Family life, funnily enough
This year’s sojourn to Florida was the first as a foursome, with the attendant baggage. But we had a relaxing time and the little lady had her first taste of a swimming pool – taste being the operative word – and I think she liked it. Anyway pictures in the March album, login here. As usual if you need a password etc, email us.
Perhaps the upcoming documentary on him on Channel 4 called ‘You’re Fayed’ and the accompanying PR he’s been doing have meant Mohammed Al Fayed (beware, it’s quite a home page ;)) hasn’t noticed that his football club is in danger of dropping out of the financially lucrative Premier league. But his main focus is still on Dodi & Diana’s death and the forthcoming report on the matter that he believes will blow the whole thing apart.
There’s a great piece in today’s Independent, in which he asks rhetorically if Dodi had been alive and he had been offered an honour by the UK why he would accept it:
“I grew up with 7,000 years of history behind me. Why would I want honours from people who were wearing animal skins and carrying sticks when my people were the greatest civilisation in the world? Fug it.”
They’ve gone now and some people loved them, while others hated them. But while they were there, one small boy gave the the Gates some love:
And yes, we’re still unpacking, and will likely be for some time to come, but at least there’s a use for all those boxes:
There’s a lot more pictures like that, posted into the February & March albums, which you can get to from here. As usual you’ll have to log in to see them so if you need a password etc, email us.
Fulham v Charlton last Saturday was only my third game this season – Boro home & Pompey away being the other two in my lowest attendance in about 20 years – and we lost both of those, so at least a 0-0 draw was an improvement on that.
The day just brought home to me what so many other Fulham fans – and I suspect fans of football teams in the ‘middle third’ of the Premier League have been saying for some time – it can be a pretty santized yet highly expensive experience these days. I knew, like Charlton’s manager – or anybody else who watched us over the past few months – who would be playing give or take a couple of players. And apart from Goma, Steed and Van Der Sar they were all capable of a lot more than they showed.
Brian McBride must be wondering why he bothered coming to Fulham (apart from the money of course) and Moritz Volz must be wondering what he did wrong to be dropped. I watched Volz at the end of the game running round the pitch with a ball and the subs meeting up in the centre circle for a kick about afterwards shortly to be joined by Claus Jensen looking a bit too pleased with himself for my liking (terrific player but I suspect he’s been bitten with whatever lazy bug has infected most of the others too). I then totted up the expenses on the way out: 28 quid for a ticket, 3 quid for a programme, which is basically a bit of corporate marketing puff, 3 quid for a can of Tetleys on a windy day by the river (dumb, I know) and for what? To support the club I still feel a lot of personal attachment to despite them trying to squeeze the life out of it by making it all about the Brand and badge-kissing tosh. Oh well, thankfully I don’t face the decision of whether to go every game. Although now, bizarrely I have to decide whether Columbus in July is worth the trip as Fulham become the latest team to try and tap into the Yankee dollar reserves.
It seems as if Chris Coleman is basically frightened of making a mistake at this stage of the season and that has led to this inertia – his comments after the game about potentially losing 3-0 and getting sacked if he changed the formation proved that. I don’t get the impression he’s a great thinker and he hasnÂ’t exactly surrounded himself by people who would challenge him in that department either. Tigana was a stubborn git, but he at least taught the players to take risks (while making sure they were fit). Thank God Edwin stuck with us, which has enabled us to pursue this risk-averse boring strategy to its likely conclusion of a place slightly above the drop zone. But I hope this is the last season we play like that or I might struggle to come to even 3 games next season. And I never thought I’d say that.
Funny isn’t it? You upgrade your blogging software late at night and surprise, surprise, it proves more challenging than you first thought and all your pictures disappear. Don’t worry they haven’t actually disappeared; I just have to fiddle with a few things to get them back..
Update: Fixed that, now to start fixing the other stuff…
Once they start working together, I’m sure they’ll be even more of a handful than they already are. Meanwhile, a few more shots here and more to come (password required as usual).
There’s some pictures here (you’ll need a password) of the little man venturing out on Sunday after we got a dump of 13 inches on through Saturday night. Fortunately the city had all day Sunday to clear it up.
Here we are in Union Square:
New York makes a great deal about being a city of the world, with almost all the world’s ethnicities represented. London’s similar, and the Guardian‘s done a great job of mapping it. There’s an overall map here (PDF) and a key. There’s also a series of articles of various groups talking about their experiences in places as diverse as Hammersmith (Poles), Wembley (Somalis) and New Malden (Koreans) and a series of maps, showing spread by religion and ethnicity, plus some statistics that the maps don’t show, including that “1% of Londoners described themselves as Jedi. They have been included in the No Religion figures.”
The British Post Office’s plans to close down 2,500 local post office branches has led to huge outcry in the UK, understandably enough, given the important role they play in defining what a local community is. But an interesting piece in the Guardian got me thinking about where we live and the differences between urban, suburban and truly rural life. I’ve only ever experienced urban life, in that the area of south London I lived in was close to all public transport and you could walk to school and local shops (although many of those have closed since I lived there and been turned into flats, some of them very ugly). It might be seen as the suburbs, but you didn’t need a car to get everywhere, which seems to me to be a sort of defining suburban quality, although perhaps that’s American suburbs, which are much more spread out. Still, if it was suburbia, rather that than exurbs, that’s for sure.
But in Manhattan, the archetype of an urban metropolis, the juxtaposition between skyscrapers and ‘Mom n Pop’ stores is striking. You still have local shops serving local people, to paraphrase the League of Gentlemen. We are soon to move apartment, to an area that is very similar to many here, in that there is a hardware store, a dry cleaner, a deli, a video rental place and bakers, all within a one block radius of our apartment building, i.e. all within 50 yards of our door. And none are chains or ‘box stores.’
Sure, they also serve people who pass through, given it’s only about a 10 minute walk from 42nd Street. But it makes you think about the reasons people give for moving to suburbia from big cities and I don’t think local shopping really is one of them. I’d sooner make the leap from big city to rural than to suburbia and have to drive everywhere to get the simplest thing done, but that’s just me.
Here, an independent watchdog body tries to get to grips with the Post Office’s definitions of what it is to be urban or rural in regards to a post office near Chichester in West Sussex (rural post office stay open, urban are more likely to be closed, to oversimplify it):
“This is where it does all get rather bizarre,” says Postwatch’s Helen Maunder. “I mean, I realise we’re not surrounded here by sheep and cows in fields, but by four of the Post Office’s own five criteria, this is a rural branch.” The Post Office disagrees: it argues that the area ought to be counted as part of the urban sprawl of Chichester, and since that urban sprawl contains more than 10,000 people, it follows that the office must be urban.
The role of the Post Office is definitely changing – our experiences sending Christmas presents recently to and from the US and UK means we probably won’t bother again. But just in case, where we’re moving to, the nearest US Post Office is 4 blocks south of us, i.e. about a 5 minute walk, surrounded by small shops and restaurants.
