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.

Proud

After we went to the Greenbelt Festival, my son Matt, rather than write a blog, recorded a video blog and posted on his blog. You can see it here

That was good on it's own, but now...now Greenbelt have only gone and put it on their website, next to the official podcast and apparently they all stood around and watched it together. Genius! You can find the "greenbelt version" here.

Resistance

It's rare these days that a group release a collection of songs (what we used call an LP!) that requires me to buy it on the first day that it is available. The last one was Dream Theaters' "Black clouds and silver linings" back in June, but before that...I really can't remember!


This week Muse released their new album "The Resistance" and I actually bought it twice on the day of release! The first time was the CD version, which was for Matt, but being a parent I made a contribution to the cost! As it was absolutely vital that without a seconds delay it was delivered to him, so that he could listen to it (remember those days?), I didn't get to hear it!
Following a new version of iTunes being released recently, you can now buy some albums (about 5 at present) in a "new" LP format. Not the most original name but they are an attempt to overcome the "lack of something to read while you listen to the music" challenge that downloads present. I have lots of friends who dismiss downloading for that reason and this is Apple's answer to that problem.

The initial LP's on iTunes were by Bob Dylan, The Doors, Nora Jones and Grateful Dead so I left those well alone, but then iTunes advised that the Muse album would be available in the LP format and so that was how I purchased the second copy of the new album.

 First point to say, no extra charge, usual £7.99. Second, you get

• the lyrics (to read why you listen to the song)
  
• artwork
  
• Matt Bellamy's notes on each song, the inspiration and what it's trying to say.
  
• sleeve notes (i.e. who played third violin on the last song etc...)
  
• three videos

The software in iTunes goes to full screen so reading the lyrics and notes is easy, even for varifocal wearers like me. In fact I find CD notes quite hard by comparison!

All in all a good attempt by Apple to bring back some of the emotion attached to opening the LP cover and taking in every facet of the new album by your heroes. True you still have nothing to hold, but in reality since the CD replaced the LP we have missed the true impact of the physical experience. This is actually more like that, than a CD ever was. The LP is back!