Bad Car, Good Food, Long Waits

Phil sold his Mazda MX-5 last week that he's owned for about nine months making a big financial loss and has learnt the important lesson never to buy a car from Andy Cobb aka Andrew Cobb of Rotherham trading as AC Cars. Hopefully others will heed this warning.

I've been out for four meals in thepast three days. On Wednesday night I went to Zizzi's in Leeds. It's a nice place but the head chef walked out while we were there so we had to wait over an hour and a half for our food. We still had a good time though and Kari enjoyed her birthday.

Yesterday we went to Varsity from lunch. Four meals came promptly and two came about ten minutes later one of them being mine. I couldn't go wrong for my next two meals though with my mum cooking for me last night and Pizza Hut all you can eat buffet at lunchtime today though there was a short period when they ran out of pizza due to the Wheawills guys being pizza destroyers!

I should mention too that Adeel left last week. He'll be missed but i'm kinda used to people leaving now so life and work goes on.

Roz will also be missed by me as she's gone to Jackson, Mississippi for five months to defend people on death row, getting more press coverage than me in the process!

Record Update

Last January a new viewing record was set for number of viewers of this blog. 64 in a day, 257 in a week and, just beating the previous record, 399 in the month. As you can see from the figures below, all these have now been well and truly broken.

27 Dec, Sat 16
28 Dec, Sun 21
29 Dec, Mon 36
30 Dec, Tue 25
31 Dec, Wed 54
01 Jan, Thu 77
02 Jan, Fri 119
03 Jan, Sat 134
04 Jan, Sun 242
05 Jan, Mon 239
06 Jan, Tue 68
07 Jan, Wed 28
08 Jan, Thu 14

Week 01 687
Week 02 382

This is all due to the fact that when people around the world search for any variant of when they should take down their Christmas decorations, this post from tree years ago is shown very high on search engines. Hopefully they liked what they read and will return at some point. The next aim is 1000 hits for the month and it's looking good at the moment. I'll update on that when it's happened!

Chesterfield v Droylsden FA Cup 2nd Round Controversy

Chesterfield were drawn at home to Droylsden in the 2nd round of the FA Cup. Big deal. But from what followed you could almost make a feature length movie about.

The match was played with Droylsden taking a 1-0 half time lead but then had to be abandoned due to fog. In an interview after the game the Chesterfield manager said (unsurprisingly) that the right decision had been made. I believe the Droylsden camp were less happy. Ther was a also a report of Droylsden fans racially abusng a Chesterfield player.

The match was then played again with Chesterfield taking the lead and Droylsden equalising. Then the controversy continued. Droylsden sportingly put the ball out of play while someone was injured. Chesterfield then threw it to their attacker who hit a looping pass over the keeper into the goal to make it 2-1. Droylsden then appealed, a lot but Chesterfield hadn't done anything against the laws. In the end, to avoid a riot, Droylsden were allowed to walk the ball unchallenged to score a goal themselves. This meant the tie finished 2-2 so a replay was required.

The replay took place a week later at Droylsden's Butchers Arms Ground on a Tuesday night. Chesterfield were leading 2-0 when in the 70th minute some of the floodlights went out. The game was therefore abandoned. This (unsurprisingly) didn't please the Chesterfield manager who said there was more visibility than when the original game was abandoned. The Droylsden camp felt they were on top at the time and disappointed the game was abandoned but that the officials were left with no choice.

The match was then played for a 4th time (just like the old replay days!) and Droylsden emerged 2-1 winners thanks to two goals from Sean Newton. However, the day after the game it transpired that Newton had picked up a suspension which was due to start on the day of the match. The FA confirmed this. The last time this happened, Bury were expelled from the cup and their opponents Chester granted a reprieve to face Ipswich in Round 3. Droylsden were therefore expelled and Chesterfield would (coincidentally) play Ipswich in the 3rd round of the cup.

Droylsden then appealed but they lost ending the saga exactly one month after in begun. Chesterfield went on to lose 3-0 in the 3rd round!

2008 Into 2009

2008 was quite a quiet year on the whole. Since my last post there's not been a lot worth mentioning. I did a couple of exams which seemed to go ok but will have to wait until February for the results. Then there were four Christmas parties with work (inhouse, students, work, and audit) which were all good and I don't seem to have put any weight on which is good (not that that really bothers me).

On New Years Eve we ended up at The Moorings like last year. We had a pizza and a drink or two or three and then went to the pub. Kate and Jon, JJ and Caroline, Lucy and Dave, Amanda and I got a table fairly quickly considering how busy it was and stayed there for the night until about 1:30. I wasn't ill like last year and think everyone had a good time. We also got invited to a sex party from the table next to us but we politely declined.

Maybe 2009 will be a more interesting year for me. Maybe it won't. Maybe i'll write about it! Happy new year readers!