The Start of a Very Long Journey
Today there is no football, either for Ipswich or on the television. I do hate these boring International weekends! Especially, now that they don’t play on a Saturday, but on a Friday night.
After reading about Bury and their football for a fiver, I tried to find them on the web and found my local team, Bury Town, who must surely be the only team with Town in their name, who play in a town with a cathedral. In fact how many towns with cathedrals are there, that are not cities.
Bury Town, are playing in the Third Round of the FA Cup today, I think I’ll go! Perhaps then, I’ll follow the team in the cup that beats them and see how far I can get! It will be a long and difficult journey!
I’ll go early, check out the museums for some of the paintings and then have a gluten-free lunch in the new Carluccio’s.
A Very Good Marketing Idea
There is no Premiership or Championship football this weekend, as it’s the International break.
They’ve just announced on Radio 5, that Bury Town will let anybody in for a fiver, if they present a season ticket for another club. It’s here on the web.
What a great idea!
A Spoonfull of Lord Sugar
In The times today, Lord Sugar states that the rules on football clubs going bust should be changed. He says, if they do, it should be goodbye and you start at the bottom of the pyramid again.
What sense! But then he does talk a bit more than most football chairmen or politicians.
Liverpool Fans are Making a Crisis Out of a Small Drama
They love crises in Liverpool and the drama over the ownership of Liverpool Football Club is typical of the city. They even wasted an hour or so, talking about this subject on Radio 5, yesterday morning.
Ipswich fans could complain about past messes that their club has got in, but to us, there are more inmportant things in life.
So perhaps Liverpool fans should get a life outside of football.
In truth these dramas will go on and on until the most successful clubs in the UK have some form of community ownership. I doubt it will be like that of Barcelona or Real Madrid, but then who’s to say what will happen?
Not Just an Obituary in The Times, but a Leader Too!
I wonder what a young Norman Wisdom would have said, if that many years later, when he died, he would not only have an obituary in The Times, but a leader inside the cover, praising his life and work. But then he was one of those small, tough men, who often come out on top despite what the world throws at them!
There have been so many memories on the TV and radio in the last day or so, about one of Britain’s most-loved comedians. I particularly liked the stories of such as Chris Hollins, who is far too young to have seen the films or the classic TV sketches of the 1950s and 1960s, but remembers him from the match when England played in Albania.
I think we always forget what a good actor he was. He won a Bafta for a start! But I do wonder what would have happened if the film he had written about Benny Lynch in the 1950s had ever been made. As someone who could box, Wisdom saw himself playing the great Scottish boxer, but then the film industry in those days of the 1950s, saw him as a comic and not a serious actor. Some years ago, I read about this part of his life in the sports pages of The Daily Telegraph. It was one of his regrets in life, that the film was never made. Perhaps it should be!
The Orange Men are on the Up in Liverpool
Blackpool actually play in tangerine, but they heaped a lot of misery on Liverpool yesterday at Anfield.
Liverpool fans were their usual moaning selves on 6-0-6 last night on the radio, but they have to understand that what goes up must eventually come down!
What price can I get about Liverpool being the Leeds United of the 2010s?
The Effect of Calcium Tablets
I reported in Calcium and Vitamin D, that I thought that the calcium tablets were helping me get a bit better.
It is some days since I wrote that and my typing seems much better. It could also be today, that Ipswich beat The Damned United yesterday and that gave my brain a lift.
But I’m not going to knock it!
Also, my mouth seems better. I just wonder if my mouth is rather acidic and of course the calcium tablets, which are mainly calcium carbonate will neutralise the acid and generate carbon dioxide. Could that create a beneficial effect?
It’s only the Result that Really Counts!
I think most Town fans went home happy with a two-one victory. The Leeds fans certainly weren’t and were complaining about the ref and especially his sending off of Alex Bruce. But he was being roasted by Andros Townshend, so it would have happened in the end.
If I had anything to complain about, it was the overcrowded train, that took me back to Newmarket. We need bigger and better ones!
Street Sculpture in Ipswich
I have always liked street sculpture and feel it is something that brings art to everybody, or in the case of Minsk in Belarus to the people. There are some of the Belarus street statues on this page. I must add to this page, as I have lots of photos from when I visited the city to support England.
Ipswich has some good street sculptues or statues, which tend to be on the popular side of culture. Here’s the Giles family in the Buttermarket.
The Giles Family, Ipswich
It was erected as a tribute to the cartoonist Carl Giles, who lived in the town. Does any other cartoonist have a statue of his famous characters? Or do they have the street named after them?
You might think a statue of cartoon characters is unusual, but the other two popular statues in the town are those of Sir Bobby Robson and Sir Alf Ramsey. Can any other town boast two statues to their football managers, but none to any of their footballers? I doubt it!
Here’s Sir Alf, on the touchline for the World Cup victory in 1966.
Statue of Sir Alf Ramsey, Ipswich
And then there is Sir Bobby in a much more animated pose.
Statue of Sir Bobby Robson, Ipswich
There is also a sculpture trail for Ipswich. Is Ipswich unique in not having any full-size statues of military or royal and often obscure figures in the town centre? There is only one statue of a prince in the town and he was Russian. But Alexander Obolensky is not rememberedso much for being a prince as for scoring one of the greatest tries in the history of rugby.
The Damned United
In common with many other men of my age, I am not a fan of Leeds United or the Damned United as they were called in David Peace‘s novel, The Damned Utd
So it was with trepidation, that I took the train to Ipswich this morning to see Town play this afternoon. They haven’t been playing too well lately and I felt that a draw was the best we could hope for.
I also went early and this gave me three hours in the town before the match.
The Anonymous Widower 