Carling Cup Final

Liverpool scored "too early" (Steven Gerrard's words not mine) and then sat back (in the same way Huddersfield Town tend to do when we get an early goal) and so Chelsea dominated the rest of the game and eventually won after extra time. It was quite a decent match with a few talking points, the most notable relating to this blog being the winning goal being given by the linesman after the ball had just crossed the line. Who needs video replays?!

In other news, I had a good night out on Saturday and saw Louise again which was nice. One of her friends recognised me but I think i'll save that story for a later post. I also got recognised as myself in The Colisseum but I don't really know who it was so if was you, I'm sorry (though I really don't think it would be).

I'm working out of the office this week which is a nice change but the travelling is proving quite tiresome (and it's only Monday). My cold is still bugging me and I now have a matching cough as well. Ooh and I'm going out for a meal tonight as a sort of farewell to Rosie as she is off down south like most of the other people I know. Quite sad really :'( I'd best go and get ready as time seems to be getting the better of me.

Growing Young

wimpy
Originally uploaded by beansport88.

Thursday saw the heaviest snowfall for some time. Not heavy enough for me to not get to work though. People did walk up to 5 miles to get in but I just walked the 10 minutes to the train station and was a bit late. I have no excuse really as I can see Huddersfield train station from my window at work. Not everyone turned up as some people were really snowed in around Holmfirth (where Last Of The Summer Wine is filmed) and Skelmanthorpe (where Where The Heart Is is filmed) and the main topic of conversation, especially as the snow continued in the morning was whether we'd get sent home. It's a while since snow has caused so much excitement. However as the snow turned to sleet, a 5 o'clock finish was always on the cards.

We did go out for lunch though, and as it was someone's birthday, we went to a favourite party venue for 7 year olds. As you may have already gathered from the picture we went to Wimpy. Sadly Mr Wimpy (pictured) was not there. Service was quick, food was good and so it was a good lunch.

I was quite ill though all day on Thursday so I went to bed after work. I just have a cold now. Maybe lots of alcohol tonight will help :-)

Nanna's 80th Birthday

Today is my nanna's 80th birthday. We had a party for her on Sunday with balloons and lots of nice food. Grandma and Grandad couldn't come as grandad was not well but is feeling a little better now. My cousin couldn't come either as his daughter has chickenpox. It was good to see my uncle and auntie again though, as I haven't seen them for about four years.

Other "interesting" news since my last post:- I went to the opticians. I took my car to the garage and they discovered it needed a part they haven't got. It keeps snowing and then stopping. The grass has not yet disappeared under the snow. I went to the pub for a quick drink with Rosie and Kate. I even had alcohol as Rosie drove over to me for a change as she is abstaining for lent.

The 1992 Great Pools Scam

To begin with I'll continue with my last post and say I could've been worse at bowling - when we were eating afterwards a teenage girl gave up after scoring 5 (all off the same bowl) after 8 rounds!

I read something interesting the other day about someone trying to cheat on the football pools. He changed his coupon to make it so that he had predicted all 61 results correctly. This would have won him £3.826 billion, which is 10 times Britain's GDP! Unfortunately for him he was caught and charged with forgery and attempting to deceive.

Went out for lunch with people from work again at lunchtime. I am finally feeling like they are beginning to accept me a bit now. Might be going to see Mr Wimpy next week :-)

Bowling With Work

As the title suggests, tonight I went bowling with people from work. Normally when I go bowling people generally get about 100 but I knew I was in for a beating when two colleagues were asking about high scores before the game saying they'd got 225 and 210. This must've unsettled me as I came 14th out of 16 twice and very last on my lane. Never mind, it was still fun. Not much else to report so I'll keep this one short so people might actually read it all :-)

Jimmy White or James Brown

If you don't already know, Jimmy "The Whirlwind" White has changed his name by deed poll to James "The Godfather of Soul" Brown in a sponsorship deal with HP Sauce to sponsor the brown ball. The BBC and World Snooker have refused to recognise this though and are still calling him by his old name.

This got me thinking to other people who have changed their name. Prince changed it to - oh there isn't a key for it - but the funniest one was some guy trying to win a radio cometition by advertising the radio station most and renamed himself Viking FM. How silly!

It also got me thinking about sponsoring snooker balls and this is silly too. They can't exactly have their name printed on it. Couldn't Jimmy White just have sponsored the white? Other possibilities are:-

Reds - tomato sauce
Black and white - stamp out racism
Yellow - Coldplay
Green - Government campaign for healthy eating
Blue - Stringfellows perhaps?
Pink - Sure you can all make jokes up about potting the pink etc.

On that note, it's supposed to be a day of love today but for the 22nd year running all my valentine cards have got lost in the post or something. There's always next year :-(

BADCASS (Bradford) Dinner 2005

On Friday it was the Bradford And District Chartered Accountants Student Society (BADCASS) (not to be confused with the Bristol slant of the acronym) annual dinner. As part of the committee I was hoping more than ever than it would be a success. This was my third attendance of the dinner but my first as a guest. I was invited by my old work to go and sit on one of their tables and it was nice to catch up with everyone.

The night was themed as Heaven and Hell with one side of the room white and the other side red. The food was the best i've had there and the portions were sufficient to hold the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed. The raffle in aid of the tsunami appeal was a big success raising over £300. It was quite amazing how whenever Amanda waved her magic wand she seemed to win a prize! There were loads of prizes, four of which went her way! I went up to collect two bottles of champagne and one trophy (as the quiz trophy is mysteriously missing) for our winning exploits over the year.

The firms can have group photos taken, of which I thought I wouldn't be on this time as I don't workfor anyone in Bradford anymore. Wrong! I got myself into two group photos this year. Old work invited guests on as well which was nice. I also managed to get on another firm's photo as I knew someone I used to work with's (who left before i did) wife who works there.

My dancing seemed to cause concern though. Kate and I went to do Grease Lightning and only 4 people were dancing compared with 30 or so for the previous song. I was quite spectacular though. Later myself and another person I know seemed to scare someone we both kind of know (but she probably doesn't know us) with our version of the (extra long) Cha Cha Slide.

I have to say though the best bit of the night was free drinks all night long and as I finally received my leaving present of £60 I made a profit for the night of £44. Well done to President Justin and organiser Tracy for making it a great night and lets hope it goes down well next year.

Fixing Things

The week finally took it's long awaited turn for the worse at just after 5:30 yesterday. My brother was in the pub and wanted a programme recording. It's normally set by my mum in the morning but it wasn't so I put the tele on and it was snowy. In a bit of a rush, due to being about to get ready to go out, I thought I'd worry about this later and just record it from Sky. No reception was being received from my digibox which was the reason I couldn't get a picture. Thinking the same again I went upstairs to find that the video had been reset but looked ok to record. I put the tape in and it jammed. The programme had now started. I turned the machine off and back on and it spat it out so I put it back in again and it worked. Good, first thing fixed!

My brother got home on time to take me to Bradford and mended Sky and the main tv by putting the power lead back into the back of the digibox. I'm sure I would've spotted this had I bothered looking. Think mum must have been dusting in case we had visitors and knocked it out. Two fixes in one - excellent!

Then there was the dinner, details of which will appear in my next post. At the end of the dinner though I noticed that my jacket was missing so I took the only remaining one. I noticed it had a business card in it and hoped it was the guy who had my jacket. I waited until today to phone him and he came from Keighley to Brighouse (about 13 miles) to do a swap at Sainsbury's. He apologised and that fixed that. Now just need to unscare someone that I unintentionally scared and everything will be ok. Can't do that for 3 weeks though and the person involved won't remember anyway. But that's a different story :-)

Friendly Farce, Pancake Party

Great alliteration in the title even if they are slight exaggerations.

Anyway, to the point, England played Holland yesterday in a friendly where Mr Erikkson played new players in false positions and kept swapping them round so much, even Motty and Graeme Le Saux (getting desperate for co-commentators) one feels) were getting confused about where people were. It wasn't the worst 0-0 friendly ever and not a total farce but it'll never be released on video.

It was pancakes at Rosie's on shrove Tuesday. The pancakes I ate were all very nice. I still like golden syrup type runny stuff as my favourite topping but the chocolate sauce has now pushed sugary lemon down to third. It was more of a social get together than a party but then I guess that's what a party is.

Work is now busy and very frustrating. Can't say much more about that on here. BADCASS dinner tomorrow where I get to see old work mates again which will be cool. This also doubles up as my leaving do and i'm expecting big things from my collection. Knowing them lot it'll probably pay for my taxi home and a drink for all of them!

Not been a bad week yet...

Opposite of Last Week

That means it was a busy week. Man Utd beat Arsenal which pleased me as Arsenal dive and cheat and hate to lose. Blackburn kicked Chelsea to pieces but still lost. Chelsea now have the Premiership record for not letting a goal in. Yesterday afternoon I went to see Huddersfield play Luton and the home team dominated throughout. Sadly the game was spoilt by useless assistant referee Mr R J West who was holding a yellow flag rather than a white stick which would have been more appropriate. He let Luton's offside goal stand when everyone in the stadium could see there was at least one offside during the move. He was booed for the rest of the match and when we finally equalised in the 94th minute, all ten Huddersfield players surrounded him showing good aggression. Anyway a point against the team at the top isn't bad I guess.

Other events of the week include going out for lunch for the first time with work on Friday. Also on Friday Rosie and I went to see Amanda in the pantomime Beauty And The Beast. Afterwards lack of food (a bun, a small piece of cake and a small tub of ice cream) due to my large lunch seemed to contribute to quite severe drunkenness after just fours drinks. Still a good night though.

Saturday involved getting up in the morning (not the norm on a Saturday) to get my hair cut to look smart for next Friday's BADCASS dinner. Having a haircut with the mother of all hangovers was not a pleasant experience and I don't recommend it to anyone. I also went out last night too with Rob and (eventually) met up with Sarah, John, Marcus, Rosie and JJ. I had much more to drink, felt less drunk but more tired and didn't really enjoy things much really. No hangover this afternoon (yay a lie in!) though and a lazy day has followed. I'm attempting to help round the house more as mum is supposed to be resting but she's being stubborn as usual so things are getting a little fraught. This, along with other niggles looks like a bad week could be in store for me. Hope I'm wrong.

Deadline Day

Not much has been going on recently. I've bought the main prizes for the raffle for the Bradford And District Chartered Accountants Student Society (BADCASS) annual dinner. I've also got a new keyboard and mouse as the old ones got taken back as the letters were coming off the keyboard and instead of cheese, the mouse ate batteries. Now I have a nice quiet keyboard and a big chunky mouse but i'm sure i'll get used to it.

Same with football really. Dodgy penalty decision in the last minute of the south coast derby fa cup match but not even a video replay would have sorted that. There were no upsets in the cup and sadly the most exciting game of the weekend was just off the M6 at Walsall where they came from 2-0 and 3-1 down to beat Huddersfield 4-3. We're signing a defender on loan this week and i'm going to watch on Saturday so hopefully we'll score three again and not let any in this time.

Anyway, it was transfer deadline day yesterday where a few plyers moved clubs but nothing spectacular. Spurs seem to be looking ambitious with a double signing. Maybe they'll be in Europe before the decade is over :-) It was also transfer deadline day for The Sun Fantasy Football. I'm now happy with my team though I think my brother has gone a bit mad getting rid of Ashley Cole, Claus Jensen and Thierry Henry and bringing in John Terry, Frank Lampard and Peter Crouch(!).

It was also deadline day for filing tax returns to the Inland Revenue. This year saw a large increase of people filing them on the internet and there was huge uproar as the site could not take all the traffic it was getting. Th Inland Revenue were unsympathetic saying something along the lines of "Tough. You should have done it earlier". Sadly I cannot take this approach and have been working my arse off to get people accounts done so they can file them on time. Most people got their's in though thus avoiding the £100 fine. It's a bit like the calm after the storm now as it's a quiet couple of months for accountants.

I think the next wek might be more exciting. Mainly because it couldn't be less exciting than last week!