No Spitting On The Bus

I need to add an addendum to my recommendation of the Eaton book: the quality of the book itself is rubbish and is really detracting from my enjoyment of it. It’s one of those small, tightly bound efforts that you have to bend right back to read. After one reading session the thing looked like it had been read and reread over a twenty year period. I wouldn’t recommend buying it second hand.



The Olympics haven’t started yet, and I’m sick of them already. I can’t understand how the nation can become obsessed by the physical frailties of various hop skip and jumpers and throwers and swimmers for 4 weeks and not give a stuff about them for the next 4 years. Radio 5 is exercising its usual right to go into overkill, which, once again, is rendering the station unlistenable.

Hopefully, we will get some good writing out of it. It's good to see Pete Davies mentioned in that article, his All Played Out remains the best book on sport that I have ever read..

David Conn had a decent article in the Guardian this week about the London Olympics, which more or less echoes my view that the money would be better spent on providing good quality grass roots sports in every community, rather than on concentrating it all on showpiece stadiums, and elite athletes. I have read about Finlands impressive efforts to get people involved in sport before and I am absolutely convinced that the more people that engage in sport from a young age and are encouraged and provided with good quality, pleasant facilities throughout their life, the better it will be for everyone.

Meanwhile, here in Wales: Wales’ flagship programme to boost activity rates and improve fitness levels has no action plan to achieve its targets.

I just heard on the radio that the police and CPS are a bit upset that Barry George has been found not guilty. I notice reports say he has been found not guilty, rather than that he is innocent. The poor old police will have to find the real culprit now, except that they still clearly believe that George is the guilty man.

The newish BBC I player is garbage. All I want to do of a Friday night is crack open a bottle of something nice, listen to a weeks worth of Iain Anderson, and arse about on the web, annoying people on message boards; but, over recent weeks, the i player hasn't let me do that; half the time it just doesn't load. Moreover, even when it does, you have to click an inordinate amount of times before you get to hear anything, and I usually end up looking at the playlist, rather than listening to the music, but that might just be me! It was much more straightforward before they improved it. Earlier I got fed up clicking on and off different Anderson shows which just wouldn't load and clicked on the I player tab. Bugger me, there was a Nick Lowe concert winking at me, so I clicked on it, and it was superb, so if you like the old bugger, go to the I player, it's there for us all to enjoy.