Author Archives: Alan

.. it’s the place where you gotta be. It’s about t-minus thirty minutes before I depart on a happy pilgrimmage down the Colwick Loop Road for my first trip to the City Ground since that game against Yeovil back in May. This time Bournemouth are the guests.

I wasn’t planning on heading out for pre-match drinks, but I’ve changed my mind now – although as I’m driving (since I need to get back quick after t’game), it will be soft drinks – but it’ll be good to catch up with the crowd of people who seem to sort of disappear during the summer!

We had ‘fun football’ on friday, both tuesday and thursday saw awful performances from the team featuring me, so I suppose I contributed to that reasonably significantly. Fortunately last night’s game was a little more fun – and I managed to score a fizzer from my own half, which I’ve not done for a while! I reckon I’m getting a bit old for three games a week though, my legs ache like hell! I do think I’m getting fitter though.

But yes, off to the match soon, which will hopefully be a good ‘un – then back home as quick as traffic will allow to leap into the shower and change in time for Andy to pick me up for a rendezvous with a limo to take us over the border into the badlands for Murf’s wedding reception. Should be a good day!

Footy season starts on saturday – which is, despite all sense of logic or reason, quite an exciting prospect for me.  Summer is kind of a hibernation period before the next season starts – sometimes with the mildly interesting distraction of either the European Championships or the World Cup.  So to feel the stirrings of this hibernation coming to an end is pretty good!

After the game I’m hotfooting back home quickly, to shower and change quickly before Andy’s coming to pick me up – then we’re being chauffeured by limosine to Murf’s wedding reception – which should be suitably amusing!  We were going to just hire a minibus, but the cost to upgrade to some limo action was barely a few quid each, so we figured we’d go for it!

Should be a good weekend – assuming the result goes the right way in the football of course!  We face AFC Bournemouth at the City Ground, who we should really beat – but they’re a decent, young and footballing side – so I hope the players don’t treat the game with the same level of contempt as some of the fan comments I’ve read in the build up to the game.

The sun’s finally out in earnest – so the fans are out the loft, there are ice lollies in the freezer and it’s only a matter of time before we all start moaning it’s too hot!

It doesn’t seem to stop the birds monstering around where they’re not supposed to, though!

My hamstring feels tight today, perhaps not all that surprising.  A big part of my footballing game is spannering the ball really hard when I shoot.. and doing that three times in a week (without any real warm up, aside from more spannering the ball really hard!) is probably taking its toll!

My knee feels a bit stiff as well.  Feh.  I reckon both tweaks will be okay by next week though, which is good.

Friday’s game was a chuckle, I think we won, but can’t be sure at all, as we didn’t really do a very good job of keeping score.  I think everyone got on the scoresheet though, which is always a good thing for friendly kickabouts… again, I lost count of how many I got, but I got a few!

Game two of the week, and another win… I’ve decided to try to step up my fitness and try to put in more mileage in games.  And feedback from both tuesday and tonight (spontaneous feedback, I might add!) has borne out that I am having a measure of success, so hopefully I’ll start to build up my fitness and have more of an impact on the pitch.

The kind of player I am means that typically I’ll be found defending, which is my natural forte – but in five-a-side it’s not enough to specialise, and I’m capable of bursting forward to get on the scoresheet (as I did twice again tonight) – so I want to do that more often and increase my running capacity.  Whether I manage to do it for the third time this week in tomorrow’s game remains to be seen!

Today we had a course at work to do with Discovery profiles – kind of a refresher for something I did shortly after starting at Boots, and it was good to recall lots of it – a positive way to spend a day away from the desk with the rest of the team.  It would appear, compared to last time on doing the profiling, I’ve abandoned ‘adapting’ at work and act as myself, which I’m quite pleased with!

Phew.. nick-nacked tonight after a ferocious game at powerleague tonight, well, perhaps not ferocious – but it was quite warm, which none of us are particularly used to of late!  Managed to bag a couple of goals and put in what felt like about a dozen blocks to help us toward a 13-10 win that I never thought our side would be able to muster! (We didn’t have any bibs, so had to cobble together the teams based on what colours people were wearing).

I’m now sitting at home listening to the ill-conceived nonsense that is Forest’s preseason game with the mutton-molesters at Pride Park tonight.  It is to contest the newly created ‘Brian Clough trophy’ – which, whilst a nice idea, seems unfortunately timed for us really – given Derby’s rather higher status than us in league standings.  There really isn’t such a thing as a friendly between our two teams, there really isn’t.  The fact we’re already 2-0 down after about 25 minutes rather reinforces my concerns.

It also sounds like Commons has just picked up a knock from an ‘off the ball incident’ – I really can’t see this game having any tangible benefit to our preparations.  The flipside is that the event is raising money for local charities, which is certainly to be applauded, and is of course at least a commemoration of a great figure of both club’s history.  Oh yeah, and the referee is Uriah Rennie too, who has proven time and again to be an incompetent idiot when it comes to giving decisions to Forest.

So yeah, not impressed.  Sadly I can’t seem to bring myself to switch the radio off, though.. ah well, congratulations to Derby on the inevitable holding of the Brian Clough trophy – hopefully we’ll have a chance to contest it in a more meaningful fixture next season!  Ooh, and Uriah Rennie just gave us a ridiculous decision, and Commons is being substituted already.. well done Forest on a ridiculous preseason idea.

One of the really shit things about summer, aside from the godawful weather, is that when it ends in an odd number there’s no football to tide me over ’til the season kicks off in August.  Forest have been undertaking a bit of preseason activity, but to be honest I’m not particularly arsed about friendly matches… however, tonight’s game between Forest’s reserve side and our dear neighbours the Sadpies is being broadcast on the radio.

So it’s been good to switch on the radio and hear the familiar matchday music – and indeed, as I type Luke Chambers has just put Forest 1-0 up after 5 minutes, which is pleasing to hear!  I really don’t care about this game, or the result, but it would be nice to register a win, as it will save the scruffy Notts fans from having anything beyond ‘Sir Charlie Palmer day’ to gloat about (this happened around 14 years ago – and Notts fans accuse us of living in the past!!).

Tomorrow night is the ill-conceived friendly with our less popular neighbours Derby County.  The game will be played at Pride Park, and marks the beginning of ‘The Brian Clough trophy’ which will be contested every time the clubs meet in the future, be it in friendlies, the league or cup games.  I’m not sure I like the idea – naturally, I love the idea of commemorating the great man, but I’m not sure this is an appropriate way to do so.  Needless to say I won’t be going to that game either.

A week on saturday and the season proper starts – I can’t wait!  But for now, I am quite enjoying hearing our creche giving the Notts first team a good challenge 🙂

Went out on the razz with Rich last night.  We initially met with Lucy and her Rich in the Ropewalk where we imbibed freely of ‘Brothers Pear Cider‘ – a heady perry that clocks in at 7% abv, so after a litre and a half of that each we were feeling suitably merry.  We parted company with Lucy and Rich and headed over to Junktion 7 in order to check out The Fakers who were playing that night.

For those that don’t know, Dave – The Fakers frontman – is known to both me and Rich since he works at ‘the empire’, and the band were instrumental (no pun intended!) in organising the Clough Aid gig last year, which raised over two grand for the Brian Clough statue fund.  If you are after a comparison sound for them, then it’s quite a tricky one – but they’re heavily influenced by indie music clearly, with a subtle hint of ‘The Who’ thrown in.

As ever, they rocked the place – I would urge you strongly to check them out if you get the chance.  Clough Aid taught me that there are some bloody good unsigned bands in Nottingham, I’d love for one (or indeed, all!) of them to get signed up and make it – come on you stuffy label bastards, get your arses to Nottingham!  It’s about time someone took the ‘famous band from Nottingham’ mantle away from Paper Lace!!

So yes, they were reet good, like.  I took my camera out with me and managed to repeatedly forget that I had it, so only took the one picture which ended up an out-of-focus shot of Rich’s eye – but still, I think it looks quite good!  Attempted to make it to the Harper’s “demolition” party after the gig, but alas it had finished by the time we arrived, so crashed on Mum and Dad’s settee with Milly, to be awoken by Rich ‘talking to God on the big telephone’ early in the morning!

So yes, pear cider has it’s drawbacks!  It means I even had to turn my nose up at an opportunistic fry-up that Dad was concocting in the kitchen as I was again roused from my slumbers.  Gutted!

I’m quite a malleable person in some ways, maybe a less kind way of describing this would be to say gullible!  But that’s not quite it, I don’t think.  When I’m suitably inspired by something I can ‘park’ my preconceptions and get somewhat taken in by it – albeit very temporarily – whether it’s a person, a film or – in the case in point – a book that is doing the actual “inspiring.”

The book in question is one I read a while ago, and I’ve just read the second of the series, it’s called K-PAX written by Gene Brewer, and without giving the game away, is about a patient in a mental institution who is exhibits – and very convincingly – a character called ‘prot’ who is a being from another world, called upon to help a human who has had a very torrid time at numerous junctures in his life.

Despite knowing it’s a fictional work, it is presented in a way that allows you to immerse as though it is real, and when viewing the world through the eyes of a visitor from a more utopic (is that a word?) place, it does make one realise what a terribly paradoxical world we live in.  Not just from a corrupt or untrustworthy government perspective, but also on a more personal level.

For example, I’m a self-proclaimed animal lover (not in the people-from-Derby sense, I might add!), yet I’ll quite happily consume meat products or similar.  Just for fleeting moments I found myself nodding and thinking that the idyllic ideas of the K-paxians presented in the book sounds quite enticing.  Of course, upon pondering this some more you get the inevitable lull that our very nature prevents anything approximating this way of thinking becoming the norm.

Despite all this, I’m still looking forward to a Subway with Rich tomorrow before we head off for a few beers.  It is highly likely the sub in question will contain meat!  Anyhow, I’d recommend the book for those of you craving food for thought, the film starring Kevin Spacey isn’t half bad either – although inevitably losing some of the depth of the original text.