Well. It was quite quite boring. And Ludlow lost 8 nil. I feel no need to ever repeat the experience.

Let's leave it there.

Football Crazy

I've always hated football. I grew up in a house where my mum supported Birmingham City and my brother Aston Villa so every Saturday in 'the season' (question - when is not 'the season?') they would argue about who was the best and my brother had a succession of ever more horrible sweaty nylon football shirts in claret and blue.

When I went to work in a public library, Saturday was our busiest day so the Saturday argument and the results were not welcome music when I returned from a hectic day of stamping records (it was a record library). And then of course on Saturday night and Sundays we had the ghastly matches played on the telly - it was hell to a person of my sensibilities.

So when i tell you I am going to spend the whole day at a football match tomorrow, you'll wonder why, won't you?

I know I'm wondering why.

Ludlow Town Legends v Manchester United Legends at Ludlow Football Club. To include buffet and dinner.

Why did I say yes?

I shall update you after the awful event.

Wheel 'em on

I've recently returned to using my trusty electronic steed the Dreadnaught. It's an amazing wheelchair that I bought when I could hardly walk at all and it only gets an outing every now and then cos it's been a bit unreliable. However by the simple expedient of buying some new batteries (cost of £125 each)it's got going again and on our recent visit to Centerparcs we had a fun time with me buzzing around in it while the others cycled everywhere.

Of course you feel slightly fraudulent because people see you in this giant contraption like nothing they've ever seen before and think you must be an utter basket case. Then when I jump out and walk round shops they think some miracle has taken place. But anyway I had forgotten how people stare and how over keen they are to help, one bloke almost flattening me with my own wheelchair when I get a bit stuck against a fence post. With no experience of driving the thing he cheerfully grabbed the joystick - I'd got out by this time - and of course it lurched towards me quicker than I could move out the way. But he wasn't daunted by this and had another go until Jack fortunately came back and rescued me before too much 'help' led to me losing a leg.

It does anyway mean that i can explore the countryside without pain so I took off up the dingle at the back of our house. Yes, you're quite right I WAS wearing my slippers. How chav is that?

Squid Who?

Anyway as I was saying. As the MD of a rich and successful internet company PerfectArc (or Perfect Arc as some would wrongly have it) I thought it was about time I mentioned that fact on this blog. We've gone a bit 2.0 for those of you who give a **** about stuff like that. Andy discovered Squidoo - http://www.squidoo.com - okay a few other people had discovered it before him. So we went a bit mad and signed up lots of useful looking URLS like http://www.squidoo.com/annawilde which means I have two blogs to keep up with now.

I don't know about you but I have this thing wrong with my head. I buy and read a business book, say, or a self help book. I read it avidly. I think 'there's some great tips in there'. I even make notes. And yes you guessed it, 5 minutes later I can't remember a single thing about it. Why is that? I guess my memory is like my last post about the cupboard clutter - full of stuff like birthdays and shopping list and must-pay-the-bills and so the new information falls out of my ears somehow. Maybe I should keep lists on Squidoo of books I've read and the three top things I learnt from them.

OK I'm bored now. Going to eat some cake.

Weird things in cupboards

Huge excitement as I have finally bought a breadmaking machine. It's got all kinds of extras like a timer and everything, and a drawer for adding nuts and raisins so that it automatically opens and throws the stuff into the dough at just the right moment. Actually it's really sad to use the terms huge excitement and breadmaker in the same sentence but there you are, that's getting old for you.

Anyway the shiny machine provoked a trip into Sainsbury's to stock up on bread flour and yeast and stuff, which we did with gusto. Walnuts and dates, seeds and special bread mixes, we hauled a load home. Which meant that today I had to climb up to sort out the contents of the cupboard and Make Room for the new stuff.

Now the top cupboard is a bit of a forgotten land as climbing on chairs is a bit forbidden to me what with a bad leg and osteoporosis and all. But I do occasionally foray into the cupboard realm and what strange things I find there:

- boxes of cup -o' -soup . The thing with cup o soup is - why? It's vile and there's no need for it, chemicals in a cup. All of ours was very out of date so i threw it away, just like that.
- food colouring. Just as in my mum's store cupboard, so in mine. Lots of it. Legacy from children's birthday cakes I reckon.
- bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and cream of tartar. I've never been too sure what these unholy trio does for you, and they were 4 years out of date with approx 0.5 teaspoons removed from each pack. Reader, I threw them away.
- empty, completely empty boxes. I blame Poppy for this one.
- rank old remains of oats, dried fruit, skanky sachets of sugar etc - it's like there's a world crisis and we've hung onto these as a protection against the emergency. Except there isn't one.

When I was about 6 my mum bought me a cake with a sugar Humpty Dumpty on it. I kept the HD in a tin for years in the pantry - years and years - I used to take it out and look at it every now and then, and then put it back. It had special significance as Firkin's the bakers had a whole window of cakes that I used to look at every Friday when I went shopping, with a kind of acquisitive envy. My mum used to make us lovely cakes but of course the shop bought ones were always better in my eyes, so she eventually bought one from Firkin's for me. I did have years of pleasure from the HD though of course I never even nibbled on him. So he stayed in the cupboard and then probably got thrown away in a mad purge one day.

Anyway i could go on but you get the picture. And i couldn't reach into the furthest corner so there's probably some other unmentionable horrors lurking therein. My point is really that I expect everyone has a similar list of nasty things in their cupboards and why do we keep them? some sort of native hoarding gene in case we fall on hard times?

Next week - watching paint dry.

BOTROS

I went with a friend to a famous tea room for lunch last week - it's called Bird on the Rock. It gets rave reviews and wins awards for being as authentic as they come - with a thirties/forties style atmosphere and decor and original teas to match. They don't trouble with a website otherwise i would stick in a link.

Anyway my friend was worried cos I was late and though she had booked - apparently essential - the guy on the phone had told her they were 'very busy' and she was concerned that we would lose the table. When we got there she dropped me at the gate and went to park the car. I walked along the path which had a procession of notices, handwritten and stuck in the ground. These notices announced such things as ' At busy times we are often fully booked and you may have to wait a while' - next one 'Please queue here - we are very busy but will do our best to accommodate you' - next one - 'Please wait to be seated - although there may appear to be empty tables, many are booked in advance'.

Anyway I went in and - yes, you guessed it - it was of course nigh on empty. A few people turned up and of course it was the beginning of February and I'm sure it does get very busy in the summer, on the three days a week they are open. The lunch and the service was pleasant enough and the place itself is jolly good for a trip down memory lane (Mabel Lucie Atwell postcards took me straight back to my childhood holiday accommodation). However it did make me think how people and organisations can develop BOTROS (Bird on the Rock Occupied Syndrome) where they are sure and certain that they are too busy when actually the evidence is completely to the contrary.

Later that same day I had the bad luck to witness another example of BOTROS whilst at Hereford Hospital with my mum who had had another fall. We were warned that there was a three hour wait as they were 'very busy' but during this time I saw no evidence of anyone being other than mildly occupied, with a lot of standing around and chatting. The NHS - with whom I am a frequent flier - has got the worst attack of BOTROS ever known. They are 'heroes' and 'angels' - and yes, I've known them be all those things - but a lot of the time they are doing routine tasks in an unpressured environment. Now I know Hereford is hardly inner city complete with knifings and perhaps I'm being unfair but honestly, there were a few kids with bandaged limbs, a drunk with a head injury, mum and a few others looking a bit peaky and that was it. Huge gaggles of staff stood around nattering or mooched about with a desultory bedpan.

I've seen worse BOTROS at PerfectArc on an average Wednesday.

Frankly Disturbing

I've been alarmed by the recent advent of a new type of squeezy container - used by Marmite and also honey. Sounds a great idea - squeeze it, doesn't drip everywhere etc

What this picture doesn't reveal is that the honey container in particular has an anus-like sphincter, which when you squeeze the honey, bulges slightly before letting go - as it were. It's among the most disturbing things I've seen in a very long time and quite puts me off.

I bet you're glad I shared that.

Will you mend my computer please? NO

Anyone who is even remotely competent with a computer must be familiar with the role of computer help/hardware technician/first line support. Unfortunately I have played this role so many times I'm bored bored bored by it - I was going to register the domain name computerfairy.com until Andy pointed out this might sound like I enjoyed mucking around with people's machines in my spare time (i.e. the 45 minutes a week I get to myself).

So I took a moratorium and started saying no to all my friends or giving them details of a guy who makes his living that way - £30 an hour - at least it made the friends place a value on my efforts. I have one friend who does buy me a lunch or a present and another friend where we barter - she does my garden in return for her computer maintenance. So that's kind of fair enough. But there's another breed who expects me to just love it and these are the ones who I have shaken off, as dust from my feet.

After all how much fun can you have removing trojans from someone's hard disk - especially when you've told them not to use file sharing - or setting up a wireless broadband network for someone who has thrown away the login details and the setup instructions because she didn't think they would be needed? You're right - not much fun at all. Especially when you spend all your hours at work trying to coax the computers into a state of co-operation - they're like a bunch of spoiled children, there's always one feeling sick or got earache.

I suppose I have a problem like lots of people in saying NO - although it's a problem I'm working on. Another friend has the concept of a full diary - she automatically says 'I think my diary is full for that week' whenever she is asked to do anything, even it's full of her eating cream buns and lying on a sofa. I can manage to say that for work commitments but not for friends - not a good enough liar.

So what's a girl to do? I guess become incompetent with computers would be a start. Or have no friends. Let's hope the march of technology overtakes me.

Dogging

I've just discovered a new tv programme - probably everyone else has known about it for ages but I'm actually quite astonished. Dog the Bounty Hunter is an American (see left) - married five times, an ex-offender himself but now a Born Again Christian, this guy is apparently legally allowed to go after people who have skipped bail and rearrest them. He and his tattoed family attire themselves in body armour - including a massive badge type thing in the shape of a star - clamber into their enormous pickups and hunt the offenders down.

Now then. When you watch this programme it makes you realise how incredibly shallow people can be. He waffles on about the dignity of the captured person after he's woken them up by pointing a pistol at their mouth, cuffing them and together with his lads, marched them into the wagon - their dignity is somehow restored by him giving them a fag and telling them about how he was naughty once and then following on by quoting the Bible at them.

The captured person then cries a bit (Dog has been crying like a baby for ages by this time) and agrees it's a fair cop and they then chuck him in at the nearest cop shop and pocket the money. Dog's missus meanwhile is hugging the woman-left-behind and telling her how her man done wrong but all he gotta do is serve a 5,000 year sentence and then he'll be all straightened out and sorted and back agin.

And this is legal in America - between 30,000 and 40,000 people every year are caught by bounty hunters. Except it's not legal in Mexico and good ol' Dog has now been arrested in Mexico for bounty hunting and bunged in the slammer himself and there's a petition going to get him let out.

Words fail me - the country that allows this pantomime is the one that we take our lead from. Soon we'll see Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne trawling sink estates and rounding up chavs with breached ASBOs.

Good grief. Oh and by the way - he's called Dog cos it's God spelled backwards. Yes really.

Solutions, solutions, solutions!

I've been accused this very day of always coming up with solutions to things and I'm forced to agree it's a lamentable trait. Let's face it - we don't always want solutions - sometimes we just want to moan or complain with the luxury of being heard and not having someone like me pipe up with ideas of how you could fix things or make them better.

The trouble is its a compulsion and I must struggle hard to overcome it.

Therefore I am signing the solution pledge right here, right now. At least for some of the time.

New things

I've always had a fascination with new things. I even feel a slight thrill opening a new bottle of shampoo or a new bar of soap. I think we always had plenty of old things when I was small so a new anything was a slight novelty. My mum and dad used to make things for us - clothes for us from mum and toys and things from dad, which of course we didn't appreciate as we should have done.

Anyway on to the really mad stuff. I find some new things really difficult - e.g. I have a bit of a phobia about writing in new blank books. People buy them for me but I have to sort of sneak up on them and quickly write something because I'm scared of spoiling all that newness. Of course I have bound some beautiful new blank books myself and never been able to use them.

And another thing - new towels. Getting and using a clean dry towel after I've had a bath - I've struggled with that one for years. I've dried myself on the general damp towel too many times to remember - buit WHY? some sort of vaguely stupid notion of saving towels? On the other hand, when I stay in a hotel I make sure I use ALL the towels and have clean ones every day. Makes no sense.

I think - going a bit philosophical - that I was quite old (like 40 ish) before I realised that I did actually like new THINGS happening in my life - prevously I had thought that I didn't. What a silly person I am. The new things happen anyway so I might as well enjoy them. :-). And clearing out some old leaves space for some new.

See - I told you it would be philosophical.