Patience.org

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.