Maybe this will come in handy on Saturday

After last nights brushing aside of a frankly poor Queens Park Rangers team, we're left hurtling towards a pile of rabble at the wrong end of Brian Clough Way.

Pre-match talk of potential banana skins and a knowledge that our unbeaten run HAS to come to end at some point were replaced at half time by trying to work out what would happen to the scoreboard if we went into double figures.

Personally, I’m happy with just the '5'. If we’d have got '6' and gone top, then Newcastle would have been trying just that little bit harder tonight to regain the peak. As it is, they’ll just treat it like any other game and hopefully the Palace players will be playing above themselves as they all look for a way out of Selhurst Park. And besides, we probably only scored '5' simply because we know we can, our run is THAT scary !!!

Derby on Saturday lunch-time. Now THERE’S a potential banana skin.

Either that, or we’ll need to borrow one of these for the day.

Saturday #1

It’s been a while, but town called on Saturday night, and when town calls, you’ve just got to go.

We met in “Fade the Hard to Find Café” which, unfortunately, was both open and ridiculously easy to find, what with it having the word “Fade” written on the window in three foot high letters. I still can’t understand why anyone would go in there when two doors down is the Lincolnshire Poacher. But I left the arrangements to someone else, and some else chose “Fade the P**s Easy to Find S**thole”. They serve real ale in there now, which makes a change from having to pretend you like gassy water dressed up as foreign lager. However, only one pump and that was the ever so massively bland Nottingham Rock Bitter. Ah well, beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.

At least I managed to persuade the rest of the group that you couldn’t walk past the Lincolnshire Poacher. It would have taken some Mr T style chloroform technique to make me miss it. A nice pint of Ossett Brewery’s Woodsman in their conservatory round the back.

According to local legend, you’re not supposed to pass the Nag’s Head without having a drink, lest you get hung before being pardoned, but looking at the state of the place from the other side of the road, hanging might have been a better option given the choice. It must be the legend that’s the only thing keeping them open.

Down to The Peacock (and avoiding the dullard filled Golden Fleece) for a nice sit down with a few pints of Deuchars. They don’t serve to the tables any more in the best side, but they don’t like it when you press the buzzers as they haven’t been disconnected yet. Maybe after Saturday they would have worn out.

As numbers dwindled away, the rest of us staggered round the corner to the Orange Tree for some relationship advice (not me !!) and dodgy beer, Elsie Mo (nice) & Brakespear’s Bitter (not so nice). We were clearly the eldest people in what is most definitely a student pub, but again, beggars wanting a late pint can’t be too choosy. But quite why the clearly under-age girl asked three aging, balding (again not me !!) and un-hip funsters as ourselves where she could find the nearest R&B club I have no idea. I didn’t know, I still don’t know and quite honestly, I’ll never know, thank-you very much.

The first weekend of a triple header, ended by an unfamiliarly larger than expected head-ache, is out of the way, roll on the Horse & Groom next Saturday, and an all-dayer the weekend after.

It must be pay-day !!!

When you've got a minute .....

..... take a look at these fantastic photos from local photographer Mat Rhodes. Superb:

(From the BBC Nottingham Website)

Get in

From the Press & Journal:

Date for start on long-awaited Fochabers and Mosstodloch bypass

WORK on a long-awaited bypass in Moray will begin in a fortnight.

Transport Scotland has announced construction work on the Fochabers and Mosstodloch bypass, which will relieve traffic on the heavily-congested A96 Aberdeen-Inverness road, will start in two weeks.

The £31.5million project, awarded to Morrison Construction, is expected to take around two-and-a-half years to complete.

A new three-mile stretch of single-carriageway road will be built between Mosstodloch and Fochabers, avoiding the current route through the High Street.

Roundabouts will be put in at the Baxters factory and the A98 junction to Fraserburgh, and underpasses built for pupils travelling from Mosstodloch to the primary and high schools at Fochabers.

More here ...

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For Forest fans of a certain vintage

IT problems

Stuck on the tram this morning at the junction of Radford Road and Wilkinson Street, it even made the news.

But you know the tram's really f***ed when the driver, in an attempt to fix the problem, trys turning the tram off and turning it back on again !!

A rather public way of handing in your resignation

From the BBC:

Geoff Hoon admits Labour leadership ballot push is over

Former minister Geoff Hoon has admitted his push for a secret ballot on Gordon Brown's leadership "is over".

No shit, Sherlock !!

Cool picture

From the BBC