Here's to next year!

It’s going to be a particularly thrilling New Year’s Eve here. Me, a bottle of Beaujolais, my mum’s sofa and the telly. My mum’s not even here – I’m cat-sitting.

Exciting, huh?

But at least I’m not laid up in bed with food poisoning like I was at this time last year.

Hope all your New Year’s Eves go/went swimmingly. And here’s to a good 2006 for us all. (And not spending next NYE on my own…)

Toilet survey #15: Burnley

Burnley 1 Sheffield Wednesday 2
31 December 2005

There's no getting away from it: Burnley's a hole. But at least I only had to be there for about three hours. And we won. Yes, that's right. We won our first match since 5 November. And scored for the first time since 19 November. So I shall forgive Burnley its grotness just this once.

The away fans are housed in the whole of one geriatric stand behind the goal that's definitely showing its age. It still has rather fine wooden seats that must date back to the 60s at least. And – despite potentially housing more than 4,000 supporters – there was a distinct lack of facilities, with just the four loos in each of two extremely cramped ladies' rooms. Yes, so cramped it was rather difficult to get a sensible shot with the mobile phone!


Clean and dry and plenty of loo roll pre-match.


In their favour, they had given the whole room a coat of paint in the recent past, so it didn't look too shabby. But had we taken our normal vast number of fans (instead of only about half the allocation) the compact concourse would have been heaving at half-time, and the queues for the loos would have been vast.

Score: 7/10. They've made the best of the limited resources available. Roll on a replacement stand, though!