Robin Park Shopping Precinct, a wet and chilly January evening. Sparrows huddle for warmth under supermarket eaves as the wheeled metal machines below struggle to wake up. Suddenly from the stony silence, a sharp blast of Krautrock in the vicinity of Stadium Way. Was ist das? Heads swivel 180 degrees as the silhouette of a…
Oh dear, I really do worry for my ailing season card – it has already been washed with my jeans, stuck behind the radiator and buried with the dog’s chew toy. I fear that swiping it through the DW turnstile three times in nine days might cause it to melt into my very hand, leaving…
Is there any sense in making New Year’s resolutions? I have already broken two of mine, namely ‘stop stealing content from the Daily Sport’ and ‘speelcheek evry post’, and it’s only a matter of time before the others are also consigned to the same proverbial trash heap alongside two bin liners of discarded Christmas wrapping…
In this most commercial of seasons, it is an absolute pleasure to sample the anarchic neo-punk literature they call the fanzine. These glossy bundles of Christmas jollity are a welcome alternative to thrice cleansed mainstream reports wrung of all humour, as if they were one of Richard Whiteley’s particularly nauseating Christmas sweaters, or perhaps Ceefax…
I rose from my bed to the glorious summer sound of birds chirruping cheerfully in the chestnut trees. Stepping outside in just my boxer shorts, I plucked my morning milk from its usual spot by the step. “Ahh, warm semi-skimmed again! Hope this hasn’t curdled in the heat.” After applying an inordinate amount of sun…
“I went for the nibbling technique rather than the stuff it all in.” So said Matt Backhouse, ‘graceful loser‘ at this week’s World Pie Eating Championships. The organisers’ shock last-minute decision to switch to puff pastry put him at a great disadvantage, since his local eatery stocked only shortcrust. Nigh on a year of training…
Oh, it’s serious stuff. When a mere midweek messabout is promoted to Saturday status, that poxy little paint pot cup becomes a tremendous technicolour trophy of considerable size. Quite literally – standing next to the hallowed John Stones Paint Trophy in the Supporters Club this afternoon, you realised the true scale of this thing. No…
There comes a moment when you realise you *don’t* know everything. That turning point in your life when you go full Acorah and start to believe in the supernatural, I mean. I recall watching a documentary about an affliction known as ‘alien hand syndrome’, which causes the hand to act of its own will, as…
You know, there *do* exist football teams named after commercial products and entities – look at Vauxhall Motors, Lada Togliatti, Airbus UK, Honda FC, Total Network Solutions and, er… Prescot Cables. Is it really that silly to assume Burton Albion were named after the makers of Maryland Cookies, Wagon Wheels and Jammie Dodgers? Burton’s is,…
I love my television. It tells me what to think about things I wouldn’t otherwise be the slightest bit interested in. It is a bastion of social justice in this post-Whitehouse society, providing wholesome entertainment in an age of MTV music videos that might as well be underwear advertisements. It is a window to the…
Emmerson Boyce is truly the Ringo Starr of football. Despite the fact he was narrator of the multi award-winning Thomas The Tank Engine, poor old Starsky will only ever be known as ‘the fourth best drummer in the Beatles’. Similarly, Boycey has been typecast as a Wiganer, even though he has made just as many…
Wait, really? The FA Cu- er, that competition again? Gah, I bet my sub editor £20 I wouldn’t explicitly mention the events of 2013 for the duration of this calendar month… Gnnngh, and it’s only the seventh. Those sneaky swines, how dare they fool us all by leaving that weekend of the fixture list blank…