Bugger me the Star Inn Cricket Club beat Billericay Cricket Club on a County standard pitch! Our fast bowlers scared the crap out of their opener who spat the dummy out at all the quick stuff and then wound up our quick's no end, cue off stump flying and said opener stomping off like a spoilt little child! I even managed some runs with a couple of glorious boundaries!

Now for many years I have been claiming the slightly less hairy spot on the back of my head is a crown, this week I realised to my horror after coming out of the shower, it is in fact a bald spot. I think this is a sign of maturity, also I thank heaven that I have far more hair than my brother Bill! who is also ginger.... poor fella.

Its Sunday tomorrow, and I am back on the cricket pitch (as well as aged brother Bill) in Billericay, my first game for a while, and I have not been near a bat or ball for nearly two weeks, add on that fact that last weeks diet in France included gallons of red wine and fine food, and the game is 40 overs, I am rather concerned for my well being tomorrow evening!

There is a very strange quiet in the house, young Finch has headed over to his mums for the weekend so I am on my tod, with bugger all to do, so I am enjoying my music and downloading stuff from Itunes..... heaven.

The area we stayed in was about 40 minutes drive from Amien and the Somme. The Somme is a river that runs through farmland in Picardy and is exceptionally beautiful, sadly its history is not, for centuries it has seen death and destruction, the worst of which was in the Great War of 1914-18 where 1.5 million soldiers perished. The front line was at Thiepval, where the memorial to the lost has been erected (see pic above), it lists all of the names of those whose bodies were never recovered, the whole area is very peaceful and its very difficult to imagine what happened there.

The Battle of the Somme, also known as the Somme Offensive, fought from July to November 1916, was among the largest battles of the First World War. With more than 1.5 million casualties, it is also one of the bloodiest military operations recorded. The Allied forces attempted to break through the German lines along a 12-mile (19 km) front north and south of the River Somme in northern France. One purpose of the battle was to draw German forces away from the Battle of Verdun; however, by its end the losses on the Somme had exceeded those at Verdun.

The whole Somme region is incredibly moving, everywhere we went we came across war graves, beautifully cared for by the War Graves Commission, visiting these sites is incredibly emotional, they have visitors books which I defy anyone to read through and not feel moved, at Memorial to the Lost I found myself wiping away a few tears as I walked around looking at all the names of those who were never found, and thinking that they were someones loved one, son, father and yet they had no proper grave for their relatives to visit. My Uncle was killed in World War 2 and has a grave in Italy that my Mother visited in 1985, but these poor brave people did not, very very sad. I think my next trip may well be to my Uncles grave.

The more you learn about this particular battle the more you want to you feel that this was a case of ignorant General's sending these poor souls to their death based on stupid assumptions, One of the leading British Generals addressed his men on the night before the first battle and told them they did not need a rifle, but a walking stick was more suitable as the German's had been wiped out following the artillery barrage, what this fool did not know was that the Germans were safe and sound in deep bunkers whilst the shelling went on, and as soon as Allies went over the top they emerged to slaughter 50,000 in the first few minutes.

At Thiepval they have built a visitor centre which tells the whole sorry story and in my opinion is more than worth a visit.

Well we are back from Conde Folie, and it has changed my perception of France in a rather large way, before I was convinced the French were rude, smelt of garlic and where just, well French to be honest, it has been explained to me that the French I have met previously were city dwellers, who are as described above, the fold in Conde Folie and the Picardy area in general are very welcoming and to my surprise and amusement, barking mad.

My first real contact came in what was to become my regular haunt, the Bar Tabac, run by Michel and Briggite, who were more than welcoming to this 'Anglais', the poor pair had to put up with my pathetic attempts at French, but had patience and were more than happy to help me correct any errors I made. Michel has signs up saying that smoking is prohibited, but Michel and for that matter the rest of rural France I hate being told what to do by the Parisennes, who they detest with a passion! so on my first visit he was talking in a rather animated manner at me with arms flying wildly, this was a bit worrying until Eamon translated that Michel insisted I smoke in the bar and if they tried to stop anyone smoking in his bar there would be a revolution and the guillotine would be dusted off, so much to my joy and Michel's approval I lit the first of many cigs in this marvelous establishment!

The only downside was the fact that I shared my room with my son and my two godsons, one of my godsons has a disturbing habit whilst asleep, he spends the entire night lifting his legs than whacking them down on the mattress, an activity that does not lead to getting off to sleep, luckily I discovered how to render this a non issue....its called red wine and was very effective!

The big day is here, and we are off to France in about an hour! bring on the can can girls, the wine, the fine food and my French phrase book, I am trying to work this into conversations...votre mère était hamster et votre éperlan de père des baies de sureau !

Had a long chat with an old Museum colleague and the upshot is I have some private work in the Civil Service! get on that gravy train!!!

Catch up on our return have fun all!

History Lesson, Lesson 2

The next time you're washing yourself and complain that the water temperature isn't to your liking, think how it was for the unfortunate people living in the 1500s.

Most people married in June because they took their yearly bath in May and still smelled pretty good in June. However, they were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor. Hence the custom of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

There you read it here first!

I am watching the Olympics on tv, and think they are having a problem with the floodlights, everyone appears to be squinting!

I seem to be really enjoying the Beijing Olympics, the Gold Rush has been great to watch, now anyone who knows me will know I am fiercely British (English mainly but will accept wins from the lesser parts of the Union), and I have a fair amount of friends who are from Australia and New Zealand, nothing gives me greater pleasure than us to beat them, its more fun to beat the Aussies as they appear to be the brashest of the lot, your average Kiwi is an accountant (in my experience) and reasonably sensible and knows not to gloat too much, they do get a bit chipper just before the Rugby World Cup until after a few games they realise that as usual the buggers will choke! But the Aussies are a totally different breed, they are the best as far as they are concerned, saldy this no longer appears to be true, us Poms have been chipping away at their brashness, starting in 2005 with the Ashes, granted the 2006 ashes was not altogether successful! but we will draw a veil over that. At the Olympics usually the Aussies destroy us in the medal table, but this year its all gone a bit Pete Tong for the poor ex cons, in Athens the Aussies ruled the cycling, but in 2008 our team of wiped the floor with them, now the Aussies are bleating that we bought the medals, as we have scientists and the like as part of the team, now correct me if I am wrong is that not what the Aussies did in the build up to both Sydney and Athens? and there was me thinking we were the whingers! other than chunter on the Aussies have been a little reticent of late... long may it continue, what I really hope for and believe is possible, is that we will regain the Ashes next year the reason? simple they no longer have McGrath, Warne, Langer and Gilchrist, 4 world class players who have all retired, and not sufficiently replaced, the current Aussies are trading on past glories and I look forward to seeing Matty Hayden looking as glum as he did in 2005!

Whilst we are on the sports subject, Charlton give me grave cause for concern, your average Charlton fan expects Promotion either automatic or via a trip to Wembley, slight drawback in these expectations....the team is crap, they are now buying players from Southend for gods sake! and strikers from non-league, a lot of this has to do with the fact the club nearly went into administration in the summer, luckily in the past week two of the higher wage earners were shunted out the door marked exit, firstly Amdy Faye scarpered to Stoke, how this man can call himself a footballer I will never know! an absolute shocker of a signing, totally useless lacking in any bottle of class, and then Jerome Thomas somehow has managed to get a loan arranged at Portsmouth, how the feck has he managed that? he has all the talent but clueless as to how to use it, A Premier League player? my arse is he, his perfomances in the Charlton team have been underwhelming, the deal is a years loan with an option for Pompey to buy him, which is the problem with the deal, Pompey will see what a waste of space he is in a year and we will have the player back again :(

Now there is a birthday in the family as my sister in law hurtles towards her freedom pass (not quite there yet, sadly age may be getting to her as she seems to confuse Lords with Lourdes) I may devote a page to the various hair colours she has had over the years! then again I may not, as the memory of the helicopter I gave to Tom one Christmas is still fresh, as the presents to my son will testify! So happy Birthday!!!

A very good day at Lords yesterday with Ian's band Wingit, they played for 15 mins before start of play and then 30 mins at lunchtime, had a run in with Lord's Health and Safety bod who quite clearly has not been to any charm school during her sad sorry lifetime! she came over as over fussy and just plain rude, and frankly turning your back on someone when they are talking is just plain wrong and is guaranteed to get me going, my way of working is to assess the problem then suggest ways round it, her way is you cannot do that, end of story, not a good way to get people to buy in to H&S at all and a clear demonstration of how to get H&S Officers a bad name, we should be there to help people to do things in a safe manner rather than just hinder and be an officious twat, we ended up winning our little battle as she did not realise what she had taken on, it was a deep joy to see the look on her face when it dawned on her I knew what I was saying, I managed to quote several bits of legislation relating to our issues, she did point out she had been doing the job for 3 years, I could hear the band giggling when I pointed out i had 10 years of experience including managing major events for a national museum and a premier league football club.....with that we scored an overwhelming triumph and she scurried off never to be seen again! The manager who hired the band was mightily impressed that someone had taken her on and beat her, that's 1-0 to common sense in my book.
The band were well received and will be back at Lords for major events in the future, 5 days on the trot next summer sounds good to me!
Got home very very tired was up at 5am to get to Lords so sleep was easy!
Young Finch is happy to be home and excited about the trip to France on Friday, its good to have the little horror home!

Only a week to go before we head off to France for our break, cannot wait, passports all sorted, two fingers ready for the French in Agincourt and we are going to get a visit into the Somme battlefield, Dan has hi eye on watching Amiens FC in action in the French League, and of course buying his usual football shirt.
Tomorrow I am off to Lord's for the Friends Provident Final, Kent vs Essex, although the weather looks crap to say the least, Young Finch will be back home with me this weekend, so cue fights over the remote!

The mystery of the bike was solved last night, it belongs to Sonia two doors down, now its a birthday present and its also not assembled, me being nice kind and fluffy (not in a green pen way) offered to store it overnight so as not to ruin the birthday surprise, and also put the thing together, which I have after much scratching of head I have managed, I have just delivered it to Sonia and everyone seems happy....
A busy day ahead, I have some private work, and very lucrative it is too! will take me a few days to work on but will be worth the time!
Young Finch has been causing chaos, last night he was on Facebook raising ransom demands for The Shirt! and also purchasing a certain Kiwi on Owned, trouble is her other half keeps buying her back, but the young un has plenty of cash and is fighting back, he also wanted to come home last night, sadly Dad is enjoying himself far too much to allow that to happen, and is socially very busy so he can forget that!

History Lesson

Settle down there at the back,a history lesson...
Do you know where the V-sign comes from? well I am here to tell you! the two-fingers salute and/or V sign derives from the gestures of longbowmen fighting in the English army at the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years' War. The French claimed that they would cut off the arrow-shooting fingers of all the English longbowmen after they had won the battle at Agincourt. But the English came out victorious and showed off their two fingers, still intact. At this Battle Henry V (made famous in the play of the same name guv) stuffed the living daylights out of the French led by Charles VI.
There that was good wasn't it? Now you may be wondering why I have imparted this historical story, well its very simple, we are visiting Agincort during our stay in France. Due to the fact we won and they being French did not I feel I am entitled to wander around flicking the old V sign at our French Cousins...... From now on I think at least once a week I will post something historical on the blog!
In the meantime the bike is still here and not claimed, I am not sure what to do with it.

The grumpy one was in full flow this morning! only this time it was not me, it was the turn of young Finch who had a severe dose of the hump, the previous 24 hours had not gone well for the poor lad, he had gone to the Valley to see Charlton slaughter lower league opposition, sadly the mighty reds lost 1-0 to Yeovil, cue young Finch demanding the head of Alan Pardew on a platter, on top of that the poor lad needed to be here to sign his passport documents, so first thing this morning my ex let me know he had just left hers in a very grumpy manner indeed, he had got up ignored everyone who spoke to him (in the case of Timmy its understandable) and came over, the daft sod had left his keys here, so he gave the door a good hammering and then proceeded to sulk...big time, now I really have no idea where he gets this grumpiness from! he duly signed the document amidst protests, then sat on the sofa and stared at the wall ignoring my offers of breakfast, the only thing that managed to distract him from all this was The Stig on tv trying to catch a tube, finally he spoke "i am going back to mum's" and the visit was over, in this mood I am grateful he is with her til next week.

Sadly my good mood of late was destroyed by the hordes of tourists in the Victoria area, jesus they don't seem to look where they are going, and then stand in places that are just so fucking stupid!!! I had some rather anglo saxon words with one who I think was Italian, who stupidly ground to a halt directly in front of me leaving me no time to either stop or avoid the stupid pasta munching git, he said something to me in Italian which I did not understand but I think he got the idea of where I was coming from, I may also have mentioned that I was surprised he had not retreated into me as the Italian Army would! hell hath no fury than a Finch bumped into!! Twats...

Then to cap it all I have come home to a delivery of a mountain bike...nice i hear you say, well I have not ordered the bloody thing! from time to time Two Heads (ex wife) orders things and has them delivered here if I am in and she is out, so I rang and its nowt to do with her, so in my hall I have a rather large box, so I contacted Argos who delivered the thing and they insist it is for a Mrs King who lives at this address...hmmm now last time I looked it was just me and the lad that lived here, I have spoken to several neighbours, none of whom have any idea who Mrs King is, Argos say its been delivered to the correct address and wont collect it! all very strange and leaves me unsure about what to do next..
Lastly watching Sky Sports News I saw Jeff Winter, former Premier League ref who is used by Sky to comment on anything relating to referee stories, he was on telling us how players have no respect for refs, is it any wonder when twats like him do the job? get this fool of my TV, if I want to watch a twat on tv I will tune into James Allen on ITV, who thankfully will be out of work soon when F1 moves to BBC!!!
There that feels better............

Well what a weekend! had a whale of a time, Friday night was spent in the Star who I play cricket for, with my Godsons parents, the kids are in France for the summer and apparently loving it out there, so the 3 of us without kids made the most of it, think I got to bed about 3am!
Now when I have had a few I have been known to come up with a few ideas, and Friday night was no exception, as result Saturday afternoon the 3 of us who were out Friday went down to their allotment and picked loads of Blackberries, the reason? Stephen and I are making Blackberry Schnapps for the New Romney Rescue Weekend in December. I also took the opportunity to have a look at the Wii fit, and apparently my Wii age is 39!!! considering I am now 45 that is very pleasing, although not altogether surprising as I have been having 2 net sessions a week on top of a couple of games of tennis. Poor Stephen, who is considerably younger than me is very upset as his Wii age is more than mine and could not quite understand it!

Saturday evening one of the team arrived from France, sadly his marriage has broken up so we had a night in drinking! and having a general gossip and catch up, all good fun. Had a gorgeous roast dinner Sunday, I cooked roast beef with all the trimmings followed by a lemon meringue roulade and fresh cream......lovely

Had a game of tennis last night, 3 sets of hard fought action, cue me giving myself a severe talking to myself during the game and all sorts of bad language! I lost! and this morning I have woken up in all sorts of pain, my back is killing me and my heel for some reason cannot take nay pressure, so no cricket nets tonight so instead its the Star for the quiz night!!!

Its a good day in the Finch household, Horror boy is off to his mothers to give the not so grumpy one a well earned break, I have many plans! out tomorrow with an old friend for the odd glass of El Vino Collapso, Tuesday evening we have quiz night in the local, The twins parents are free of their brood and Dan is away so its going to be a good night out for us, sometime next week I am going to see Mock the Week being recorded and am doing another QI thing... Dan will be most upset as it appear to be his favourite programme at the moment, but he is too young to attend, he he, and on the 16th I am at Lords all day for the Pro 40 final, Essex vs the mighty Kent, I am there with a mates band supposedly helping out, but Matt the Cat will be there in a Fred Flintstone outfit so I suspect I may join him for some refreshment. Dan was due to come home that night, but it has been deemed a good idea for him to come home later on the Sunday....
Its enough to put a bloke in a good mood!

Busy week looms next week, I have to go to town and collect my new passport and Dan's first one, ready for our holiday in France, we go on the 22nd August to stay in Conde Folie, a tiny hamlet in the Picardy region very close to the Somme battlefields so expect 100s of pics when we get back!
I am off to Cornwall in September with a mate for a weekends walking, we will walk from Boscastle to Newquay then collapse in a heap! In October we hope to do some more walking in Wales, not sure where yet possibly Snowdonia, or maybe the Brecons, we aim next summer to walk crom the North West Coast to the North East Coast, 192 miles we have discovered! so we aim to get a lot of serious walking in before next summers epic journey.. my fellow walker is attending the December New Romney Mountain Rescue weekend, and foolish assumed we could do a good 20 mile walk, I have pointed out the true nature of the weekend and the mileage is being re-assessed! poor fella thinking it was a walking weekend!
The Kiwi has got herself hopelessly lost on a driving holiday in the Cotswolds, even with a Sat Nav she is useless!!!

I needed to escape from Young Finch for a bit... so I took myself off to meet G for coffee, where we managed to put the world to right! Even managed to buy a new shirt in a sale in Stratford, we had a very entertaining time shopping, although G quite clearly has an evil streak!

So Kevin Pietersen is the new England captain, hmmm it worries me, I recall the effect the captaincy had on Ian Botham, and I worry that it may have the same effect on the new skipper, thats my only real reason to be honest, I heard countless twits on the radio saying he should not be Captain because he was not born here, what twaddle, his Mother is English, he has a UK Passport, if thats the case maybe he should not even be allowed to play for England, so take away his 158 at the Oval in 2005 and we would never have won the Ashes, I heard bugger all from them then...bunch of hapless xenophobic pillocks...
And there was me feeling less grumpy!

Well what a funny old weekend, the shirt made it to the Valley, sadly so did the Charlton team, I think it may be a long old season with little to shout about, the Clubs financial position is not good at all.
I decided against traveling to Basildon Utd, in favour of a day out with the Kiwi who dragged me round Greenwich and Surrey Quays, and then proceeded to copy all the tunes on my external hard drive.
Yesterday evening found me on BBC 5 Live voicing my opinion on why Robert Key and Kevin Pietersen should not be the new England captain, The issue I have with Robert Key is he carries a bit too much timber and is not what we need, with KP its Ian Botham all over again, leave KP as our most talented batsman, lets not ruin him with the Captaincy...
There, the not so Grumpy One has spoken....

There is a growing campaign on Facebook regarding one of my shirts! i wore it last week at a poker night and spent the whole evening having the crap ripped out of me! so there is now a campaign to save the shirt as I have threatened to destroy the said shirt! My son hates the shirt with a passion and reckons it should only be worn by those who write with a green pen! This afternoon it may appear at the Valley and tomorrow it may be live on stage at Basildon United FC!! watch this space....

Back after a short break, feeling a bit more human! made a rather large decision, I want out of London asap, have had enough, been up to see the Kiwi ex who has met someone new, I took he news surprisingly well! going to meet up with her Sunday for a gossip!
Had a really good net session, bowled flat out a fast pace for 90 mins, had poor Steve ducking and weaving! it seems that all the tennis and cricket practice are paying off, my weight is coming down and I do not ache so much after, I have 3 games of tennis looming next week and a net session, then the week after Young Finch is at his mothers for a week and Dad gets a rest yippeee!!!