While my heart is still beating

Last Saturday I watched Saints lose at home to Wolves, who are run away leaders of the championship. It was a good game ruined by a referee who did his profession no good by his performance. We lost 2-1, but for the ref could we could have had a point.

Today we went to Reading, who just don't lose at home. They were a Premier League team last season and in many ways still are and were before today's game third in the league and had the best goal difference in the league by some margin. We won 2-1! While the commentary on the radio is as biased as it can be, we seemed to play really well and showed Reading no respect and in the 1st half in particular played them off the park. 2nd half sounded more even but we managed to hang on for a win that could just turn our season on it's head. (Yes I know the important word in that sentence is "could"!!!)

QE2/QE2 Finale

As a young boy, aged 10, the arrival in 1969 of the luxury liner, Queen Elizabeth 2, in Southampton was a huge event and I'm pretty sure that my school took us to Western Shore on the edge of Southampton Water to see her first voyage. This was in the same way that they had taken us to the same beach to see the last voyages of both the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary.

Forty years on, last night the QE2, as she is affectionately known, sailed from Southampton for the last time. It is the end of an era as for most of my life the iconic funnel has been visible to all visitors to the docks and seeing her sailing in and out of the port has been a regular sight.

She left with a fitting tribute, accompanied by a flotilla of small craft, with a massive firework display and just in case there were a few people who were unaware of her departure earlier in the day as she arrived from a final cruise, she briefly ran aground!

She is replaced by two even bigger liners the "Queen Mary" and the "Queen Victoria" both mighty fine liners but not the QE2.

Her final resting place will be Dubai, where she will be turned into a floating hotel. Who knows maybe one day I'll get a chance to stay "on board".

Slow train

There are a series of TV adverts running at the moment about the foolishness of jumping crossing gates across rail lines. This driver. I would suggest, hasn't been paying attention. This is the aftermath of his van being hit by a train on the Salisbury to Bath line this morning. You can read the full story here.

How do I know this? Well I was on a train on this line this morning. Not the one that hit the car but the one going the other way that stopped in the middle of nowhere for 10/15 minutes. The one that then had to go back to Bradford-on Avon (as unsurprisingly the line was blocked) so that we could get off and stand in the cold for 50 minutes, get on a coach , be driven into Bath and then get another train to Bristol and then arrive two hours late for a meeting!!!!

All because some "red van man" didn't think that he would come second against a train!

Genius!

Pride (In the name of love)

President elect Obama - Great news and great acceptance speech!

John McCain - dignified in defeat, consigned to history.

Sarah Palin - say she wants to run in 2012. Surely (please) her only chance is to train for the Olympic marathon?

Joe Biden - hopefully not the next President Elect.

W - sat in the White House knowing that people outside are partying that he's leaving. Has 2 months left though, so not over yet, what could he still do?!? Somewhere in Texas a village is about to get it's idiot back!