I might almost have been famous

I had an e-mail this morning from someone who had watched the TOTP programme on the box last night, asking if I was related to the BBC producer Michael Hurll.

Well, I am! We share the same great-great-great-great grandfather. Well, that’s not strictly true – I wouldn’t expect there to be much left of him to share now. I was contacted a few years ago by his sister (Michael’s, not our great-great-great-great grandfather’s) who was compiling the family tree and wanted some info about my more immediate family.

This could possibly be my one claim to fame – except perhaps when Jeremy Bates trod on my foot next to one of the outside courts at Wimbledon.

Pilot scheme, or Your wish is my commando

I’ve been spending the last couple of days compiling the pub’s fortnightly general knowledge quiz. One of the rounds this week is on literature and one of my regular sources on the intermanet caused me to navigate to a site devoted to the Biggles’ books by Captain W E Johns, a boyhood favourite of mine, although I cannot claim to have read all 98 of them!

Here’s a little test for you. Which of the seven titles below is NOT a real Biggles book?

1. Biggles Flies East

2. Biggles Flies West

3. Biggles Flies North

4. Biggles Flies South

5. Biggles Flies Again

6. Biggles Flies To Work

7. Biggles Flies Undone

Also, I do recall borrowing two books by Johnners (if I may make so bold as to call him that) at the same time from the school library: Biggles Works It Out and Gimlet Mops Up.

Haha! What will those hero boys get up to next?!

Call that Football? – Update

Just when you thought it was safe to forget about the first blog in this series, I urge you to read the comment added to it by my son, Andrew, here. Very eloquently put, if I may say so. The matter is under advisement and I am considering my legal position.

Drip

And more drips. We can't get anything right in this country, can we? It's been so bloody humid, I feel as though there is someone with a watering can (large rose) constantly pouring warm water over my head. I honestly find this weather unbearable, to the extent I am considering consulting my GP to see if something's come loose. Talking of more drips, a friend of mine suggested a nifty scheme to me on Sunday (incidentally, before Alistair posted a link the other night in the chat to some home-made cooling device or other) which consists of filling a plastic Coke bottle with water and freezing it - don’t forget to allow for the fact that water expands when it freezes, so leave a space for that - ("actually, I would do two, then you've got one in reserve"), then simply standing it in front of an electric fan, whereupon the fan would distribute cold air instead of the boiling hot air which normally permeates the room where I have to work. Incidentally, my friend isn't one of the other drips mentioned: these are the ones from the Coke bottle which are pooling underneath it. You therefore also need a bowl of some kind to catch them. My office is so small that, with all of the equipment it seems you need, there is not enough space for it, or if I did set it up in the only available spot, it would probably prevent me from ever leaving the room. You can't win.

Call that football?

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now. More or less normal service is being resumed in the pub after yet another dismal England failure to win an important competitive match on penalties. Pah! I've lost count of the number of bitter disappointments suffered over the years. It's time to make my resolution public which, by the way, I have been accused of being not likely to stick to, mainly because of similar ones made in the past. However, for some considerable time (as I have intimated before), I have become increasingly disillusioned with the game: the obscene salaries, the yobbishness, the niggling cynical shirt-pulling and violent tackles, inept and inconsistent officials, insubordinate protests and pathetic, childish play-acting. Here it comes - I fully intend never to watch another professional football match at club or international level, in the flesh or on TV. There, and I mean it! If anyone sees me heading towards one, I owe them a big fat drink! I've got better things to do! It's a shame; I used to love football.