The Goal That Never Was - Coventry v C Palace 1980

I remember this so well...they showed it more clearly on Match of the Day.The free kick flew past the keeper and hit the stanchion - a word that was new to our boyhood vocabulary - before bouncing out. Poor old Clive Allen who was a great player at QPR and again at Spurs but had a torrid time at Crystal Palace. Just shows goal line controversy is nothing new...I remember thinking the Coventry kit was really cool. Oh to be fifteen again.....

Big Miracle - Trailer

1989/90 Season: Leeds United 4 - 3 Hull City...who said Vinnie couldn't play...?

Great goal fromVinnie Jones...and can you spot football 'pundits' Chris Kamara and Jim Beglin in the United team along with a 'youthful' Gordon Strachan......

Heard a cuckoo this morning........such an amazing sound and so evocative of Spring!!!

http://www.bto.org/science/migration/tracking-studies/cuckoo-tracking

This is an amazing project...apparently two have returned out of the five tagged.....a ten thousand mile round trip to and from their wintering grounds in sub-Saharan Africa.

Disastrous weather for wildlife.........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17966324This cold and wet weather seems depressingly unrelenting...the wettest April on record....but it really has been a disaster for wildlife, particularly birds, for whom timing is everything. Their arrival, incubation of eggs and rearing of young is all aimed at coinciding with fresh tannin free foliage and abundant insects. Even if the young birds are fed sufficiently to fledge, the cold and damp will kill them. I have found several drenched blue tits and blackbirds that have succumbed in this way. It is indeed colder now than it was at Christmas......there is time for most species to have a second brood but if this weather continues it will be a disaster.......

Planes, Trains & Automobiles Medley.....watch this film!

John Candy in his funniest role as Del Griffith.....a film I can watch again and again.......his premature death was a huge loss......

Joggers, snoggers, doggers ......and bloggers.

I went along to one of my favourite haunts the night before last....Wilstone reservoir. The sky was a menacing grey and the terns and hirundines were feeding in swirling , loose groups low over the surface of the water. It is an atmospheric place at all times and despite the terrible weather it once again had a lovely feel to it. Hearing a cuckoo calling from beyond the reedbed was a reassuring reminder that even though it feels like November, Summer is surely around the corner. I visit Wilstone when I can - early morning is my favourite time - but rarely in the evenings. It is a public site and I have no problem with the runners who impressively complete laps of the place or the assortment of dogs that look longingly at my telescope tripod as a potential location for a territorial pee. But this time the car park at the bottom of the steps that lead down from the reservoir had become the location for some sort of 'meet up'...if that's not an inappropriate expression.....with at least six cars containing couples in various states of entanglement. As I made my way past the cars trying to look anywhere but their direction, I noticed a woman sitting on the bank. As I got nearer I could hear that she was sobbing. Really sobbing. I stood for a while a little distance from her and scanned the reservoir as I always do, but in the end I had to ask her if she was ok...which I did. She just stopped, looked at me and said 'I'm fine'.....which clearly she was not. She tried a half-hearted smile before starting to cry again and within a minute or so she got up and walked back to her (empty) car and drove away. Now whether the frolics in the car park had anything to do with her unhappiness I do not know. Could I have done anything more..I don't know...I just wanted to let her know I was concerned. But it was a sad little cameo on a bizarre night at the reservoir that clearly takes on a different character on Spring and Summer evenings.........