warmshade

It’s a video of Sky Sports News but it does the job.

If you look carefully to the right of the goal at the front after Cambridge’s 2nd, 3rd & 4th goals you can see a light coloured hat bobbing up and down. That’s me celebrating!

A while ago I brought to your attention to the “Path Cra” game which features a model of George W. Bush on a machine-gun equipped tank chasing a skate board-riding Osama Bin Laden. This was found on sale in Seychelles and given to me as a present.

Here’s a short (sadly silent) video showing the Chinese made toy :

It’s so wrong on so many levels that you just can’t help but love it. Thank you Sandra for finding it and Gay for bringing it back to the UK for me.

I think it’s worth seeing the box again, so here it is…

…gone.

In search of warm shade.

I thought I’d take a break from my labours to share the visitor stats for foolhandy.com from the past year. This is, honestly, more interesting than it sounds because of one thing : Spider Pig.

I posted the Spider Pig MP3 file late July, almost as soon as The Simpsons Movie was released. And wow… the above graph tells the tale rather better than words but it’s worth noting that I’ve had more hits in the first five days of June 2008 than I did in the whole of June 2007. It’s still being downloaded a fair bit now, and has been joined by the less successful for still worryingly popular Moon Pig MP3…

It may not be a BBC level of hits but still, 144 hits a day isn’t bad for a website with not much of interest on it!

Now all I need is another pull like Spider Pig.

I may have an idea…

Gardener Monty Don says he is spending his time recovering from a stroke “pottering around and having a nice time”. It might not be glamorous, but it’s a simple pleasure, and it could be better for you than you think.

Well Done to the BBC for highlighting such simply and uplifting pleasures!

Latvia’s 2008 Eurovision Performance was something special…
Here it is for your viewing and listening pleasure!

I did some gardening yesterday. The wonderful weather was there to be made the best of and so I cleared some of the longer grass around the edges, mowed the lawns, watered the potted plants and rhubarb and started work on our vegetable growing.

This was quite a moment, as I’ve never grown vegetables in my own garden before. Vegetables in other gardens and flowers in my own but not like this. The aim eventually is to have raised beds but we want those on the side next to the soon-to-be-replaced fence so I’ve delayed doing anything about them. In addition I bought a considerable number of small plants from the school gardening club and they needed planting.

As you can see I’ve had to lift the turf in a couple of places on the lower lawn. There are purple cabbages, runner beans, shallots & cauliflowers all planted a bit too close together… It was only once I’d dug out the first patch that I realised just how much I’d underestimated the amount of space I was going to need for the plants I had bought, and even though I then dug a second patch I think they’re going to crowd each other. We’ll see how they get on with limited personal space in the coming weeks. Incidentally, am I the only one getting a freshly-filled-grave vibe here?!

The garden’s looking reasonable at the moment. The sheds still require expletive prefixes and the new fence (when it happens!) will help but it’s not the place I was despairing with a month or so ago. Amazing what a bit of summer sun can do… My only complaint really is the almost complete lack of colour other than green. There are a number of red rose buds preparing to bloom just behind where this picture was taken but apart from that it’s down to the orange anti-dog netting the previous owners put up to break the monotony. That’ll be a goal for next year then.

So we lost, but it was OK. Considering how close to extinction we were just a couple of years ago taking 20,000+ people to a Play-Off Final at Wembley isn’t bad.

It’s a great stadium and despite our rather flat performance it was a great day out.

This is a picture of the Cambridge United fans below us as the players ran out onto the pitch. It was a special moment - thanks for capturing it Steve!

Cambridge United will return…

This is where I write something deep and meaningful.

Or rather I’m too nervous to so I’ll settle for this…

All I want is that come night-fall I can still sing (to the theme of The Flintstones) :

Cambridge! Mighty Cambridge!
We’re the greatest team in history…
We hate, Peterborough!
And we’ve never lost at Wem-ber-ley!

It doesn’t take a genius to work out the scenario that ruins the chant but positivity is winning at the moment…

We’re Going Up With Jimmy & Willy!

COME ON YOU ‘U’s!!!

With four days to go here’s footage of the game that finally got us back to Wembley…

Come On Cambridge!!!

Here they are…the final scores!

1st : Murph - 911pts
2nd : Steve - 861pts
3rd : Karl - 858pts
4th : Helen - 850pts
5th : Colin - 849pts
6th : Alex - 828pts
7th : Gay - 799pts
8th : Kymee - 771pts
9th : Rob - 744pts
10th : Kyle - 736pts
11th Alfie - 519pts

So congratulations to Murph who snatches it at the last and will now have to choose how to spend his £10 prize at the Cambridge United Club Shop! Hopefully we’ll get a picture of Murph receiving his prize posted on the site soon…

Thanks to everyone who entered, please let me know if you’d like to do it again next year, and if so if you’d like any changes made.

Oh, and please keep your fingers crossed for Cambridge on Sunday as they endeavor to go up with Jimmy & Willy.

It’s very easy to bask in warm shade when there is actually warm shade around to bask in. The past weekend is a typical example. Sat under the parasol on the patio having breakfast, mowing the lawn and smelling the freshly cut grass, sitting chatting at Thaxted windmill looking out over the fields - all in shorts and t-shirt and all without feeling cold or in need of some colour other than grey. There was no difficulty for me in submitting to a state of mind where all was good in the world. Senseless toil was as far from my mind as is possible when work is only a day or so away, and I fell asleep happy.

I have however been awake for the past two hours stewing. It’s all very well making decisions and intending things to happen but you can’t just click your fingers and be at a point several months down the line before you’ve lived through the here and now, making sure those damned hoops are satisfied… The balancing act is moving slowly, easing the system back to where you want it. If you’ve found yourself running again there’s folly in trying to walk before you can jog.

The sun is shining again today. I have important decisions to make and important work to do. I wonder how many opportunities there will be for basking today, either physically or mentally.

Why? Well with apologies to Steve for cutting and pasting from a previous e-mail - here goes…

The hoops they get you to jump through and the lack of trust. Just taxing your car is so wrapped up protocols and presumption of guilt that if, like me, you’ve just recently bought a car you need extra documents and different pieces of paper. Why? Because the DVLA themselves haven’t processed the paperwork quickly enough. But because it’s assumed that everyone is trying to illegally register stolen cars I have to put myself out for their lack of efficiency. And what’s more, because the system is so complicated normal Post Offices can’t deal with it, so I would have had to go to my nearest DVLA office which is an hour’s drive each way. Oh, and I’d had to leave work early to get to the town Post Office because they’ve stopped village Post Offices issuing tax discs because of cost involved in training to make sure that people don’t cheat the system - and they wonder why people don’t make use of local Post Offices - because after all, we’re all bastards who are hell bent on breaking every law there is.

And then I went to the Co-op and the (probably) 12 year old lad behind the till made a big point of holding my £10 note up to the light to make sure it was real. I’d taken it out of the Co-op cash machine moments earlier, and what with having been turned away from the Post Office to go and get more documentation to prove I wasn’t peddling cut-and-shut Smart Roadsters (is this in fact possible?) I flipped. I just couldn’t handle yet another presumption of guilt. So I grabbed the £10 note off him and snapped that it was real and that I’d like him to check all the coins he gave as change because I didn’t trust the Co-op either and he looked scared and I walked out with my stuff shaking and close to tears because I’d let my frustrations with always being assumed by the state and businesses to be a criminal get to me in a fashion that’s so unlike me.

When I went back into town (with the required documentation proving my inside leg measurement…) I went back into the Co-op and apologised to the very wary looking check-out guy. It hasn’t made me feel much better, but I know I would have been unable to cope in my mind if I hadn’t gone back and spoken to him.

So there you are. I hate that I am seen as a drunk-driving, TV licence dodging, tax evading, money laundering, cut-and-shut merchant and so must be checked up on and judged as guilty until proved by myself to be innocent. And although it’s the same for everyone I take it personally.

And so enough is enough. There is another way…

As read here on the BBC…

Like hell you do Gordon. Even though the alternative is dire I wish you’d just leave us right now.

I’m not a fan of jazz, but listening to I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue has given hours of enjoyment.

He’ll be sadly missed…

And here’s an obituary by the BBC.

“As we journey through life, discarding baggage along the way, we should keep an iron grip, to the very end, on the capacity for silliness. It preserves the soul from dessication.”

Dion Dublin is a footballing hero of mine. There aren’t many of them because generally footballers aren’t worthy of hero worship, but Dion is different. He made his name at Cambridge United and when he played for England (although no longer with the club) I couldn’t help smiling and feeling proud that Dion had made it that far. Since leaving Cambridge he’s played for umpteen clubs but has always been glowing about the U’s and spoken warmly of his time at the club. Under John Beck Dion was a vital part of our rise from the lower parts of the old Division 4 to moments away from the inaugural Premiership. I, along with many other Cambridge United fans, have always hoped he might return to he club in some role and as he got older the likelihood of him dropping a few leagues to rejoin us seemed greater and greater.

Earlier this year he announced that he would be retiring at the end of the season at the age of 39. Jimmy Quinn, our manager, has apparently made attempts to re-sign Dion but he’s insisted that media work beckons. So it’s not going to happen. Possibly better this way - he’s not going to tarnish his glorious reputation - but it would have been nice.

Maybe, hopefully, a friendly appearance will happen but if not…

Dion! Dion! Dion!

I was listening to PM the other day and it was suggested that Disney films feature environmental champions. I’ve never been a great fan of Disney films but this song has always worked for me. Baloo an environmentalist? Maybe, but he’s definitely an idler…

One of the blogs I subscribe to is Football Shirts News. Yes, deeply sad I know, but I love it that at last there’s a place for breaking news about forthcoming football kits. Because these things are important you know. Really…

Anyway, they occasionally have football shirt related news too, and today they brought to my attention (to save me having to read The Daily Bigot) the information that Chelsea forward Dider Drogba recently spent £1800 on replica kits bearing his name.

The reason? Well you can find out by reading the full article here. He may earn £70,000 a week but you’ve got to wonder how fulfilled his life is if this is true…

And so to waxing lyrical about yurting at Graig Wen…

Graig Wen is a site where you can camp, stay in your caravan or motorhome, hire their holiday cottage or even - as we did - stay in a yurt. It’s not a big place but it is fantastically placed in a very quiet and picturesque location with great views over Afon Mawddach estuary but still near enough to Dolgellau that you can use it as a base to visit much of this part of Wales. Sarah & John who own Graig Wen are very friendly, and as it’s all very new (we were only the third group of people to stay in our yurt!) the facilities are excellent.

View Larger Map

We visited Cwm Idwal in Snowdonia, Llechwedd Slate Caverns at Blaenau Ffestiniog, Betws-y-coed, Portmeirion, Harlech Castle and the fantastic beach at Dyffryn Ardudwy. They’re all to the north of Graig Wen, but to the south there’s Corris and Machynlleth to visit too. I really want to go to the Centre for Alternative Technology one day, and using Graig Wen’s yurt as a base certainly appeals.

They have a website which you can get to by clicking here:

and they even have a video!

If you’re thinking of staying in the area I’d recommend Graig Wen, and I’m looking forward to staying there again myself.

Finally, in case you’re wondering, you can find out what a yurt is by clicking here. (Ours was canvas over a local ash frame though - no yak skins for us!)

Especially for Murph & Steve because I just know they won’t have looked it up…

Why deny it? Everyone loves David Hasselhoff…