'Curse of Peladon' all those decades ago.

Good point, I too remember the massively premature 'JWP is the next big thing' hype from the early days of this season. I'm pleased to see the forum seems to have calmed down a tad on that front of late. Whenever I see this youngster in the first team I must say he doesn't look out of his (energetic) depth playing in this division - and that's a real achievement for one so young - but I can't honestly claim he has made an especially outstanding contribution so far either. So it's just too early to say for certain how good he will become as his body, technique and level of experience matures naturally over time. If you twisted my arm and forced me to guess however, I'd rate him as a decent prospect rather than a outstanding one in the class of previous academy products such as AOC, Bale, Walcott, or even his contemporary Luke Shaw. As ever, time will tell.

Well as fun as the two promotions undoubtedly were, beating both the current Champions and Premier League title holders this season must make us officially 'by far the greatest team the world has ever seen' I would have thought. That is how these things work isn't it?

Ah! I wondered who would spot my deliberate mistake ...

Those 'moral blackmail' style ads you see on TV all the time now really are beyond the pale. If it wasn't for the high cost of consumer electronics the next time I see that bloody 'Adopt a Underprivileged Donkey' one I'd put a brick through the screen.

A good keeper beyond doubt and this welcome news leaves us with one less thing to worry about over the summer, but why oh why is our normally uber smart Chairman sporting a 'pulled through a hedge backwards' look? I'm betting a wild night out in the fleshpots of Hedge End ...

I obviously must have loved Thunderbirds more than the Saints back then because I've forgotten all about the NUM's impact on Gods Game! I do remember the regular power cuts, how politically polarised this great nation was back then, and me old dad (secretly enjoying methinks) the 3 day week - may he rest in peace.

This is one of those very rare moments I find myself in complete agreement with you. You might have added however that playing in this noddy competition also means that we could kiss goodbye to most of our beloved Saturday 3pm KO's too. It would be worth our while kicking Swansea black and blue next Saturday if it meant we were free of the threat of this nonsense.

Ah but you've weren't a 11 year old boy back in the 1974 having to suffer a power cut just as you were settling down to watch Thunderbirds on a Saturday lunchtime. Some wounds just never heal you know ...

Compared to what we became used to from the IRA for instance the two Boston bombs - while obviously lethal to those nearby - appear to be relatively small devices. To my mind this suggests that responsibility for this crime is just as likely to lay with some deranged individual rather that a major terrorist organisation or even state action. Time will tell.

Did MT's death make much of a impact on the news in Dubai Phil?

USB connectors - they only work one way round and both bloody sides look identical!

I can't say I have - but I'll look out for it.

I just payed good money to see the new Tom Cruise film 'Oblivion'. In yet another post apocalypse dystopian future, where a devastated planet Earth is all but abandoned after a alien invasion, our hero plays a kind of super cool service engineer who repairs the ferocious combat drone thingys that are supposedly fighting the remaining aliens - but is everything all that it seems to be? It would be wrong for me to state that this is a bad film - the effects are brilliant, the production values are top notch, and the action scenes very impressive - but this is another of those efforts that may provide a feast for the eye, but make a pretty meager meal for the imagination. I just can't watch this sort of thing without being instantly reminded of a 100 other sci fi films that have gone before, from Independence Day to Logans Run via Planet of the Apes. But if you want to see it then please don't let me put you off because perhaps the problem is more me rather than the film. It strikes me that my ongoing quest to recapture the frill I got in my youth seeing great Science Fiction films (such as Alien, Blade Runner or Terminator II) for the very first time is a hopeless one because, as I enter my fifth decade clinging to the surface of this mad planet, I've just seen it all before I'm afraid.

If you feel is it perfectly OK to loudly employ the F word in front of young children (age 6 or 7) while they are in the setting of a restaurant (if we dignify a fast food outlet with that term) then that shipmate is a pretty telling insight into how you were brought up. But perhaps it's a generational thing I suppose. But I must admit that I've too have been known to utter the odd expletive under my breath while actually at the match - normally when I see Guly getting ready to come on - but there's a time and a place for that kind of thing ... ... and a restaurant just ain't one of them.

I saw some West Ham fans in one of the fast food outlets before the game - obviously with many young children about the place - effing and blinding away to each other at full volume as if they were in a car together. The East End clubs do seem to attract more than their fair share of the type of scummy fan you wouldn't really want to see sitting next to you.

If accurately reported, this story should make depressing reading for us all. Despite some worthwhile improvements, one serious problem that continues to hold back this nation is that neither Maggie Thatcher, or any of her Tory/Labour successors, finished the task of reforming a state education system that has been quietly failing generations of working class children. It's not really about a lack of investment, and I'd be the first to agree that social problems (such as a shortage of good parental role-models) are important too, but a culture of low expectation and schools being organised primarily to suit the vested interest of the teaching unions, rather than for children, is still too widespread in my view. Whatever your political standpoint, in this day and age seeing politically militant elements within the NUT still calling for Luddite nonsense (such as the abolition of Ofsted for example) is enough to make a grown man weep.

Semi frustrated that we didn't take all the points yesterday - as we clearly deserved to I thought - but consoling myself with the cheering realization that at least we don't have to watch bloody West Ham again until next season. Just imagine the grim prospect of having to endure Sam Allardyce's brand of niggely stone age hoofball every single week ... those cockneys deserve a bloody medal. With just a couple of good signings we should take more than just the single point off them next season.

"Sanity is what everyone else is doing" I've moved on from Cormac McCarthy - temporally - and I'm now engrossed in Trinity's Child by William Prochnau. Set in the early 1980's long before the fall of the Berlin wall, this story falls into a fascinating little sub category of war fiction that has long held a kind of morbid fascination for me as a child born during the tense years of the early 1960's - World War III. Think of films such as Dr Strangelove, or its even better counterpart 'Failsafe', and you'll soon get into the (now dated of course) mindset. Under enormous internal pressure to match US defence spending, the USSR launches a major, but limited, nuclear strike on the USA with the aim of evening up the odds. As a result of the devastation inflicted at ground level the narrative of this gripping book soon becomes concentrated on the all too fallible crews aboard three aircraft: A lone B-52 bomber 'Polar Bear One' committed to the Grand Tour - a nuclear counter strike on targets within the Soviet Union. The EC-135 'Looking Glass' plane tasked to control the remaining US Strategic Forces once SAC HQ in Omaha is destroyed. The huge 'E-4' Airborne Command Post that must desperately tour the US trying to find any politician authorized to assume legal command in all this chaos. Can the crews of these aircraft perform their missions and remain rational human beings under a level of stress that is well nigh intolerable? Imagine if you dare trying to perform a suicidal one-way penetration on the Soviet Air Defence system in a lumbering old bomber when you know for certain that everyone you love in the world has just been turned into ash. Can 'Alice' in the Looking Glass reestablish control of the USA's terrible nuclear might when nearly all his communications are knocked out and know one knows who is in charge? Above all can anyone persuade the new president that ideas about 'winning' a nuclear war such as this is now a meaningless concept and what he needs to do is stop it getting even worse? I may be guilty of overusing the word 'awesome' on here from time to time, but in this instance that term really is justified.