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Afleet Alex in the Belmont -that was quite some acceleration.

And this butternut squash risotto, that was quite some recipe, well worth the 50 mins up-front roasting of the squash.

Well I got that one completely wrong. There was I telling my mum this morning that speculation linking Edwin Van der Sar to Man Utd was just usual Sunday newspaper speculation and that the greatest goalkeeper in Europe would stay with us for another season given his age and alleged liking for London life, let alone the need to have first team football. I get in a few hours later he’s gone to Man Utd for two years and a bit of cash for us. When will I stop thinking football at the highest level resembles is little more than a business?

His arrival in August 2001 was one of those ‘wha?’ moments we had under Tigana. He was one of the kind of players who you’d feel privileged seeing live once in your life. Next thing we knew, there he was down the Cottage and 153 games later and he’s gone. He was worth 6-10 points a season for us and we’ll miss him. Plus I was part of a group that paid for his kit this year!

If he has a few bad games up there he might be dropped – if he’s first choice to start with – and then his place in the Dutch national team will be in doubt for the World Cup. But I sincerely hope that doesn’t happen to him as he’s great to watch.

Who needs kid’s music when you’ve got a boy who appreciates the finer things in life at such an early age?. Ok, he does like the Tweenies and is susceptible to the occasional burst of the Teletubbies, but if he was forced to name a top 3, it would probably go something like this:

The Futureheads – Decent Days and Nights; he hasn’t figured out the words yet, but he sure likes pumping his arms and stomping around to this three-minute guitar & close-harmony romp.

The Streets – Fit but you know it; his favorite line in this being “But i stop sharkin’ a minute to get chips and drinks.” If we had the radio edit we woudn’t have to cough over the slightly more, ahem, colorful lines in it.

And finally Baggy Trousers by Madness; a long-time favorie, whereby the lines…

Baggy trousers, dirty shirt
Pulling hair and eating dirt
Teacher comes to break it up
Back of the ‘ead with a plastic cup.

…result in a bash on the noggin (as he would put it) with a plastic cup, which has been requested before the song starts.

A chance to own Morrissey’s Aston Martin now he’s done with it…

Fulham ended up finishing the season in 13th place, the same number of points (11) ahead of the top relegation spot occupied by Crystal Palace and the lowest European qualification spot, which this season happened to be Middlesbrough in 7th.

The final day 6-0 drubbing of Norwich – which sent them down – was not typical of the season at all. We apparently played in an adventurous, attacking way, playing a 4-4-2 formation that much of football history has told us generally works pretty well.

At the start of the season I predicted on TFI that we would finish the same as we did the previous season – 9th – based on the fact that we were probably riding a bit of first season naievety & bravery on the part of our first full season manager Chris Coleman plus the fact he’d made some shrewed signings – Tomasz Radzinski, Claus Jensen & Andy Cole among them, whhich would offset any problems he might encounter.

How wrong can you be? Well his first season adventurism turned into a second season characterized by the fear of failure – he event eventually admitted as much publicly. Cole did end up as a top scorer, but Jensen was injured for long periods of time, Malbranque had injuries and an Radzinski spent too much time warming the bench or being played out of position.

On the plus-side, Papa Douba Diop emerged as the best signing he made. He plugged a huge hold in our midfield, while also scoring some important goals and Liam Rosenior came through as a makeshift left back (he’s only goot a right foot). And once Coleman realized that perhaps two strikers would be better than one, McBRide got his chance and proved what some of us already knew – he can and will score goals regualrly with both his feet and his head. Goma came back from injury to shore up our defence just before it was too late (and probably helped Zat Knight get his first full England call-up. If he plays on the somewhat meaingless England promotional tour of the US he’ll be the first active Fulham player to play for England since George Cohen in 1966, unbelievably enough.

And at the end of season dinner last Sunday, Dad (been going to Craven Cottage since 1938) got to meet the legendary Johnny Haynes and got his autograph. Probably the greatest-ever Fulham player and captain of England while at Fulham.

Last week she starting standing on her own. Now she does it for fun. It’s only a matter of days before everyone in the family can walk:

Just watching the C-SPAN simulcast of the BBC election coverage and Putney, our family’s constituency in London has just gone from Labour to Tory. I always wondered how it had stayed Labour so long, but blimey, that’s not good. If the Labour vote goes to the Lib Dems, that’s fine, but not the race card-wielding Tories, please!

The helicopters buzzing above us on 3rd Avenue this morning might have brought home to the US that there is an election going on in the UK today (although of course the small bomb mght have had nothing to do with it, but it’s a bit of a coincidence). And in some sense it’s the campaign that probably shold have happened here last year. The main issue, despite his best efforts to focus on the economy, which is still strong, is Iraq and the lies Tony Blair apparently told to defend Britain’s involvement in the war, which has damaged the Labour Party and if there was an effective opposition, he would have probably lost. As it is, Labour will likely hang on.

Slightly strange that he should be taking all the heat, but I think that says something about the nature of politics in the UK. Even though the British people think their politics is all-spin and the election campaing proper is too drawn out – a whole month! – they should see the lack of open dialogue in the US, which meant that Iraq really didn’t become much of an issue in last year’s election. Historian Simon Schama (British, living in New York) goes over much the same ground in today’s Guardian which makes for interesting – and funny – reading.

So for my second appearance in the British media within a week, I sent my story into the Guardian’s Fiver, which is a satirical look at football sent out each day at, roughly speaking 5pm (hence the name) and well worth reading.

Anyway they’ve been running a series about the cushiest job you’ve ever had, so I wrote about my couple of summer jobs working at Wimbledon. I should point out that I did not write the bit about American readers, despite it being in quotes. They inserted it as part of an ongoing friendly jab at their many US-based readers.

Anyway, take it away…

TONIGHT’S TV AND RADIO

ITV 1: London Soccer Night (11.10pm)
“I once had a cushy number at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club,” trumpets Nick Patience, kicking off another day of your brilliant jobs.

Five: John Barnes’s Football (1.25am)
“That’s Wimbledon for those particularly slow on the uptake/your American readers.

Portuguese Football – Porto v Vitoria Setubal (2.05am)
“All it involved was sitting in a commentary box on Centre Court and ensuring that only those with a press pass came in to watch the tennis.

Dutch Football – Feyenoord v Ajax (3.40am)
“Better still, they employed two of us – but only needed one to stand guard at any given time.

Argentinian Football (5.10am)
“We were also given press passes and, being fairly keen photographers, we were able to snap away with the pros on Centre, No1 and other courts.

Sky Sports 1: Spanish Cup Football – Betis v Bilbao (10.30pm)
“Close-ups of Martina’s muscular forearms stay with me to this day.

J League Weekly (12.30pm)
“We only had to get to work before play started, which was usually 2pm, too…

Sky Sports 3: Live Women’s Football – England v Scotland (7.30pm)
“…and the food vouchers we were given in addition to £30 quid a day were also good for lunches of the liquid variety.

BBC Radio Five: Sport on Five (7pm)
“In addition to watching the entirety of Wimbledon 89 and 90 close up, I was also able to take great pleasure in ejecting Gerry Williams (where is he now?) from the press box.

Talksport: Kick Off (7pm)
“He was attempting to erect his shiny new Sky TV (or whatever they were called then) tripod and do a piece to camera, but I wasn’t having any of it. As we shoved him out we told him bluntly there’d be no pieces to camera on our watch!

Newstalk 106 (www.newstalk106.ie): Off the ball with Ger Gilroy (7pm)
“Good times!” Any more cushy numbers out there? Or is it time for a new TV and radio riff? As always the.boss@guardian.co.uk is willing and waiting to be serviced.

Next week is TV turnoff week in the US. We don’t yet have such a problem and have actually cut back to just one telly (a reduction of 50%!).

By complete coincidence, BBC Radio DJ Steve Lamacq today was asking on his afternoon show on 6Music about Draconian or unreasonable rules imposed by your parents when you were young. It quickly became apparent that ITV (the UK’s first commerical TV channel) was effectively banned in many listeners’s households, including one person whose parents went to the lengths of removing the channel-changing knob (it was the 70s) so they couldn’t re-tune their TV.

Anyway, I decided to send in the story of the lengths my Dad went to to prevent Charlotte and I from watching TV (not just ITV, although that was seriously frowned upon at all times – and with good reason, let’s face it!). To wit:

When my sister and I were growing up in the 70s and 80s, we were also prevented from watching ITV by and large. It was deemed inferior to the BBC and let’s face it, they were right!

In fact my Dad sometimes took it one step further and went as far as splitting the electric cord on the TV such that he could take the business end (the bit that plugged into the wall) back to work with him at lunchtime so that when we got home from school (my Mum worked part time and so wasn’t there a couple of afternoons a week) we couldn’t watch any telly until he got home at about 5.30!

So we listened to the radio instead.

Still I didn’t really miss much in terms of telly, apart from the odd Grange Hill and if I was as handy with a screwdriver, I might try the same thing on my kids now!

And you know what? He read it out on the show.