Eagles

I blogged about the football club I support a while ago and how Crystal Palace has been in administration for a number of months. Despite the Administrator stating a massive interest from parties looking to buy the club, none have come to fruition other than a group of wealthy fans willing to purchase the club as “reluctant buyers”.

The acquisition has moved along and an offer has been made to the creditors, but the future looks bleak. Simon Jordan, the previous owner, and largest creditor by far is unhappy and could delay the club’s sale, forcing players to be sold and even forcing the club into liquidation… i.e. death. Many people believe that the downfall of the club is due to Mr Jordan and the naive mistakes he made. He certainly wasted a huge amount of money and has failed to advance the club other than build a top rated youth academy.

The next few weeks will see if southeast London will lose its professional football club after 103 years. It’s a sad very time. With this in mind, I have been thinking about the death of club I have followed since I was a small child – could I actually support another team?

I enjoy watching football and the rumours and politics behind it, but I know that I could not follow another team. Even if I found a club with similar roots, history, outlook and “feel”, I am sure that it could never feel like a part of me.

My life with Crystal Palace is complex and irrational, built on personal (and family) history with hopes, dreams, disappointments and even the odd achievement. All of this makes it worthwhile and you can’t fabricate history or loyalty.

The football business is flawed and needs to be transformed. I hope that it doesn’t take several large clubs going bust before clubs and the Government get involved to transform the sector. German clubs are not in huge amounts of debt and yet are still successful.

So it could mean that my only football outlet would be the England team* and that’s too depressing to contemplate. There has never been a club versus country conflict for me. England consists of overpaid, spoiled, immature “lads” who play bland football with the result in mind and never the performance. This fails to represent the football I want to see; I want my own team of overpaid, spoiled, immature “lads”, thank you very much.

So the future of the Eagles looks bad, but you could never say that being a Palace fan has ever been dull. The picture at the bottom of this entry is 5 linked photos I took one warm night at a play-off semi final.

* Staring longingly at pictures of Fernando Torres probably doesn’t count as a football outlet.

Exploring London

With one day to take from my holiday allowance before the end of the company year, I decided to take my camera to London and explore some places I had never been to and combine that with some family history research.

It was a beautiful Spring sunny morning and I got the first of many trains at 10.03am towards London...

- Arrived Finsbury park
- Underground to Highbury & Islington
- Stopped for a Latte
- Got the bus to Dalston Junction
- Took brand new Overground train (with about 4 people on) on the "new" line to Rotherhithe where Pete and I used to live. Of course, most of the line is from the 1800's but some of it has only just come back to life.
- Had a look around Decathlon while is rained heavily
- Took Jubilee line underground train from Canada Water to Stratford

- Saw the Olympic site from afar (cranes everywhere so you cant see much)
- Had some lunch
- Took Jubilee line underground train back to Canada Water
- Got back on the Overground to New Cross Gate
- Got a train to Norwood Junction and then walked to the house where the Burton's lived. Sadly, some of the houses no longer exist.
- Took a bus to Thornton Heath to see where my Great-Grandad lived. It's a very rough area now.
- Rode a slow bus to Penge and got off at the wrong stop.
- Got lost in Sydenham looking for Crystal Palace Park, but it was a nice walk in the sunshine.
- Found Crystal Palace Park and walked around it for an hour. Lovely place in the overcrowded streets of south-east London. Saw the concrete dinosaurs for the first time!
- Got a train from the impressive Crystal Palace station to Balham.
- Northern Line Underground train to Leicester Square.
- Had a look around Covent Garden.
- Walked to The British Library, but it was closing so will go back another day.
- Had a look around St Pancras station and the shops.
- Decaf Latte break.
- Train home from Kings Cross. Got home at 7.45pm.

Some images from the day...

And you are?

It's been a dull week for me and I wont even bore you with my trip to the dentist.  Have a busy(ish) week ahead, but am using one last days holiday from work on Monday and intend to go to London and just explore with my camera.  I have a couple of places that I want to visit that I have never been to - I'll blog about it I'm sure.

Last night Pete and I and 3 others went for a meal at the top notch restaurant that we went to for my pre-birthday night out.  It's so expensive, but so good.  We ordered some wine and the waitress said "we don't have that one anymore - it was shit wine!".  To the point I suppose.

On facebook I posted a picture that I saw on the net and asked for feedback on what either our new Prime Minister or Her Maj' was saying.  This is my contribution...

Online backup

A while ago I saw a feature of The Gadget Show (one of only a few great shows on Channel 5) all about backing up personal computer data.  Your data can be lost due to virus infections, accidental deletion, hardware/software failures, power failures, etc.

I personally have a huge file of photographs, documents and music that would be awful to lose, especially the photographs.  A while back our computer died and it might have been possible to get someone to trawl the dead hard drive for the data, but I had a separate external hard drive as a backup so the files were readily available.

However, what would have happened if there was fire or theft?  I would be stuffed!  Therefore, I researched online backup facilities and decided to use the one recommended on The Gadget Show - it's called Carbonite.  For $50 a year, all my data is backed up - I think it's a small price to pay to protect memories and to avoid potential hassle if you lose data.

If you don't backup your files, you are mad.  If you don't use an online system as well, you may be taking risks - so consider it by doing some research yourself... please!

Some off the wall Venice pictures

1. The elevators in the hotel - i.e. "Schindler's Lift"
2. Mirror mirror
3. Locks all over the bridge - not sure why
4. Pete 'n' graffiti
5. Dinner on my birthday

May Movie Update

Here are the films that Pete and I have received from Lovefilm.com and watched on TV and DVD over the past month or so, in reverse order, with my ratings out of ten from my movie list on IMDB.

The Girlfriend Experience 3
How could Steven Soderbergh would put his name to this rubbish.

Alfie 7
Classic Caine.

Paranormal Activity 7
Excellent horror film. Pete lasted 15 minutes watching this before making excuses to leave the room!

Away We Go 5

Vertigo 7
Amazed I had never seen this Hitchcock thriller.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 6
Violent and too long.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas 2
I really like Terry Gilliam, I really hated this film.

2012 4
Cliches, awful acting, stupid story, idiotic sub-plots, great effects (all 4 points for that alone).

New Moon 6
Not the greatest story - but most points are for the guys whose shirts keep coming off.

The Truman Show 7
How come Jim Carrey can act normally and pretty well and other times he's a complete prat?

The Proposition 7

Sunshine Cleaning 7

K-PAX 7

Some Voices 6

Religulous 8
Already commented on this one at this blog entry.

The Fall 7
A visually stunning film with a story within a story. Bit too long.

Bye bye Miss American pie...

Last night Pete and I accompanied my Mum and Dad to the Royal Albert hall to see singer/songwriter Don McLean. The tickets were a present for my Dad's 70th birthday. As expected, the venue was full of people of a certain age.

I grew up with Don's music as my Dad played the American Pie album (on scratchy vinyl) over and over, so I knew a lot more than Pete did.

The warm up act was the excellent Lesley Roley who played a witty song about an ex-boyfriend who had written loads of non-complementary songs about her after they broke up. So she had written a song called Mr Sad and had a great line in it:

"Size is important when you're not very big".

She said he ex was none too happy when he heard the song.

Not much to say about the election result other than other European countries survive well with coalititons, so we need to get on and sort something out! I do believe we need a change in the voting system as too many votes are wasted, especially at safe seats, but that can wait.

Anyway, enjoy the dull rainy May day!

Five on the fifth #11

Welcome to 5 on the fifth, a monthly posting that benefits from audience participation. You take 5 photographs on the 5th of the month (or the days leading up to the 5th) - post a comment here with your name, location and link to the site containing your photos and I will update the blog entry with your information. Remember to mention my blog on your own blog, so that your visitors get to see the other contributions. You can take 5 random pictures or follow my suggested theme - this month it is: A journey.

You can join the 5 on the fifth Facebook page here.

My own pictures are below the links of those who kindly contributed:


It's My time, Oz via Dublin
Mark, Washington, USA
New Leaf, Arizona, USA
Al, Philippines
Les Maudites, France
Coffeedoff, Suffolk
David, Brighton
Daniel, Sweden
Mr Urs, Switzerland
Johan, Namibia 
Pete, Our house, UK
Dennis, UK
Howard, USA
I am witness, USA
Torchy, UK
Erik, USA

 

 

Busy busy

It's been a busy weekend so far and there is another bank holiday Monday to come.

On Saturday, Pete and I went to Grand Designs Live at the Excel centre in London as we had free tickets. I had been to the venue before, but the sheer size of the building still astounded me. The show itself was not as good as I had expended - although there were hundreds of stalls and events, it was mainly high end stuff - i.e. expensive everything from furniture to kitchens and swimming pools to power tools. My favourite section was the food area - lots of gadgets and food to try.

On the way back, we called in at Ikea and bought some new furniture for the spare bedroom which we are currently doing up with some cool colours and a new carpet. Ikea was full of North London chavs and as usual, not enough tills were open.

Today I got up early (partly as Pete woke me up constructing the Ikea furniture) and spent a while clearing the garage and building "things" like shelves from an old bed. Recycling in action! I then spent hours painting, which I hate doing.

We then took loads of old wood, cupboard doors and furniture to Pete's mums house and had a massive bonfire. Great for a cold(ish) day like today - Caveman instincts to the fore.

And finally, Crystal Palace played their final game of the season today and managed a draw with Sheffield Wednesday sending the Northern team down and rescuing the Eagles. It's been a crazy seasons with stupid refereeing decisions, cup runs, great results, awful results and a bankrupt club. I am praying for a saviour and it has to come very soon. I'll blog about this again I am sure.

One other thing, when we were in Venice, we found a great gallery called BAC Art and we bought a print of a watercolour - the only obviously gay picture in the house. It's this image on the right... hope you like it too.

May

It's almost time for the next "5 on the fifth".  As usual, everyone is welcome to take part. You can either take 5 random pictures of anything that happens to you on the 5th of May (or the days leading up to it) or perhaps go for my suggested theme. This month, the theme is A Journey.

I hope that you will be inspired take part. If you are looking for a place to store your images, you can create photo folders on Hotmail or Google (Picassa) for free. Don't forget to add a comment on my blog on the 5th with your name, location and link where the pictures can be found. Remember to mention my blog on your own blog so that your visitors get to see the other contributions.