Footy updates 2025/24

Recent midweek games (international break):

Whitstable 4 Bearsted 2
Early days but looking good: 

Gillingham 0 Wycombe 3 (EFL Trophy)
Wycombe have greater priorities than this competition

Bayern Munich Women 3 Arsenal Women 2 (Champions League)
This was on Disney+ so I'm unable to explain how European Champions Arsenal threw away a two goal lead.

Port Vale 0 Wycombe 0

zzz

Tottenham Women 0 Arsenal Women 0

Shot shy Gunners squander an opportunity to get closer to the league leaders

Whitstable 3 Stansfeld 3

Two goals down after 30 minutes to the bottom of the table team, this was a disaster in the making. But a fightback culminating in a 97th minute equaliser made it less so. Bit of a shock though

Arsenal Women 2 Real Madrid Women 1

We came from behind to rescue a faltering campaign

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My forecasts for this weekend: (and ChatGPT's):

Charlton 1 Southampton 1 CGPT: 2-1

Ipswich 2 Wrexham 1 CGPT: 2-1

Wycombe 2 Lincoln 2 CGPT: 1-1

Arsenal 2 Tottenham 1 CGPT: 2-0

Quizzing Christmas

I'm committed to preparing a Christmas Day quiz for a bunch of people whose knowledge and interests are impossibly diverse. Oldies who love history and classical music and read newspapers; teens and pre-teens whose world is Pokemon and YouTube and Gen X/Millennials who are into 80s music, TV shows and the internet. Where's the common interest?

How to set quiz questions to suit all tastes and knowledge is not easy. I could try to devise questions which cover all those topics but that would mean every question is unanswerable by somebody. I want to keep everyone involved 100% of the time. That may be impossible.

Maybe I should go for puzzles: everyone loves an anagram. Except for the dyslexics. Oh. Geography: everyone has seen an atlas at some time in their lives. We may not know Uganda's colonial back story but we know where it is. Tick. Maths puzzles: yep that's pretty much universal, there'll be someone on each team who can use more than five fingers. Tick. Politics: even the kids will be voting at sometime soon in their lives, so it's their civic duty to know something. Tick.

That's all a bit limiting though. Maybe I'll just go for football. Everyone loves that don't they?

I also have to bear in mind that there will be those who love a good argument, so my research has to be watertight. I've learned that in the past. I'll have yellow and red cards ready to punish bad behaviour. Three strikes and you're OUT.

Smart phones and watches will be collected at the door. Wish me luck.

No One Saw A Thing

Two children got on an underground train in London. Only one got off.

The search for the missing child is the narrative of Andrea Mara's 2023 novel No One Saw A Thing. I was looking forward to it because I enjoyed the TV adaptation of her earlier novel All Her Fault. I decided to read it partly because that was an attractive and well played story but also because I wanted to make comparisons between book and movie (or at least the eight part series).

I've generally been of the view that books are more satisfying than TV because the nuances of human thought and feeling are too subtle to show eloquently on the screen. Now I'm not so sure.

Mara clearly has a talent for devising clever plots and constructing back stories for the multiple characters, all of whom know (or have known) each other well in her books. The central fiction of a child going missing, in both books, feels personal; I don't know whether Mara's own story bears on this but that, plus a focus on sympathetic female and untrustworthy male characters seems intimate.

Everyone lies

That utterance by one of the characters lies at the core of the book and is borne out eventually; even those it's easy to warm to prove it. Perhaps that's true of much crime fiction but it's tiring. If you know they're all lying, why bother to try to read and consider everything they say? You know it's all going to come out in the wash. If every character is flawed, there is no jeopardy, no empathy. You can't risk getting attached because you will end up disappointed. It's fair to say, though, that there are no story lines which are incongruous or irrational; human nature makes them credible.

My main problem with this book is the way that the lies emerge through flashbacks. Multiple times you're just getting into the narrative and ... it's interrupted by a flashback chapter. I was annoyed by it and wanted to know if there could have been a better way. I get that the back stories have to emerge gradually during the plot but the sudden back and forth time lines felt jarring. I tried to recall how it was handled in the TV series of the earlier book; there were certainly lots of them and they were differentiated by the flashbacks being in monochrome. I don't remember being irritated by them; perhaps the slow pace of weekly episodes is better suited to that style.

I wasn't happy with the writing style. I'm not a student of literature but the conversations between the decades long friends were for me bland and trivial. I found that the excellent acting in All Her Fault meant I could relate to what the protagonists were feeling; in prose those feelings have to be expressed in a string of words. And the plot similarities between the two books made it seem somewhat formulaic.

I'm being over-harsh here. My personal tastes are not everyone's and my preference for character development over convoluted plots not what others ask from a thriller/mystery novel. There is much to enjoy in the book but I don't think I'll be exploring her other novels.

The Perfect Barber

There's a New Guy at my barber's.

There are very few things I seriously dislike but going to the barber's is one. More precisely, it's having to go to the barber's. I would love to have a head of hair just like this:

But no - I have to trudge along every few weeks to have what little hair I have snipped off. When I do so, I have the following aims:

• take as much off as possible in as little time as possible
• no chitchat
• forget all your training; just cut!

There's a woman barber who thinks she's a hairdresser, an artist. She's full of "I've just trimmed those two hairs so that you can see the gentle sweep of....". I avoid her like the plague. Which is why I was delighted to see New Guy today. he fulfilled all the requirements, as above. I didn't time him (I'm thinking of taking a stopwatch next time and saying to Lady Barber "we stop after five minutes; anything left over will have to do") but it can't have been much more than 5 minutes, I'd say.

I'm so glad I'm not a woman; having to deal with those long, flowing locks would be a nightmare. Although I suppose you could go all Annie Lennox

Anyway, thanks New Guy. No tip though. 

See you in a few weeks; I'll be bringing the stopwatch.

Change of Heart

I was going to have another rant at the striking doctors. But my heart wasn't in it.

I was going to muse on whether Rachel Reeves has been having us on by leaking supposed plans to break the manifesto pledge, just so that she can triumphantly announce "no pledges will be broken" in her budget speech. But my heart isn't in it.

I was going to mock the report of the cricket club banning New Forest ponies from their pitch, referencing my experiences playing golf in Australia with kangaroos on the fairway, but I know there are readers who think I over-emphasise sport. So I didn't.

Instead, referring back to yesterday's TV series review, I enjoyed Andrea Mara's tale so much that I decided to get one of her other books and read it.

Which I did. And am.

 I'll let you know.

Crazy Carrie

All those years ago, when Homeland launched, then carried on into season 2, then further and further until it seemed like it would never end, Brody died and Carrie went crazy.

Now there's a new Crazy Carrie, the protagonist of an outstanding TV series on Sky (which by the way is now owned by Comcast and Rupert Murdoch is not involved) called All Her Fault.

A child goes missing and the series - based on a book of that name by Andrea Mara - is a thriller which, alongside the search for him, follows the dramatic effects on his family as they become ever more paranoid. There are two particular moments of brilliance: after a cliffhanging ending to episode 6, E7 is given over totally to Carrie's background and the circumstances leading to her abducting Milo. It enables the viewer to take a deep breath after the shocks of the previous episode and adds greater dimensions to the mystery. In the final episode the twist in the tale is revealed, with devastating effect. There are feminist elements to the story in its treatment of the characters.

The production and the acting are tremendous and it's the best series I've seen for a while.

I'm not going to go into any spoilers, just tell you - if you're a TV addict, watch it; if you're a book person who loves a good mystery, Mara's book is probably for you (I haven't read it). 

If you take the plunge and read or watch, let me know what you think.

Footy updates 2025/23

How did my forecasts fare this weekend? (And ChatGPT's)

Arsenal Women 2 Chelsea Women 2 CGPT: 1-2 Result: 1-1

Arsenal suffered from two refereeing decisions but stay in the hunt for the league title

Tottenham 0 Manchester United 0 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 2-2

Spurs pretty good away but completely unpredictable at home

Wycombe 1 Leyton Orient 1 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 4-1

Signs of improvement

Swansea 1 Ipswich 2 CGPT: 1-1 Result: 1-4

We seem to have got a settled team and are getting the rewards

Wrexham 1 Charlton 2 CGPT: 1-1 Result: 1-0

Disappointing, dropping below Ipswich

Infinity 0 Whitstable Town 3 (FA Vase 2nd round - Whitstable are the holders) CGPT: 1-3 Result: 1-2

Into the 3rd round

Sunderland 0  Arsenal 1 CGPT: 0-3 Result: 2-2

Disappointing to concede equaliser in the last minute but still top of the table

Correct results: 4 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 2)

Correct scores: 0 out of 7 (ChatGPT:0 )

Match score this season so far: usedtobecroquetman 3 Chat GPT 2

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Upcoming midweek games (international break):

Whitstable v Bearsted

Gillingham v Wycombe (EFL Trophy)

Bayern Munich Women v Arsenal Women (Champions League)

Footy updates 2025/22

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Recent matches:

Slavia Prague 0 Arsenal 3

Charlton 1 West Brom 0

Ipswich 1 Watford 1

Tottenham 4 FC Copenhagen 0

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My forecasts for this weekend: (and ChatGPT's):

Arsenal Women 2 Chelsea Women 2 CGPT: 1-2

Tottenham 0 Manchester United 0 CGPT: 2-1

Wycombe 1 Leyton Orient 1 CGPT: 2-1

Swansea 1 Ipswich 2 CGPT: 1-1

Wrexham 1 Charlton 2 CGPT: 1-1

Infinity 0 Whitstable Town 3 (FA Vase 2nd round - Whitstable are the holders) CGPT: 1-3

Sunderland 0  Arsenal 1 CGPT: 0-3

Thanks, Tofiq

I had a bad day yesterday. It rained incessantly, so much so that I decided to skip my usual visit to Tesco where, lacking any shopping needs, I would have bought my newspaper and had a coffee whilst reading it. As soon as I saw the rain I knew that, come the evening, I would get no satellite signal to enable me to watch Arsenal in the Champions League. Meaning I had to get the match on my phone and cast it to the TV - keeping myself away from other notification channels so that I wouldn't know when a goal was scored before it appeared on my - delayed by a minute or so because wifi streaming is behind the live action - screen.

I do realise this is very much a first-world bad day.

Then there's chess. I'm in the middle of a game against my son and I don't know what my plan is. Or I have too many plans and can't stick to one. Chess is like boxing, in two ways. The first is the Mike Tyson way: "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth". So I can't get too aggressive or that'll happen when I'm least expecting it. Which leaves me with the other option: rope-a-dope, made famous by Muhammad Ali. It’s a tactic where a fighter leans back on the ropes, covers up, and lets the opponent punch themselves out. The idea is to absorb or deflect blows, conserve your own energy, and then strike back once the other guy’s exhausted. Ali used it brilliantly against George Foreman in the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle.” Foreman threw himself into endless power shots while Ali just soaked it up and talked to him — “Is that all you got?” — until Foreman was spent. Then Ali knocked him out.

That's what I'm hoping Dan will try.

Anyway, I'm back on track today, in my usual post-shower routine: shop, drink coffee, read paper, catch up on my chess games, do chess puzzles (which doesn't seem to improve me), solve (hopefully) the Times Quick Cryptic crossword, solve puzzles on the New York Times Games app - Wordle (got it in 4 today), Connections (got it with just one error) and Strands (always successful but try to do it without hints).

That takes me to about noon.

Which is when I get to thinking about whether I have any inspiration to write a blog post. And today I want to tell you about Tofiq Bahramov.

Tofiq changed history. Every English man or woman knows that our crowning glory was winning the World Cup in 1966. Which happened because Tofiq made an error. He was a retired footballer and a qualified referee from Azerbaijan (then in the Soviet Union) who was the linesman in the Final, when England played West Germany. He ruled that Geoff Hurst's infamous shot had crossed the line and was therefore a goal. But it actually hadn't, as shown in modern replay analysis.

Today, Tofiq is remembered by Azerbaijan's national stadium being the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium in his honour.

If you think that our country is in a sad, sorry state today with widespread gloom and despair, just imagine how much worse it could have been if Tofiq had got his decision right 😧😧😧

Not such a bad day after all.

Footy updates 2025/21

How did my forecasts fare this weekend? (And ChatGPT's)

Burnley 0 Arsenal 3 CGPT: 1-3 Result: 0-2
Juggernaut

Charlton 1 Swansea 1 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 1-1
Solid

QPR 1 Ipswich 1 CGPT: 2-1 Result: 1-4
Climbing the table

Wycombe 1 Plymouth 0 CGPT: 2-2 Result: 2-0
Despite a late red card for Wycombe, they progress to the 2nd round of the FA Cup

Fisher 1 Whitstable 4 CGPT: 0-3 Result: 1-2
3 points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand

Tottenham 1 Chelsea 1 CGPT: 1-2 Result: 0-1
Spurs continue their inconsistency

Leicester Women 0 Arsenal Women 2 CGPT: 1-3 Result: 1-4

There are only 5 points covering the top 5 so all is not lost yet

Correct results: 5 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 4)

Correct scores: 1 out of 7 (ChatGPT: 0)

Match score this season so far: usedtobecroquetman 2 Chat GPT 2

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Upcoming midweek games:

Slavia Prague v Arsenal

Charlton v West Brom

Ipswich v Watford

Tottenham v FC Copenhagen

Is it correct?

More Andrew-related opinion 🙀 [that's a cat sighing]. The Times leader on Saturday discussed the saga and included the phrase "It is correct that the couple's daughters, Eugenie and Beatrice, caught up in this drama through little fault of their own, remain princesses." What? Are they 8yos, crying themselves to sleep at night if they are no longer princesses? These are mature women in their late 30s who contribute little or nothing to British public life and the only justification for their grandiose titles is the technicality of being the offspring of a person who is the son of a monarch.

But my issue isn't about these two women - I couldn't care less about them. My problem is with my newspaper. It's reasonable to expect reasoned argument from the leader writers. "It is correct" is stated as though it's fact. It's the kind of specious assertion I'd expect in the Sun, Express or Guardian. Not from the erudite journal of record. You need to say why it is correct.

And "through little fault of their own"? Little? Not "no fault". Is the Times implying that these young women could have had some influence on their father's behaviour?

Honestly, if they have any moral integrity, they should renounce their Princess-ships and we would all recognise they've progressed beyond the age of 8.

That's enough on this sorry tale.