Idiot

David Pratt is suing Forest for £50k he says he is due from a 'performance' bonus for his 11th place Championship finish with Forest.

The only time I've ever seen David 'I once scored a fluke against Belguim in the last minute of a World Cup game and have been living off it ever since' Pratt's name and the word 'performance' in the same sentence, it was usually separated by the words 'p**s' and 'poor'.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that this is happening, it's not as if the offers are rolling in for a man who financially crippled one of the best teams in the country and then went on to undo all Peter Taylor's good work for the U21's. He must be short of cash, his grinning ugly face is starting to appear once too often on SKY at the moment. And by that I mean I've seen him once.

It's not a surprise it's taken this long either. Not for a man who couldn't find his a**e with both hands. With a map.

Forest gave him a chance to show England what he could do in football management, and he f***ed up big time. Forest should now make a stand and tell him to sling his hook. If Eric Barnes wants to give him £50k, let him.

I'll give him 50 pence for his performance as Forest manager.

But I'll be wanting change.

Natural light

A nice power cut occurred round our way early this morning. This gave me the opportunity to have a look outside my front door and:

1. Marvel at the stars in the sky without the usual street light interference


2. Look at the local architecture in a new 'light'


3. Wonder which idiot designed a burglar alarm system that goes off at 5 in the morning when the power is switched off, that indeed still goes off even if there is no mains power and one with no possible means of deactivation until the power is restored. Aren't neighbours wonderful !!!

Forest 1:0 Bristol 'Handball' City

In the old days, before responsibility kicked in, every Forest home game was the same, meet in the Newshouse on St Jamess Street at midday, taxi down the ground at half two, back in the Newshouse after the game followed by a bat round town and a boogie in Pieces, sometimes literally. The Newshouse is sadly no more, Pieces was never that good anyway (The Cookie Club is far better) and old age tends to kick in around 6'ish. But at least there are times when you can get down the pub early for a good session before the game. Casa is the new name for the Aviary and while the beer's still poor, at least they have the good sense to let you have it in 4 pint jugs.

Forest were good on Saturday with Junior Agogo again proving me wrong about my perceptions of this particular ex-4th division striker.

Anyone who says Bristol City deserved a point on Saturday knows nothing about football. Forest scored direct from a free-kick on 9 minutes, Breckin & Agogo forced good saves and Neil Harris missed a sitter before Forest changed to a more defensive formation to see out the match. During that time Bristol City created exactly ZERO clear cut chances and insted chose to rely on ridiculous penalty claims as their only possible salvation. Their fans were so predictable that at one stage I thought "Handball" was a new song of theirs.

They could still be playing now, with the Forest players safely tucked up at home, and they wouldn't be level. Good teams don't lose to promotion rivals, good teams take their chances and good teams can defend.

3 points on Saturday, 5 points clear at the top of the table, thank you and goodnight.

The good stuff

One of the highlights of the Nottingham social calendar is the annual Nottingham CAMRA beer festival. Into its 30th year now and exactly 20 years since I started going as a sweet, innocent 17 year old. This year it was my turn to introduce the pleasures of proper beer to my fledgling 'in-no-way-under-age-honest' brother-in-law. I like to think of it as my contribution to the circle of life thing, you know, like The Lion King.

Plenty of fantastic beer on offer, plus the ever increasing numbers of perries & ciders. Nothing beats walking across bouncy scaffolding erected over a drained swimming pool when you've already had a few.

Highlight for me was an 8% cider matured in rum barrels.

Mmmmmmmmm.

In the pink

We all dressed up in pink at work on Friday.

Click the banner below to find out why.

Thanks.

More rubbish

From the Guardian this time, more lazy garbage.

In response, I could spend hours picking holes in this and in time, no doubt I will, but to start with:

1. The area of land between Nottingham, Derby & Leicester is largely Derbyshire & Leicestershire. People choose to build on it due to the fantastic transport links and location. If Nottingham was as described, why on earth are so many people so desperate to build here ?



2. The building of the (admittedly appalling at the time, recently improved, but still admittedly poor) Maid Marian Way was only part of destroying some of the worst slums left in Britain at the time, the old meadows & narrow-marsh, which were hardly an "exquisite set of Queen Anne almshouses".



3. The Salutation is hardly isolated, what with it being on the town side of the aforementioned Maid Marian Way, within 100yds of the centre of town and physically NEXT DOOR to another pub!!! I believe the author means the Trip to Jerusalem, a mistake that could have been easily rectified by actually visiting the locations he is writing about. Pillock.



4. We don't have an elected mayor, and don't want one. The Police force, however, have been banging on for donkey's years to be made into a metropolitan force to increase their effectiveness. The Government's failed restructuring costing the Notts Police force money they can ill afford.



5. The management of the two hospitals has been poor, resulting in the imminent loss of hundreds of jobs, but quite what that has to do with the rest of the article is beyond me. Cuts like this are unfortunately happening up and down the country.



6. Nottingham EMA airports is one of the fastest growing airports in Britain, ALL of which could be snidely labelled "Cheap Flight Airports". Have a look at EasyJet, RyanAir, BMI Baby et al and look up which airports they fly from.



7. Gun crime in Nottingham has dropped dramatically over the last 12 months. Nottingham was only labelled as described by other lazy London-centric journalists with an aversion for crossing the M25.



8. Any student who chooses to go to, say, Manchester or Liverpool because they're scared of Nottingham's reputation can't really be that intelligent in the first place, can they ?



9. Stoke-on-Trent doesn't really exist. Stoke-on-Trent is an amalgamation of several smaller areas. Only an idiot would make that comparison. The only thing is common is the name of the river that flows through it. More lazy lazy journalism.

And that's just for starters. People in Nottingham have long since got used to this kind of lazy gutter journalism from our capital's newspapers, and have even longer since stopped caring. We don't have to justify ourselves as a city, we don't have to sell our good side and we don't hide our seedier side behind bright lights & delusions of grandeur.

In short, people live here because they want to.

People move here because they want to.

People build here because they want to.

The only people who don't seem to come here are the morons from the press.

The theory I have is this:

The journalists who continually slag Nottingham off, have all been here on weekends away, drawn in by the legendary large women:men ratio, but who all went away unrequited & unloved.

That'll be due to the extremely even journalists:w***ers correlation.

Just in case you missed these ....

Exactly how hard is it to boil an egg using existing technology ?

and

Miserable b******s alert !

Good weekend

I was at a wedding on Saturday, so fortunately missed Forest getting hammered at home and England boring everyone to tears.

Is this yet another blip for Forest, or can they get a bit of a kick up the a**e from this ? They can't keep playing badly, losing and having to rely on everyone else to get bad results to stay top. Any more blips and it's going to start looking like one of those heart monitors you see on Casualty.

Not overly bothered by England, Steve MacLaren bores me to be honest, I preferred Sven. We seem to be spending too much time shackling the players away from just being themselves. Managing England should be one of the easiest jobs in football, yet people seem to go out of their way to make it more difficult than necessary.

At least I didn't miss the Scotland game. Not that I was around for it on Saturday, but my brother-in-law went to the game at Hampden (no mean feat from Fochabers, it's easier to get to Glasgow from Nottingham) and on Sunday he provided me with a kick-by-kick description of the whole match.

Walter Smith can finally start to dream of Euro 2008. He can buy a big TV, beers in the fridge etc etc etc

Dust ? Anyone ? Dust ?

Emotionally, I know my strong points, I'm a bright lad, I'm polite, I help family & friends out whenever & wherever I can. I'm also keenly aware of my weaknesses, I can be a bit blunt, I don't mind voicing my opinion and I can't sing for toffee.

Physically, though, it's a different story. In my mind I'm still the slim, fit, 21 year old Adonis I was, well, when I was 21. In my mind I'm thinner than I really am, lighter than I really am and fitter than I really am. In reality, I'm a couple of stone overweight, unfit and have a diet Jamie Oliver could run an entire career from. That's not a good place to be and I can't rely on what has happened to me in the past to cover my laziness any more.

So, the time has come to do something about it.

It's not that hard, surely, eat less c**p, eat more fresh fruit & veg, spend less time lazing in front of the idiot box, do more exercise. Simple.

So, publicly, this is the goal:

1. Get my weight down to 18 stone by this time next year (yes, that's right, DOWN to 18 stone)


2. Get fit enough to run the Nottingham half marathon next September (not the full marathon, never run an event where the first person to try it died at the end)


3. Be able to get my clothes in normal shops in town (and not ones with the words "Big", "Tall" or "Lazy" in the title)

A relative hermit

From Mac, a link to create a personalized map of Europe showing where you've visited.

Here's mine:



create your personalized map of Europe

Two things instantly spring to mind:

1. I've not been very far, really. The USA isn't on this map (just in case there's any Americans reading this) and I've been there twice, but both times to the same dull concrete city, Richmond VA. I was shown a street by an excited local where some of the houses were nearly 100 years old. I didn't have the heart to tell her my terrace house in Basford I lived in at the time was about the same age.


2. I've not been to Andorra!

Nottingham gene

Scientists have identified a gene only found in people born & bred in the best city in the world.

It is very similar to the gene that makes turtles return to their place of birth at the same time each year to lay eggs, or salmon swimming back up stream to mate.

This specific Nottingham gene makes people travel great distances to the Forest Recreation Ground in early October specifically to act like kids for a couple of hours, eat hot dogs and join in with the age old tradition of adding mint sauce to mushy peas.

Goose Fair is on. You can't beat it !

Colly-more ?

From the BBC, Stan Collymore wants to resurrect his Premiership career.

The counter argument is stated here.

From my point of view, Stan Collymore was up there with the best footballers this country has ever produced. If he'd had the same professional attitude as, say, Alan Shearer, he'd still be an England regular and top flight footballer now.

The fact that he still makes the news now is partly down to his ability as a player. And the rest for his talent of being able to spot an open car door in the dark through thick foliage.

But the fact is, the man's an idiot, his own worse enemy. I'd heard stories from a Palace fan that he liked to settle any disagreements with his then girlfriend with his hands, which may be hearsay & gossip, but assaulting his high-profile weather forecasting partner in public certainly isn't.

He lost his friends at Forest when publicly asking for a move to a big club, a move his agent Paul Stretford had promised him. Man United were on the prowl after a couple of run-of-the-mill wonder strikes against them in 1994. January '95 and Man United got their man, a shock move orchestrated by Mr Stretford, Andy Cole from Newcastle. On hearing the news, Collymore stormed out of Forest training.

His last game for Forest was away at Wimbledon. Sam Hamman showed off his latest signing before the game, a fully grown elephant, and I think it's fair to say the elephant put more effort in that afternoon than Mr Collymore.

If he can still do it physically, he'll still be a decent player, and I'm sure there's a couple of lower table premier league clubs who would have a look.

But mentally, the jury's not only out, but will be reserving their judgement for some time to come.

From the bottom of goodie bags

From the BBC:

Two US scientists, John C Mather and George F Smoot, have won the 2006 Nobel Physics Prize.

They have been honoured "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)".

The CMB is the "oldest light" in the Universe - it is all around us and comes from a time just 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

What exactly have they won this award for ?

The findings themselves, or for being able to convince people that it really is important and not a complete waste of time, money & talent ?

Better off dead

James blunt is the most requested song at funerals, according to the BBC.

I wouldn't mind if it was played at my funeral.

So long as I NEVER have to listen to the turgid rubbish in the mean time.

This is probably a better indication of his position with the general public.

Maybe it's his car, below ?

I want this car (One for my Scottish readers)

If you can remember the 60's, you weren't there

Drugs are bad for you. They rot the brain, they change your personality, they drain your finances, they force you to lose whole portions of the day. Only a fool deliberately chooses that life changing course.

But I am that fool.

My drug of choice; Alcohol ? Nope. Weed ? No ? Something stronger ? Definitely not.

So what is it that is going to cause me to suspend myself from reality ? That will become so self encompassing as to stop me fulfilling a meaningful role in human society ? That will turn me into a virtual cabbage ?

Lego Star Wars II The Original Trilogy on my eldest's Nintendo Gamecube.

Goodbye world.

Forest 3:1 Swansea - Sep 30 2006

This game sums up exactly the frustrating side of being a Forest fan. You know the team can play well, you know the squad of players is probably the best in the division and you know that the level of support far surpasses anything else at this level, yet the team still plays inexplicably badly for the first 45 minutes of the game. No midfield, no clear cut chances on goal and if Swansea had had a decent centre forward, we would have been dead and buried before the half-time oranges were dealt out.

The referees whistle was the cue for the standard negative crowd reaction and much half-time grumbling.

The Forest team that took the pitch in the second half hadn't changed personnel or formation wise, yet within 10 minutes had not only levelled, but gone in front with the type of overlapping wing play the 3-5-2 formation demands to be successful. The first two times in the game the make-shift left-wing-back ventures across the half way line, we score.

At 2:1 up the passes get shorter, crisper and more incisive. A cracking through ball set Junior 'wake me up before' Agogo clean through from 40 yards. I'd had a conversation on Friday night asking why Mr Agogo had moved from being cover for the injured Nathan Tyson to suddenly first choice striker, my argument being that if you spend £125k on a fourth division striker, you get a fourth division striker worth £125k. As he sprinted through on goal, I could see him blazing over, blazing wide or blazing it straight at the goalkeeper. Blazing it anywhere but the onion bag. What he DID was wait until the keeper committed himself before delicately chipping it into the empty net. A fantastically sublime finish for this level. Mr Agogo, I apologise profusely.

So 3:1 up, foot off the gas, gently saw the game out, good stuff and still top.

A good foundation for a Saturday night out, spoiled somewhat by the blinding headache that only Budweiser's chemical content can deliver.

At least I got home in one piece, I could have fell asleep somewhere embarrassing. All together; "Wake me up before Agogo ......"