Victory

Well we (Hull City) beat Sheffield Wednesday one-nil yesterday so I have earned "bragging rights" over any Wednesday supporters I encounter this week - including students in the school where I work. Very useful. The game itself left much to be desired. The first half was so dull that half of the crowd of 22,000 fell asleep and others read their programmes. There were no real shots on goal and only one corner conceded. The referee was whistle-happy, regularly pulling up the play instead of giving advantage to the team in possession. At halftime, Fiona fed us some delicious homemade flapjack.

The second half was marginally better. We brought on two subs - Price and Elliot and gradually they had an impact. Elliot met a cross from the right brilliantly to send a powerful looping header over Weaver's flailing arms. Goal! Up out of our seats with the orgasmic delight but then whistle - bloody offside! How could that be? We were dead opposite the action - there was no offside! Then three minutes later, Jason Price with his Afro hair powered through the middle to hoof the ball into the net - justice was done! Hull City 1 Sheff Wed 0 - All sing along together:- "We love you City we do! We love you City we do! We love you City we do! Hull City we love you!"

That puts us fifteenth in the Championship with twenty six points. Having had back on back promotions, this season was all about just staying up and fingers crossed, we are edging that way now. Sorry (hee-hee!) to blogger Retarded Rugrat in Vancouver - your Owls just weren't good enough.

Ramble

Our humble Sheffield hovel:-

"More pudding! We need more pudding. " - recent comment on this site posted by the world famous Seattle-based blogger Brad the Gorilla. Well, when Brad demands pudding it must be delivered.

Usually my blog entries have a specific subject - be it Ireland or God, George Best or Beer. This evening I thought I would just ramble along, see what nonsense emerges from my Hewlett Packard keyboard.

My belly is currently sated after consuming a Chinese takeaway from the New Hing Lung on Abbeydale Road - highly recommended. Fried rice, chicken chow mein, chicken foo yung, sweet and sour chicken and chicken chop suey - a Friday night feast. Last evening I took my brother Paul out with my son Ian for an authentic Kashmiri curry at the imaginativetly titled Kashmir Curry Centre on Spital Hill. I love that place - it's so basic - formica table tops - spoons to eat with - tacky pictures on the walls - and because it is a Muslim-run establishment, they don't serve alcohol so you have to cross the road to the "East House" pub and return with your pints of foaming Wentworth Ale - dodging buses and taxis but never spilling a drop. No "scapa" in the "East House"! The nan bread in the Kashmir is "to die for" (what a dumb expression!) - homemade, light and fluffy with dappled patterns from the gas rings.

Have you ever heard those expressions - "I like my food" or "He/She likes her food" ? I think these remarks are also pretty dumb because 99.5% of the world's population like their food and the other 0.5% who have eating disorders probably also like it but have psychological issues with it. A much better expression is, "You are what you eat" - chemically and biologically this is true - so perhaps tomorrow I will begin to take on the racial characteristics of the offspring of a Kashmiri warrior and a Shanghai maiden. I'm fantasising - more likely, I'll still be the same old Yorkshire pudding - a little bit crusty with plenty of room for gravy in the middle.

World Cup draw tonight. I wonder who England will get. Our team promises so much and our Premier League is surely the most exciting league in the world but we never seem to really crack the code on the international stage. In Wayne Rooney we have someone who could be the best player on the planet and around him there are other superb players like Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole and, on his day, David "Golden Balls" Beckham. Talking of football, Shirley and I are off to Hull tomorrow to see The Tigers take on Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship. "Come on you Huuulll!" I hope we stuff them like we did at Hillsborough last year. That was one great night.

Life goes on. One more week at work and then two weeks Christmas vacation. I never want to go away anywhere at Christmas. It's a lovely time. Warm fire. Sleeping late. Aromas from the kitchen. Pigs in blankets. Goodwill in the pub. My wife and kids with me. Boris curling up on my lap. Reading a good book and this year, what could be better than papering the dining room ceiling on rickety stepladders? Ah well that's before I go to fetch my ancient mum from the old people's residential home in Beverley - just two nights back in the bosom of her family. I know she'll like that. She was angling for it last time I saw her. It's the least we can do.

So that was more pudding Sir Brad and Lady Friday, Nonny, Freethinker, George and all the other cyberpeople I have met in the hidden valleys of Blogworld. Finally, a favourite Yorkshire saying of mine - "All the world is queer save thee and me and even thou art a little queer!"

-: Shirley in Rome, October 05

Blogworld

It's almost ten years since I first discovered the Internet. How this baby has grown! And every time I log in I'm still thrilled. This evening, I have been looking at old pictures of Bakersfield, California, checking out hotels in Madrid - Spain and reading reports about England's most successful primary schools. It's like a window on the world. I often say to others that science fiction never foresaw anything quite as amazing as the Internet we now know so well.

Early Internet adventures included forrays into chatrooms from which I was frequently expelled by moralistic moderators. In 1998, I remember counselling a suicidal woman in New York - trying to get her to see that it is possible to emerge from the darkest shadows that life casts upon us. Every new day can be a new beginning. I don't know what happened to her - I lost her somewhere in the tangled worldwide web.

Now there's blogging. Sometimes I tell friends and acquaintances that I am into blogging and some of them have absolutely no idea what I mean. Blog? What's that? To me easy blogging is another wonderful extension of the Internet. I guess I have always been a frustrated writer and blogging allows me to write things and get them published in a professional-looking form without cost or very much trouble. It's so easy.

You could spend hours checking out other blogs from around the world. Every blog is different and they all reveal interesting things about how other people live and how they see life. Of course, the Internet and computerisation have always been led by America so it is no surprise that Blogworld has a high American population.

I have enjoyed reading "Friday's Web" (North Carolina) and "Free Thought By A Free Thinker" (San Francisco), "Brad The Gorilla" (Seattle) and "Hanging Hope on A Head's Up 1973 Penny" (Georgia) along with dozens of other blogs - "Blog by George", "Zandrea", "Retarded Rugrat", "And I'm Reading This Because..." (Sacramento Ca). As I say every blog is different. They have made me laugh, think, rage and occasionally, even though I am a tough old Yorkshire Pudding, shed a couple of tears. We are the citizens of Blogworld. We want to be noticed. We want to connect with others. We want to be participants rather than voyeurs. Thanks to all my fellow bloggers out there for showing me bits of your lives and educating me in ways our parents and grandparents could never have travelled.

They say that the internet was conceived and nourished by the American military machine but now it's in the public domain and we are exploiting it, subverting it, stretching its horizons. This is no longer Planet Earth, this is Blogworld!