The joy of rail travel (23rd June 2003)

Call me a geek if you want - I've made some modifications to my Notes 6 calendar. So, if I'm traveling by plane, it shows a little plane icon. If I'm on holiday, it shows a little palm tree. If I'm on a training course, it shows a little teacher. A phone icon for a conference call. And so on. So what's this got to do with trains? Well, if I'm taking a train journey, it shows a little shopping trolley icon. I couldn't find a suitable train icon, but I find that the shopping trolley works rather well... both offer the same level of comfort for their passengers, they travel at roughly the same speed, and you often find rubbish and discarded food in both. But there the similarity ends - because the good old shopping trolley, even if it possesses a set of wheels that take you in all directions, is infinitely more reliable. Today was a good example...

But first let's discuss my experiences as a whole. I travel to London on the train perhaps once every two weeks. If I'm really unlucky I'll do twice in two weeks. Every time I return, I kiss the ground outside Sunningdale station and praise the Lord that I don't actually work in London (I once did for 2 years, and I think that's the root of the severe psychological disorders that I now suffer from). By the way, if you're wondering why a resident of Camberley doesn't travel from Camberley station... well, check the time table - I could walk to London quicker (on my hands). So, anyway, I'm not a frequent traveler, but I wonder this... are the trains always late / delayed / cancelled / packed like asylum-seekers in a transit van at the Dover ferry port, or is it just a coincidence on the days that I travel? I wonder...

Back to today. I heard on the radio that there were severe delays going into London Waterloo. The South West Trains web site said that there may be delays of up to 145 minutes because of "signal problems". Signal problems is one of the old favourite excuses for not being able to get their act together, along with the autumnal "leaves on the track" and the Reginald Perrinesque "badger ate through junction box at Raynes Park". Still not as original as a genuine one I heard last year - "chickens on the line".

But as the saying goes, "one man's meat is another man's poison". At least, that's the way it should work. I arrived at Sunningdale station to find my train delayed by 10 minutes, despite the man in the ticket office saying "this line wasn't affected". Well, that's true, 10 minutes late is actually business-as-usual (a slight improvement in fact). However, the one I should have missed was running nearly 20 minutes late, and so I was in time to catch that one. Great. Shame then that it was cancelled.

Fathers' Day (15th June 2003)

I knew that the offspring had something special planned for today. For the past two weeks, despite keeping the secret, she'd made a number of references to Fathers' Day and I was continually told not to look in her wardrobe on any account. Being told not to do something you don't normally do anyway always arouses my suspicions.

Daddy's Mug, by Lauren Adams (aged 5 and a bit).

I wasn't surprised to be woken early this morning by an excited 5-year-old, but I wasn't expecting the work of art that I was presented with. She'd made me a hand-decorated mug, complete with blue hearts (a quick reminder of the ruling on colour - "pink is for girls, blue is for boys"), a green handle, and the inscription 'Daddy'. Okay, she hadn't actually sculpted the mug herself (the undecorated crockery is available at 'Dynamic Ceramics'), but the artwork was all of her own doing.

Perhaps I'm getting a bit slushy here, but I was really pleased to get such a special and unique pressie... certainly better than a pair of socks, especially if you have a requirement to hold hot liquids. Shame it can't go in the dishwasher (why, I don't know). I'm wondering if we've got a good thing going here with our crockery-decorating prodigy. If anyone wants to order a set of six of the Christmas edition, let me know.

The great water fiasco (30th May 2003)

I arrived home from a trip to Dublin this week to find a rather attractive patch of dark tarmac in front of our driveway... the sort of look that tarmac has when it's freshly laid. And here lies a story, but let's go back in time a month or so.

It was a Saturday morning when the wife heard me swear blue murder downstairs. The water bill had arrived. I do my best to budget for these things, and despite the fact that the water bills seemed to arrive somewhat sporadically, I could usually guess the amount roughly (around the £100 mark for 6 months). So imagine my shock when I opened the envelope to find the figure "£297" at the foot of the bill. The wife rung the water company who were able to track our consumption over the past three years. The conclusion? Our consumption had gone way up and we must have a leak. The first question in my mind was "who's liable?". There was no clear-cut answer, although we would be entitled to a "leak allowance" on our bill. How kind of them. The next step was to ascertain whether a leak was the problem, and their service agent suggested that we go out to the water meter to see how much we'd consumed since the meter reading. And they also suggested that it's a good idea to read the meter every month to check the consumption pattern.

This is where the fun begins... I opened the cover on the hole, and peered in. And there, in what I can only describe as "the depths of the earth" was the water meter. How they read this meter I'll never know. If was a good five feet down. Distance wasn't the only problem - I couldn't make out the digits because they were covered in dirt... but I couldn't reach down far enough to wipe the dirt off. Okay, let's try something else. Can you imagine what I looked like standing peering into this hole outside our house with a pair of binoculars? Still I couldn't make out the numbers. Next I tried the finder-scope off my telescope, but still couldn't get the reading. My only other suggestion, lowering Stuart Little down the hole on a piece of string, didn't seem to be a goer. So, the wife was back on the phone, demanding that someone comes to the house to show us how the hell we're supposed to read these dim-and-distant digits.

This brings us back to this week - the nice men from the water company came to raise the meter, explaining that the meter was installed long before the construction company had decided on the final level of the road. And guess what... this gave them an opportunity to do another meter reading - and they'd got it completely wrong (one of the engineers said "there's no way someone could have read that - they just guessed it"). We only owe around £100. So, a big thank you to the water company for causing us a month's worth of anxiety about owing them a sackload of money and having the driveway dug up. Stupid pillocks.

And finally, and not related in any way (apart from the mention of a trip to Dublin), hello to my friends Phil and Steve from DominoWorks in Dublin. I hadn't seen them for ages, and was glad to hear they are still visiting the site (well, I wondered who was). I'm sure they'll be honoured to see their names here (yeah, sure) and a plug for their company, although the mention has probably missed the target audience by some measure.

Movie reviews - 'X-Men 2' and 'The Matrix Regurgitated' (22nd May 2003)

I really do partake in the total cinema experience - my digestive tract had only just finished with the 'small' bucket of popcorn from my last visit ('X-Men 2'), and yesterday I found myself at the Warner Village in the picturesque town of Staines to join an excited-looking crowd of people for the first showing of 'The Matrix Reloaded'. A quick word on the popcorn - the so-called small bucket took me over 2 hours to reach a point where I couldn't face the remainder. Who the hell is the large bucket aimed at? A family of twelve planning to keep some for tomorrow night?

Anyway, on with the reviews. First 'X-Men 2'. Very good, 8 out of 10. Probably better than the original because the action gets cracking immediately - the sequel didn't have the baggage of having to lay out the premise like it's predecessor did. Of course it had holes in the plot that you could drive a coach full of people eating large-size buckets of popcorn through, but you have to switch off the ol' brain when you go to watch films of this genre. Nifty special effects, a nasty villain, more mutants... all that was required really. I'm looking forward to the third installment (but not half as much as the third installment of 'The Lord of the Rings').

Keanu consults with the script writer.

Speaking of third installments, later this year I'll get the chance to see the conclusion of 'The Matrix' trilogy. If I can be bothered that is. I don't really know why I went to see 'The Matrix Reloaded' having found the first part rather tedious. I have to say I enjoyed this more, but there are only so many times you can watch Keanu Reeves and his plastic-clad pals doing mid-air rotations in slow motion.

As for the plot... I don't know what the thought process was behind the plot - perhaps something along the lines of "don't worry, the audience will be too busy admiring the special effects". And yes, the effects were incredible. All-in-all it was okay, but not great. It wasn't helped by another starchy performance by Keanu, delivering his lines with the aplomb of a hastily drafted-in understudy from a local amateur dramatic society. I wouldn't say he was wooden, but with all those explosions going on he must have added to the fire risk.

Highlight of the evening? The hilarious trailer for Jim Carrey's new movie 'Bruce Almighty'. Now that's one I do want to see, and who knows, I may even be able to persuade the wife.

A new-ish look and some other stuff (18th May 2003)

You may have noticed that the site has undergone a slight cosmetic overhaul. Mainly it's gone from purple-ish to blue-ish. There are some changes behind the scene... I've rebuilt all of the pages to use cascading style-sheets properly so the next time I get bored with the look (about 5 weeks time) I can change it all within a few minutes.

So what else has been going on? Well, my bid to lose half a stone in weight has hit a serious obstacle. Two in fact. Firstly, the discovery of Vanilla Coca-Cola. I was getting on okay with Diet Coke with Lemon (the lemon flavour making the normally revolting taste of standard Diet Coke fairly palatable). But the Vanilla variety is totally irresistible. They do a diet version which I have yet to try, but I know it's not gonna be as tasty. The second obstacle has been the discovery of a local vendor of Ben & Jerry's Chunkey Monkey ice cream. A treat normally restricted to a visit to Woking Cinema, this one constitutes a serious threat to my bid to not look like a flabby pale Englishmen come August.

Arsenal won the F A Cup, beating Southampton 1-0. That was good - nothing worse than ending a season without a trophy (ask any Spurs supporter - mind you, they'll be used to it). My good mate Tony 'Woody' Cocks left Lotus and joined "the other side". I'd like to wish him luck, but as he now sells Microsoft Exchange I can't really. I don't mind if they knock out a few copies of their attractive but wobbly operating systems, but there should be only one winner in the messaging and collaboration war. I look forward to taking money off his customers in the near future.

Who's a clever boy then? (4th May 2003)

I've already convinced myself that I'm good on general knowledge and trivia (see 'Quiz night' below'). Not content with being one type of smart-arse, I decided to have a crack at the BBC's nationwide IQ test that was being televised earlier this evening. First let me say how bloody irritating the actual program was... how did they manage to drag it out for so long? I recorded it and the bloody tape ran out of, well, tape. It took about 45 minutes to give the answers to the 70 questions because that grinning pillock Phillip Schofield had to keep conferring with the groups of thickies in the studio.

Anyway, to the point. How did I do? Pretty good actually. I beat the score of the supposedly most intelligent person in the studio... he scored 135 and received a dangerous looking chunk of glass masquerading as a trophy (the sort of thing of which my mum would have said "you'll have someone's eye out with that"). I scored 136, which apparently makes me quite clever. It left me wondering how accurate the test was... a number of years ago I bought a 'test-your-own-IQ' book and scored 152. Much like quiz night, when I lamented the easy ones we got wrong, I also got a couple of the easy ones wrong tonight. And the area I really fell down on was the visual memory section, and annoyingly I knew one answer but plumped for another.

Finally, I have to close tonight's entry with my warmest congratulations** to Manchester United for winning the Premiership title following Arsenal's 2-3 defeat at the hands of Leeds Utd. Arsenal led for so long but lost their momentum (and a number of players to injury) just as Man Yoo hit their stride. But in the end, the team who spent the most money on players and sold the most replica kits in Basingstoke, Dublin, Oslo and Johannesburg won the day. I'm proud to say that my nephew Tom still wants to buy an Arsenal shirt with his birthday money. Happy birthday Tom.

** Yes, this is sarcasm - Mr Ferguson and his team can go **** themselves.

Aaaaarrrggghhh, fire! (20th April 2003)

The evening before Good Friday is a damn bad time to be traveling anywhere, so what we don't need is acts of God and acts of stupid twats throwing extra spanners in the works. But that's what we got... throw in a bus crash and a natural disaster and you've got a recipe for trouble.

The problem is this... I have two possible approaches to my house - one via the A30 that goes from Staines to Camberley (and beyond, but who cares about that bit) and the Red Road (which joins my part of Camberley to a place called West End). On this Thursday evening, a car collided with a bus in Bagshot thus bringing the A30 to a standstill. I got a call from the wife telling me to avoid that route, but then found my other route (the Red Road) closed due to a fire on the large area of scrub-land between Camberley and Bisley. Weeks of dry weather and unusually warm April temperatures (with the possible assistance of some cretin throwing a ciggie from a car window) had started what would eventually become the largest ever fire in Surrey.

With the Red Road closed I considered going back to my original route through Bagshot... however, I could see that the road that linked where I was to Bagshot had a tailback that was probably over 2 miles long and didn't look to be moving at all. Hardly surprising - one route closed, the other obstructed by a wrecked bus. Fantastic. But of course, I am a master of local knowledge, and I had another plan. I could go thru Lightwater and meet up with the Red Road further along, and hopefully it would be open from that point onwards. That distance of just over a mile took me 45 minutes, and I made a mental note about the amount of traffic that I passed going in the opposite direction... "there is no going back". Bit a bummer then when I met up with the Red Road junction at the other side of Lightwater - it was closed there as well. Time for plan D.

Plan D involved abandoning the car and walking the remaining 2 miles back home (I could pick it up later or the next day). But even this could be doomed to failure - would the policemen let me walk down the closed Red Road? The answer thankfully was "yes, but be careful". This was where it got really weird. I wouldn't normally recommend the very busy Red Road to pedestrians... there's no pavement, and it winds and dips producing some risky blind bends (cars that have gone off the road are a common sight). And yet here I was walking along it. The silence was eerie, all I could hear was the buzzing of the overhead power cables. No traffic, no other people. The field of grass and gorse to my left-hand side were charred, some of the trees were reduced to carbon - I could still feel the heat, and the occasional small fire was still visible. The whole area gave off a thin cloud of blue-grey smoke. I felt like the last man on earth, a lone witness to the aftermath of the apocalypse.

At the top of the hill I turned right up The Maultway - this road was also closed, and the emergency services had set up a base there. In the distance I could see huge clouds of smoke - clearly there was still a large fire going on nearer Deepcut, and according to the radio news it wasn't brought under control until Saturday.

I considered taking some photographs so you could see the expanse of the devastation and the state of the area... but then I thought "if you've seen one burnt patch of ground, you've seen them all". The flood pictures were more impressive.

Football, war and tax (17th April 2003)

It's a good job I sometimes take the time to cool off, walk the dog, have a bath, and do a bit of work before I commit my thoughts to HTML. The wife told me off tonight for throwing a slipper at the television, and I was ready to write all manner of insults about the footballing abomination known as Manchester United. Regulars to this site will know that I'm not a big fan of this expensive, overpaid bunch of w*nkers, and tonight's 2-2 draw did even less to endear them to me. Three hours has tempered my entry on the subject, but I may gather enthusiasm as I type.

Firstly, they fielded two players whose combined value in the transfer market roughly equaled the cost of Arsenal's entire squad. Amazing how much money you can amass by selling branded pencil cases to kids in Hampshire and shirts to rat-boys in Surrey. Then you have the sight of Alex Ferguson taking to the field after the game to applaud the Man Utd fans, many of whom had made the long journey to Highbury from places as far afield as St Albans and Basingstoke. It was then I threw the slipper and shouted "tosser" as he walked around like the King of Shit Hill. Man Utd may have the slim advantage in the title race, and in all honestly look the more likely to triumph, but you haven't won yet, you miserable old pile of shit.

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer shits his pants as Sol Campbell promises to discuss the matter outside after the game.

Okay, let's discuss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, Utd's purveyor of jammy last-minute goals. The little turd did his best to ensure that Sol Campbell was sent off (and succeeded). I guess only Sol knows if the elbow in Solskjaer's face was accidental. But you have to ask... why would the usually non-aggressive Campbell, who was not in any danger of losing the ball to the baby-faced Norwegian, and was only 5 yards from the assistant referee, purposely elbow someone in the face? And why did Solskjaer recoil like someone who'd been lamped with a 3-ton battering ram, and hit the ground like a sack of potatoes thrown from a second-floor window? Go figure.

My final word on the football for now... I've supported Arsenal for 20 years, and I'd rather continue supporting them for the rest of my life and have them come second every year than see them become what Man Utd have become. Win or come second, watch them spend their extensive funds on new stars this Summer.

War... huh... what is it good for? Well, judging by the smiles on the Iraqi peoples' faces when the statue of Shithead Hussein came tumbling down, it clearly has some merits. But other than that, I won't discuss the subject any further - I'm not qualified to do so. Mind you, it was kind of funny when Mr Blair and Mr Bush decided to set up a new television station to broadcast their "it's okay, we're gonna look after you" messages to the "liberated" population. Two-thirds of the country was without electricity, and I bet a fair few had had their ariels knocked off their roofs. Mind you, many people had new television sets. Shame they didn't pay for them, but such are the benefits of looting.

Finally, a quick word about tax. Last month it was a huge hike in council tax. This month it's National Insurance and company car tax. I was just wondering, if anyone from the tax office is reading this, perhaps they'd like to pop round my house and see if there's anything else they fancy... the widescreen television perhaps, or my telescope? How about I get another job in the evening? After all, the harder I work, the more hours I put in, the more money the tax office can take off me and pass onto the government to piss up a proverbial wall.

Various topics to discuss (11th March 2003)

Quiz night (9th March 2003)

When the wife asked me if I wanted to go to our daughter's school's quiz night, she expected a lukewarm reaction. However, dear reader, you know that I fancy myself as a master of trivia. Or to put it another way, I know a lot of things but not much that's useful. So, here was an outlet for my pointless talent. Count me in, I replied.

A team of a couple of few other parents we'd got to know was assembled, and the big night arrived. Fifteen teams sat at individual tables. They'd obviously all been there and done it before - they knew the ropes... they bought their own picnics. We had to struggle by on the wine that was on sale, and I was especially grateful that team-mate David had brought a bottle of water. One of the table's boasted two vicars amongst their number... an immediate advantage for any biblical questions that might come up.

So, eight rounds of ten questions, plus a preliminary round of identifying jumbled-up celebrity faces, and a 'during-supper' round of A to Z questions. There was also a joker to play, allowing you to double your score on that round.

With one round to go, and not including the scores from the A to Z quiz, we were leading by 2½ points. We knew we'd done alright on the A to Z quiz, but the final round turned out to be a real stinker for us, netting only 4 points out of 10. The final tally revealed that two teams shared first place with 106, and we had just missed out with 105½. Annoyingly, when we were asked to name the country beginning with 'A' that had declared itself as the world's first atheist state, we initially thought Albania, but then inexplicably agreed on Andorra because Albania seemed too obvious. The reason Albania seemed obvious is because it was the right ****ing answer. Oh, if only...

Mind you, it wasn't such a bad evening. Third out of fifteen is pretty good, the prize was some wine (no loss to me - see the Hall of Shame), and I won a £50 voucher for a local Chinese restaurant in the raffle. Plus I now know that acrophobia is a fear of heights, and that Vine Street, Bow Street and Marlborough are the orange properties on a UK Monopoly board.

And judging by the reactions of the other teams, we got some questions no-one else got. The Cardigans are Swedish (not Welsh, as the table next to us thought), Actinium is the first element in alphabetical order (well done David, I didn't know that), and Horus was the Egyptian god with the falcon's head (that was me who knew that). Next year we shall have our revenge.

A tale of five teams (24th February 2003)

Football again? Yeah, well, it's my web site and you're free to surf elsewhere. I will have my say. I had a very tiring and at times frustrating weekend decorating the offspring's bedroom (well, the larger spare room which has now become the offspring's bedroom). Painting the ceiling is hard work and slow progress, and as for getting a wardrobe from one room to another...? When you have to start dismantling something which isn't actually designed to be dismantled you know it's going to be a long evening. It left us scratching our heads - how did we get it into the room in the first place?

Shining like a beacon of contentment was the weekend's football results, which could have been even better but for two common factors - Man Utd's jammy ability to score goals in the last minute of a game, and Bolton's suicidal tendency to concede goals in the last minute of a game (if you're slow on the uptake, Man Utd played Bolton). Okay, had I been asked before the game, would 1-1 be a pleasing result, I would have undoubtedly answered "yes, thank you very much". But when there's 89 minutes on the clock and Bolton are 1-0 up, the answer would be slightly different. But Man Utd dropping 2 points (rather than 3) earlier in the day gave the mighty Arsenal a chance to go 5 points clear at the top of the table. In the past Arsenal could also be trusted to cock it up when they had their big chance - however, not today dear reader...

Robert Pires, scorer of goal 2 congratulates Sir Thierry Henry, scorer of goal 3.

The ceiling was just finished when Arsenal's first goal against Man City went in - 4 minutes into the game this was good news, but there were still 86 minutes to go. After 12 minutes it was 2-0... better I thought, a comfortable lead. After 15 minutes all my concerns drifted away and visions of being 5 points clear at the top with a vastly superior goal difference took away the boredom of sticking masking tape to the skirting board.

After 19 minutes it was 4-0 and I actually started to feel a little sorry for Man City. They were clearly getting a good whipping, but yet I couldn't forget that they'd been so helpful to Arsenal this season. They gave the Gunners 3 points in the game at Highbury, now they were handing over another 3, but it should not be forgotten that they deprived 3 points from Man Yoo at Maine Road earlier in the season, and then had the audacity to go to Old Trafford - 'The Theatre of Dreams' (oh, pardon me while I puke - where did that name come from?) - and hold Man Yoo to a draw (and City had a winning goal disallowed). I like City.

My thoughts then turned to Bolton... they went to Old Trafford and won, and they held Man Yoo to a draw on this day of decorating. So in four games against Man City and Bolton, Man Yoo gathered just 2 points. This is interesting. The North London derbies between Arsenal and Spurs have traditionally been very close matches, even though Arsenal are the better team by some cosmic distance. Are Man Yoo now facing this type of problem with their local teams?

Arsenal added a fifth early in the second half, and clearly took their foot off the gas (City got a later consolation goal). Actually I watched the highlights and to be fair, City deserved it. The reactions were typical - the charismatic and affable Lord Wenger of Highbury dismissed Man Utd's game as unimportant. Kevin Keegan, a man who can usually take a defeat on the chin (well, he's had plenty of practice), stated that City were fresh from a rest and would have a go at Arsenal - but weren't good enough. Don't be too hard on yourself Kev, you may have scuppered your rival's chances this year. Good man. Sam Allardyce (Bolton) praised his players' commitment but bemoaned another last-minute collapse. And of course he mentioned the penalty that Bolton deserved but didn't get - "it's the old story of a small club like Bolton coming up against a side like United" he said. Very true.

Ferguson - "Bolton cheated by fielding 11 players".

Let's save the last words for Man Yoo's moany old gobshite manager, Mr Alex "it's not fair" Ferguson. Obviously pissed off with his team being deprived of their God-given right to win, the red-faced whinger came out with the usual old set of excuses.

Firstly, "We've played four times since they played their last game and that's a lot of football. They've been in Dubai sunning themselves". Really? Four? Okay, if you say so. In the last week, Man Yoo played an F A Cup tie against Arsenal - Man Yoo played at home, Arsenal had to make the 200 mile journey to Manchester (as did most of the Man Yoo fans). Man Yoo also played a Champion's League game mid-week. So did Arsenal. Arsenal then had to travel the 200 miles to Manchester again... Man Yoo had to travel to Bolton, which is about 12 miles from Old Trafford. Arsenal also played a team who'd just had a two-week break. So, this is actually a crap excuse that doesn't hold any water. Try something else.

Okay, how about this? He then went on to complain about the pitch. This is laughable. Sorry, did I miss that new rule? The one that says that the away team has to stick to certain parts of the pitch and the home team are allowed to run over the better areas of grass?

Cheer up Mr Ferguson... next weekend you get your first chance in ages to lift some silverware. The Worthington Cup... the trophy you said was of no consequence a couple of years ago. Let's hope the grass at the Millenium Stadium meets your high standards.

And finally, the fifth team to be discussed... Sunderland. Late last week, Sunderland's manager Howard Wilkinson stated that Sunderland weren't involved in a relegation fight. For a team already at the bottom of the table this sounds a bit strange. But further analysis of that statement is quite revealing. The important word is "fight". It infers some sort of retaliation. Judging by the way the 'Black Cats' keep losing at home to anyone who cares to turn up, "fight" isn't a word they understand. They need 7 points and 13 goals to get themselves out of the bottom three, but then they'll have played 3 more games. I can't see them getting 7 more points this season.

Champs dump the chumps (16th February 2003)

Sorry, it's time to talk about football again. Last week English men wanted to avoid the subject, especially in the presence of Australians. The trouble is that there's always Australians around these days. I like to have a little joke with our Antipodean friends - I say to them "I hear that Australia's a lovely place". They inevitably reply in the affirmative, that's it's the most beautiful place on Earth, etc, etc. "So", I say, "how come you're all over here then?". And of course, they love to talk about cricket. Sorry, correction - they love to gloat about cricket. The thing is, most of us don't give a shit. Cricket is very, very boring, and it's not our national sport. We're not encouraged to play cricket at school, and (unlike Australia) we don't get cricket-playing weather very often. No, we're English and we like football. Yeah, Australia beat us at cricket every year, so what...? My argument has always been this... we should play them at football once a year and see if they've got anything to gloat about then. As of last week, they have - their 3-1 victory saw to that. Okay Australia, come on then, we'll take you on... crown-green bowling, darts, curling, shove ha'penny... name your sport.

Edu - he scored.

Anyway, I digress. Yesterday was the big one - the match that surely, if the F A Cup worked on a seeding system, should have been the final - the reigning champions Arsenal versus last season's also-rans, Manchester United. Let's cut the crap - Arsenal won it 2-0, overcoming the away disadvantage and ending Man Yoo's hopes of a domestic treble. In December, Man Yoo won the Premiership fixture by the same margin, and were just about the better side on the day. Yesterday they were distinctly second-rate.

Sylvain Wiltord - he scored too.

What was even more wonderful about this match was that it laid to rest a long-standing ghost. Talk about Arsenal and Man Yoo meeting in the F A Cup, and the pundits will find it impossible not to mention the Ryan Giggs 'wonder goal' (yawn) that won United a semi-final a few years ago (I forget which season). Of course everyone forgets to mention that had Nicolas Anelka's perfectly legitimate goal been allowed to stand, there would have been no extra-time and no goal from the cross-eyed Welsh gipsy.

But now, mention Arsenal, Man Yoo and the F A Cup and everyone will say "ha, what about that twat Ryan Giggs missing that open goal?". And it's true, for Arsenal were somewhat lucky when Giggs beat the goalkeeper and two defenders, and then lifted the ball over the empty open goal into the crowd. Priceless.

Oooh, bad luck Ryan...

And of course, no Man Yoo defeat would be complete without their manager, Dame Alice Ferguson, being so gracious. To quote Ferguson... "Arsenal's players bullied the referee and got away with it". More on that in a second, but I feel Mr Ferguson (you'll notice I don't call him 'Sir Alex' - I refuse to recognise his knighthood) missed the point... Arsenal scored two (that's 2) goals and Man Yoo scored zero (as in f*** all) goals.

Now, this point about Arsenal's players bullying the ref. Did they bully him into allowing Arsenal to score two goals, did they bully him into preventing Man Yoo from scoring? I think not. When long-faced Dutch goon Ruud van Whatisname dished out two bookable fouls in the first 20 minutes, did the Arsenal players bully the ref into sending him off? Well, obviously not, because he stayed on. And of course Dame Alice has a short memory... in 2000 didn't the United players chase a ref after a penalty decision went against them? Wasn't Roy Keane seen screaming at the ref in a most threatening manner? You bet. Bottom line - Ferguson, you lost. You were beaten by a better team, so shut your whiney old gob.

A very sad day (9th February 2003)

Yesterday I had to take one of the hardest decisions of my life. After spending a day at the vets during the week, the prognosis for Harry wasn't good. He faced continued treatment on his eyes, he had developed a skin condition, and had arthritis. The arthritis accounted for the fact that he couldn't groom or clean himself as well as his used to. They said that if he didn't respond well to treatment it would be best to let him go.

I thought about this news. He wasn't enjoying the treatment - the eye drops, the lotion on his face, the increasingly necessary clean-up operations. He hated being put in the carrying box to come into the house or to go to the vet. Now, in addition to the existing treatment, he faced a regular full shampoo and daily doses of antibiotics. Surely this wasn't fair on an old chap - just a couple of months away from his ninth birthday he ought to be taking life easy.

Harry 'Randall' Adams - 1994 to 2003 (pictured here aged 3 months)

After a day agonising, I decided to take the hardest decision. There was no point in putting on old man through all this. The likelihood for a rabbit already a year past life expectancy was that more ailments were going to come his way. He was already ailing, so better to go now before he really went down-hill and suffered badly. The vet agreed.

Today was my first day for nearly nine years without Harry in my life (not including days away of course). Those things I used to grumble about, like cleaning out the hutch in the cold and rainy weather, now don't seem so bad. Tomorrow I'll be able to get off to work a few precious minutes earlier because I won't have to feed him and let him out of his hutch. But I'll miss doing it. I'll miss the way he used to thump his back foot in a temper if I forgot to take his biscuit out to him. I'll miss chasing him round the garden when one of his escapes went on too long... and the smug look on his face when he sat under the shed where he thought he couldn't be reached (and the sulky look on his face when he got shooed out with a broom).

I'll close this rather sad section with a story about my fluffy chum... first, I need to tell you that he grew quite large - much larger than the cute little chap you see pictured above. The spotty oik at the garden centre who told me Harry was a "dwarf lop-eared" was talking out of his backside. A couple of years later, our now giant rabbit occupied a double-decker hutch and large enclosure in the garden. It was fenced off, but he could get out if he wanted to - I once saw him clear the fence from a standing jump. Anyway, one Summer evening I went out in the garden and discovered some patches on blood on the paved area of his enclosure. There was also a big smudge of blood across the white patch of fur behind his head. Seeing this, I thought the worst, but on inspection I couldn't see that the blood was his. To be on the safe side I took him to the vet. The vet came to the same conclusion... the blood wasn't Harry's. So whose was it? I guess we'll never know - Harry takes that secret to his rather large grave. The vet's theory was that the blood belonged to a cat. He told me that, if threatened, a rabbit will turn round and kick out - and a kick from a rabbit of Harry's size could break a cat's jaw and certainly give it a bloody nose. The vet stretched out one of Harry's back legs to illustrate the point. I think he said it was three times as powerful as a human leg of a comparative size.

I guess some people will say "come on, he was only a rabbit, why the long eulogy?". Some people may not understand it, but I think anyone who's had a pet will. Suffice to say, our back garden isn't the only thing with an empty space tonight.