Another record

Yesterday one of my favourite bands "Transatlantic" (yes, I know "who"?) released their latest album.

Tonight I diverted my journey home via Southampton to buy a copy. The only option was HMV, who didn't have it. Now some of you may say " that was lucky you were saved from having to listen to it" but that would be cruel and unnecessary.

What struck me, however, was a city the size of Southampton has only one music store where you can buy anything that isn't chart music (and even then it's only Smith's and ASDA!)

Time was there was Virgin, Our Price, Smith's, Fopp, Debenhams and various smaller independant shops. Now just HMV. No wonder iTunes etc do so well!!!

Down in the park

I grew up in Shirley in Southampton and a large part of my life between 8 and 15/16 was based around Shirley Recreation Ground (Shirley Rec). It was here I played football during the winter, cricket in the summer (although the football usage during the Winter didn't make for straight uneven bounce!). In the summer, as well, we regularly used the 4 tennis courts (except during Wimbledon when you couldn't get near them). I climbed my first tree there, rode my bike there and hurtled down the sloping paths on home built go carts.

Over the years it has declined as generations of local children increasingly abused it, with vandalism and graffiti and it has a tired look.

We've still visited it, to use the play park when the boys were younger and to play sport as they've got older.

More recently it has started to show signs of new life, with a cafe opening and a friends of Shirley Park (as it now known) group forming to keep in a tidier way.

Well today they've hit the jackpot with the Lottery announcing that a £1.5m grant has been given to them and all sorts of things will now be carried out to "the Rec" so that further generations will be able look back and smile when they think of it.

Everybody wants to rule the world

World cup qualification for next years tournament in South Africa ended tonight. For England that meant the unusual feature of England playing a largely meaningless final tie against Belarus at Wembley, having already qualified last month against Croatia.

Having lost in Ukraine last week-end there was some added pressure for some players (Rio Ferdinand?) as to lose two games on the trot would make Capello a very unhappy man and that is not something that I would wish to experience.

It also meant that some of the "fringe" players could play, a fact helped by injuries to Gerrard and Rooney. So Crouch, Agbonlahor, Lennon & Bridge all got a game and with 35 minutes left Beckham came on. At that stage we were 1-0 up from a very early Crouch goal. It finished 3-0 and Beckham made us look a much better team, having a hand in both goals and hitting the post with a shot.

What did we learn tonight...not a lot. Will we win the World Cup..... maybe? Next year? Who knows, it'll be winter in South Africa next June/July, so maybe the weather will help us. We can but hope.

Loser in the end

Expenses are something that I have claimed for most of my working life. I have always erred on the side of caution as, to be honest, I was always certain that some kind of banking "big brother" was going to measure how far Wimborne was from Bournemouth and reduce my mileage claim accordingly (or worse....)!!!

I know that some colleagues claim for absolutely everything ( as I'm sure happens in most businesses), BUT the yard-stick for me has been what is reasonable, not what is possible. Sorry but that's just how I am.

Our British Members of Parliament have, however, made claiming expenses an art form whereby our Prime Minister has overclaimed by £12k and thinks that paying it back makes it all ok. The fact that he claimed all that extra money for cleaning and gardening seems to only make it worse. I know that he's far from the only one but he's the PM and if he is not above reproach then hell and handcarts come to mind.

"Sighs deeply"

We will rock you

Last night I made my second appearance as a singer in a choir (not counting school boy times).

It occurred during the Roger Jones musical "Rock" which is touring the South west. This is a semi-professional set up who augment each performance with a local choir.

This means that for the last 3 months we've been practicing singing the 16 songs so that come last night we look like we've been part of the show all the time! Except that of course everyone in the audience knew that we were only performing that evening.

The musical is based on the story of Simon Peter (the one in the New Testament) and the show was excellent, with good acting, singing and music. The music was a professionally produced backing track, with some live instruments and the staging, sound and lighting were all again of a semi-professional standing.

It was a pleasure to be a small part in such a great production.

Peace at last

The announcement today that this years Nobel Peace prize has been awarded to President Obama, took many by surprise, including to his credit the man himself.

The announcement was so unexpected that when one US journalist contacted the White House for a quote, they thought that he was joking!

It is a surprising decision in that he hasn't really done anything significant in this first year of office that instantly springs to mind as an action or series of actions after which we all said "well that's the Nobel Peace prize sorted this year". What he has done is take the USA back onto the world stage as a country who are prepared to negotiate again. The BBC correspondent, Mark Mardell, said on the radio this afternoon that  he thought he had got it for "not being George Bush!"

Any way well done Mr President, it's good to see your efforts (???) are being acknowledged.

Paint me down

One of the "ahem" benefits of relegation to League One is that Saints get to take part in the mighty Johnstone's Paint Trophy.

The competition is divided into two halves, divided North and South (to reduce traveling) and the winners of each half meet in the final at Wembley. Each half is also divided into east and west to further cut down traveling although that's less logical as tonight for example in the South west section Bournemouth went to Northampton!

Saints naturally are also in the South western section and after a bye in the last round, tonight they hosted Torquay from League 2 at St Marys. Tickets were very cheap and allied with a 7pm kick off meant that over 9000 turned out to watch.

The game itself started badly with Saint going in at half time losing 2-0!! The second half produced the required comeback to that at full time it was all square at 2-2.

Penalties! We scored all five, they didn't. Wembley is slightly less of a dream!!!

Perfect

Tonight's TV.

1. How I met your mother.... (Which ended with Roxy Music's "Mother of Pearl")
2. 2 brand new episodes of  "Two and a half men"
3. Chuck
4. 30 Rock

After a day like today I really need to watch and not to think!

Movin' on up

Will and I went to St Mary's this afternoon to witness our biggest win of the season , 4-1 against the mighty Gillingham.

We also went last Tuesday when a late injury time goal gave Bristol Rovers a 3-2 victory. To be honest we played slightly better on Tuesday night than we did today, but today the big difference was that we took our chances. On Tuesday when 2-1 up we had agreat chance to make it 3-1 but the Bristol keeper made a good save and then later when 2-2 another good save kept the score line level.

Today having taken an early lead, we let Gillingham back in through sloppy defending, but this time two chances were converted and eventually we eased to a fine victory.

This means that, at last, we have a positive points score (+2) and hopefully we will start to clear the gap on teams above us and begin to climb the table. After all we're only 16 points off of a play off place!!

Rio

Today the IOC selected Rio to be the venue for the 2016 Olympic games, which means that with Brazil hosting the 2014 World Cup, South America (or more accurately Brazil) is going to be THE place to go in the next decade.

Some thoughts:-

• Obama has been snubbed!
• Girl/Boy from Ipanema will be either BBC or ITV's theme tune for one of the events?
• They're 4 hours behind us so we could be watching sport at midnight quite regularly
• Let's hope that the inward investment brings lasting change for the country and it's poor.
• "Samba" will be the most over used word for a while each summer. 

October

Or should I say "blogtober", as this month I'm going to try to turn my blog into more of a diary?

Today's highlight's. Car had a service at Nissan Westway who hang out at the end of the Totton fly-over. This meant that, having planned my diary so that I could be in the office all day, I could drop the car off and then walk the mile or so across the fly-over to the Bank. The Nissan dealership looked after the car when Dad owned it and are very helpful and not too expensive, so I've carried on using them and the closeness to my office is the clincher. I also quite enjoy the walk to the office. Everything went like clockwork and a cleaned and valeted car was ready at the end of the day.

After that, tea at Mum's mainly to retune her freeview box. She actually had done a pretty good job herself, thanks to both the Daily Mail and her brother (down the phone!). A free meal is too good an offer to overlook, however, and I wanted to just check what she had done and make sure that she still had all her favourite channels (BBC1 & 2)

Finally..Pompey players haven't been paid. If they could only go into administration that would be a great start to the month.