By choosing to have a girlfriend/partner/lady friend (or whatever you are supposed to call her when you are 44 ) who lives near Stockbridge, I have not only discovered a new part of the world in recent years, I also experience the thrill of narrowly escaping death every time I return home to Basingstoke on possibly the shortest slip road leading on to a dual carriageway this country has to offer, my latest attempt being just a few days ago. You ...
I have read various books and watched several documentaries in recent years regarding psychology in sport, about how to create a winning attitude, how to deal with failure and indeed, more critically, success, something that when achieved, can leave a huge and dangerously depressing vacuum in sportsmen. When my beloved football team won the Championship yesterday I was actually in the bath. This was because despite only drawing earlier in the ...
I have had a good week this week, I have witnessed Reading getting promoted to the Premier League (as if you haven't noticed) and had a great evening celebrating Diane's birthday on Wednesday as well getting lucky and picking up some more new work as the recession continues to bite. However, nothing prepared me for the unadulterated joy I experienced late last night when I was nosing through people's Facebook updates before I retired to my ...
On an amazing evening at the Madjeski Stadium last night Reading FC achieved promotion to the promised land that is the Premier League for the second time in six years. It was an incredible achievement from a team that languished in the bottom three in October but have somehow amassed 46 out of the last 51 points available. It couldn't have been scripted better for Reading fans, with fifteen minutes remaining, the news of West Ham's draw at ...
My old mate John pointed out to me that I had been a bit harsh to pensioners in a recent blog titled "Why Does a Deluge Follow a Drought" where I said that old people bullshit about summers (or indeed winters) not being what they used to be. This was not meant as a nasty comment or indeed a harsh one, it was just a personal assessment that as we all get older we become nostalgic for periods in history that were only brief but tend stick in the ...