When England were thrashed by Croatia

This is a superb poem that appeared as the Beachcomber column in today's Daily Express. Wonderful stuff! There's also a story concerning Wednesday evening after the game when the driver of a Tube train at Wembley Park station said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry for the delay, there seems to be a man on the track in front of us. Let's hope it's Steve McClaren!'

The gloom of the nation has never been worse
Wherever we turn there are risks
The Government can only bluster and curse
When it loses our data on disks
Our discontent's winter has firmly set in
No blooms now of rose or acacia
All hopes for the future were thrown in the bin
When England were thrashed by Croatia

Our train of contentment has come off the track
The weather grows wetter and wetter.
Our army's bogged down on the streets of Iraq,
Afghanistan isn't much better.
The world is a terribly dangerous place
From the streets of New York out to Asia,
But saddest of all for the whole human race
Was England's defeat by Croatia.

This once proud great nation was humbled indeed,
When England's team under McClaren
Lacked skill and cohesion and brilliance and speed,
And as for ideas, they were barren.
They earn enough money to fill a large tent,
Including all payments ex-gratia.
Though many would say they weren't worth a brass cent
The way they succumbed to Croatia.

There's carbon dioxide polluting the air,
There's panic around Northern Rock.
There's street crime and muggings and drugs everywhere
With police overworked round the clock.
And football? We couldn't back England to beat
A team full of Japanese geisha
The way that they played when they suffered defeat
At the feet of that team from Croatia.

The nation's in ruins; it's crumbling away.
We're all getting deeper in debt.
We read more bad news in the papers each day
To add to our national fret.
There's wet rot and dry rot and pale peeling paint.
Now shaming each porch and each fascia,
Yet ne'er has our pride felt so awfully faint
As that evening we lost to Croatia.

The terrorists try to make all our lives hell,
There are fraudsters depleting our cash.
And councils proposing (or so I've heard tell)
To charge for removing our trash.
Poor England's performance was spotless, some say,
As a vanload of dogs from Dalmatia.
(A region where holidaymakers can play
On the southwestern coast of Croatia.

The only small solace I have to report,
Despite what the football fans natter,
Is that one more defeat for the country at sport
Does not, in a real sense, matter.
They can't win in Europe, perhaps they should try
America or Australasia.
Or some other place where the fans' hopes won't die
As they did 'neath the might of Croatia.

Stars we'd like to come back

Princess Diana is the star most people wish would come back from the dead... typically I suppose. The survey was compiled by Virgin Mobile to launch its Get Paid As You Go scheme. The princess was followed in the survey by Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Lennon and George Harrison. Jesus Christ was sixth...which means that people would prefer a fertile parasite to return from the dead rather than the person that died to save us all. Mind you, Jesus has already done it, hasn't he?

Nincompoop!

Strangely nincompoop has been named as Britain's favourite word and my instant reaction is... ??? Has anyone ever actually used that word in normal conversation? Maybe you have if you are over 80 years old and a former RAF officer or headmaster. Apparently the quirky insult, first coined in the 17th century to describe a silly or foolish person, beat off competition from more than 600,000 other English words. Who takes part in these surveys? The word gained 13% of the vote in the survey by the makers of the new language game My Word Coach. Here is the top ten in full.

1. Nincompoop
2. Love
3. Mum
4. Discombobulated
5. Excellent
6. Happy
7. Squishy
8. Fabulous
9. Cool
10. Onomatopoeia

As you've never seen her before...

The Boss of the House! Click each image for a larger view. Lovely!

York!

The insides of a train... fascinating!



Iron Duke

Liverpool to Manchester in the olden days.

A no smoking sign in Japanese inside one of the excellent Tokyo bullet trains.

A nice mini carriage in a case.

Something old and yellow in the Railway Museum...

Three views from inside the Model Railway exhibition next to the railway station. Although this is quite impressive with lots of detail it is four quid to go in and it is just one small room, whereas the proper Railway Museum is absolutely enormous and free entry. Strange!

A cool nostalgia advert for senior railcards at the station.

A view of the wheel from the railway station.

The York Wheel. It seems that everywhere you go there's a wheel nowadays!

Bicycles at the back of the Royal Mail depot in York. Notice that a lot of them are here and therefore not in use!

Caption Competition

Just for a laugh... who is saying what to who?