Festive ramblings

I hope you've all had a very jolly (and merry) Christmas!

I've been very lazy. Christmas day was spent at my bro Thom and his wife's with my mum, Thom's parents-in-law and grandmother-in-law and his lovely sons (aged 4 and 2). The boys (of course) got masses of presents, but they were really excited about everything they opened - from books to sweeties to clothes to Baby Annabelle. Yes, that's right, a very girly doll. Jake (aged 4) was a victim of ambush advertising, and decided he wanted a Baby Annabelle, so his great-grandma got him one, with a little help from his parents. She got his brother Harry (2) a doll too. I have no idea what this says about Jake - but he loves his toy cars and trains too!

Yesterday, being Boxing Day, meant football. We were away at Preston North End - about and hour-and-a-half's drive away - I got a lift with a couple of my London friends who were also up visiting family for Christmas. Toilets to come! Then back to Thom's for dinner and more entertainment from Jake and Harry.

I'm still undecided when I'm going to go back to London. There's football again tomorrow evening (in Sheffield), and I was contemplating heading back either after the match or on Thursday morning, and possibly giving the away match at Burnley on New Year's Eve a miss. But it sounds like the weather might make my decision for me - sounds like there's loads of snow already down south (only a small dusting up here thus far) and more is promised for the next couple of days.

And thanks to the American's inability to realise that Europe is closed between Christmas and New Year, I've got work to do. My column has to be done by Friday - which means I'm going to have to do it from press releases, cuttings and a Powerpoint presentation from a meeting I couldn't go to a couple of weeks ago. Hmmmmmm.

Toilet survey #14: Preston North End

Preston North End 0, Sheffield Wednesday 0
December 26, 2005

Another match, no more goals. Preston are pushing for promotion so a draw was a reasonable result, but we're still in the relegation zone and that was the sixth match in a row in which we've not scored. And not looked like scoring. This isn’t entirely surprising, as all our strikers worthy of the name are injured. We desperately need Paul Sturrock to find us at least one who can actually put the ball in the net when the transfer window reopens in January. And hope he doesn’t get injured.

The last time I went to Preston was in our first season after we were relegated from the premiership, five years ago. The away fans were then housed in a terrace down one of the sides – one of four grounds we still got to stand at in league matches that season (the others being Gillingham, Fulham and Stockport). It started snowing about 10 minutes before the end, and by the time the final whistle blew on our inevitable defeat, it was snowballing down. A 25 minute route-march to the station through a blizzard wasn’t much fun.

Fortunately, the terrace has been condemned (though not yet replaced) and we were in a new stand behind one of the goals, which was shared with home fans. We’d sold out and I think there were about 3,500 Wednesday fans there, so the concourse under the stand was heaving – though amazingly we did manage to get beer and pies.

The toilets weren’t bad. There were two cubicles facing you as you went in…


…plus another seven down the side, so there were no queues either before the game or at the end of half time – though there was a bit of a wait after the match.


The cubicles were fairly roomy and reasonably clean, with abundant quantities of loo roll.


The ambience was normal football ground breeze-block chic, with a little bit of a twist – half the walls were pink breeze blocks, with pink mortar holding them together. I wonder if they had blue ones in the gents’?


Rating: 7/10. Not bad.