My best mates, late wife’s brother was a Queen fan from the year dot.
Following our amazing party at Paul Gambaccinies house in Oxford, we went over to Ruislip for another party at Carols house, her brother played this wierd band Queen’s records all night, it really peed us off, he was convinced they would be famous, we weren’t so sure about this.
I remember my ex missus phoning me up to tell me that Bohemian Rhapsody was No 1 in the charts, we couldn’t believe it.
So followed a real love/hate relationship with the band.
Quite frankly I never bought a thing of theirs until my son got a bit keen in the late 90’s.
However, watching their performance at Live Aid was pretty awe inspiring, but not convincing.
What really did me, that album brought out after Freddies death, it really is a hell of a way to go and how the hell he did it is beyond me, I love it.
I do think that, like the stuff or not, the bloke was pretty amazing, and sadly missed, what would he be doing now I wonder.

I’ve had my Xmas present, I was going through my late fathers family heirlooms last weekend and found some of my grandfathers stuff, which my mother let me bring home.
All from WW1, these include his Royal Scots Glenngary cap, Sam Browne belt and most interestingly, a little diary for the weeks around Xmas 1917, couldn’t believe finding that.
It’s very poignant to see what was happening exactly 90 years ago.
Xmas breakfast consisted of bread and butter with boiled bacon, dinner was bully beef stew followed by plum duff, tea was bread and butter, oranges, nuts, biscuits and ciggies and this was in camp away from the trenches, which was duly destroyed by high winds and blizzards.
He spent New Years Eve on guard all night, then off to the front and spent the first night asleep on the fire step in the trenches to keep out of the mud and snow.
Makes you think doesn’t it.

Now that winter is well and truly on us, yes, I got caught in a blizzard in Nottingham last weekend, everything was white over, amazing really,
I thought I’d do an update.
Last month, the local council in their wisdom decided to cut the wild area over the fence, had I not stopped the tractor driver, he would have cleared everything down to the river, not good considering that we have evidence of otters down there. All the nettles have gone along with their cover and precious butterfly larvae, as has the nesting site of our rare reed buntings.
Why, well I gather that some rich old boy decided that it spoiled his view, though the council have come up with all sorts of stupid reasons for doing this. So I appeared in the local paper etc etc, but it hasn’t been resolved yet, I’ve not been well the past month either, but I’ll have to start a bit more wingeing I reckon.
The pike is still in the pond, we can’t catch it, what it eats is anybodies guess, I can only assume it grabs any small frog that comes along.
I was clearing out some weed last week and found some huge waterboatman, obviously not on the menu for Mr Pike.
I have to rush off now, the stable doors need fixing, just the weather for banging about outside.

RIP Ian Smith, but lets not have to do this to Stormbird.
If anyone can be bothered to look at his website, he is a poorly chap, ok, his postings are irrational at times and drive us mad with those bloody smilies, do we humour this, I don’t know, but I bet his references to Steve are sincere, don’t knock it, lets leave it down to Moggy shall we.
I feel for the bloke.

Look up Englands statistics on Wikipedia, it makes interesting, but sad reading.
Also the managers records are pretty interesting.
Alf Ramsey comes out tops, inevitably, but then, considering the players he had during 66 and beyond, it’s not surprising is it, the squad picked itself during the World Cup, though, had England lost the final, no doubt the FA would have sacked him for not picking Greavesie, a bold decision at the time.
My own opinion is that Clough should have superceded Ron Greenwood, and lets face it, whoever you supported, he was the peoples choice at the time, but then he would have created mayhem amongst the FA fraternity, possibly with resounding success for the future of the English game.
In which case we have to promote O’Neill for the job, a chip off the old Cloughie block, and lets not forget how much they were wary of each other at the time, which helps.
I’ll never forget the FA Charity Shield match in 78, Forest and O’Neill in particular, were destroying Ipswich,.
O’Neill was rampant, scored 2 goals, easily looking for his hatrick and Cloughie took him off, the reason, he didn’t want him to get too big headed, now thats what being a manager is all about, isn’t it?

I tried to get a ticket for the match and fortunately failed, if I had, and saw that team selection, I wouldn’t have bothered going anyway, it was doomed to fail.
I’ve been following football for 50 years, and at one time played myself in a top amature league, but recently the whole state of the game, the money issue, the excessive number of foreign players, etc etc has caused me to lose interest, my missus was even surprised that I bothered watching wednesdays joke on the TV.
So who takes over now, it has to be a Nottingham Forest connection, either Pierce, who at least has passion and an England background, or O’Neill, who is at least British and has a brain, which is what didn’t endear him to the awesome Mr Clough, Englands greatest loss as a manager, the FA could well be frightened of O’Neills intellect, he was studying law when Forest signed him in the 70’s, he won’t be manipulated, thats for sure.
On another note, I couldn’t get a ticket because areas are left unsold due to segregation issues, why wasn’t this considered when the stadium was designed, it’s bloody ridiculous.
Similarly I was under the understanding that the place had a sliding roof, if so why wasn’t it closed before the match, multi-million pound stadium with a crap pitch, what a joke, why didn’t they save a few quid and used the Cardiff Millenium stadium design, looks awesome to me, but just typical of the FA to get it wrong, the place should have been built well away from it’s current site anyway, trying to get through that area of London is not worth thinking about, made worse by the nearby location of IKEA, ever tried to get there on a match day.

Usually most warbirds are now in winter hibernation, however I was in a meeting in Ipswich this afternoon when the unmistakable sound of something with a merlin passed overhead. It sounded fairly low, but unable to escape to see what it was. Any info?

I saw a clipped wing Spitfire fly very low along Bradford Street, Braintree, heading north east yesterday afternoon.
This is normally the route back to DX, but sometimes they head towards Sudbury and into Suffolk which seems to be the route for helicopter traffic from Wattisham, particularly SAR’s.
Presumably Ipswich is only 15-20mins flying time from here so it could be a possibility, any explanation anyone.