That was the year that was - part one

I've now been back in 'Blighty' for just over a year. I left the UK in 1999 and returned last Christmas. Seems like a good opportunity to take stock, so here (in no particular order except for the obvious positives and negatives) are my highs and lows of 2008/ of a year back in England:

The Good

Had to scratch my head here a bit. Most of the good stuff's been of a more personal nature. I turned the landmark age of forty in a very low-key way. Since turning 40, I seem to have turned into a babe-magnet for twenty-somethings. It's not my sub-conscious trying to rebel against growing old, maybe it's a question of being in a situation where I don't have anything to offer to thirty-somethings in terms of settling down as I've been through all that but if it's simply being good company and experienced on the romance front, I seem to have a lot to offer the younger ladies. It's not been a torrent as I'm now very happy to be in a relationship but suffice it to say I can see that we don't stand much of a chance of this being a long-term thing but why look into the future when you can 'Carpe Diem' (or the month, the year or whatever).

The good old British pub quiz has also been a joy.

The people I've got to know have been great too. Germany was wonderful but there are common references with your own compatriots which make it easier to have a laugh or reminisce.

Watching cricket again has also been a pleasure I'd been denied for a few years and, despite all the biff, bang, bosh of Twenty20, it's still Test Cricket which floats my boat so thanks Jimmy Anderson and Co. Maybe next season I'll watch a live game and get caught up in Ashes fever to compensate for the series I missed when Flintoff, Harmison, the sorely-missed Jones and a couple of batsmen caused national jubilation.

Music has been a bit of a weird one. I went to two gigs this year: Elbow in Camden Roundhouse (London) and Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in Brighton. Weird because I wasn't a big fan of either at the time of deciding to go. The groups I would have wanted to see are so big here that getting tickets is legalised daylight robbery (ticket exchanges and ebay have meant that touting is now big business carried out well away from the venue) so thankfully the groups I would've watched churned out crap albums this year and spared me the effort.

Football, ah football, the best thing happened in 2007 when England lost the manager who made Graham Taylor look good. I wasn't sure what Fabio Capello was going to do, but whatever he's done, it seems to be working. With a bit of luck we'll have another 12 year moratorium on the cringeworthy BBC questions about "Who will you support?". Nobody was the answer as it always is when England aren't playing.

Being a Chelsea fan (albeit a bit of a lapsed one during the Ranieri era) it was amazing to see how we're despised not for being a more successful version of Millwall but for doing what Blackburn did that first premier league year. Scolari seems to be better on the PR front but watching the Champions League final with my mate who I used to go to Stamford Bridge with should have been a highlight but turned sour when the England captain and home-grown marvel, John Terry, missed the decisive penalty. I was also mightily annoyed that Drogba got banned after the Burnley incident but the coin thrower from the Lancastrian meat pie makers club remains as elusive as Osama Bin Laden and Burnley continue to play on in the Carling Cup. I'm just annoyed as it's a chance to see Chelsea for half price.

I read one of the best books I've read in ages this year. The Damned United, a fictional account of Brian Clough's ill-fated days at Leeds United. Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch was a watershed but this is a tsunami of stream of consciousness writing. No doubt the film version will ruin it.

Films? Didn't go to watch any films for grown ups and I've stopped renting stuff too.

TV? Didn't watch much but what I saw doesn't deserve to be in this section.

As for the bad...watch this space!

Life on the M6

Last week's tiredness was due to a weekend in Liverpool. Sentimental old fool that I am, I decided to skip the M6 toll motorway as I hadn't seen Brum in donkey's years... My wish was fulfilled (and then some!) as I sat in Friday afternoon traffic all through the West Midlands, Staffordshire and Cheshire. I only wanted to see Castle Bromwich , Spaghetti Junction and the City skyline! I could see the scaffolding around the school in Castle Brom (Birmingham) where I used to teach from the contraflow I was stuck in. Just as I could see the Fort Dunlop factory and Spaghetti Junction. The memories came flooding back at a substantially faster rate than the flow of the traffic. Pity I don't have such fond memories of Wednesbury, Walsall, Stafford, Keele, Nantwich and the Thelwall Viaduct otherwise I could have reminisced for hours to take my mind off the queueing traffic.

To cap it all, I took a wrong turn as I arrived in Liverpool and the whole journey (150 miles from N'pton) took about 5 hours! (Coming back took just over two and a half hours using the skills I'd acquired on the Autobahn in Germany) . I was visitng a mate from Hamburg whose company have transferred him to Liverpool for a year so he was keen to go out and party. We got home at around 5am on Saturday morning and about 2 on Sunday morning. Actually, I'm glad we went mad on the Friday evening because I had all of Saturday to recover. Couldn't have driven back with a hangover measuring that high on the Richter scale.