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I’ve not written owt on here for ages, and I’m not really sure why I feel compelled to now aside from some insomnia-easing listening to 3 Daft Monkeys gave me the headline which seems to have triggered a lunchtime stream of consciousness heading in no particular direction.

Home-based upheavals aside it’s been a reasonably busy time – work’s got plenty on, and as the football season came to a climactic end at Wembley last weekend we’ve got the World Cup to look forward to.  Prior to the play-off final I actually confessed to the numerous Derby supporting friends and colleagues that I have that I did have a part of me that actually wanted the Rams to succeed.  What? I hear you say. It does feel dirty – but putting the obvious parochial disdain aside the way that they have gone about their season has been a good model to aspire to aside from the final game of course.  Young players, attractive football, not spending a fortune – contrast that with QPR who have operated beyond their means for time immemorial – part of the very problem that blights football.  I won’t deny though that come the day and come the end, Zamora finishing off a beautiful lay-off from Richard Keogh after Jake ‘Bucko’ Buxton was turned inside out was actually pretty damn funny and I think the ferocity of my enjoyment perhaps betrays my true feelings.

Plus it’s nice to have the chance to play ’em again next year rather than either looking enviously upwards as they hone in on the reaching-12-points party.

Before that I went to a wedding at a zoo – how awesome is that?  Jen, who I work with, married Ade – it was a lovely ceremony in the manor house in the grounds of Chester Zoo, so I got to enjoy the usual celebrations that go with a wedding with the added bonus of getting to see a load of animals too!  I have been probably rightly criticised by fellow colleagues upon returning to work that I maybe took too many pictures of animals and not enough of the wedding, but I know some more of my team were being suitably snap-happy with proper cameras so I think between us we have it covered.  Aside from the obviously awesome wedding shenanigans the two highlights outside of that of note were one of tour guides pointing out her colleague was ‘attempting to force their way in from behind’ (fnar) and a clumsy male Jaguar going from lurking mysteriously in a tree to ending up on the floor under the branch that just snapped. On top of his very unimpressed looking female Jaguar companion.

The photo to the right probably doesn’t do it justice, much as the photo on the left taken zoomed in certainly doesn’t do justice to the happy couple and their awesome wedding cake made by Jen’s aunty.  It was delicious.

Then on to next weekend through a series of fortunate events I find myself with a ticket to go and see Carl Froch hopefully smash George Groves into the next millennium at Wembley Stadium, which will hopefully still be damp from Derby County tears.  I’m not big into boxing, but ‘the Cobra’ is not only from Nottingham, he’s from my bit of Nottingham so it’s good to support him.  After the controversial stoppage of their previous fight (which is a shame really, as Froch was clearly about to take him out).  So fingers crossed for a favourable outcome there.

On a penultimate note, check out this awesome video that aired on Notts TV the other day.  Alas I’ve yet to check out the channel as I don’t have Freeview at the moment, plus being just north of Loughborough I might not be able to access it as we’re likely to point at the wrong transmitter.  Anyway, a tribute to Torvill and Dean from the good people of Nottingham.  Dancing on Ice certainly isn’t something that generally floats my boat, but their performance of Bolero was pretty special even for this immovable object, and the tribute from regular folk from Nottingham is charming:

Finally the news we had hoped wouldn’t happen was the result in the search for Elaine, she was found and sadly was no longer with us.  Her funeral was beautiful and moving, her family and friends brave and courageous – and Andy in particular deserves your support for an epic challenge that he’s undertaking to raise money for the charity ‘Missing People’ who helped him through the process of undertaking the search while it was still live.  To do that he’s cycling from Edinburgh to London – if you would like to support him, then do it by clicking here and sponsoring him: http://www.justgiving.com/findelaine

Post-surgery update – it was a success on all levels, the necessary amount of bone marrow has gone winging its’ way to the recipient, and whilst a bit tired and bruised I feel pretty good!

Learning that my recipient is a young boy feels really fitting, as I joined the scheme as part of Joel’s campaign – and it’s especially heartening as a child has a better chance of recovery too.

Not that I ever thought I would, but I genuinely have no regrets at all and feel very pleased to have been able to help somebody like this.

In that vein, please consider registering if you are eligible at Anthony Nolan or, if over 30, Delete Blood Cancer

I discovered today that we have a little over 500k registered in the UK. Germany have more than 4 million, and a high proportion of UK sufferers of blood cancer owe thanks to that given the genetic similarities between us and the Germans leading to more matches.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could follow their lead and achieve that kind of number of would-be donors?

Just a short update this time, fear not! I’ve arrived safe and sound at the London Clinic and am currently sipping orange juice watching Deal or No Deal!

Tomorrow morning is the operation, then the deed is done!

As before, if you’re 30 or under please consider joining the register at Anthony Nolan. If you’re aged 31-55 then you can register at Delete Blood Cancer.

Thanks! And see you on the other side!

I don’t often cast myself as Uma Thurman, but a couple of weeks ago as I sat on our settee compelling my foot to move upwards in the aftermath of having drop-foot and it twitched a bit, it evoked that scene in Kill Bill where ‘The Bride’, lying in the back of a pick-up truck, strains to shake her limbs from entropy.

As her toes begin to twitch on the screen, she smiles and states that the hard part’s over – now let’s get those other little piggies wiggling.

Since that moment I’ve probably regained about a third of the movement I’d lost – it’s most apparent when I’m not working against gravity, so being a reclined kind of person means I have plenty of opportunity to sit flexing my foot up and down as far as I can whilst watching TV or otherwise relaxing.  If I’m standing or sitting with my feet on the floor it’s more of a twitch than an actual movement.

Still, it’s positive to see actual signs of recovery – it’s been getting on for four months since it initially happened – obviously in the interim period I’ve also had the medical diversion of ‘Susan’ to distract me from this longer term problem.  So there’s light at the end of the tunnel, I’m just not quite sure how far it is to walk to get there – but I’m certainly looking forward to the prospect of getting back on the football pitch again.

I probably won’t do so sporting a yellow jumpsuit whilst toting a Hattori Hanzo katana though – although I do have a katana at home!

As a boyhood Red Dwarf obsessive (a fairly short look through the family photo albums will find my mid-teens saw me basically living in either Red Dwarf t-shirts or Forest shirts) I never quite got to the SciFi convention level of fandom.  But it was great to spend time at a relatively intimate ‘Evening With..’ the core members of the cast since the show’s inception (or since the third series at least, in the case of Robert Llewellyn).

With Danny John Jules arriving late (apparently not an uncommon occurrence!), it was left for Craig Charles, Chris Barrie and Robert Llewellyn to lead the entertainment in a fairly informal Q&A led by Al Booth.  Most striking was their ease in the company of each other (for the time before Danny arrived, Craig and Chris were sharing a bar stool – although I’m not sure if they realised!!), and the natural banter they almost couldn’t help engaging in.

I guess being a soap actor now it shouldn’t be surprising, but Craig Charles has an amazing capacity for remembering lines from random episodes – be they his own or his fellow cast members – rivaling even the most avid Dwarf aficionado in the crowd where the other panelists might’ve been floundering a bit trying to remember disparate scenes or pieces of dialogue.

The predictably huge demand for photos and autographs at the end by the assembled gaggle of nerds and geeks (of which I include myself, of course) meant that I shelved the fourteen year old me, and headed home rather than queue for ages, desire for entertainment sated by four of my favourite TV personalities basically sitting together and having a laugh like the bunch of old mates that they clearly are, but including the room in their recollections and in-jokes.

Kudos to Lee for seeing up the evening, with it going so well there’s every chance this could be something that happens again in the future – if it does, then I would heartily recommend it.