Three Peak Challenge

Am doing the 3 Peak Challenge on the 23/24th August for Brain Tumour UK.

The 3 peak challenge is climbing the 3 highest peaks in England Scotland and Wales in a 24 Hour period. Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis and Snowdon...

Am training at the moment but need sponsorship!!! Please sponsor me via the widget on the right.

My 2 Cents

England.. What a load of shit.

i was watching the game with friends and nobidy mentioned this but we were screaming at the TV. In the first half before the goals, everytime we got the ball we were looking left for the width on the wing, however Gerrard was always sat in the centre of midfield. ashley cole kept getting in trouble as gerrard's instinct is to go inside.

Capello is useless in my opinion. For a start, the goalkeeper wo had the best year at club level by miles was Joe Hart. He played in the friendlies and looked confident. who do we start with? Robert Green who made more unforced errors in the premier league last year than Hart OR James. Then we have Terry playing on the wrong side of the central defence. How can we not even get that right? How hard to find a left sided Centre back to play alongside? For 10 years england fans have KNOWN that Gerrard and Lampard can't play in the same team yet we still play Gerrard right wing.

Green makes 1 error and gets dropped. Upson has 1 alright game against fucking SLOVENIA and we keep him in against the Germans when Capello had already proved with his original selections that Carragher and King were his first two choices. What heppens? Our defense is all over the place. We have Rooney playing with another striker that he is not used to doing. We have Heskey who can't score. We don't play crouch who has the best goal to game ratio of anyone in the squad. We play Milner because Defoe managed to get on the end of a cross against Slovenia. Who is he crossing to?! Rooney and Defoe are hardly renowned for aerial ability. When rooney layed on milner the other day and he didn't score, who else was shouting WALCOTT?! So who were our best players in the tournament? James? Ashley Cole? Johnson? See anything familiar with those players?? They are the only players playing in their normal fucking club position!!

Then there is the tactics. It is IMPOSSIBLE in my opinion to set yourself up tactically for a game when the players DO NOT KNOW who is playing in the match. did we do anything special tactically for the Germany game? Or did we just play the same team who did ok against Slovenia?

I think when players autobiographies come out in a few years they will slate the Capello regime. We now need to rebuild. Any players who won't play in the world Cup should now retire and start trying to get some younger players playing. Not that we have any coming through.

Green Day and England

Am so tired.....

Went to watch the England game at the pub Friday and was depressed when it finished. All Robert green'd fault in my opinion but am not going to talk about that shit. After the football finished a few of my mates said "shall we go out for a couple in Norwich?" Why not.... Well I ended up getting back to my mates where i was staying at about 5.30. I had to get up about 10 to go to London to see Green Day at Wembley Stadium. I got up alright, we were banging on my other mates door for ages before he finally got up.

Driving down i felt seriously bad. I really wpuld have preferred just to go home and back to bed at that point!! We ended up parking at Redbridge and getting the tube in but thought the tube would have stopped before we got back but didnt really care as we'd get back somehow. We got to Wembley and it was already quite bust at about 1730:



So we got a couple of drinks and watched the support bands in the middle then when green day came on, went over the top of everyone to get to the front of the main area, where the V is you can see on the photo. The concert was amazing. They are such a good band to see live. We were all jumping around as usual and they played for 3 hours. If anyone hasn't seen them live you should, really really good. This is a video i found on youtube



Anyway we ended up getting back to the station on time and got home about 230 so am just going to sit and watch the football today and do nothing.

World Cup

Well it's been rubbish hasn't it?

It was good to see the Ivory Coast and Portugal play for a draw and just see who can beat North Korea by the most goals. So many draws and nobody has been that good. Germany were alright but Australia were absolutely useless.

To give my opinion on england... I really don't like Capello's policy of telling the players 2 hours before kick off who is playing. I saw an interview with Alex Ferguson once and he was asked "What do you say to the players before kick off?" he replied "I don't see the players the morning of the game, if they don't know what they're supposed to be doing just before the game then we have no chance". I would hope that the players NOW would know if they're playing friday, and know exactly what they're supposed to be doing.

Also, there was all this talk about squad selection. Why take Dawson and Upson if when King gets injured we're going to play Carragher? Surely we wasting a player?! Take Dawson incase King, Carragher and Upson get injured? Alot has been said about Joe Cole not coming on for Milner (who was a waste of time) and Robert Green (who would have been my 3rd choice keeper). If we win the group, then not only do we miss germany, we also get a not bad Quarter Final of probably France who didn't look all that, however I'm not convinced we're good enough to win the tournament.

Work is Shit

My job selling car insurance is shit. You really get treated like shit all day and speak to wankers all day. You really get so many wankers calling. Old men are the worse...

"Can i take your first name please?"
"Smith"
"Your first name please?"
"J"
"Sorry sir i need to take your name for the insurance certificate"
"well i don't see why you need that but it's jonathan"

and you know it's going to be a shit call.

I had a women moaning at me the other day asking why her insurance quote was so high. She had a "causing death by dangerous driving" on her record. I wanted to say "Someone paid for your driving with their life"

Someone today was moaning asking why they paid £500 for annual insurance last year and this year it's gone up to £1000. She said "I did have a claim worth £7000 in March but it shouldn't put it up that much should it?" talk sense women...

Hopefully it'll be quiet during the football. I'm looking around for other work but there's nothing about. I still might just go to mexico and work on a boat like my sister did.

Saturday Night Fun

I went out in Norwich last night with a few friends from work and a few mates from where i live. I the first bar we went in my mate was at the bar and started speaking to a bloke at the bar. As soon as this bloke said he worked at the same place as me my mate said "Do you like it there? My mate Matt fucking hates it"... Turns out it was my boss... brilliant.

Earlier on in the day at work i'd had one of them flirty "Are you out tonight?" conversation with one of the managers and she started ringing me off one of my mates phones and I met up with her and some other people from work. This girl models in her spare time and is super fit and If she does like me, she only likes me as we work together as she wouldn't look at me twice if we just met in a pub. I was being really stupid about things and actually being sensible for once and thinking "I'm 31 and she's 20" but i really shouldn't be worrying about things like that. We went to get into another club and I lost her and didn't have her number so couldn't meet her again later but i'll keep trying to see how it goes.. this is her by the way:



After that i met up with my mate and his sister and ended up staying with them until the club let out about 5.30 and then we went to get some food and a taxi. I feel a bit of a twat as after meeting that manager earlier she must have got me thinking so i was shitfaced and so started trying it on with my mates sister (who just looked at me in a what the fuck are you doing kind of way) and then one of my other mate from works sister was there who i ended up kissing, so i didn't really do very well in a moral not trying to pull mates sisters kind of way. I hadn't been out that late for ages and it was strange to leave a club in daylight....

Foreigners in London

I went to London today with my mum and had a good day. A few things wound me that to be honest normally wind me up in London. I went into a post office near the British Museum as I needed to apply for a new passport as mine went through the wash. I was using the Post Office's check and send service and the guy serving me was Indian. Suddenly i'm being grilled about applying for a new passport and interviewed by someone who's blatantly not British, I thought it was quite funny.

Later on we were in Starbucks in the Trocadero and a Russian girl served us. "Latte half strength" Was the order... "Half what?" "Half strength" "What you mean half strength?" "Half the strength as you normally make it"...."you mean half strong?".. And i get really indignant that the person serving me can't speak english. The worse was to come, my mum went to the toilet (which costs a fucking pound by the way) and she didn't have a pound coin only two 50p's so she went up to the attendent and asked if she had a pound and the women just stared at her... She got the two 50p's and asked her again for change and this women didn't have a fucking clue what my mum was saying. How can you get a job with no grasp on english at all?? Is it because they get paid 40p and hour??? I suppose if your getting paid 40p an hour, free toilet breaks is a fucking BRILLIANT perk at £1 a go.

The thing that struck me the most today happened everywhere and is what is normal everywhere you go now. People taking photo after photo of exhibits in the British Museum. People not reading what they were looking at, just walking round taking photos with nobody in them just the artifacts. I didn't take a camera, i like to experience things and see the exhibits myself and read what they are and enjoy it for ME. Not taking random photos saying "this was a rock but i don't know what it was". Now don't get me wrong I like photographs. But people nowadays don't actually enjoy the experience they are having as they are too busy taking photos of it!! I don't have any photos of the best experiences of my life... I have no photos of the Champions league, FA Cup and League Cup finals, I have no photo's of the stunning Louise from Leeds I met one night a few years back. I remember them in my head and didn't feel the need to take a million photos so I would remember it. Weddings are the same now, rather than a photographer taking photos of the couple being happy, the couple's entire day is now pretending to be happy for the photographer.

North Korea

That place is super fucked up. I've been reading and watching a bit about North Korea recently and it is really really scary. It's like the Ministry of Truth in 1984 where Kim Jong Il adjusts the truth to suit his means. Nobody in the masses has any access to external websites and all internal information and media is created by the ruling government. They are told they are the happiest people in the world and Kim Jong Il lives in the most lavish luxury whilst his people starve.

Kim Jong il is called the Dear leader and The President of the country is his father Kim Il-sung, even though he died in 1994 and is still treated like a God. The calender in North Korea starts at 1912 in the same way the western calender starts at the birth of christ.

What must it be like if all you're told is what the government wanted you to hear? If you had no idea what was happening in the world how do you react to situations? North Korea has got one of the largest armys in the world and have nuclear weapons. If the government tells the people that they are right and the west are enemies as are South Korea, without a voice of reason from neutral media outlets, isn't everyone going to believe that? If the news tells people that america are launching an attack and the only way to retaliate is by using nuclear force, if people have no alternate news access, why would they think that was not right?

We attack Iraq to take out saddam yet this scares me far me, I don't need to ask the question why we're not doing anything about it do I? They just have nothing we need.