Safety In Numbers

So, Nottingham Forest have stayed up somehow…!

Results haven’t been the best, but we me managed to scrape together the points needed for safety. Of course it wasn’t that easy (it never is at NFFC). We could’ve made it safe by beating Blackpool at the weekend, but we only came away with a draw. Norwich played Reading on Monday, a win for Reading meaning Norwich couldn’t catch us. We’re on 50 points, they’re on 46. After a nervous wait at the Mail Centre, news shortly came through that Reading had scored, then quickly scored another. Cue happiness by the few Forest fans at work! I hope we sort things out in the summer. We never seem to be that active in the summer breaks, but the team needs a shake up.

It’s also good to know we’ll have the extra local derby of the Leicester game next season, as well as a return to the scene of one of Forest’s greatest games, Peterborough United’s London Road – the place where Collymore helped fire us back into the Premiership in 1994. It also looks increasingly likely that we’ll be playing Newcastle next year, along with maybe Middlesborough and Leeds from League One. If nothing else, it’ll be an excellent year in the Championship. So many strong teams!

I had some time off last week. Well earned and needed that it was, what I couldn’t have accounted for was how excellent the weather would be. While late April temperatures are always warm and sunny, i got the lucky break of that lasting all week long. Not a great surprise to me that the minute I go back to work, the weather takes a turn for the worse. I can’t help it if the sun likes me. It also made the night’s drinking in honour of Iain’s birthday on Saturday all the more pleasurable. Iain and Aleks have been up in Nottingham. He came up for his birthday on the Sunday, so we took the time out to visit some fine Nottingham drinking establishments! I had an over reliance on Jack Daniels & Coke rather than a pint of lager (after the horrific calorie contents it contains of which I’ve read of). It was nice at first, but Whisky drunk soon makes me act like an arse – as if any help was needed for that…

I don’t expect many watchers of Heroes to be reading this, but any that are please look away now as I’m about to talk about the (amazing!) season finale. I get the episodes available to download after buying it from iTunes, but knowing that next weeks episode is the finale, i couldn’t wait. It’s a week in front in the US, so I downloaded it. It was a great end to what I think has been a great season. It’s been building up to something shocking and I wasn’t disappointed. Sylar is the best villain there is. He’s so evil, but such a great character. When it became clear a few episodes ago that he was using his shape shifting power to impersonate Nathan Petrelli in order to come in contact and ‘be’ the president, you just knew that Nathan’s chance of redemption by saving the day would go awry.

Obviously things didn’t go smoothly for Sylar and towards the climatic point of the episode, Nathan and Peter Petrelli team up in order to defeat Sylar together. Something bad was on the cards when Nathan says to his brother “I love you, Pete”. Studying Media Studies at school has sadly taught me a thing or two about how tv shows are made and telltale signs as to a major plot point… ANYWAY, Sylar ends up slitting Nathan’s throat. The lingering image of Nathan’s lifeless body sitting in a chair telling us that, unlike other deaths throughout the series, this one was for real, Nathan Petrelli was dead! Oh no!

But the way they got out of it was genius, and sets up a potentially excellent Series 4. Matt Parkman used his physic powers of persuasion and brainwashing to make Sylar shape shift into Nathan and stay as him. So now Sylar is Nathan. Still with me? A clever way to keep Sylar in the show without seeing Zachary Quinto for a bit perhaps? He did go filming Star Trek after all, maybe it bit into the filming of Heroes, who knows. The little taster of the next ‘volume’ that they have at the end of the series sees ‘Nathan’ show a few Sylar traits (his obsession with clocks), as well as Tracy Strauss reappearing in water form, starkers (!). The internal conflict of Nathan next season could be excellent. I have high hopes. Just make Hiro get his power back with no side effects!

Lost is also nearing the end of the season. Just three more episodes left, with the final episode being two hours long – Yay! It’s a slow burner this year, but the clip of this weeks show looks promising, Guns! Jack! Faraday! Can’t wait!

I’m having fun fitting into old clothes again, after losing 2 stone these past two months. I’ve cut out snacks, cut down the portion sizes, increased fruit and veg and exercise a whole lot more. Give me one year and i’ll be a skinny fucker.

Three and Out

Mid April means a lot to me.

Three years ago, maybe even to the day, I went onto Blogger and created my very own Weblog. Not the first one, but one which wasn’t gay and forgotten in a week, instead I hoped that this one would stand the test of time. As well as documenting my thoughts on god knows what, it would also provide me a point of reference as to what was going on at certain points in my life.

Initially on Blogger, i moved my blog onto WordPress in the autumn of 2006. A superior free blogging service, and have been excellent for these past three years. They even let me move my old Blogger posts over here! Although looking back through the archives not all of them have migrated successfully. My first post on here is something about a local newspaper reporting on Nottingham Forest, but if i remember correctly the very first post was a picture of the centre of Nottingham in the early hours. Taken when I had a (very) short lived job in an office.

Luckily, that office job didn’t last long. I won’t name any names, of the people or the company, but the manager was a total TWAT. I can’t abuse the guy enough. No sooner had I left there, I began working at Royal Mail, and three long years later I’m still here! Grateful that I’ve been in employment, sad that I’ve still not found anywhere better or done something a bit more worthwhile in these past few years.

Unlike any other feeble blog attempts, i know for a fact that this blog does get read. I have the odd comments, see the daily web traffic for the site and got a great big clue that I’m being read after a certain Red Dwarf comedy legend Mr Robert Llewellyn posted a comment to a blog post I’d written about his Comic Relief problems…! I could stop doing this blog today safe in the knowledge that it’s been read by Kryten!

So, know i have that little bit of self congratulations out of the way, normal service can be resumed. I’m an avid photographer, I love taking pictures. Whether it is of myself (it often is…) or of places I’ve been to, or indeed my mates, I’m always snapping away. My ‘Blog Anniversary’ got me to thinking that with the amount of pictures of myself I’ve taken over the past three years, i could do a month by month portrait of how I’ve changed – physically – over the years. Let’s face it, i have a weight problem, so I’m always looking back to pictures of when I was thinner. I may as well collect those pictures together and see where I stand now. I’ve lost over a stone in one month, and an online ‘gallery’ can be posted somewhere to show how well (or indeed bad) I’m doing.

It’s something I’ve thought of doing, and a week off work might see me bored enough to get it started. Who knows?

Flickry

I decided to renew my Flickr subscription the other day, after about six months of me being a poxy free user – with limited privileges. Paying a yearly subscription enables you to upload as many pictures as you want, whenever you want. I’ve got so many pictures already on my Mac, so if I dump them on Flickr I have extra hard drive space!

Elsewhere, the new episodes of Red Dwarf started on Friday. Obviously, it was never going to measure up to the classic series, but it was good nonetheless. Shot without an audience and on hi-def film does give it a different look, and the lack of a budget does not show at all. In fact, the sfx look so much more impressive than previous years. It’s the final episode today, and I’m hopeful it’s been popular enough for it to return as a full series.

And finally, Forest won! Four games to go and we’re currently out of the relegation zone. Long may it continue!

Tick-Tick-Tick-Tick-BOOOOM!

Here is me, battle scarred from yesterday…

Black Eye!

I’d like to say the reason behind this black eye was the incident at my workplace yesterday. Six suspect packages were found at the Nottingham Mail Centre in Beeston, causing the building to be evacuated. The police, fire service, helicopters, bomb squad were all called to investigate. I turned up later on and heroically risked my life and those around me to retrieve and dispose of the bomb before the whole place exploded. In the rubble and debris i was lucky to come away with just a black eye….

That’s the story i’ll tell other people! The truth is so much gayer.

Turns out that the packages were suspect because they were intended to look like bombs. Apparently one of them was stuffed with white powder and wires! Talking to people at work yesterday, it seems that the guy who sent this has a record of sending similar hate mail to judges and other members of the Nottingham county court. He sends the mail without stamps, preferring to, ahem, draw his own. This had all happened yesterday morning, and I was totally oblivious until I’d got to work and was told by one of the managers. A major incident and I totally missed it! Anything interesting happens at work and I’m never there. Luckily the packages were harmless and all the staff safe, but any more of that mail coming through and I’m outta there!

The black eye was not from the bomb scare, nor a fight with a colleague, but from my own stupidity. Busy day at work yesterday, so I was rushing all over the shop. We use plastic boxes to sort the mail into an have them stacked around the table we work on. I impatiently pulled a box from a stack, trying to wiggle it out, next thing i know the box had smacked me right in the face. Hit me on the eye socket and cheekbone. Initially it just hurt, but the black eye turned up later. To be honest it’s more bluey purple! It also has the nasty effect of me looking like I’m wearing eye shadow…

Elsewhere, I’ve started going to the gym again. The utterly shameful weight gain recently has stopped and I’m back on the way down again. Lost about a stone already, looking to lose a lot more by the end of the year.

L’imbécile D’avril

It’s been an eventful day today, not so much involving me but of events elsewhere.

April Fools Day – Plenty of jokes have appeared around the internet. The Guardian started things off by claiming that they will be the first newspaper to publish exclusively on Twitter, YouTube has made all their videos and comments and everything else appear upside down, Google have launched “CADIE” which probably requires you to look for yourself… And Opera have launced a browser which incudes face-gesture recognition. All worthy a look and a chuckle.

G20 – I’m not really interested in this to be honest, but it’s become newsworthy today purely for the arrival of President Obama. He can do no wrong with the british press it seems, everyone (including Gordon Brown) seem only to happy to be seen with this guy. Even the Queen seemed overjoyed to be meeting him. Is he the messiah? Nah, just a naughty boy!

Also linked to the G20 conference is the ‘riot‘ in London. Not much of a riot to be honest, a few broken windows outside the Royal Bank of Scotland in London’s City, and a few bloodied heads of protesters that really should know better, hardly compares to some of the great riots of the past – the Poll Tax ones for example! Daily Mail favourite Russell Brand also made an appearance at the protests, before things started to go wrong of course. Here’s hoping that some fires are started later tonight.

Alan Shearer – Newcastle pick the worst day to announce their new manager, but announce it they do. Alan Shearer has finally given in and accepted the post of manager until the end of the season. He has nothing to lose really, he succeeds and he’s a hero, he fails and he can bail out in the summer. What annoys is the reaction seen on Sky Sports News. We’ve heard all this before when Kevin Keegan returned to the club. The “messiah”, the influx of Newcastle shirts emblazoned with some sort of reference to that fact. “King Kev” could easily be something like “Sir Alan”.

The reaction of fans to Shearer’s return is severe optimism, the like not seen since the ill fated return of ‘King Kev’. If I was a Newcastle fan, i’d be a little concerned as to his lack of experience in such an important part of a season where they look in real danger of getting relegated. My workmate claimed that Newcastle won’t go down because they’re ‘too big a club’. So Leeds and Man City were two-bit clubs then? Don’t get me wrong I hope Shearer succeeds, but Newcastle fans ought to be wary of how devastating relegation can be.