Footie, trouble and a bad example of a birder

7 October 2013

Last year Lincoln City played footie here in Dorktown.  At some point trouble broke out between both groups of supporters which end up with part of the town centre being closed off.  The Granby pub was also closed by the cops with a large group of men locked inside.  They of course took advantage of the situation and although the beer pumps were turned off they just about emptied the coolers and spirit optics.  Well, last Saturday Lincoln City were back here in town but the cops were not going to caught off guard this time and laid on a lot of extra officers.  The arriving Lincoln supports were escorted from the station and for the whole walk from there to the footie ground, around two miles I should think.  This time everything passed off quietly is seems.   Oh yes, the game ended up as a 2-2 draw.

The town's team is now called Nuneaton Town after the prior team, Nuneaton Borough went bankrupt.  Where they play has also changed too.  Now they meet at a 'stadium' (in the loosest term), is on the Attleborough Fields Industrial Estate.  The previous ground was called Manor Park and was sited at the top end of Queens Road.  Now it's a housing estate! 

Right in front of it was a pub called Cock and Bear, not a bad pub either and opposite there is a small fenced off garden.  When I was kid we used to get the buss from Arley into town on Saturdays.  We always knew when it was match day because of the number of cycles left in that garden, safely locked up.  The guy who owned it must have made a bomb out of that bit of land. 

It does however show a huge difference in how footie used to be and how it is now.  Trouble at the games was very rare indeed, if not absent altogether.  Now it seems that it's an expected part of the whole thing - but not as bad as it was a few years ago.  I should think that there are many older folk who would wish things were back as to how they used to be.  That's progress for you; but not all progress is good is it? 

I subscribe to a number of birding boards and one of them is on Yahoo.  Yesterday I read a post on there about a miserable old fart who was making nasty remarks about some of the other birds in the hide with him.  This man was moaning about the field craft of some of the others there.  He also wouldn't reply when he was spoken to and totally ignored everyone apart from his friends.  The writer of that post compared that man to another one he met the same day who was totally the opposite.  He had his scope set looking at a rarity that was sitting looking about.  Not only did scope owner make sure he pointed out the bird to everyone else, he also allowed them to view it through his scope.  What a difference hey?  Sadly, as with all interest groups there are miserable prats like that first man.  However, I can confirm that he and his like are few in number.  Most of us birders are pleased to help others as much as possible and even more so when we are encouraging kids.  That's why we take Kile as often as we do.  The more kids we can introduce to the fun of birding the better for us all.

So now I have to find a photo - and I have just the one ... 

a cormorant I snapped on Saturday at Fishers Green.  It's not a brilliant shot though, sorry.

And the Sage has spoken this morning ...

 I walked into my local pub, sat at the bar and ordered a pint. I noticed a bloke sitting next to me looking forlornly at a photograph of a woman.
"She was beautiful." he said, tears rolling down his face. "She was my best friend, she was always up for a laugh. She even loved sex."
"I'm sorry," I said. "When did she pass away?"
"Oh, she not dead," he replied. "We got married."