Saturday, Sept. 23, 2017 - 23:40

1. Wag-wan. Or however one might spell the vernacular expression derived from truncation of the query "What is going on?". The second half of my week was OK, despite a level of self-afflicted tiredness and the consequential shortfall in motivational energy, but that's life. I'm wearing a shirt today that I don't think I have been able to fit in before, having lost three and a half pounds last week to more than counterbalance the pound I put on the week before. Syracuse, uncle-cuddler!

2. It's not typical me not having written my dairy (sic) for a few days, I know. Nothing disasterous or bad going on - more a case of nothing eventful having happened, nothing much worth noting. I've been playing a bit on my FM2016 game, taking Rhyl to the Welsh League Cup and Forfar to two mid-table finishes (yeah.. I know.. I'm *so* impressive!) and struggling to make an impact at the lower end of the manegerial scale as compared to when I have played the game starting as a coach at one of the teams in the top or second from top flight. I'll persist, see what develops.

3. It's apparently 'Celebrate Bisexuality Day'. As a consequence, I am going to make sure that I have sexual relations with exactly the same number of men as women today. That would be fairest. Today also marks the day in 1913 when Roland Garros of France became the first man to fly in an airplane across the Mediterranean (from St. Raphael France to Bizerte, Tunisia) - natuarlly they named a tennis court after him as a consequence.

4. Angellica Bell won Celebrity Masterchef, beating DJ Dev and Ulrika-ka-ka in the final, mainly because of her perfect pear frangipane pudding. The actual final show was a bit crap as compared to previous episodes, the format being a bit flawed in that half of the show was pissing about in a Michelin star restaurant kitchen, and hence not really competing (which seems daft, in a cooking competition) - but I do understand the appeal of this kind of thing for the competitors etc. with learning some new posh culinary shizzle and getting rewarded for stuff.

5. Not a good week for some bookmakers with respect to their public image. William Hill offered decent odds on Tony DiCicco replacing Mark Sampson as England's women's national team manager (DiCicco took the USWNT to the 1999 World Cup title) despite the fact he died in June. You'd have thought they'd have learned from PaddyPower having been slated for offering odds on the similarly deceased Ugo Ehiogu becoming Birmingham City manager.

6. Last night I watched a bit of musical telly after the usual Friday night televisual entertainment. Sara Cox's 'Sounds of the 80s' was relatively decent, Alison Moyet interviewed, and 'Is This Love' stuck in my head quite a lot of today, esp. when I was doing my laundry. Afterwards, an 'A to Z of Jools Holland' had some interesting bits, but was in truth too rushed and though it was good that it touched on many aspects of the long-running 'Later..' show, it did so in too little detail. I'll have to dig out my ol' PJ Harvey CDs again though, for sure.

7. Linked with the immediately aforementioned, I stuck on the celebratory concert to commemorate a quarter-century of the ex-Squeeze musician's late evening frequent musical show. It was patchy, as perchance I should have expected - Paul Weller 'Wildwood' good, KT Tunstall and Foo Fighters likewise. Some French folk (Camille) playing drums were interesting and made nice music too. William G Stewart died a couple of days ago, aged 84. He was a long-standing supporter of the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. He joked that if, on an episode of Fifteen to One, too few contestants survived the first round to continue the game, he would give a speech on the Marbles to fill the time.

8. It's also Danielle Dax's birthday today. I remember my brother had one of her albums ('Blast The Human Flower' iirc) and I quite like 'Big Hollow Man'. It's odd my brother having owned stuff by her though - his musical tastes during that time were mainly electronica, baggy and dance like New Order, Eurythmics, The Shaman, The Stone Roses.. but I suppose he liked The Sugarcubes too. Perhaps his girlfriend got him into Danielle Dax, or something?

9. New series of Strictly started today, and it was basically a bit disappointing. Not really because of any issue with the people on it, more to do with the whole thing feeling tired and predictable and I've lost my interest in it over the last few series' basically. Every season has the same puns, the same clichés, the same stuff, pointless 'theme' VTs blah blah. I also get a bit pissed off with the constant demonising of Craig Revel-Hallwood as some kind of pantomime villain when he's just saying the truth as opposed to fairly bland platitudes or pointless exagguration that the others indulge in.

10. A bit of local news today relates to where I visited a week and a half ago - archaeologists digging at Oswestry Castle have finished their exploratory excavations, and have found that the castle was larger than first thought and have confirmed that an additional building was unearthed next to it. They're going to dig again in May when the weather improves innit.

11. I shouldn't be surprised, but I've done a hell of a lot of pisses today. I suppose I have drank three or four cups of coffee, a similar number of cups of tea, and around a litre of diet lemonade. Not to mention the soup I've eaten for dinner, if that contributes?

12. A raven is one of several larger-bodied species of the genus Corvus. These species do not form a single taxonomic group within the genus. There is no consistent distinction between "crows" and "ravens", and these appellations have been assigned to different species chiefly on the basis of their size, crows generally being smaller than ravens. The largest raven species are the common raven and the thick-billed raven.

13. This afternoon I finished 'In a Cottage in a Wood' by Cass Green. An immature and selfish woman inherits a cottage off a woman throwing herself off a bridge. There are a couple of hundred pages of stupid description of this daft girl and her inability to grow the fuck up and her trivial interests. In the end there is a massive set of coincidences which explain everything. I was left feeling I'd wasted my time and my (admittedly only a small amount of) money.

14. The next book I'm reading, which I started this p.m., is 'Cheating at Canasta' - a collection of short stories by William Trevor. It's a different beast for sure. It takes a bit of an adjustment to move from reading novels to reading shorter pieces at times, but the quality is there with this anthology. A story about a lad killed by another lad on the walk home from a night out in Ireland, fatal blow, imagined sleight. Powerful resonance.

15. The complete absence of an arm or leg in amelia occurs as a result of the limb formation process being either prevented or interrupted very early in the developing embryo: between 24 and 36 days following fertilization. Tetra-amelia syndrome appears to have an autosomal recessive pattern of inheritance - that is, the parents of an individual with tetra-amelia syndrome each carry one copy of the mutated gene, but do not show signs and symptoms of the condition. In a few cases, amelia may be attributed to health complications during the early stages of pregnancy, including infection, failed abortion or complications associated with removal of an IUD after pregnancy, or use of teratogenic drugs, such as thalidomide.

West Ham United 2-3 Tottenham Hotspur

Burnley 0-0 Huddersfield

Everton 2-1 AFC Bournemouth

Manchester City 5-0 Crystal Palace

Southampton 0-1 Manchester United

Stoke City 0-4 Chelsea

Swansea City 1-2 Watford

Leicester City 2-3 Liverpool

Fulham 1-1 Middlesbrough