The People's Cup

Hannah and I went to the Valley last night to watch a pre-season friendly between Charlton and FC Den Bosch, a second tier team from the Netherlands. I normally give this type of fixture a miss as they are usually contested at well below full pace and are often little more than glorified training sessions. However, the coming together of a number of factors persuaded me to head south yesterday and make my way to the Valley:

1. Following a significant turnover of players during the summer, the game would be my first glimpse of what will essentially be a new Charlton team this season
2. The fixture had an interesting and heart-warming back story 
3. The evening offered a rare chance to see Charlton, potentially, win some silverware

More of number 2 and 3 shortly, and oh, I nearly forgot, there's a fourth reason too. I won't disclose how here but I had managed to get my hands on a couple of complimentary tickets. Not exactly as hard to come by as London 2012 ones, I admit, and with entry for paying customers only £5 a head probably not requiring disclosure on a tax return, but if I needed a final push to make the trip south then this was it.

Charlton's sword v the Den Bosch dragon on the Valley's new big screen.

It was announced a few days before the game that the Den Bosch supporters had donated a trophy to be awarded to the winners on the night to mark the similarities between the histories of the two clubs. It would be called the 'People's Cup' in recognition of the crucial contribution of fans in saving the Dutch club from going out of business a few years ago in a situation with parallels to how Charlton almost went out of existence in 1984 and left the Valley for an highly unpopular ground-sharing arrangement with Crystal Palace that inspired supporters to form a political party and eventually orchestrate a return to the Valley.

Pre-match photo

It took a while for Charlton to settle in the first half, and the Dutch team looked the more likely to score early on, but in spite of some good passing and movement by both sides at times the opening 45 minutes provided little in the way of excitement. What we needed was an Erica Roe style interruption to liven up proceedings, or failing that someone running across the pitch dressed as a Smurf. If you're wondering why on earth I found myself thinking about Smurfs at this point you've got a point. I think it was probably because of their low countries origin and the Smurf-like shade of blue of Den Bosch's kit.

The Den Bosch defence scramble a second half corner to safety

The pace picked up considerably after the break, however, with Charlton's midfield new boys Stevens, Green and the topically named Hollands particularly catching the eye. A subtle and expertly paced lob over the Dutch goalie by Bradley Wright-Phillips in the 78th minute proved decisive and with Charlton hitting the woodwork either side the goal, the victory could be considered well deserved. That it was achieved against opponents who appeared pretty accomplished themselves can only bode well for the season about to begin.

The fantastic Den Bosch fans

Most of the noise on the night came from the boisterous but good natured 136 Den Bosch fans amongst the small crowd of 3,951. They had obviously come to enjoy themselves, and succeeded admirably. Just before the People's Cup was handed over to Charlton captain Johnny Jackson, it was announced that whilst in London during the day, the Dutch supporters had engaged in some fundraising and raised £500 for Charlton's favoured charity Demelza House, an organisation that provides hospice care for children with life-limiting illnesses and their families. It wasn't clear what this fundraising involved, but what a fantastic effort! Hearing this brought an even warmer glow to an evening that became increasing enjoyable as it went on. By now all thoughts of Erica Roe and Smurfs were long gone.

'"Our first silverware of the season" announced the tannoy. 

Johnny Jackson's exaggerated hoisting of the trophy very much captured the happy spirit of the evening, and I really hope that Charlton arrange a reciprocal visit to the Netherlands next year. I will certainly be up for it.

Not long now until the serious stuff begins. My next visit to the Valley will be for the first league game of the season against Bournemouth on 6th August. I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.

Moore the merrier

When you are part of a large family it becomes increasingly difficult to get together with all of them at the same time as the years go by and numbers multiply and disperse. So it has been great over the past four days to spend some time in St Albans with quite a few, although not all, of my immediate family and their children. First to arrive, on Thursday afternoon, were Mum and Dad. With a number of days leave still to book before the end of September, I decided to take a couple of days off to spend a little more time with them. On the Thursday evening we all headed to the Wicked Lady pub in Wheathampstead for some delicious food and wine in very agreeable surroundings. It was our first visit to this this establishment, for which Mum made a commendable effort to dress up in the style of a wicked lady with her vivid scarlet dress and matching lipstick. Judging by the lady depicted on the pub's sign, however, the Wicked lady in question was probably the one played by Margaret Lockwood in the 1945 film of the same name. The film is about a nobleman's wife who secretly becomes a highwayman to bring some  excitement into her life. There is a local link here in that the film is based on the alleged exploits of Lady Katherine Ferrers, wife of the the major landowner in the nearby town of Markyate, which is positioned on the former main London to Birmingham road (now the A5).

Friday's main event was a visit to Hatfield House, childhood home of Queen Elizabeth I. It's a fine looking house and the current owners have done a fantastic job with the facilities for visitors. There's a lovely courtyard area housing a great cafe, a range of tasteful shops and the all important rooms in which to spend a penny. This area as well as the car park was free to enjoy, but with entry to everything else on offer adding up to a small fortune (even with the disappointing £1 seniors discount that would have applied to two out of three of us), we opted to focus on the collection of Henry Moore sculptures on display in some of the formal gardens and the more unruly woodland areas.

'Large Reclining Figure' with the Old Palace in the background

Henry Moore (1898-1986) always maintained that his creations were made for display in natural surroundings. Indeed, in 1951 he wrote "Sculpture is an art of the open air ... I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in or on the most beautiful building in the world.'1 It's not exactly sculpture, but now you mention it, Henry, I wish I still had that papier mache dinosaur I made at primary school - it would look so much more fetching nestling beside my tomato plants in the back garden.

'Draped Reclining Figure'

Some of the structures were more abstract than others, but they all looked great in their surroundings, particularly I thought those placed amongst the long, meadow-like grass in the woodland areas. 

'King and Queen'

It was also lovely to spend some time wandering around chatting with Mum and Dad. One consequence about being 50 is that my parents are now in their 70s, and although they are both still very active and mentally alert, the thought does enter my head from time to time that they won't be around for ever and so days like Friday become increasingly special as the years go by.

'King and Queen with clothes on'

A real bonus of visiting somewhere like Hatfield House with my Dad is having access to his fantastic knowledge of plants. He knows the names of every one (Latin and common) as well as loads of interesting information about them, the result of his horticultural training and many years working with plants.

Name that flower (Latin and common terms please)!

One tree did defeat him, however. Mind you, I was quite prepared to believe it was an 'Oozlem' tree, a name Dad made up on the spot and had me going with for a few minutes before admitting that he didn't actually know. As we were speculating further about its' name, a passing employee informed us it was in fact a Medlar tree. These are self-fertilising trees that can last for hundreds of years, so this one may have even been present as the young Elizabeth strolled around the Hatfield gardens.

1:00 pm on Saturday heralded the remaining arrivals for the partial family get together. In total there were 16 of us (8 adults and 8 offspring ranging, I think from 5 to 23, although I could be wrong). It was a lovely relaxed time and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. After a couple of hours of snapping away happily with my camera to compile a photographic record of the occasion, I remembered that I had taken the memory card out earlier and not replaced it, so I'm hoping that Andrew, who arrived with a lens approaching the length of the Blackwell Tunnel attached to this camera will have captured more of the afternoon than I managed to.

A real sign that I've reached my "middle youth", as Juliet prefers to call it, is the time and care I spend on the upkeep of the lawn. Consequently I was a little nervous about how well it would stand up to invasion.

Josh putting the durability of the back lawn to the test.

Well, I'm pleased to say it stood up admirably. Not that I would have minded really if there were a few signs of wear and tear. It was just great to see people enjoying themselves on it. Admittedly I didn't see all of the action as I was periodically required in the kitchen but the highlight for me was Andrew and Brenda rolling back the years for a swashbuckling game of badminton. 

A fun afternoon.

1. Sculptures and Drawings by Henry Moore, Tate Gallery, 1951, p.4.

Recipe for Success

We were up early yesterday and made our way to London along empty Sunday morning roads. I had decided to slip in an extra 10K race to assess my progress and decide how best to use the rest of the summer to prepare for my autumn PB attempts. Our destination was Regents Park, which hosts a series of five 10K races on the first Sunday of each month from May to September. These are relatively small events, with up to 500 runners taking part, and usually such events are the preserve of the very serious (i.e fast) runner but I was encouraged by the description on the event's website of "A mixed ability race series. All runners welcome". Hopefully I would not be awarded a wooden spoon at the finish.

Regents Park Mosque

The start time was 9:30 am, and we arrived in very good time and parked on Regent's Park Outer Circle very close to the entrance to London Zoo. It was a glorious summer morning with not a single cloud in the sky. One of the Royal Parks, Regents Park is a vast open space right in the very centre of London and it looked magnificent in the sunshine. The start and finish line was next to the Hub, a great facility located a few hundred metres from Monkey Gate, appropriately named in view of its proximity to the Zoo. The Hub's attractive circular cafe sits on top of a grass mound, which on closer inspection houses entrances to facilities including changing rooms and showers. It's the base for a range of sports that take place within the park as well as exercise classes and children's activities.

The visible part of the Hub

The race itself consists of three laps around a route in the northern half of the park, skirting the boating lake and the Zoo on the way round. It's an interesting and attractive run, especially on such a glorious morning.

Mother and baby gorilla - photo taken on a visit to the Zoo with Hannah earlier in the year.

The route was well marshalled by smiling members of the Mornington Chaser's Running Club, and every km was marked by a luminous yellow sign. The start and finish area was presided over by an extremely cheerful fellow with a loud hailer which he used to good effect both for organisational purposes and to broadcast his often amusing encouragement to runners as they passed through or approached the finish line at the end of their final lap. The whole event exuded a friendly, happy atmosphere, making me very keen to take part again - maybe on a regular basis.

I completed the first lap in a fraction over 20 minutes, an encouraging start. From then on, though, I began to wilt in the heat to the extent that when I passed the fringes of the zoo for the third and final time my pace was probably on a par with some of the more ponderous inhabitants of its famous reptile house.

Terrapins are reptiles and not amphibians in case you're wondering

Along with many other participants, I was lapped on my second circuit by the runners on track to finish in 40 minutes or less. Now that's an impressive feat and I salute their speed and stamina. Some of them, however, I could teach a thing or two about personal hygiene. Moving at considerable speed, they were only within my nasal radar for a fleeting second or two, but at least three or four of them left behind an overpowering scent of the worst kind of body odour as they sped into the distance. There's no excuse for it in my view. Sure, running is a sweaty business, especially in high temperatures, but it must require a monumental avoidance of baths, showers, washing machines and deodorant to build up a smell like that. Very off putting to say the least.

Anyway, rant over, back to the race itself. In spite of summoning the energy for an impressive sprint finish, my watch showed a disappointing finishing time of 1:10:01. My official result on the website was a slightly more respectable 1:09:58, which was marginally slower than my time for the London 10k just over a month ago. Although I finished towards the back of the field, a steady stream of runners continued to pass the finish line for quite some time afterwards, possibly putting my performance on such a hot day into perspective.

Feeling the heat with the finishing line in sight

So where does this leave me? Even allowing for the effects of the heat yesterday there's no escaping that after making very good progress towards my goals for the first three months of the year, I have since reached a plateau of Hog's Back proportions. After the Newham 10k at the end of March I calculated that if I could improve by just another 10% I would give myself a good chance of beating at least some of my PBs during the Autumn. However, in spite of sticking to my training intentions fairly closely if anything I've got slower.

I think perhaps I need to take another look at my diet. About 9 months ago I changed my diet to avoid anything containing wheat as far as possible, and this has had a very positive effect on the health of my digestive system and my fitness generally. It's given me a lot more energy and, unlike before, I very rarely get a headache nowadays. You may have heard that since switching to a gluten free diet at the start of the year, new Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic has only been defeated once in fifty one matches and today took over from Rafael Nadal as world number one. So avoiding wheat seems to be a good idea, but to match the scale of Novak's improvement I think I probably need to make a few other changes too. Yes, chocolate and alcohol I'm looking at you!

Don't worry, I have no intention of giving either of these up completely. Both are high on my list of life's little pleasures and after my earlier misgivings about reaching 50, I have come to view 2011 as a celebratory year and the sense of celebration would not be complete without the occasional glass of wine or bar of Cadbury's Whole Nut. Nevertheless I do seem to have been consuming increasing quantities of both recently and a more controlled approach may well lead to improved results in the Autumn I feel.

So there you have it, my recipe for success: continue to stay away from wheat, keep on building up the training gradually, and restore wine and chocolate to their previous status of occasional treats. It sounds straightforward enough, but sticking to it may prove easier said than done!

Alternatively, I could stop having baths and washing my clothes .....

Take That

When a number of months ago I managed to obtain 4 tickets for Juliet to see Take That at Wembley Stadium I had envisaged that she would go along with Hannah and a couple of other females. As the months passed, however, Juliet kept asking me "are you sure you don't want to go?", and I eventually found myself thinking "you know what, I think I do. Take That are not really my thing but they're known for putting on a spectacular show, the Robbie Williams angle should be interesting, and it really is about time I experienced the new Wembley."

And so, last night for the first time in 13 years I found myself making the famous walk from Wembley Park station along Wembley Way.

The new Wembley Stadium

My last visit, on 25th May 1998 (more of which later), was to the crumbling old stadium. Although a visit here was always special and infused with a sense of history, the facilities were outdated and gloomy and the view often poor. The new version couldn't be more different. The surrounding area is much smarter and cleaner and the arch that replaced the iconic 'twin towers' is a magnificent architectural structure that's visible for miles around. Our seats were in the top tier which is reached via a series of long escalators.

The magnificent arch of the new stadium

I'd told Hannah that Wembley was like the Valley, but not quite as good. From the outset I don't think she believed me, and the view on entering the arena itself immediately confirmed that I had been very economical with the truth on this occasion. The panorama was breathtaking; a scan around took in the precipitously banked seats that must ensure a great view from any part of the stadium. Our position, directly in front of the stage would be a superb vantage point for watching a game of football, although was too distant to be able to make out the performers on stage in any detail although of course this is overcome to some extent by their projection onto the big screen

Still filling up during the Pet Shop Boys' supporting set

The warm up set by the Pet Shop Boys was enjoyable and evocative of the distinctive music scene of the 1980s. I particularly enjoyed "West End Girls" and "You were always on my mind", although largely for the music, which rather drowned out Neil Tennant's vocals. However with the lyrics being so familiar it was easy enough to sing along.

When I started teaching in 1994, many of the 7 year old girls in my class were avid Take That fans. They'll be in their mid-twenties now, and some may well have been in the audience tonight. How time flies! I have a feeling, though, that our section of the stadium may have been sponsored by Saga or one of those Stairlift companies. Whilst there were some youngish fans around, plenty fell into the more mature category, with a generous sprinkling of Thora Hird's among them. Whatever age, however, most of them seemed to be overcome with hysteria as soon as the Take That boys arrived on stage. And it seemed they all knew every single word of every song.

A typical fan in the Saga enclosure

The large lady to my left urged me more than once to join in with the mass arm waving that continued for most of the concert. "Come on, you know you want to!" she told me. I didn't, actually, although I was quite happy to stand, tap my foot and sing along to the bits where I knew the words. It's probably diplomatic to add at this point that Juliet was sitting to my right.

Gary, Mark, Jason and Howard surrounded by hysterical women

The first part of the show consisted of the four group members left after Robbie's departure in 1995 singing songs from the period after they reformed in 2006 (Greatest Day, Rule the World and Shine being perhaps the most enthusiastically received). My perception was that this selection of songs was the most wildly enjoyed of the whole show, and hats off to Gary Barlow, they are great pop songs ideal for singing along to.

Let me entertain you! Robbie on the big screen

Phase two of the show was a solo section by Robbie. He started with "Let me entertain you!", which has never failed to send shivers down my spine since it was played to accompany the teams, surrounded by dense smoke from celebratory fireworks, out of the old Wembley tunnel at the 1st Division Play Off Final in 1998. This was the amazing game (4-4 after extra time, 7-6 in the penalty shoot out) which saw Charlton promoted to the Premier League for the first time, and featured a hat trick by Clive Mendonca that was as close to a work of art as it's possible to see on a football pitch. It's a day and a game I will never forget (I'll highlight the clever Take That link there in case you don't notice it); I left the stadium physically and emotionally drained and drenched in sweat purely from being a spectator.

Other Robbie classics, including "Angels" and "Rock DJ" followed, along with some banter consistent with Robbie's bad boy image. To be expected, I suppose, although unfortunate given that there were quite a lot of young children in the audience. As with the Gary Barlow compositions, hearing these numbers together highlights just what great pop songs they are, although there is greater edge and character to a lot of Robbie's stuff, making it more to my liking.

Building up to a grande finale

The rest of the band rejoined Robbie for a selection of songs from their reunion album, Progress, starting with "The Flood" which was very enthusiastically received. However I sensed a growing restlessness among the faithful as further tracks from the album were churned out. They seemed to be neither typical Take That numbers or particularly tuneful. More familiar songs were wheeled out for the finale and encore, which reignited the hysteria, adding to the impression that all most of the audience wanted to do was sing along and wallow in nostalgia. And why not? I found myself doing the same, although off at a bit of a tangent. I recalled sitting in a similar position in the old stadium watching England's magnificent demolition of Holland in Euro 96, and being pressed up against the stage, like many of the arm waving women last night, at Hammersmith Palais in December 1979 as the Clash belted out numbers from the greatest album of all time, London Calling. Memories, eh! The Clash gig was raw, rough at the edges excitement - no need for the kind of extravagant set and supporting cast surrounding Take That 2011 style. It's not that the giant robot, dancers, acrobats and other paraphernalia adorning Wembley weren't spectacular. They were, I just didn't really understand the thinking behind them.

There's no doubt about it, though, Take That are very, very good at what they do. On a lot of different levels it was a fantastic evening. I'm so glad I was persuaded to go.