Doon Toon

A nice big Championship welcome to Newcastle United. The ‘big club’ that ‘couldn’t possibly go down’ has done just that.

From a Forest point of view this is great news, a trip to St. James Park is in order. I’ve been meaning to go to Newcastle (the city) anyway, so combining the two and making a weekend of it will be great. I’ve also noticed over this past weekend that when they talk of the kind of teams that Newcastle will be playing next year, it always comes down to the small clubs that are a marker over how much Newcastle have ‘fallen’. This is so incredibly unfair to the likes of Doncaster, Peterborough, Blackpool etc. who have done amazingly well to get to this level.

I have a feeling that the big club mentality will linger around Newcastle next year, and while they are favourites to win the league, i think they’ll be unprepared for just how competitive this league will be next year. There are a lot of very strong clubs in the championship, and Newcastle need to acclimatize. Leeds never really got around to doing that and look at them now.

It’ll make it harder for us to make an impression on the league next year for sure, but suddenly the Championship looks like it’ll have one of the best seasons in ages!

I once was Lost…

And so my weekly early Thursday mornings have finally come to an end after the screening of the season 5 finale of Lost.

It’s an hour and a half of brilliance! As with Lost, it manages to both answer questions and create a whole lot more. As with Heroes a few weeks back, I’m very much spoilerific on this blog, so anyone in the UK yet to see the “The Incident”, look away now…

We finally see Jacob, after seasons of shadowy figures, we see the guy himself. And we also see how he’s connected to some of the main characters, and intriguingly how he also touches them, as well as a flashback for Juliet which is notable for Jacob not appearing at all – something which makes sense at the cliffhanger ending. We also find out that Locke really is dead. The box that Ilana and Bram were carrying around held Locke’s dead body, just as it was when we saw him dead in season four. It turns out that the Locke we’ve seen this season was an enemy of Jacob glimpsed at in the first scene of this episode (which also showed us the Black Rock). All along he’s been finding ways to kill Jacob, and he succeeded, thanks to the manipulation of Ben. It looks as though the un-named enemy of Jacob/The Smoke Monster/Locke/Christian/Alex (Ben’s dead daughter) were all one and the same!

The incident is probably the main feature of the episode after that. We see it, kind of… Jack convinces everyone that it’s in their best interests to ‘reset’, they go through with the plan to denote the bomb and watch as…nothing happens – “Well doc, this don’t look like LAX” as Sawyer puts it. Turns out that the Dharma workmen have drilled into the ‘energy’ or whatever it is they’re after, and the effects are similar to what we’ve seen when the button hasn’t been pressed in the hatch. All metal items go haywire, they all seem to be attracted down the hole – looking awfully a lot like the hatch – where this energy is coming from. So, in short, it’s a big magnet. In the rush to get away, Juliet gets caught up in it all and despite furious attempts by Sawyer to save her, she falls down the hatch – presumably to her death.

Except she’s not quite dead. She comes to, mortally wounded it seems, but awake. She sees the unexploded bomb, picks up a rock and starts bashing it. Then that’s it! The scene fades to white and the Lost logo appears (also in white). We have to wait 6 months until we get to see what happens! Do they all die? Is time changed? What now for Impostor Locke and his sidekick Ben? Richard also mentioned that he saw the Oceanic Six all die back in the seventies, yet he and Eloise weren’t there!? As i said, answers aplenty but even more questions!

Away from the frustrating end, it was nice to see an explanation for Rose, Bernard and Vincent’s disappearance after the flaming arrows incident. It was also good to see Phil get killed, the bastard that he’s been. Plus Radsinsky also got took down a peg or two by Kate, Sawyer and Juliet at the swan site. It was an amazing, if a little frustrating episode, and i’m glad there were no problems downloading. All went off without a hitch, despite the 700mb size.

I now have no American tv show to watch! I might have to start watching The Fringe. Or even go see the new Star Trek movie! Either way I’m going to cherish my Thursday morning lie-ins from now until January 2010, when it all starts up again – for one last time.

Elsewhere in planet PJCollison, I’ve managed to lose my mini electric razor, which caused me to go out and buy a non-electric razor should it ever happen again. It’s a Wilkinson Sword Quattro and the shave is brilliant. The last time I tried a wet shave I barely had anything on my face to shave off! The Quattro doesn’t leave any razor burn, or indeed cut my face, and it’s by far the cheapest of the premium razors – the Gillette Fusion being the most expensive.

BBQ

Just had a fantabulous Barbeque, half cooked by myself. Some chicken breast marinated in a chilli/sesame oil sauce and some sausages, along with the old favourite economy burgers. We used a cheap £2 disposable barbeque, and had nowhere else suitable to put it other than the back yard…

YUM!

Summer Holidays

I acted on the spur of the moment and booked myself a holiday.

A four night break at a four star hotel in Jersey. All for only £300. I booked a holiday a few years back in Jersey, but for reasons i can’t remember I had to cancel it, even after I’d booked the flights. This year, i’m determined to go. It’s in mid-July, so unfortunately it’ll be in the first week of the school summer holidays. I’m banking on there not being a great deal of families around, Jersey maybe not being the place you’d find hordes of kids and parents. Mablethorpe maybe, but not Jersey!

It’s a pretty nice looking hotel – the Hotel Savoy – and it gets some good write ups, plus in the Jersey holiday brochure it features quite prominently. Buffet breakfast, free wifi, plasma TV with Sky and a double bed. £300 really was a bargain price. I visited booking.com who had it down at 300, whereas the Savoy’s own website had the cheapest rates coming to 400. So, i acted swiftly. Adding to that was the greatest surprise of them all, the flights.

Booking them with Bmi Baby, i was expecting to shell out a bit, but it turns out that this weekend you can buy any flights out of East Midlands (well, most) for free. You do get stung with taxes and other various charges, so it’s never truly free, but it all added to the bargains i’d already got. So in 10 weeks time I’ll hopefully be basking in this fantastic summer we’re apparently going to have!