Peckham’s Dickson Etuhu speaks

Here.   Good comments, I think:

I couldn’t have asked for a better move to be honest. It was the hardest decision of my career, because Sunderland didn’t want me to go and I had a lot of friends there, but as soon as I spoke to the Manager here at Fulham I knew that I had to come here, because he can teach me and make me the player I should be.

Peckham boy too, which I hadn’t realised.  Nigerian international and all.  Still, good luck to him.  I’m looking forward to seeing him play.

Good day for me.  Expected disasters at work didn’t materialise, and after work I nipped up to town to get some guitar strings.  I have an old classical guitar that I can’t play very well (most people say this, but I really can only play to basic chords) and it’s a string light, battered (I dropped it down the stairs when I was at uni), and now covered in dust.  So I need to clean it up, which I’ll do on Sunday, but I also needed strings.  So I nipped up to Denmark Street where all the guitar shops are.  I’d love to love it there, but the people in the music shops are so damn pleased with themselves I’m almost ashamed to go in. Everywhere you look are the cool kids you thought you’d left behind years ago, playing unspeakably clever things on their guitars and generally being intimidating.  This surely says more about me than it does about them (and one of my best friends is a guitar wizard), but I couldn’t get out fast enough.  There’s an excellent crime bookshop on Charing Cross road (I think it’s called Murder Ink) so I nipped in there to pick up the latest Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, accidentally wandered into their erotica and romance section (who knew?!), then picked up a few back issues of Alfred’s magazine.   Huzzah!

Then I got home, and not only was there a package containing Juliana Hatfield’s autobiography “When I grow up”, but also a mystery ticket explaining that something else was supposed to be delivered but wouldn’t fit through the letterbox.  Cool!   Alfred Hitchcock can wait. I’m onto Juliana, a fantastic account of what it’s like to be a once worshipped indie star now playing to the same 200 people over and over again.  (not in England though. She hasn’t been here much so gets… maybe 600 people).  Priceless stuff for a fan like me, and in early October we’re going to see her live at the South Bank, which is going to be fantastic to the power of about 90.

Tomorrow’s Friday, then it’s down to mum and dad in the west for the night, then back up to see us play another team in claret and blue against whom we rarely succeed!  Huzzah.

Life feels pretty good again though.  Funny how it all works out.  Swings and roundabouts, I used to say when I was 18 or so, whenever I could.  And I was right.   On Saturday we may well beat West Ham.  Imagine.

How predictable is this?

Saw this in Smith’s last night.  I quite like Pietersen, but this is a) bloody typical and therefore b) not remotely surprising.  Tsk, etc.   Michael Atherton would never have stooped so low.

Weird scenes inside the goldmine

UEFA is about to ruin the perfectly formed European Championships by increasing the number of competitors from 16 to 24.   On the one hand, great, more football. But 16 teams means that the whole thing is small and perfectly formed, no dead games, just great fun. Ah well. $$$$.

Roy Keane on the X Factor phenomenon: alright, not the X Factor, but he’s not happy at the abuse he gets. I can’t understand where all the anger comes from either, but it seems to be part of the game. Fans demand more. They feel they have a right to make their views known. And probably they do.

Was Brazil v Ghana in WC 2006 fixed? You know, I do remember it seeming a bit fishy. Ghana had been bloody good to that point, then just died on the vine.

Tomasz Radzinski back in Belgium. Thanks to Simon for that link.

Ian Pearce has signed for…. Oxted. Bloody hell. I would think he could still be a dominant league 1 player, but perhaps that’s not what he wants at this point. Wow though.