Joint 3rd all-time goalscorers for the Effra Academicals!

I was down in London last week, and met up with Stuart [he of recent majestic 40th], Luke, Jonathan/'Osc' and Macca for an impressive curry somewhere near London Bridge station.

We all used to play 5-a-side and 11-a-side together for a team we named Effra Academicals, which began 10 or so years ago at Crystal Palace Sports Centre and, frankly, was as much fun as it's possible to have. Plenty of legendary moments, loads of cameraderie, and on occasion our womenfolk shivering but vocal on the touchlines. Plus, beer at the end of it - pretty much an ideal set-up (apart from the regular trouncings, but even they were, er, character-building or something). The Accies are still going strong...

Anyone who has seen me play football, or had to play alongside me, will know I only think about scoring goals. When my team is suffering a backs-to-the-wall defensive siege, I tend to see this as a chance of a counter-attack, rather than reflecting that getting back to help out might be a more immediately productive use of my presence on the pitch.

Consequently, Osc and I were the Accies' main strikers, and its various offshoots, for a good few years. When Valeria and I left London for Rotterdam in 2002, I retired as the club's leading goalscorer, on 74, and Osc overtook my tally a few years later. Both of us retired from the club a long time ago, but as this entry on the club's blog explains, we have both ourselves now been taken over. Almost ten years later for my record...!

At the curry house, Stuart presented Osc and I with commemorative club shirts in recognition of our past efforts - and, boy, were we chuffed with them.



So too was Liam when I got home, though mainly - all right, solely - from seeing his surname on a real football shirt! (As I've lamented previously, he remains completely indifferent to the actual sport itself...)




Still, should the miracle occur, he's clearly got the moves for Messiah-complex goal celebrations...

Liam The Ice Smasher

At the tail-end of the winter, Liam and I went for a short bike ride, and got sidetracked, literally, round the back of County Hall, ending up down by the railway tracks where we found a frozen-over pond.

Not content simply to admire this natural phenomenon, Liam wanted, of course, to destroy it. To smash the ice, though rather sweetly under the pretext that there might be animals trapped underneath it, "like frogs and newts".


So we went off looking for "gigantic stones or big bricks". We found a couple, and I launched them skyward over the pond and, it does have to be said, they did make an entirely agreeable and impressively loud 'plop' sound with volcano-esque explosive fountain upon entry.

When we found a wooden stake of some description (left lying around by local vampire slayers), Daddy was entrusted with slamming it into the ice - and, as I like to think the photos attest, I didn't let him down. It was then interesting to lift the stake up so the ice cracked a bit, creating a spider's web pattern of cracks around the entry point... I'm sure a physicist could explain it, but that doesn't take anything away from how cool it looked.

I'm especially appealing for appreciation of this last photo; I mean, the timing, the perspective, all with a mobile phone... Come on, admit it, it's quite good.

C2c 2011, etc etc - Willington (via Oakenshaw), Newton Hall, Easington...

With the commentary to Andrey Arshavin's fantastic winner against Barcelona at the Emirates ringing in my ears - I'd already memorised it - I set off for Brancepeth, and its agreeable castle. But I got there reasonably straightforwardedly, and so like my jaunt to Chester-le-Street, I decided to just carry on and see what came next.

Tow Law was the answer, on the next signpost, which appealed because of Tow Law Town, of course: I admit I don't keep track of how they're doing, but always seem to hear their name on the Classifieds. Except I got lost en route, and more to the point, thirsty. So when I cycled past a remote village called Oakenshaw I figured it must have a shop.

It doesn't, or not one immediately apparent from its high street. This meant carrying on into the unknown down a gigantic hill to the next village nestled in the bosom of the valley below. Fortunately, this was Willington, a village I knew, 8.5 miles away from home - 10miles with the needless detour.

There I sampled The Mermaid Fish Shop's lunchtime special, with pot of team and mushy peas, all for a reasonable £5,
and salivated over the football reports - shame it didn't work out in the away leg (had van Persie been on the end of Wilshere's pass at the end, though...)

The next jaunt was nearer to home, in the Newton Hall estate, because last summer Liam and I had found a brilliant alleyway with a daunting and exhilarating hill down into town that I couldn't resist trying again. It took a while to find it, over the railway bridge, but it has a Cresta Run feel to it, and ends up with a lovely arc round into a farm:



The following week I headed in another direction, toward Sherburn, and beyond to Easington, apparently the most ethnically homogenous postcode in the country, and a tough place to reach by bike - 13 miles away, loads of hills, especially into Sherburn Hill (clue in the title, I suppose)!
But there were some giant windmills en route, in the beautiful hills...

Easington's high street is a looooooooooooong and formidable bank, but when I got there, I saw a sign that said the coast was at the bottom, three miles away. Well, I couldn't resist that, and you do get a thrill from seeing the sea, don't you? I got there, but there was a steep cliff, and I didn't have enough time to find the path down to the 'beach', so I had to settle for this, before the 13 miles back:

Daddy's 42nd birthday

I turned 42 on February 19th - it's all right, next time with the card and CD, email me for suggestions! ;-P - and this year saw more of an actual celebration than normal!

Best present of all was that my best mate and best man (and I was his) Dominic came over with his family, wife Fi and two boys Lawrence and George, from Manchester. We hadn't seen each other for over a year - as I keep saying, Durham is a long way from everywhere, even Manchester is over 2 hours away! - and so it was fantastic to see them again, and for Liam and Lawrence and George to play together.


Fi baked me a birthday chocolate cake too, and it was yum. Here are the two families.

We went for a walk in town to show Lawrence, a keen Harry Potter fan, some of the locations where the first film was shot. I had always believed the hall in University College had been used for the school dinners, but Lawrence was utterly unconvinced, and turns out he was right. But some of the Hogwarts scenes were filmed in the cloisters of the Cathedral, so I pulled back some credibility there!

Dom and Fi also arranged, for my present, a Guided Tour of The Emirates for me in the next year, which is touched by genius as I've only ever seen My People's Central Temple from the southbound East Coast service to London King's Cross... I also got loads of Coen Brothers DVDs from the missus and the monkey, and a quality hand-drawn card from Liam.

Thanks everyone.

Stuart Dade's 40th birthday shenanigans

Stuart Dade is a mighty old friend from when I lived in London doing my MSc and then PhD. I've played football with him for the Effra Academicals; I've been on EPIC stag dos with him, including his own to New York [insert expletive] City; he and I compiled the legendary 'God's Gifts' CDs of music interspersed with goal commentaries, only a select few people in the world have heard, let alone own; and dozens of gigs, the highlight of which, friendship-with-him-wise, was Billy Bragg on Election Night 1997. Earlier that day he and I had been getting out the vote for the Mitcham and Morden marginal in south London, and when that seat's result came in on the venue's giant screen at about 3am, he and I moshed to it in a drunken frenzy of democratic engagement! (Well, everyone was optimistic that night...)

So his 40th was a big deal, and together with another massive mate in London, Luke Fallon, I wanted to get him something brilliant. But what? He has all - and I mean ALL - the Star Wars memorabilia you could think of, and we suspected he probably also had all the obscure vinyl records we could think of, so what?

I came up with a signed Norwich City shirt, and really there was only one man whose name had to be n that shirt: Jeremy Goss. Scorer of two legendary goals when Naaaaaaarrrrccchhhhhh [to give them their correct pronunciation] beat Bayern Munich in the UEFA Cup in the 90s (unaccoutably, I can't find the goal I want - the one at home - on YouTube; it's over-rated, this Interweb thing).

So - how to get hold of Jeremy Goss. We figured he must still be associated with the club, but the club were, understandably, less than keen to share his private contact details with us. So I Googled him, and he does after-dinner work and speeches and the like, and has a brochure on the web. With his mobile phone number (OK, techincally this was via the Interweb so the jury's out on whether it'll catch on...)

I called it, and he was an absolute gentleman, more than happy to help. We only had a week to make this happen, so the logistics required us to buy the shirt over the phone from Naaaaaaarrrrccchhhhhh, send it to him (NCFC Club Shop employee: "And where would you like us to post it to?" Me: "Jeremy Goss' house, please"), get him to sign it etc, and send it down to Luke in London, for us to wrap in time for the party...

The quid pro quo, which just made the whole thing even better, frankly, was that Mr Goss is doing a charity bike ride, "Back to Bayern", for a local blind charity and he asked if we would donate. We have done, and if anyone else wants to do so, click on the link above. (A comment linking it to Stuart's shirt will help Mr Goss know your gift is linked to his kindness...)

Come the night of the party, we called Stuart over, and handed over the package. The pictures tell the developing story of his realisation...

As you can see at the end, we got Mr Goss to not only sign it but write out the salient details of John Motson's commentary for his goal in the home leg (Stuart was there and lists it comfortably in his Top 10 Greatest Ever Moments)...

The man is a star, and the look on Stuart's face was everything we wanted. (His brother, Andy, also a Naaaaaaarrrrccchhhhhh fan, got the green-eyed monster a bit, for which apologies...!)

The party was excellent, in a barn at The Plough Pub in Leigh, Kent. The beer flowed and it was great catching up with some more old friends from London, too. The DJ eventually got people on the floor - as an ex-DJ I couldn't help but think he'd shot his "Don't Stop Me Now" bolt ridiculously early! - and we rolled back the years/ made utter fools of ourselves to the Stone Roses, Nirvana, and Dinosaur Jr (all of which the DJ said were new to him, showing OUR age I admit, but surely also his narrow musical horizons! We had no idea who he played in the middle of the night!)

Luke and I stayed at The Barn in Hildenborough, a lovely little B&B - although we got a maximum of 6 hours in it because I had to head back. Outsanding breakfast...