WEMBLEY '08

Visited Wembley Stadium yesterday afternoon for the Championship playoff final, Bristol City Vs Hull City. Had a great day out, especially as Hull won! Next season we will be playing in the premier league for the first time in our 104 year history.....bring on Manchester United.....bring on Liverpool.....bring on Chelsea and bring on Arsenal and the rest of them!!!!

The Weekend Has Arrived!!!

A picture taken on my phone last weekend as Hull City walk around the stadium applauding the fans whilst the fans applaud them in return, in the last home game of the season!

Yes it's the weekend, it is supposed to be good weather tomorrow so I think the family and I shall have a BBQ in the garden, except for my sister who is going to Blackpool for the weekend for some nursing convention thingy (Jolly).
On Sunday I will be taking the 5 hour coach ride with my dad and brother to watch Hull City's final game of the season away at Ipswich, no matter what the result is, it's been a fantastic season of football! At the very least we will only finish 3rd with a playoff place, but if we win and Stoke lose then we will gain automatic promotion to the Premiership!
Can you believe my boss asked if I would work tomorrow!!! I said HA! NO CHANCE!!! Not on a bank holiday weekend! I shall be taking it steady though, my liver took a pounding last Saturday when my friend Alex, my brother and I went for a night around town, we didn't get home while 3am!.......I'm getting too old for this kind of behaviour!

The Beginnings Of A Story

Boo

Layla

As I sit here listening to 'The Last Shadow Puppets' I can't think of anything to say! I have just finished listening to 'Rodrigo Y Gabriela' and I feel quite tranquil! I also just took these photo's of our dogs Boo and Layla, I thought they looked nice so I wanted to share them with you!

I also found a story on my computer that I started working on a couple of years ago, it was only a few paragraphs but rather then leaving it to rot on my hard drive, I thought I would share it with you!.......

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The rain had been lashing down hard for maybe two hours when John Fallon turned onto the slip road to leave the Highway for the quieter country road. This would lead him to the Inn where he would rest for the night, before heading for his meeting with Mr Silva at ten o’clock the following morning. He couldn’t help but think of the strange dream he had the previous evening. Why had the vision of a man burning to death appeared in his consciousness?

The rain seemed as though it was not going to let up, at least not for the time being, of this he was sure. The road he now travelled seemed very quite, on the highway there had been few other vehicles, and since joining the single carriageway he had not passed another vehicle. Perhaps people had seen sense to avoid any journeys this evening due to the earlier forecast of heavy rain, and it did not surprise him there were no vehicles travelling this road, the pitch blackness of the country made the road ahead very hard to view, this was compounded by the rain hitting the windscreen, and now the road was becoming more and more serpentine as he journeyed forward, slippery and twisting.

His mind turned once again to the dream, he did not recognise the man in the dream, nor the street in which the scene had unfolded, but he was sure the strange images he had conceived were important some how, but overcast by childhood memories, the mental picture was hiding something, in the shadows maybe?

His thought turned to the road. John could see another vehicle now in the distance, its headlights twinkling, almost rippling with the added effect of the raindrops running down the windshield. He looked at his watch as the headlights of the other vehicle travelled closer, it was now nine thirty. Another person stupid enough to brave this shit storm he thought to himself. The car passed, it looked to John like a middle aged man and woman in the front seats, empty in the back.

As he looked ahead he could see a shadow in the road, moving, it was too dark up ahead to make anything out but, no he could see a car and next to it a person standing in the road, the dark figure started waving it’s hands then a light! A flashlight, it appeared the person was trying to wave him down. He started to slow the car and then indicated to pull over, ‘fuck’, he said to himself, ‘so close to a warm bed, a hot meal and a fucking shower’ and now this idiot, delaying me from my R n’ R.

He pulled to a stop about six feet behind the other car, a battered, rusting, red Ford. John started to wind down his window as the person, a woman, walked briskly up to the driver side of his car, ‘Hey thanks for stopping, could you by any chance give a girl a lift to the next garage? This shit heaps gone and died on me’ said the woman, pointing to her car.

She was around five feet eight inches, although it was hard to tell whilst she was bent down into his window. She was slim with an athletic build, olive skin, shoulder length black hair, lovely well formed breasts, and looked to be around twenty five. She was wearing blue jeans and a tight, light, short sleeved t shirt which showed her stomach and her arms, she was not wearing a coat and was soaking wet. ‘Sure, get in’ he said. She wasted no time, as he rolled up the window she ran around to the passenger side and opened the door. As she got in she laughed, a sort of bemused laugh which…….

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Yet another of the many projects I have started and then just laid to waste! It was going to be a sort of sci-fi thriller, I may actually do some more work on it one day!

Lathargy

Had a very quite weekend, I did absolutely nothing, I only left the house a couple of times to walk the dogs, as a result, I managed to catch up on a few TV series, namely Skins and My Name Is Earl, via Channel 4 On Demand (Streamed over the internet). The weather was rubbish and I was left feeling disappointed after Saturdays football match, although with Hull City (The Tigers) losing away at Sheffield, I was glad that I didn't manage to get a ticket for the game! But the lacklustre weekend has left me feeling lathergic, although I'm in a good mood, I just can't be bothered to do anything!
It should be a decent week though! I'm going to 'The Sesh' live music night tomorrow, to see a friends band, and I'm going to 'Sidekicks Lounge' on Wednesday night (another live music night) with my sister, to see her friends band!

The image is just another photo taken in Whitby of some Whitby Pirates! Whilst I was traveling the high seas!

Hole of Hocum

This is a photo of my dad and I, taken with my camera, by my brother (I like the jaunty angle) as we stopped at the 'Hole of Hocum' (not sure if it's Hocum or Horcum) on the north Yorkshire moors, on the way home from Whitby last weekend!
The 'Hole of Hocum' is about quarter of a mile wide a mile long and about six hundred feet deep, it was scooped out of the ground in rage by a giant called Wade, he threw it at his wife Bel who had infuriated him, but it missed her and landed two miles away to the east and formed a conical hill known as Blakey Topping.
What actually happened was streams that run down through the valley eroded the surface away and water from underground springs gradually undermined the area. But I like the story with the giants better, and it's an actual local legend, I didn't just make it up!

I don't really have much to say today, except IT'S FRIDAY!!! and it's been a long week! I was looking through a college prospectus today at work for an evening class that I would want to do out of personal interest, I think I want to do the class on writing sitcom's, it's a 10 week course. I have always wanted to star in a sitcom, what better way to get started then to write my own!!! Well it would be a bit of fun anyway, and how good would the homework be.......right everyone, I want you to go home and watch at least 2 sitcoms before next week!
I also want to do some Spanish evening classes and perhaps a creative writing class as well! I'll give these some thought before the next intake in September!

Gulls And Music

Here are some photo's of Seagulls that I took in Whitby, there were certainly plenty of them about!

One thing that I have failed to mention in recent posts is that during my absence from blogging, I have quit the band, the reason, I was not happy with the level of progress we had achieved as a band, and I was not happy that one member of the band thought the best way for us to get better and tighter as a band was not in fact to practice with each other but instead to just learn songs and practice on our own at our own places! This of course does not make sense and I felt it was a poor effort at disguising a bit of apprehension with regards to playing live in front of actual people in an actual live music venue!
Nevertheless, there are plans afoot! My musical/comedy side project 'Legend of Sid' which has gained in popularity, is going to be turned into a live performing act!!! Where I will be singing and playing acoustic guitar (the need to actually be able to sing for 'Legend of Sid' is not important, in fact the worse, the better!) whilst my old buddy Dean, singer of 'The Strands' is going to play drums (he has bought an electronic drum kit and has long harboured a desire to play the drums) and we hope that our friend Rob will join in and play keyboard. It will be a much more laid back affair, with occasional gigs and practices.
Dean reckons he will be ready for a first practice at the end of May. Although many of the existing songs will not make the transition to a live experience, we will have to rely on coming up with some new songs that will be more accessible to the general public with not so many "in jokes" although with three albums to my name, there should be some salvageable material!!!

A Disappointing and Sad Evening

Firstly, here's some Black and white shots taken in Whitby on Sunday!

Now, lets skip back to a conversation I had on Monday evening;

Father: Danny and I are going to get a ticket for tomorrows away match at Barnsley, would you like me to get you one when I go to the ticket office?

Me: No, I don't like away games on week nights as the traffic is usually bad, and it can be a bit of a risk making it to the stadium in time for the start of the match! Besides they are showing it on Sky Sports!

Then we skip to 16:00 yesterday;

Father: Are you ready?

Me: What for?

Father: The football game, it'll take about an hour and 20 minutes to get there!

Me: I said I didn't want to go, it's on sky, and the weather is pretty poor!

Father: Oh, I thought you said you wanted to go!

So, as he had already paid out £20 for me, I took the ticket, got ready and left the house, and we started the 70 mile drive to Barnsley. Everything was going great, except the weather, it was pouring down with rain! We were making excellent time and it looked like we would arrive one and a half hours before the game, and get a decent parking spot.
We were 50 miles down the M62, just 1 mile from the turn off we needed, when all of a sudden the traffic came to a standstill! We waited a while then one by one, emergency vehicles started passing us by on the "hard shoulder" in total 5 fire engines, an emergency support vehicle, 5 ambulances, an air ambulance and 8 police cars! Oh no we thought, this is serious!!! It turns out there had been a multi vehicle pile up involving six cars, started by the driver of a crane swerving, and resulting in a 10 year old boy (also a Hull City supporter on the way to the football match) being killed and 10 others seriously injured (the fire brigade had to cut people out of wreckage) all this happened about 1/4 a mile (30 seconds drive time?) in front of us, we could see the emergency vehicle lights flashing up ahead as we exited the car to look along the line of traffic!
So we sat there as the time to "kick off" approached, deciding it was very likely we would miss the start of the game............after 4 hours of sitting in our car, listening to the match on the radio, the game was almost over when we started to move and were directed to turn around up ahead and join a long line of cars waiting to follow a police car back up the "hard shoulder" in the wrong direction, to the previous turn off, where we journeyed back home listening to the Hull City fans phoning in the radio station, saying what a great game it had been, and the atmosphere in the stadium had been fantastic "like one huge party"...............................

Things to be thankful for...........1) We were not involved in the accident 2) Hull City won the game and are in an automatic promotion spot 3) We recorded the game on Sky+ 4) We weren't one of the articulated lorry drivers who couldn't turn around and probably had to wait until the early hours for the accident to be investigated and the road to be cleared!

Also, you cant help but feel for that poor boy, the other injured people, and their families!