Scott Overall Does An Ian Thompson
Scott Overall’s performance in the Berlin Marathon would appear to the uninitiated to be a glorious one-off.
But it’s happened before with British athletes in the marathon. Go back thirty years or so and Ian Thompson won the British marathon championship on his debut, when he just made up the team. He then went on to win two gold medals in major championships.
You could argue that Thompson’s performance was better, in that he won and Overall didn’t. But then today, training methods are better and more scientific and there may well be a lot more to come from Overall.
Let’s hope that Scott Overall is worthy of and fit for selection next year for the London Olympics. If he improves substantially, as he well might, then the marathon could be one of the highlights of the athletics.
I have a feeling a two pound win double of Overall and Radcliffe might just be the bet right now.
We must never underestimate the value of a home venue. It did wonders for the Spaniards in Barcelona.
Cash For Scrap
No wonder we get so much metal thefts with big screen adverts like this at football grounds.
Where to Sell Your Scrap Metal For Cash
I took this picture at West Ham last night!
If I was the Transport Minister, I’d get them banned.
East Coast Tickets Are Not Exchangeable For A Sensible Fee
For my Day 1 trip from Accrington to London, I booked an advance ticket on the 10:05 from Leeds to London, that arrived at 12:30. The ticket cost me £26.45.
But at the time I booked, I hadn’t thought that I could fit in the Aston Villa part of the trip.
So I found that if I took an earlier train from Leeds, it would give me more time. But no matter, it said that I could exchange the ticket for a fee.
So I looked it up on the web this morning and found that there were tickets for earlier trains still available, albeit at a higher price. There were also Super Off Peak tickets available at £28.90, which is probably what I should have bought in the first place.
So I went to Kings Cross and found out that to exchange the ticket for a named train would cost me a fee of forty-one pounds or so. I’ve changed advance tickets in the past and I think I got charged five or ten pounds or so. That would have been reasonable, but not ideal, as in fact, I’m not sure which train I want to take. As it’s a Saturday, I have a feeling that a Super Off Peak ticket allows me to travel on most, if not all trains.
So I left, after realising I had a nice story for my blog and of course, I still had a valid ticket on the 10:05, even if it is a bit tight to get to Aston Villa.
At home, I found that the £28.90 ticket was still there, so to see if I could get it cheaper, I tried the TrainLine. But that wanted £40.90. I don’t pay booking fees to anybody, so they can go and find some other mugs.
So I went back to East Coast and eventually bought the ticket at £28.90.
It’ll be interesting to see what price, I could pay for a walk-up ticket at Leeds on Saturday.
To return to the title of this page. I don’t consider, a forty pound plus fee acceptable, when I can buy a fully flexible ticket for about two-thirds of the sum.
This trip is starting to get interesting. Perhaps I should follow Tony Hawks lead and travel with a fridge. The problem is that I’ve had enough medical problems in the past few years, I don’t want another caused by humping a fridge.
The Greenway Bridge Over Stratford High Street
The structure of this important bridge, which is just known as Olympic Bridge T12, is now in place.
It will be much needed to get Olympic visitors from West Ham station to the site. There’s more on the bridge here.
Were BBC Radio 5 and ITV Watching Different Rugby Matches?
At half time in the England-Romania match, I switched over to BBC Radio 5 to avoid the adverts.
Whereas the ITV commentators were gushing about England’s performance by leading comfortably, Ian Robertson on the BBC was more professional and clinical in his analysis.
Here is a typical comment from Robertson.
If I was a fanatical England supporter I wouldn’t be thrilled.
I know he’s a Scot and I know little about rugby, but England did seem to make too many mistakes for my liking against Romania’s second team.
But then ITV commentators are more interested in ratings to get more adverts, than good balanced commentary.
But could you expect any more from a channel that produces some of the rubbish it does?
The Prince of Pace
I have been meaning for some time to photograph the statue of Prince Alexander Obelensky in Ipswich and finally got to do it last Monday, when I was in the town.
It is rather unusual and celebrates both his rugby and his short and tragic flying career in the RAF.
I also think it is the only public statue in Ipswich of anybody with a royal title.
I like it.
I Was on talkSPORT Last Night
I was interviewed on talkSPORT by Jason Cundy late last night.
I don’t think I made too much of a fool of myself.
The Tevez Defence
Carlos Tevez got himself off a serious charge by claiming he couldn’t read English according to many reports, including this one in the Mirror.
I would assume that he didn’t have any colleagues or friends, who couldn’t read English either. I once had a spam e-mail in Russian, so I asked one of the builders, who was Lithuanian, what it meant. He said it was spam, so I ignored it.
How long before the defence is used in a serious case like murder or rape? The accused in a rape case could perhaps claim that he didn’t understand what No meant.
Perhaps the best thing we could do is give Tevez six months to learn basic English.
My Place in The Sun
I was in The Sun yesterday, just under Pippa Middleton at the bottom of page 29. Under the headine, He Choos He Scores, it said the following.
Londoner James Miller, 64, will use trains and buses to visit 92 Football League grounds in alphabetical order in 29 days.
Not strictly true, as I’m allowing myself the 31 days of October, but they obviously didn’t have any more space.
C once appeared on page 3 in The Sun. A case involving a saucy farmer, where she was defending the two women, who attacked him, was published many years ago.
A South African Joke
The British tell Irish jokes, the Dutch tell some about Belgium and all the friends I’ve ever had from Zimbabwe have told jokes about stupid South Africans, usually of Boer ancestry.
Here‘s a true story about some South Africans who went to New Zealand for the rugby. Instead of booking a hotel in Eastbourne, a suburb of Wellington, they booked one in Eastbourne, by the sea in Sussex.
I suppose it could have been worse. There’s another Eastbourne in County Durham, wghich is even further away. They could have watched the athletics yesterday and the Great North Run today, though.
The Anonymous Widower 