Falkirk 0-0 Motherwell

I’ve just got time to do a quick match report before we set off for the airport.

This was the proverbial game of two halfs. Motherwell dominated the first half, assisted by a very strong wind in their favour.

Falkirk were very fortunate to go in 0-0 at the interval.

The wind disappeared for the second 45, which meant, curses, that the game was played on an equal footing. Falkirk had the better of the second period, but not enough to win, and a draw was a fair result.

How strong was the wind in the first half ? Well, a Motherwell attacker burst into the penalty area and attempted to curl one into the top right hand corner of the net. The only thing that stopped the ball from ending up in Grangemouth was that it hit the corner flag at full pelt.

Bloggers

Burning Spear writes a blog !!!

http://www.burningspear.net/blog/

Mother’s Day

OK - I’m shortly going off for another afternoon of enforced recreation and sublime torture at the Falkirk stadium, where today’s visitors, appropriately, are Motherwell.

Is your Mother well? - yes, not bad, thanks, kind of you to ask. My own mother was 75 this week and although I completely forgot her birthday, I can redeem the situation a bit by remembering that it is Mother’s day tomorrow.

After the football this afternoon, Ann and I are jetting off to sunnier climes (Somerset) for a week so it will be largely a radio blackout until next Sunday (internet access being strictly limited to those occasions when Telstar is directly overhead). Thus, I am taking this opportunity to mark the fact in advance that tomorrow is Mother’s Day -

R.I.P. Mike Smith

We grow so old.

My correspondent makwuzere draws my attention to something I’d missed, namely that Mike Smith, the singer and keyboard player in the Dave Clark Five, died on Thursday aged 64.

The Dave Clark Five had a series of hits in the mid-1960s, and even, for brief period, rivalled the popularity and commercial success of the Beatles. Their first big hit, Glad All Over, knocked the Beatles’ I Want To Hold Your Hand off the No1 spot in 1964.

In response to the Merseybeat of the Liverpool groups the sound of the Dave Clark Five was dubbed “the Tottenham sound” — all the band members originating from North London.

While the sound of ‘Glad All Over’, ‘Bits and Pieces’ and ‘Catch Us If You Can’ can instantly transport me back to innocent childhood days, I would be very hard pushed indeed to name very many more Dave Clark Five records. But these three discs are enough to ensure a small slice, a sliver, of immortality.

Having said that, it is undeniable that the group were extremely popular, particularly in America where they made a record 18 appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. In their heyday they played sold-out world tours and sold 100 million records.

Smith was a reluctant celebrity, and invariably turned down requests for interviews. For 30 years after the group’s heyday, he earned a living as a record producer for such artists as Shirley Bassey and Michael Ball and as a writer and singer of advertising jingles; his clients ranged from British Airways to Volvo and McDonald’s. He also sang on the original recording of Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita.

Ironically, Mike Smith was due to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York in two weeks’ time, but he died of pneumonia, probably attributable to continuing immobility due to spinal problems following a fall at his home in Spain in 2003 that had left him severely paralysed. The details of the fall are quite tragically mundane - he had forgotten his house keys and climbed over a fence, getting his trousers snared at the top of the fence and then falling and cracking his skull, rendering him tetraplegic. What a tragedy.

But we will remember Mike as he was in 1964, wide grin, big beat, glad all over.

Abbey Road

Following the posting below about Paul Cole, here’s some of the other photos that were taken on the cover shoot that day in August 1969 - none of them featuring Mr Cole

1 March 2006

I record, as I must, that it was 2 years ago today that my pal Bill took Ann and I to the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank. It seems amazing to me that 2 years have passed since then. It is still so tangible to me that it almost seems, not ‘just like yesterday’, but like today, like right now.

My posting for 1 March 2007

http://almax.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/maudlin-sentimentality/

really says almost all that I can say about that traumatic time.

After I had checked in and had blood tests done, my brother Malcolm came and picked Ann and I up and we went to his house for dinner. Malcolm, if you are reading this, can you believe that was 2 years ago?

Anyway, this is a welcome and suitable opportunity for me to note that the severe operation which Bill’s son recently underwent in Leeds seems to have been a miraculous success, and that news has caused a feeling of great elation among not just Bill’s friends and colleagues, but among many people that neither Bill nor his son have ever met.

R.I.P Paul Cole

Paul Cole died in Pensacola, US on 13 February at the age of 96.

Whaddya mean, who the fuck is Paul Cole?

He is the guy pictured above.

Still none the wiser?

OK - try this -

No.

Give up.

Well, look at this -

Paul Cole is the man standing next to the police van in the iconic image on the cover of the Beatles Abbey Road album.

He was an American on a London vacation with his wife on that August day in 1969. His wife was visiting a nearby museum.

“I told her, ‘I’ve seen enough museums. You go on in, take your time and look around and so on, and I’ll just stay out here and see what’s going on outside,’” he recalled.

Parked just outside was a black police van. “I like to just start talking with people,” Cole said. “I walked out, and that cop was sitting there in that police car. I just started carrying on a conversation with him. I was asking him about all kinds of things, about the city of London and the traffic control, things like that. Passing the time of day.”

In the picture, Cole is standing next to the police van.

It was 10 a.m., Aug. 8, 1969. Photographer Iain McMillan was on a stepladder in the middle of the street, photographing the four Beatles as they walked, single-file, across Abbey Road, John Lennon in his famous white suit, Paul McCartney without shoes. The entire shoot lasted 10 minutes.

“I just happened to look up, and I saw those guys walking across the street like a line of ducks,” Cole remembered. “A bunch of kooks, I called them, because they were rather radical-looking at that time. You didn’t walk around in London barefoot.”

I acknowledge finding this story on TCPalm via the fantastic Growabrain

How the Law Works in Pennsylvania

What’s wrong with this sentence :-

A man who shot a policeman has been arrested and charged with murder after the policeman died.

Nothing wrong? Let’s add some detail -

The arrested man is 71 years old.

Still OK.

The actual cause of death related to a urinary tract infection which in turn had been caused by the shooting.

OK - still cool.

The policeman died 41 years after the shooting !!!!

Wait a minute………

The arrested man spent 20 years in prison from 1967-87 for the shooting.

What?

The State didn’t bother with an autopsy when the former police officer died at the age of 64, since it was obvious that his death was caused by the shooting 41 years earlier.

It can only be America, folks

Read it here -

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080228/od_nm/usa_murder_dc_2