Ian Pearce will have his revenge on Seattle

Not really.  But here he is playing for Oxted.

He’s scored 14 goals in 11 games.

I love this story.  He was a very underrated player at Fulham and, I’m sure, could still do a job for 75% of English league clubs.  Good man.

Amid all the doom and gloom, some nice stories

First, I got an email from Craig Murray today.  On his website, Mr Murray describes himself:

As Britain’s outspoken Ambassador to the Central
Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped
expose vicious human rights abuses by the
US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now
a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

Cool, eh?  But that’s not why I’m writing about him.  No, he’s just written a book, and in it is the following, which he thought might be of interest:

In December 2008 I found myself sitting next to Baroness Amos on an airport bus heading for the plane to Accra. Once on board she moved to Business class while due to overbooking I was downgraded to Economy Plus.I shared this fate with John Paintsil, the Fulham and Ghana wing-back. We sat together and I must say he is delightful. He was flying back for two days mid-season to take his sick father to hospital. He was extremely polite and unassuming, helped other passengers with their luggage, put up with my conversation about football, and was evidently devoted to his wife and children. At the end of the flight I saw him search through the cabin to find one of the British Airways Unicef envelopes to make a donation, while not drawing anyone else’s attention to his gift. We hear a great deal about the terrible behaviour of Premier League footballers. But I am sure there are other John Paintsils.

Excellent!  Top man.

So there’s that.  Now one of my own.  Today I went to a client meeting in Bracknell.  9am start, so 720 from Waterloo for me.   When there, as you do, we were all talking about the game last night.  Fellow I was talking to has a seven year old son, who was due to go to bed at 8.   The Southend v Chelsea match arrives on the TV.   Joe (the boy) doesn’t want to go to bed now.

“I support Chelsea though!”

“No you don’t, you support whoever’s winning”

“I do.  I’ve supported Chelsea since the sixties!”

Where the hell did a seven year old child get that from?

Good news for Fulham fans too:  Gary Megson has withdrawn from the Bullard hunt. Excellent.

“I spoke to Alistair Mackintosh last week and got it from the horse’s mouth what the position was.

“I mentioned a figure to him, and he said it wouldn’t be acceptable – so we move on.

“There was no point on going any further because there was no common ground, and everything that is going around at the moment is untrue. We have moved on – that happened a week ago.”

So there we are.   Finally, I noticed today that the gents’ at Waterloo Station have signs reading “STOP COCKS” at various intervals about 8 feet high up the walls.   I’d have taken a photo, but you can get into trouble for that sort of thing.   But the signs were funny in about 80 ways.

No sign of a Kettering ballot success.  Hmmm.