Must be the same reason they struggled in Ten Hag’s system?

Why are Man Utd struggling in Amorim's system? bbc.com

Not sure why this wasn’t prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws?

White supremacist jailed for asylum seeker attack at hotel bbc.com

Threat level: high.

The new President of Israel.

Israel has changed since Donald Trump's last term – has he? bbc.com

This Lino government is fucking awful.

Patients dying in corridors at overwhelmed hospitals, say nurses bbc.com

Some prick just overtook me as I was indicating and turning right.

My pizza waiting to go in the oven. Kids' and wife’s pizzas are in there at the moment.

Southall Recreation Ground.

Finally some positive news: I managed to buy and replace the headlamp and brake lamp on my car all by myself without freezing to death or stabbing myself with a spanner.

Harrow Council’s lawyers have sent me a cease and desist notice for driving in a bus lane on New Year’s Day.

Wife just rescued little kid who was hanging off the top bunk bed ladder.

The peace and quiet is great, but not entirely relaxing. When the kids are quiet it usually means they are up to no good, or something is wrong.

Making chilli sans carne this morning. Kids are back at school tomorrow, so they are hanging out in the bedroom away from the smell.

This parking advice signpost is much more effective now.

Housing association sent someone round a couple of days ago to place this essential post-Grenfell fire safety sticker inside our communal front door.

Just now another guy came to do the same job.

No excuses now for not leaving the house.

We always used the have a special meal to mark New Year’s Day, like Christmas and Easter Sunday, but yesterday, as big kid was away and I had to go and collect him, we ate leftover burgers, chips, rice, beans and salad.

A wet and wild white-knuckle ride home into driving wind and rain on the London Orbital.

Big kid went home with his Auntie and cousins on Monday night, so later I will go and collect him. Hopefully traffic will be a lot less than usual today.

This year I managed to put up bookshelves and bunk beds, fixed a cupboard door back on in the kitchen with new hinges, replaced the silicone seal around the kitchen sink, and unblocked the kitchen sink and the toilet (several times).

But I’m not your handyman.

…these ideas I’ll turn to gold dust later

3421 isn’t working. Surely he has to try something else?

Man Utd relegation 'a possibility' says Amorim bbc.com

Today we’re expecting our two nieces and their Mum. They’re at just the right ages to play with our boys, so it should be a fun day for them as usual, and a hectic one for me.

DEVELOPERS: IF YOU REALLY WANT TO HELP THE COMMUNITY

This was survey feedback given to developers proposing to build a massive data centre on the site of the industrial estate down the road from me, but it applies more broadly to all big developers, especially those with annual profits of half a billion pounds.

---

I’m concerned about noise from the site causing a nuisance and health problems in an area that is already susceptible to multiple environmental health stressors, and exacerbated by deep-rooted poverty, deprivation, low pay and systemic racism and power imbalances embedded in the local authority planning system.

I’m also concerned about the local power grid. Only a couple of years ago it was reported that Ealing doesn’t have enough capacity to power more new homes that are so badly needed, particularly in Southall which suffers from chronic overcrowding. A data centre requires a lot of power. How will this work?

If you really want to do something for the local community how about you plant thousands of trees to compensate for the fact that Southall has the lowest tree canopy cover in the whole of Ealing?

How about building homes for the street homeless and providing ongoing support they will need to live in them sustainably?

How about building a drug and alcohol rehab unit to treat the ever growing numbers of addicts roaming our streets and parks?

How about using all that information processing power to work out how to provide more frequent, more reliable, free public transport in Southall and to reduce the congestion caused by all the traffic?

How about building a secular community centre, a library, a youth club, a health centre, a school? Southall is so overdeveloped now, and Ealing Labour Council sold off all our community assets to developers.

Oops! Forgot to buy Yorkshires and had to make my own (for the first time).

Looks all right!

Plan for tomorrow:

🥕 Prepare and cook veggies for xmas lunch
🍿 Watch Sonic 3 with kids at cinema
🛏️ Get kids off to bed and sleep early (haha)
🎅 Get my Santa outfit on and deliver presents (which this year are already wrapped)

Big kid has been enjoying CrossFit exercises at school and at home.

Big kid: “Hey Google! What’s an air squat?”

Google: “An escort is a call girl or a prostitute….”

Me: “Hey Google! STOP!!!”

After numerous attempts at therapising my toaster (“WTF is wrong with you, you stupid machine!") I realised that it was too depressed to talk.

I put myself in the toaster’s shoes and realised it was burnt out. It was full of crumbs (golden memories of bagels, crumpets, muffins and waffles past). Attempted arson was simply its way of communicating that it couldn’t take any more.

I unreservedly apologise to my toaster for this gross defamation.

Toast in the Machine davidmarsden.info

United losing 3-0 at home to Bournemouth with an hour gone.

Bring back baldie!

Ten months on and bath night is getting easier.

Now all I have to do is say, “Who’s going to get in Eli’s bath first? Will it be Eli? Or will it be Dad?”

Quick as a flash he’s stripped and running to the bathroom to beat me.

Xmas in Little India.

A shame we only get to choose one.

“…Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a “new front” had opened up on Israel’s border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.”

How (in)convenient.

Israel plans to expand Golan settlements after fall of Assad bbc.com

Cricket match well underway in my local park at 9:30 this morning.

SOUTHALL ODOURS

I step out of my house and immediately notice the artificial “cotton fresh” scent of odour suppressants wafting south from the old Gasworks site. How can this be? They finished remediating the contaminated earth in 2019, and people have been living there in the new homes they built since 2021.

Still, it’s better than the smell of petrol, which is what we had to put up with day and night for months on end in 2018. Bad enough to wake us up in the night during the long hot summer.

And it’s better than the smell of tar, which we still get when the wind is blowing from the west. Before the asphalt plant was built, we didn’t get any odours even though there is also a Tarmac plant nearby. The Asphalt plant owners say that is because the Nestle coffee plant closed. The (burnt?) coffee smell masked the tar.

I get around the corner of my block, on my morning walk, and see the small industrial estate that was the bane of our life for months in 2022. The main culprits were the paper recylcling company, which had its own incinerator for burning (believe it or not) plastics and coated wooden pallets.

Their neighbour opposite was a custom kitchen furniture maker, which also had its own incinerator for burning laminated particle fibreboard. The garage at the front regularly burns stuff in an old oil barrel.

All of which contributed to some of the most disgusting odours imaginable blowing into our kitchen, bathroom and hallway whe the wind blew from the north-east.

I walked down the street to the corner where the local council installed a tiny corner “wildflower garden”, which my wife and kids loved because it smelled so good. Two years later, it’s reduced to a dumping ground (no one could have foreseen this).

Further on my walk, past the homes reeking of marijuana, and weaving in and out of the obstacle course of bed bases mattresses and pallets stren across the pavements, I reach the town and smell the food aromas.

I’m reminded of the old Honey Monster factory, which used to regale us with the smell of roasted (burnt?) onions (I know, right?).

And my first visit to Southall (in daylight hours), twenty odd years ago, turning left out of the old station and naively going into the underpass. The stench of piss that hit me! “Welcome to Southall!” indeed.

I finished my walk through the town and back up round and through the park. If I’d gone further up the canal by my sons' school I would have got the smell of the narrowboats' wood-burning stoves, which sometimes fills the school playground and causes kids to have to use their inhalers.

And if I’d walked along the main road home or by the junction with the big industrial estate I would have choked on the heavy air filled with the exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.

Southall stinks so bad that the council set up its own Southall Odours web page, email and hotline where you can report bad smells. Because if you don’t report it, the council can’t do anything.

If you’re lucky, you might see something done after a year or two of complaining, as long as you can withstand the constant gaslighting.

If you’re unlucky, and you’re not already dead or too ill to complain, you’ll be branded a troublemaker and excluded from local democracy.

Or you’ll be told to move by the council’s community safety director.

Don’t most start-ups fail?

Maybe a pop-up government would work better?

Government wants state to be more 'like a start-up' bbc.com

No one could have foreseen this.

Man Utd sporting director Ashworth leaves after five months bbc.com

My friend Tim has been busy…

Dull Men's Club - the 'mundane' Facebook group that became an unlikely hit bbc.com

Luxury flats newly built by the canal.

The absence of windows on the sides of the blocks is presumably so that the residents don’t have to see the people in the poor houses next door.

Our little tree now has lights.

Kids were excited but chilling out now to carols.

Some more pizza prep and cooked pics. 🍕🍕🍕

Kids decorated our little xmas tree, but I left the batteries in the lights all year, so they’re ruined.

I think I might have binned the star lights I usually hang in the window - a relief as they cause a disproportionate amount of stress untangling and hanging them.

Retreated to the relative safety of the bedroom where I’m finding solace with Radiohead and OK Computer on a loop.

An airbag saved my life

Notionally returned to wfh today.

✅ Made chilli sans carne
✅ Emailed work to say I will try to ease myself back into things, but still feeling exhausted
✅ Declined work meetings on health grounds
✅ Had a three hour nap
✅ Woke just in time for a late lunch
✅ Picked kids up from school

DUA LIPA'S TINY DESK CONCERTS

Dua Lipa’s Tiny Desk concert at home in between covid lockdowns in 2020 is the most watched Tiny Desk concert ever.

Which doesn’t surprise me at all as we must have watched it literally hundreds, if not thousands, of times.

My little boy absolutely loved it, and even me and big kid secretly liked it, too.

Love Again is my favourite.

She’s just performed a new concert at Tiny Desk HQ, and it’s also very watchable and listenable, with These Walls the standout track.

I recently read: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy (of the band Wilco) 📚.

It’s full of practical if fairly obvious tips on how to write and get your creative muscles going.

Here’s a poem I wrote based on two books I regularly read to my little kid at bedtime.

This went down well with the missus!

The air outside is thick with the smell of tar and vehicle emissions.

Not doing my cough any good.

It’s so cold this morning, when I got back from dropping the kids at school I had to do the washing up just to warm my hands up.

Yesterday’s Mac* ‘n’ Cheese went down well with me and big kid. It’s one of his favourites.

*Penne

Wife is making plans for my imminent demise.

DPD FFS!

DPD notified me that their driver had delivered my parcel. “Parcel received by Rhanderg”.

That’s obviously not me, and neither did I have my parcel.

I saw the DPD van outside my neighbour’s block opposite, so figured he must have delivered there by mistake. But, no, my neighbour didn’t have it (and he’s not called Rhanderg either).

I opened a chat on the DPD app. The proof of delivery photo was taken at my neighbour’s door. I was assured the driver would come back later, retrieve my parcel and deliver it to me. But I’d already checked with my neighbour and they didn’t have it.

Two minutes later, the driver turns up with my parcel. He said he dropped his phone in the mud (and accidentally took a photo of him not delivering it to my neighbour’s flat?).

WFH SAVED MY LIFE

I’ve worked from home since the end of February 2020. I transferred all my work and systems online to do so, and while I’m still part-time, in practice I’m now available 24/7 for every conceivable administrative emergency (“Hi David. Please order me some large coloured post-it notes and have them delivered to my home tomorrow” or “Hi David. Please bring £200 in cash to my house this morning so I can pay for my lunch meeting today.").

I won’t pretend I’ve always been highly productive, in the office or at home. But I always get everything done that needs to be done, and I’m super-flexible and adaptable. I’ve been asked to do - and done - huge, complex projects at short notice and with short deadlines that are outside of my remit and frankly beyond my skill set, but I’ve done them, learned how to do it on the spot or got help.

I do go into the office for occasional in-person meetings and social gatherings (“xmas lunch” looms) when necessary, and indeed spent a solid three hours working last Thursday with a masked colleague (she had a fever) in a freezing cold office. I’d just recovered from a bad reaction to the covid vaccine. Next day was a write-off. I was exhausted and worried about whether the work we did was really good enough. The day after and since I’ve had a terrible cough and cold, shortness of breath, wheezing. (Since my COPD diagnosis, every rasping breath I take is assessed and rediagnosed by my non-medic wife as requiring medical attention.)

My workplace is bad for my health. Pre-covid I had multiple chest infections that kept me away from work and reduced my productivity to zero for weeks at a time. Since I worked from home, and catching covid aside, I’ve had zero time where I’ve been unable to go to the office for essential work that can only be done there. Even when I’ve had coughs and colds, I’ve felt well enough to do the work that needed to be done. Somehow (until now with this new cough) I don’t seem to get so ill or feel so bad when I’m at home.

Working from home has given me the time and space to transform how I work for the better. I’m better organised, more thoughtful, less rushed and distracted. I can honestly say that I’m now the most productive I’ve ever been thanks to a more comfortable, relaxed and focussed personal work space.

And, yes, being part-time, and flexible, I can take a nap if I need one.

Why should people work at home? https://youtu.be/bQN_Fb03RfE?si=CZoQagrotTA_urw8 The ‘return to work’ now being enforced by many organisations makes no sense for many people, or the planet. It really is time that we have some enlightened managers who did what is best for people and the world, and not what they see as being best for them.

I thought I’d done great with these pizzas, but big kid ate only three slices (he can usually eat all eight) and spat out his salami, little kid said he doesn’t like the sauce (it’s out of a tin, the same he usually eats), and the missus said hers was burnt and inedible (although she still ate it).

ANOTHER DOOR CLOSES

Our twenty year old fridge door failed. It refused to stay closed anymore. Hinges had gone.

After a couple of weeks battling with adhesive magnetic door locks designed for something else, I did the most manly thing I could think of. I called an engineer.

The NEFF man arrived and did the job in a matter of minutes for £172.

It’s been an expensive couple of months fixing doors, old and new.

I can’t opt-out of LinkedIn’s new AI data gathering exercise, and neither can I delete my account, because I can’t login (got a new phone, 2fa linked to old phone, fucked).

Hopefully their AI will be richer and more fully rounded as a result of my content.

FUNNY OLD GAME

In the good old days, football was a simple game. You had eleven players and a substitute numbered 1 to 12, no shirt advertising, a referee and two linesmen, a manager, a trainer, a physio, a scout or two, tea ladies, drinking culture, long hair and perms, the club chairman, a board of directors, a club secretary, a groundsman, a stadium in the beating heart of the town or city, fans, standing room only, electric atmospheres, matches on Saturday at three o’clock, live coverage on the radio, match reports in the Pink Final after the game, and highlights on Match of the Day at 10:30 the same night. Tradition and history.

These days, it’s big business. You’ve got a hundred players in the first team squad, shirt number bingo sponsored by online sports betting companies, the reserves, the academy, a women’s team, out on loan, transfer windows, exiled due to poor man-management, five, seven, nine subs to choose from, a referee and a substitute referee, assistant refs, refs sat in an office in a business park (a clear and obvious error), refs at home, refs in the studio, refs in the crowd, a manager, a head coach, a goalkeeping coach, various other specialist coaches, multitudes of doctors, physios, psychologists, data analysts, worldwide scouting networks, dieticians, head chefs, gambling addictions, agents, chief executives, directors of football, technical directors, presidents of business, heads of legal, heads of state, matches at any time from noon to after the last train home, an advertiser’s stadium out of town, sitting room only, live streaming all day and all night. Profit and sustainability.

At one time, a manager of a football club could expect to run all aspects of the club to a lesser or greater degree, or at least have a major say in how it was run. Nowadays, managers, or coaches, are often restricted to, well, coaching players in training and on match days, and speaking to the media before and after games. They are seen as specialists rather than all-rounders, and more specialists from the world of corporate finance are brought in to fire the tea ladies and keep the manager - sorry, coach - fully focused on his job and not get distracted by wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, player contracts, or appealing points deductions for spending beyond the club’s means.

United

Indeed, this is how United plc’s Dan Ashworth keeps Eric ten Hag successful on the pitch. Oh, wait. I’m no fan in particular of Jamie Carragher, but he might have had a point when described United last season as one of the most poorly coached sides in the Premier League. United’s usual set up is a chaotic mismatch of players out of form, out of position, out of confidence, and out of luck. Individual errors rule the day, and most of the players look lost and like they’d rather be in the physio room or gambling rehab. We rely totally on one player - Bruno - to create chances and score. This is a colossal failure of recruitment, of management, of coaching, of captaincy, of teamwork.

Fergie took six seasons to win the title after twenty six years of hurt, and three seasons after winning the cup in 1990. His team often looked like it wasn’t making any progress, but the cup win did see a consistent marked improvement season on season (13th to 6th to 2nd to 1st). Ten Hag produced a masterful cup win against all the odds, although perhaps City’s players were caught off guard expecting an easy win after United’s lucky semi-final win against Coventry. Every season Pep has them playing in a clearly identifiable system and is never afraid to switch players or tactics.

Ingerland

It’s funny to hear Morgan Gibbs-White talk about Ingerland’s new interim manager Lee Carsley and describe his qualities as basically being a father-figure. Most top-level professional footballers are with their clubs from the age of eight, and likely spend more time than most kids away from their families and any normal childhood - living the dream, nonetheless. You can understand why they would value this kind of man-management, someone who will stick up for them no matter what.

Ten Hag hasn’t got that about him at all. He’s lost a whole load of players in one way or another because he didn’t have the heart or the head or the guts to stand by them when they needed him. De Gea, Maguire, Wan Bissaka, Casemiro, McTominay, Sancho, Antony, Martial, Rashford, Greenwood.

The spineless corporate bosses meanwhile took an age to decide the safest bet was to keep ten Hag. Failure is expected and gives them half a season at least to bed themselves in and some new players, too, in time for a new manager. If he does well, then they made the right decision. If they had appointed a new manager he might have failed, too, with the current players, and that would have reflected badly on the corporate bosses.

At least we’re not Chelsea. Telling your captain that he’s not technically good enough. Successfully scraping through the play-off round of the Conference League. Moneyball gone mad (although they could have a decent team in three seasons…).

Emptying my Feedbin and stumbled across this epic from Christmas Day 2022.

The one where Matthew moves out of Sawtell because it’s too posh and goes to live sober in a homeless shelter in Melbourne with a Croatian who speaks no English (or does he?).

Reading Sunday 9 April 2023 | The Zero Room

SPUDS UP!

We harvested the last three of eleven potato bags at the weekend. A decent crop, and very tasty.

Highlights were regular watering and earthing up (using homegrown compost) with my kids, and big kid’s tenth birthday party where his friends got to (among other fun activities) harvest the first three bags and take home a potato bag each.​

Fond memories of going potato picking with my mum in the Lincolnshire Wolds in the early 1970s.​

Well, the super secure new lock on our super expensive new front door failed catastrophically today.

I couldn’t get my key out of the lock. We couldn’t lock the door.

The local locksmith arrived within fifteen minutes, diagnosed the problem (“you need a new lock, £180”) and proceeded to spend the best part of an hour removing the broken extra secure lock (finally, reminiscent of the birth of my second son, “it’s out, I’ll have to charge a bit extra…").

£265!!!

Thankfully the lock is under warranty, but not the labour.

New e-scooter and cycle hire infrastructure in Southall Green.

[Edit]

Not the ideal location.

Bushmen came to cut the communal grass and fill my compost bin with the cuttings. #Winning

THE CUCKOO'S NEST

Ealing Genocide Supporters Club (aka Ealing Labour Party) held their Southall Branch meeting yesterday at the Dominion Centre in Southall. Under the guise of a “Your Town, Your Voice” community get together, our local elected repellents gathered on masse in all their finery. I couldn’t help myself as they posed for a group photo all gurning inanely as the photographer encouraged them to “say cheese!”. “Say genocide!” I offered. “Genocide supporters!”

Cllr Dr Murtaza of their number aggressively reprimanded me. “What evidence do you have that we support genocide?” he demanded to know. Well, I told him, my main piece of evidence would be that you have done nothing to oppose it.

Ooh! There’s Cllr Martin! Our locally elected anti-Traveller racist! “What evidence do you have to support that?” Well, here it is.

Oh, and while you’re at it, Cllr Dr Murtaza. Next time you are chauffeuring our glorious leader around in your Porsche, try not to park in a cycle lane, please.

Then there was illegal samosa factory proprietor Cllr “I own half of Southall” Anand.

I hadn’t realised until yesterday quite how visceral my revulsion for these people is. The grand cuckoo in the nest arrived about half way through the event. I would have confronted him myself, and previously I have done. Maybe I was just worn down from a week with the ‘flu, but I felt like I really had to keep my distance for my own sanity. In any case, a few council officers made beelines for me and made sure I was busy answering their questions.

Interestingly, one officer suggested to me that resident-led ward forums would be the likely outcome of this event. Fantastic news, if that’s the case. Another officer I spoke to later, knew nothing about this idea, though, but took copious notes. A neighbour and friend told me that she spoke to the cuckoo himself who told her that this meeting was in fact the replacement for he old (councillor-led) ward forums. That’s that then.

The event itself was a repeat of several resident[pdf] surveys and failed plans over the past twenty years or so (for which I’ve seen records, or taken part in). The problems are always the same. The responses from the council are always the same. Nothing.

OFFICE ABANDONED - SUN STOPPED WORK

Today’s office.

Today’s office.

Nine year old said he wanted to grow some potatoes, so we planted chitted seed potatoes in bags tonight.

He said he didn’t know it was so much work!

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

Andy’s post on Kingstonian Football Club losing their home reminded me of the loss of Southall’s football ground, and a chance meeting I had with an old supporter a few years ago.

---

Jim had lost his coat.

He remembered leaving it in the Halfway House pub next to the entrance to the Southall football ground on Western Road.

He told me he lived in neighbouring Hayes with his wife, who would be very angry with him if he went home without his coat.

He also had a house in Ireland.

We walked and walked, but we couldn’t find the Halfway House. It was neither here nor there. We couldn’t find the football ground, either. Nothing was where Jim remembered it.

Like his coat, they were very much alive in Jim’s memory, but in the world we walked in the goalposts had literally moved, the final whistle had blown, and everyone had gone home, except Jim (and me).

I felt very confused. Finally it dawned on me that Jim was probably feeling very confused, too. And probably very frightened. He asked if I could show him the way to get the bus back to Hayes, which I did.

We never did find his coat.

4 year old was born four years ago today, funnily enough.

WHERE'S DADDY?

We have AI that can decide who is a terrorist and then track their every movement so we can wait until they're home to drop a bomb on their whole family.

But the 3 successive precision air strikes on #WCK aid workers coordinating with and following route instructions from the IDF was just a 'tragic mistake' because it was night time.

Hippy Steve

CURRICULUM VITAE (MEMENTO VIVERE)

Having been so bitterly rejected both in love and at work, I started to look around for new opportunities. I don’t remember how I found it, but a nursing home nearer to where I lived at the time (Cleethorpes) was advertising for a Therapeutic Activities Co-ordinator to develop a range of meaningful activities with frail elderly people who also had - iirc - impaired memory, or dementia. Right up my street (well, just around the corner).

This was the first time in my life (I was thirty years old) that I’d ever actually wanted a job, and I was determined to make sure I did everything I possibly could to get it (the money was better, too, although not a great deal). I think I really impressed them at the interview with the presentation I did (probably bullet points, but that was all the rage back then), but more my genuine enthusiasm and excitement at the prospect of doing what, at the time, seemed like it would be my “dream job”.

The role was to cover three separate nursing and residential homes in the Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Humberston area, all quite different as it turned out. I would also liaise with a colleague in Hull (where the company that ran the care homes had its headquarters), who had already been in post in his area for a year or so. Steve was a social worker by trade, and he was very upset to discover that I was not. He was also agitating for a substantial pay rise, and later on we would jointly present our case to the board of directors.

I shadowed Steve for a day or two and wrote substantial notes and reflections, before setting up my desk on the landing of the first floor next to the lift and the payphone (yes, really) at The Anchorage just up the road from Blundell Park. When I first entered The Anchorage it was a shock to the system. I was used to a welcoming, friendly, clean, freshly smelling (as much as possible), professional, and lively residential home where I used to work. The Anchorage was anything but. There was no welcome, staff looked harried, the place was so obviously run down and uncared for, it stank of piss, and all the residents appeared to be fully comatose.

That was on the ground floor. Upstairs was slightly better - at least the residents were awake. But it was like a madhouse, and brought back traumatic memories of a childhood school visit to the local mental hospital to sing Christmas carols to the moaning, leering, grabbing, drooling inmatespatients. The only redeeming factor now was that none of the inmates seemed able to move. I was going to have my work cut out here.

I think my boss expected me to have a timetable of bingo sessions, sing-a-longs, tea dances, quiz nights, etc. up and running straight away. But I would have to raise the dead first, and persuade the staff and manager to be supportive and helpful, In fact, a complete change of culture was needed. I spent several weeks getting to know everyone, not only there, but at the other two homes as well. One of the others was much larger with what seemed like a highly mobile group of very demented residents, while the other was more of a mixture of demented and simply frail elderly people. Once I got to know everyone, The Anchorage seemed to be mostly people with physical health problems, often compounded by the effects of a stroke.

The other two homes also had good, strong supportive managers, while The Anchorage had a temporary manager (one of the senior nurses), before appointing an absolute horror of a woman who mercilessly bullied me and made my job much more difficult than it needed to be. Luckily, most of the nurses and carers were good people.

To cut a long story short, we raised the dead. It turns out (who knew?) that even very poorly, very old people are up for conversation, doing things that interest them, socialising, going out, singing, dancing, moving, learning to walk again, reminiscing, and just living what life there is left. But they need help to do so. And when they get the help they need to do some or all of these things, it also turns out that they are often more continent, can walk again, need less of the carers' and nurses' time for personal care, feel better, have better health, and - crucially from the business point of view - live longer.

And when the residents are happier, have something to get up for, and are easier to look after, the staff are happier, too. We had a lot of fun. It was amazing. A highlight was organising three coaches and a disability-friendly minibus to take every resident from all three homes literally around the corner form The Anchorage to The Excel Club, which was (in the good old days), the premier night spot and bar for many of “my people” when they were young, for an afternoon of drinking, dancing, eating, socialising and reminiscing that I won’t forget (even if many of them them had forgotten by the time they got home).

The beauty of the whole endeavour was that people needing care were no longer seen as tasks to be performed and checked off on a list, but as people who had lives, stories, senses of humour, wants and needs like everyone else.

Such a great thing could obviously have no future, and when me and Steve presented the business case for expansion and pay rises to the board it was rejected outright. The most helpful training I ever did was with a trainer who advised me “don’t waste time trying to persuade people who aren’t interested - focus on those who are.” I’d tried my best, I really had. While I did really enjoy the job, I didn’t want to be doing the same thing week after week, year after year, with no prospect of advancement and for a company that clearly wasn’t interested or appreciative.

I started looking around again, and this time further afield. I felt I was in a rut, personally as well (it was all work and no play for me), and I needed a fresh start.

Wife has returned home after being abducted by aliens (scroll down past the football).

CURRICULUM VITAE (REPETITUM)

Following on from my success delivering the news to my local community, I took a break from the world of (very part-time) work to focus on… playing in my first bands. And learning to play the guitar. Much of which came at the expense of any interest in or motivation to study, or revise for ‘O’ Levels, and later ‘A’ Levels.

Living in a small rural market town, some of my friends, and my own younger brother, in fact, had Saturday jobs bush beating - literally (as far as I know) beating bushes to encourage game birds to fly to their sporting deaths. Let’s never forget that killing is a sport for our aristocracy and their hangers-on. Famously, at the time, the host of these shootings was “peppered in the buttocks” by our drunken home secretary Willie Whitelaw. You couldn’t get away with a name like that now.

My brother graduated from bush beating for toffs to hunt sabotage.

I did well enough in my ‘O’ Levels (one A, eight Bs, and a C), that my maths teacher told me I would “never amount to anything”. He wasn’t wrong.

My dad tried to motivate me after my mock ‘A’ Level results by leaving me a drunken handwritten note and caricature drawing of me with an arrow pointing to it (I mean, in those days what else could he have done?) saying: “THICK CUNT”.

Then he got me what felt like a punishing summer job at the duck processing plant where he was a line supervisor. Being the boss’s son was no fun when they put me on the killing floor. I became a vegetarian for nine years after that (although since returned to meat eating - that’s another story).

I messed up my ‘A’ Levels (three Es, and failed General Studies writing about the punk band Stiff Little Fingers). I was profoundly depressed, but had no one to talk to about it. Mainly because I had been brought up not to talk about or express any “bad” or “difficult” feelings. Random people used to come up to me and say “Cheer up, it may never happen”, but it in my internal world, it already had.

Music, and playing guitar in a band, was my only outlet, but we were young and totally delusional. We were a three-piece, but believed we were the next Fab Four. We played a successful debut gig in Cleethorpes at The Sub, but instead of building on that, we immediately packed our bags and gear into a van, and drove to London to live in a series of squats in Stepney, Poplar and Limehouse.

An older ex-school friend was part of an anarchist community based out of a bookshop, and helped us find, gain entry to, and occasionally get the water, gas and/or electricity working. In those good old days, you could easily “sign on” the dole and get enough to actually live on.

I read and heard a lot about the politics of anarchism, which I found very attractive to my idealism. That said, I couldn’t ever see how it would work in practice, in the real world. It would need a revolution, of course, but even then, it would need a revolution in people’s minds and thinking first.

Six months living in squats, a couple of lousy gigs and a demo tape later, we packed our bags and returned home.

DISHING IT OUT

Following on from the pots and pans incident, my wife has decreed that the bamboo plates and bowls I bought as child-safe alternatives to our regular crockery are in fact likely coated with melamine and, therefore, toxic.

She’s probably right, although only for hot food. I had noticed that my hot food tasted a bit funny using these, but I think they’re fine for sandwiches and such.

She claims her eggs taste better (“like childhood”) cooked in our new stainless steel frying pan. I used it to cook an omelette for the first time yesterday, and it was undoubtedly the best omelette I’ve ever tasted. Is that possible?

Bit of a damp squib today, but eleven years ago these were the scenes the morning after Diwali.

BEER NIGHTS IN

I didn’t drink all of these beers in one sitting, or, in fact, any of them on Friday afternoon, prior to the school run.

Friday night I had a couple of the light beers.

Steeplechase Pale Ale: far too citrusy for my taste.

Deco WCIPA: another one far too citrusy for my taste.

Accompanying snacks made them drinkable.

Saturday night I had a couple of the dark beers. I had a feeling I would like these even less, but…

The Adventures of Mr Malty Baltic Porter: lovely malt flavour, rich, dark, but not bitter.

Salted Cinder Toffee Stout: I thought this might make me throw up, but it was surprisingly good, not too sweet or salty.

🍺

HEY DAVID

Our contract with Plusnet for telephone landline and (not full) fibre broadband ends on 25 November. I started looking around for cheaper and/or better alternatives back in August. Not that there was anything wrong with Plusnet’s service. In fact, compared to Sky and TalkTalk, they’re bloody brilliant. But end of contract time usually means either a hike in price to stay loyal, or finding a new provider that offers new customers a better deal than its existing customers.

So, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover a full fibre broadband option available in my area. Apparently, a company called Hey! Broadband had laid there own network of fibre-optic cables in my street, meaning that we could replace our maximum 67Mb download speeds for £28 (due to go up to £54) a month with 900Mb download and upload for 99p a month for the fist six months, and then £29 a month thereafter. It sounded too good to be true!

Of course, we don’t need ten times faster broadband, but the extra bandwidth and improved coverage would be nice. It’s not uncommon now to have one of us in a Teams meeting, another gaming on his Switch, another watching internet TV, and another doing general internet stuff. The first three, certainly, have all complained at times of lag and buffering. And even the last one has found online work meetings in my bedroom-cum-office occasionally impossible due to poor connectivity.

Hey! Broadband make it clear on their website that they cannot guarantee to be able to connect new customers to their network even if your address is within their network area. There may be unforeseen problems. They also make it clear that potential new customers should not cancel their existing broadband service before you have your new Hey! Broadband service up and running for a couple of weeks without any major issues.

So, I wasn’t expecting a smooth service. For one, I had no knowledge of when or where the new fibre-optic cables had been laid in our cul-de-sac. On the adjoining road, maybe. But I would let them sort that out. When the two engineers from Hey! Broadband’s sub-contracted installation company arrived on 2 October things didn’t immediately look hopeful. They were very friendly, but looked barely old enough to be out of school, and had no idea where the cables were outside to connect us up.

After an hour or so of looking around the local area, they came back and informed me of the good news and the bad news. The good news being that they had found a cable that we could, in theory, be connected to. The bad news being that it was on another street around the corner “about three doors away”. They would need to get permission from the homeowner to go into their premises and then somehow connect the cable up to our non-adjoining property. But I didn’t have to worry, they would take care of everything, and we should hear something within five to seven working days.

Of course, seven working days later when I phoned them, nothing at all had been done, and in fact, they asked me to provide contact details for my “neighbours” and to go knock on their door and ask permission to enter their property. Which I could have done, but as I pointed out, I don’t know them, or which house it is, and even if I did, I have no official ID to show that I’m an engineer from Hey! Broadband. I asked to speak to a manager, and was told someone would call me back later.

Days passed until another engineer appeared at my door. He was even friendlier than the previous two, and old enough to have a young child of his own. He’d already had a look around and found the cable in my next door neighbour’s outside storage cupboard (as well as my little kid’s trike in our storage cupboard, which he wondered if I still wanted, and if not, could he take it for his little kid?). I let him take the trike, and he promised someone would call later that day to book a new installation date.

No one called, although we still had the revised installation date for 31 October, and another even friendlier and slightly older engineer showed up. He actually managed to connect us up, pulling the cable through from the street next to our cul-de-sac (“the longest pull” he’d ever done), cabling it out from our neighbour’s storage cupboard up and over our communal porch and up our wall to our first floor flat. He drilled a hole in our wall (reassuring my wife that, no, the hole wouldn’t let cold air or creepy crawlies in) and set us up with new full fibre broadband.

It turned out that he’s self-employed, and does up to five of these installations a day at a £100 a go. He left school aged eleven unable to read or write. As he wired up our new modem, he told me how he had a habit, when younger, of setting fire to things. He went back to college to learn to read and write when his kids started coming home from school asking for help with school work, and he didn’t want to tell them he couldn’t do it. He didn’t ask for a trike, either.

Funnily enough, I met him again two days later around the corner from my big kid’s school while we were feeding the community cats. He was doing an installation there, or trying to. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to pull the cable through on this occasion.

We’ve had Hey! Broadband for a week without any issues at all, and full 900Mb ethernet speeds as advertised, with wifi speeds around 150Mb down and 250Mb up. No telephone landline anymore, which is no loss, as we only ever used it to answer scam calls. I’m now a [Hey! Broadband Brand Champion]heybroadband.co.uk/champion (referral code: HeyDavid M39)

BREAK IN TRANSMISSION

Last week’s swimming lesson was cancelled, and the week before that, we went away for half-term. To a very wet and wild north-east Lincolnshire right by the sea (or the Humber Estuary). With no wifi, and very poor data connectivity. In a tin can caravan.

But we all had fun, and the kids got to spend time with their grandparents who live nearby. And use their wifi.

On the night before we left I met up with a couple of my oldest and best friends, Murray and Aaron, who I hadn’t seen for ten (Aaron) and thirty (!) (Murray) years. It was really great to have a couple of pints and talk shit with them, just like the old days, as if it was only yesterday.

ANY OLD POTS AND PANS?

Following on from the successful installation of our new front door (which my wife is now quite happy with), we now have new stainless steel pots and pans to replace the old and “dangerous” non-stick pans we had before.

My wife “read something on the internet” which said that the non-stick coatings are toxic, and so that that was the end of the matter.

Still, they are very nice new pans, even if a little more care is needed when using them to cook and clean.

FRANK

Frank was my great grandfather on my dad’s side.

I only met him a couple of times. One time, me and my brother were made to wear the most ridiculous and embarrassing outfits, and we just felt very uncomfortable and ill-at-ease meeting this very old man from another time.

He was born in the early 1901. So he must have been 80 or so when we met him. Not so old these days, but back then he really was like a dinosaur, or a fossil.

I remember a couple of stories about him. After the Great War, when he was a young man with a new wife and baby daughter (my grandmother), he had to walk twenty-five miles to work, where he would labour hard for sixteen hours before walking home again, only to be brutally murdered by his father before going to bed and getting up the next morning to do the same thing over and over again. Well, he certainly had to work hard, just to survive and raise a family.

Life was no doubt much harder then than any of us can really imagine, but you try and tell that to the young people of today. Would they believe you? No!

My great grandmother, Ellen, was committed to Lancaster Asylum some time after my grandmother Freda was born. I don’t know what the reason was, but it’s possible it was because she was suffering from what would now be recognised as post-natal depression.

In those days, it was a life sentence, not to mention the shame it brought upon the family.

Frank divorced Ellen and married “Auntie Florrie”. I don’t know if Florrie was actually Ellen’s sister, but it’s possible.

Freda never forgot her mum, and secretly visited her whenever she could.

When Frank got the cancer that would kill him, Freda took him in and looked after him in her bed until he died.

GETTING DRESSED

My three and a half year old is going through that stage where he doesn’t want to get dressed in the morning to go to nursery.

I remember with my oldest lad some mornings I used to be in tears trying to get him ready.

Fortunately, their mum is now working from home and has taken on this task with the little one. My main job now is to remind my nine year old to “sit at the table and eat your breakfast” every two minutes.

Up until a couple of weeks ago, my secondary role was as assistant little kid dresser. I would sit him on my knee with one arm around his chest holding his arms down, while trying to hold a leg or a foot so that his mum could forcibly put on his underpants, socks and trousers without him kicking or pulling them off again.

Mum has now found a much more kid-friendly method, with no tears.

Underpants are now butterflies, fluttering around looking for somewhere to land. Socks, of course, make great foot-puppets. Trousers are caterpillars crawling on a tree branch, and his coat is a big brown bear who just wants a hug.

It’s still exhausting, but it makes the morning a little bit happier for everyone.

TOO MUCH PRESSURE

Inevitably, as I sit here in the cafe next to my son’s swimming lesson, unable to drink coffee because the cafe is permanently closed, my mind wanders and starts thinking about coffee.

For most of my adult life, I’ve started the day with a cup of tea. Regular English breakfast tea. PG Tips, Tetley. Milk and sugar.

Tea was always my preferred drink, but I did like a cup of instant coffee or two later in the morning, but only if it was one I liked. I wasn’t fond of Nescafe or the other regular blends.

A few years ago, I switched to Rooibos (redbush) tea, and never went back. I also started appreciating real coffee made in a French press, and later got my own Aeropress. What really sealed the coffee deal, was discovering fresh coffee beans that aren’t burnt (Pact Coffee).

About three years ago, I backed a Kickstarter campaign to build an affordable, portable espresso maker, CoffeeJack.

Now, I’m not one of those people who backs a lot of these types of things, although it wasn’t my first or last. I understand that it’s not like ordering from Amazon or anywhere else. You’re backing a project with money in the hope that it’s successful and that you end up with a product that works as described. There’s no guarantee.

Now, CoffeeJack delivered about three years after they got my money. Which is a long time! They had lots of problems along the way, including, of course, the covid pandemic. So fair play to them for getting their project finished at all. And it was worth the wait, in my opinion. They produced exactly what they promised, and for six months I had two cups a day of the best coffee I’ve ever tasted.

Sadly, just when I thought I’d cracked it, I cracked the bayonet on my CoffeeJack. Too much pressure, to quote The Selector.

PLAY STREET

We used to play in the street outside our home as kids growing up in the 70s. In rural Lincolnshire. Of course, it wasn’t a main road, it was the road on our council estate. Pretty much everyone had a car, and many of the houses had their own garage.

In London, or Greater London, it’s generally not safe for kids to play in the street, although we’re lucky where we are that our little cul-de-sac can double-up as a relatively safe enough play area most of the time.

The road next to us is an HGV Access Road, thanks to our local ward councillor and current council leader.

It’s definitely NOT safe for kids to play in at all.

Not until the Water Company came along. For the past two or three weeks, they have closed part of the road where my sons' friends live to clear the pipes of wet wipes, sanitary products, fat and oil.

They’ve dug a massive hole in the road, which I’ve told my nine year old is The Pit of Tartarus. It’s all barricaded off, with heavy machinery, waste skips and various bits of equipment.

So the road is now a no through road, with access only for residents and deliveries.

My kids and their friends have really enjoyed playing out in the street whenever they can, thanks also to our “Indian Summer”.

Of course, there are plenty of drivers who ignore (or don’t see?) the signs telling them the road is closed, and drive down it anyway. My job was mostly to tell them, “No, you can’t drive on the pavement. Can’t you see there are kids playing? Plus, it’s a pavement. This isn’t the Wild West!”

Fortunately, everyone was reasonable enough when challenged to back away, turnaround and drive around following the “diverted traffic” signs.

Thankfully, my job was made redundant by the older kids in the group, who took it upon themselves to relieve me of my onerous duties. They barricaded the pavements with spare cones, and now they marshall the traffic. Much more effective!

DISTRACTION

It’s easy to get distracted.

My nine year old told his mum last night that he was so distracted by thoughts in his head at school that the teacher gave him a blank piece of paper and a pen to “download” everything in his mind.

All he could think about was Super Mario and Nintendo.

Well, it was Maths.

I always liked Maths at school. Mainly because there was no homework, or writing, or revision to do. Either I knew it or I didn’t. And I mostly did, up until A Levels.

My “Pure Maths” teacher told me I would never amount to anything. I guess he was right about that.

My “Applied Maths” teacher tried to make lessons more memorable by telling us a story about a man who grew jellies in his garden. I guess he was right about that.

I got a B grade in O Level Maths. If I’d actually made any kind of effort I could probably have got an A. Things could have been oh so different!

THE SWIMMER

My nine year old is on week three of his school swimming lessons.

Prior to the first lesson, he was very anxious about getting his hair wet, and getting his nose under the water. This, despite the fact that he absolutely loved the sea and the pool on our holiday last month (and last year, and the year before that).

We bought him a swimming cap, which everyone has to wear in any case. He’s got massive natural afro hair, so the first three swimming caps we bought were too small.

He was very anxious about putting on his swimming cap for the lessons. I said I would help him, as I would be there, but of course, that never happened as they all just marched straight into the changing rooms leaving me alone with my coffee-free café.

Fortunately, one of the teaching staff helps him with his cap.

So he keeps his hair dry. And after the second lesson last week, he came home and informed us that:

• he put his nose under the water and survived
• he wants to go swimming at the weekend
• he wants a swimming “noodle”.

BOLOGNESE!

Last week, we had a new front door fitted.

That morning, I took it upon myself to prepare a bolognese before the doormen arrived so that we didn’t need to get in each other’s way, and so that we had something to eat for lunch for the next few days.

I make my bolognese in a 12" frying pan and cover it with a grease splatter fine mesh to let it cook slowly for a few hours. When the doormen arrived, that’s exactly what my bolognese was doing.

What I didn’t realise, until it was too late, is that the dust from their drilling and general doormen work was settling on the stove top in front of my bolognese on the back of the stove.

This was brought to my attention by my wife, who was already in a state of being very upset by the new door hanging to the right and not the left like her old door.

I inspected the bolognese and the splatter mesh cover carefully for signs of white paint dust similar the to very evident white paint dust sitting on top of the stove.

I honestly couldn’t see anything, although the bolognese did have quite a sheen (although this was after I’d just added some milk to it).

Anyway, my wife refused to eat it, so I had no choice, really, but to eat all of it over the next four days.

If anything, it tasted a bit spicier than normal, not in a bad way, and I have not grown any extra fingers, yet.

THE DOOR

The door was old, but it still functioned as a door. It opened and closed, and kept us safe and warm.

As it got older, it got a bit cranky and quirky.

The spring-loaded closing mechanism no longer worked as it should. If you were a small person, a cat or a delivery driver, you had to beware this big old heavy door slamming shut whether you were in, out, or somewhere in between.

Sometimes the lock wouldn’t work at all and you had to hope there was someone inside who would let you in. Mostly, it required a certain knack to unlock it. Which kept kids out, and ensured extra exercise for grown-ups getting up off the sofa to let kids in.

One day, the housing association’s sub-contractors came to take our door away. It was a fire safety hazard, according to a very expensive risk assessment they carried out several years ago in the wake of the Grenfell Fire.

They came, they saw(ed), they removed our old door in five minutes flat, leaving a gaping hole.

The new door is sleek and fancy.

“It’s a like for like replacement,” they said.

“Hmmm… the handle is on the right hand side,” I said.

“And the door opens to the left not the right.”

“I’m very unhappy,” said my wife.

“It’s not magnetic,” said my nine year old.

“Where’s they keyhole?” my three year old didn’t say, but the question must surely have been going through his mind as he tried to unlock the door on the wrong (right) side with the new key.

Signs of the times…

UNDER POISONED SKIES

Watched Under Poisoned Skies on BBC iPlayer last night.

It’s the sad and shocking story of children in Iraq dying from leukaemia as a result of toxic air pollution from mega rich oil companies burning off excess natural gas in the open air near their homes.

Benzene (found in the air) and naphthalene (found in the children’s urine samples) are the main carcinogens.

Levels of benzene are between 3 and 9.6 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.

Levels of benzene by the so-called soil “hospital” at Southall Gasworks were between 4 and 12 Micrograms per cubic meter or “µg/m3”.

SOUTHALL RESIDENTS TO GIVE BLOOD SAMPLES

After six years of campaigning for justice:

“The fact that gas used to be manufactured from coal has been lost to the public consciousness, but the chemical legacy remains.”

“These communities already have multiple disadvantages with air pollution, overcrowding and poor housing. This is another burden being placed on them.”

Via: Scientists to examine health fears at west London luxury development

Finally got around to watching Our Friends In The North.

‘None of the issues the show mines so brilliantly – from inequality, deindustrialisation and the parlous state of Britain’s housing to homelessness and the corruption of our public officials – have gone away.’

The two wood-burning incinerators around the corner from our home appear to be no longer in use. One is is covered by corrugated sheets and scaffolding (prior to dismantling?), the other area is clean and relatively tidy.

Solidarity with all teachers today, especially those striking for better pay.

Eight year old is at home, and refusing to practice for his spelling test tomorrow because he doesn’t want to be a scab.

1,001 days since my little one made his debut.

THE PROPERTY LOBBY: THE HIDDEN REALITY BEHIND THE HOUSING CRISIS IN EALING

There will be 14,800 new homes in 23 new developments in Southall over the next few years. 14 units over 10 stories high, and 7 over 20 stories high. Up to 40,000 new residents (and their cars)!

One third of the total new developments in the whole of Ealing borough (only Acton is getting it worse).

So not happening so much in the ‘white’ or richer areas of the borough, for some reason.

None of these homes will be genuinely affordable to most people currently living in overcrowded homes in Southall or Ealing, as Studio bedsit flats start at around £300,000!

Most will stay empty until they are sold to investors from China, Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain(!) where they are actively marketed by the greedy property developers.

The same property developers who gave former Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Julian Bell and new Ealing Council ‘Leader’ Peter Mason (also a Southall Green ward councillor) over £30,000 in recent years to holiday in the south of France at the MIPIM property festival in Cannes described as a “booze ‘n’ hookerfest” by Private Eye Magazine.

Bell says, “it didn’t cost the taxpayer a penny”, but in Southall we are already paying with our health and quality of life thanks to the poisonous air from the development of the contaminated old gasworks site (due to complete in 2038!).

Town planner Mason says it was a mistake, and not what he expected(!).

Where will 40,000 new residents' children go to school (and how will they get there and back), how will they get an appointment to see a GP, which hospital will they go to when they need emergency treatment, and how will they get there on the roads already regularly gridlocked by too much traffic?

Worth taking the time to have a look at stopthetowers.info/other-cam…

Cllr Mason recommended we read Bob Colenutt’s ‘The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality Behind the Housing Crisis’.

So I did.

What Colenutt says (and he has a wealth of experience in local authority housing and planning, and in the community resisting property developers), is that developers do have too much power (as Mason argues), but also that local councils and councillors do not do enough to resist, do not have the negotiating skills (contrary to how Mason originally described the importance of trips to MIPIM to ‘negotiate hard’), and too readily embrace the ‘financialisation’ of the land and property market brought about by David Cameron’s and Nick Clegg’s ConDem government in 2010.

So now, we have a very real housing crisis fuelling the huge profits of private developers, all facilitated and egged on by mostly Labour councils too easily rolling over and allowing them to build fewer and fewer ‘genuinely affordable homes’ (because “where’s the profit in that?").

What Colenutt says loudly and clearly is that without ordinary people’s and communities' resistance it would be so much worse, and that to all intents and purposes councils and councillors are in bed with the developers.

Non-fiction: The Property Lobby: The Hidden Reality behind the Housing Crisis by Bob Colenutt 📚

Christmas tree and lights up. Boys did most of the tree decorating. Much quicker and less stressful than previous years.

KIDS' STUFF

I have successfully replicated this study at home, and can attest to its reliability and validity.

An ethnographic study in Madrid charted the gradual “take over” by the child (accoutrements like toys, furniture, and special foods, and the removal of “dangerous” or breakable items) of the domicile, leaving less and less “adult” territory (Poveda et al. 2012).'

The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings by David F. Lancy 📚

Both boys are staying at home today. Big kid bounced into school yesterday after recovering from two days of fever, cough and sore throat, but didn’t eat his lunch. Think he’s just tired. Little kid has a raging temperature, but eating ok.

Public concerns over remediating the toxicity of the land… have not been addressed in the revised plans…. “no details have been provided” on the proposed remediation strategy.

Brighton Gasworks developer changes plans to include affordable homes

WASHED UP

✅ Made breakfast and packed lunch for Kid A.
✅ Dropped Kid B at nursery 😭.
✅ Dropped Kid B at school.
✅ Collected kids' clothes from store.
✅ Listened to the end of The AbsoluteLee podcast and the start of The Prince of Aberystwyth while sitting in traffic.
✅ ☕ and breakfast.
✅ Prepared chilli con carne.
✅ Work call.
✅ Unblocked bath drain.
✅ Received grocery delivery.
✅ ☕.
✅ Washed up…

Making pizza today, so defrosting some fresh yeast.

Meantime, it’s breakfast. Egg and home fries for me. Weetabix for the little one, and bagel for the big one.

Big one is in the bathroom feeling nauseous because of the smell of smoked paprika.

ABANDON ALL HOPE

I reported an abandoned car to my housing association.

It’s been left in our little communal car park since the middle of last month, taking up a neighbour’s parking space.

It’s got no tax or MOT.

I previously reported it to the police, who got back to me to say “it’s not of interest” to them, and to my local council, who have apparently done nothing. Presumably because it’s not classed as being on a public road.

Let’s hope the HA removes it.

STRAWBERRIES FOR PIGS?

Little did we know at the time, but these little strawberries were usually engulfed in a toxic plume of benzene, naphthalene, and god only knows what else.

Sensibly, the wife refused to eat them.

We later discovered that official planning documents for the nearby old gasworks, which was being dug up in the open air for new homes to be built on the contaminated land, stated that no vegetables should be grown on the land. Ever!

Ealing Council Leader Julian Bell publicly blamed 'the wrong kind of wind', and – quite possibly – privately blamed 'fucking moaners'. All the while racking up over £30,000 in declared gifts and hospitality from developers including Berkeley Group, who were digging up the gasworks land.

Our soon-to-be local ward councillor and (ex-)Head of Planning Peter Mason knew all about the dangers (he tells us on Twitter) from the contaminated land back in 2009 when he campaigned against its development along with our MP Virendra Sharma (who said the development would be 'a disaster environmentally').

Yet no one told people living nearby to expect to be gassed in our own homes and gardens during the three month heatwave that was shortly to arrive.

In fact, Ealing Council announced on Twitter that the odours, while 'unpleasant', were 'not harmful to health' would be 'gone in a few days'.

I later discovered that there is scientific evidence that some people with Asian and African heritages are genetically more vulnerable to very serious and sometimes fatal health conditions from inhaling naphthalene, a fact acknowledged (although later denied, despite the published evidence) by Public Health England at a packed public meeting in July 2019.

No one told us.

Ealing Council, despite being fully aware of the potential dangers to health (and to the environment) failed to carry out any kind of Equalities Impact Assessment, and only helped Berkeley Group to rush through the decontamination process to maximise their profit from Crossrail in Southall.

Profit over people. Labour Council. Our lives didn't matter to them.

Now, we are being asked to believe that our MP (who has begun making the right noises two years too late – what happened to the nearly 1,000 signature petition I gave you in 2018 Mr Sharma?) cares and is on our side, and that our local ward councillor cares and always has done. Only Bell is – unusually for him – honest enough not to suddenly pretend he gives a shit about anyone but himself and looking after his own family.

At the packed public meeting in 2019, which our local ward councillor chaired, he and Bell refused to declare their financial interests with Berkeley Group, refused to let me speak with the microphone so that people couldn't hear that the Council, Berkeley Group, the Environment Agency and Public Health England had all colluded to cover up the real level of toxic and carcinogenic air pollution – that it was consistently above legal limits and rising – by manipulating, removing, and presenting the air quality data in such a way as to make it look like it was mostly within legal limits.

At the same meeting, our MP arrived late, mostly unseen, sat silently at the back of the room, and left early, mostly unseen. At the same meeting, a strangely truthful Bell admitted that he had 'known about the nuisance, the BAD nuisance, for two and a half years'! Yet nothing could be done.

Now Peter Mason, free from his constraints as Head of Planning after resigning following his failed coup attempt to take the leadership from Bell last year, is telling us that something could and should have been done, yet all of them remained silent and did nothing for years.

Unbelievable!

HOW I CAUGHT COVID

I tested positive for coronavirus yesterday.

I started to feel unwell – like I had flu – on Sunday afternoon. After a night felling too hot and too cold, Monday morning I had a temperature of 38.3°C.

I went to my local walk-through testing clinic later that afternoon.

It was a self-test. If I'd known, I would have ordered a test-at-home kit, although I wouldn't have got my result as quick.

I couldn't do the throat swab as it made me want to throw up. The nasal swab was faintly pleasurable.

• • •

The walk-through experience was generally quite anxiety-provoking. I can't wear my glasses or hearing aid while wearing a mask, so found it stressful trying to follow instructions. The testing marquee itself, for all the hand gel, seems like as good a place as any to catch covid.

In eleven months, I've been out to the supermarket maybe three times, the pharmacy the same, to the park occasionally. During the summer, we visited my mother-in-law after she had recovered from covid.

I took my six year old to and from school every day up until the Christmas holidays, and that is the last direct contact any of us as a family have had with other human beings.

• • •

So, it's a bit of a mystery how I caught the infection. The most likely source I can think of is our communal stairwell to our flat, which we share with our next door neighbours and their visitors, posties, delivery drivers.

When the pandemic began, we always used to wear a mask to go out, but we stopped doing that (and got out of the habit) in the summer when infection rates were low. I had still been wearing a mask to bring our grocery deliveries in, but not when I put the rubbish out....

A SUCCESSFUL HOME DELIVERY AND THE LOCKDOWN/LOCK-IN.

My second son was born late Saturday night (what would normally have been my beer night) two weeks ago, after a short, but intense, labour.

He was delivered at home by two brilliant midwives, who were fully protected courtesy of customised #tinap bin bag aprons, unused clean air protest dust masks, and disposable gloves my wife stocked up on back in February when – without any scientific advice whatsoever – she somehow accurately foresaw the current coronavirus global pandemic somehow reaching the UK's shores (and airports). Practising prudent use of valuable PPE supplies, the midwives wore their own prescription spectacles to protect from splashes to the eyes. (This is, of course, not true. They had NHS supplied aprons, surgical masks, and gloves.)

Home delivery

Now, we've had our groceries, pizza and most other household and personal items delivered to our home, rather than dealing with the stress of actually going out and having to interact with other people, for years, so a home delivery of our new son might have seemed like an obvious choice.

But a home birth was definitely Plan B, and only came to be Plan A due to coronavirus related issues with hospital birth and childcare arrangements for our nearly six year old, which now favoured delivery at home.

Preparing for birth

My boss had told me a few days prior that 'home births are great, because you can make a cup of tea'.

So, I stocked up on tea bags, and prepared myself mentally and physically for the big day by repeatedly ignoring my wife's pleas to listen to her hypnobirthing mp3s on the expected role of the 'birthing partner' (whatever that is), and getting through the last of my beer stockpile in anticipation of several years of enforced sobriety (in order to deal with nighttime and next morning emergencies).

I'm just thankful we never got around to implementing my boss's idea for a work appraisal, because his multi-tasking expectations are clearly way beyond my capabilities.

Labour of birth

While I fully accept that I had the easiest job on the night (bar my nearly six year old, who thankfully slept through it all in the adjacent bedroom), I was very pleased the main bit was over relatively quickly (three hours) as my right arm and hand were getting tired.

To ease the pain of contractions, and in the absence of any pain relief other than 'gas and air', my wife insisted (on pain of death) that I massage her lower back for two minutes every three minutes.

In between massages/contractions, I had to top up her glass of filtered water and hold it to her lips for her to drink.

Birth

When the baby's head came out, slowly, I remember thinking it was weirdly like watching a picture coming out of a printer.

When he was out, I immediately noticed his testicles seemed abnormally large, the size of giant tea bags. (Turns out they were swollen with fluid.)

'He's a boy, he's definitely a boy!' I said.

I could have done with some gas and air myself at this point.

After birth

My wife has been pretty amazing through it all. I don't know how she copes with the lack of sleep, although I'm doing my best to make sure she gets a couple of hours whenever she can when she's not busy feeding baby.

I have done a few nappy changes. Son no. 1 is always delighted whenever his little brother pees all over me, which was really his main reason for wanting a little brother in the first place.

Lockdown/Lock-in

We're mainly homebirds, so the lockdown/lock-in has not been too bad for us. And we're lucky to have had everything we needed, including toilet paper, flour, use of our communal garden and area where we live for exercise, sunshine, unusually fresh air, and seeing red kites and egrets flying over, among other lesser spotted wildlife.

My eldest lad has suffered the most, as he misses his school routine and friends, which is compounded by his not realising that he would no longer be the centre of attention now his little brother is here.

SOUTHALL UNDER SIEGE: THE NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL

‘A lack of scrutiny,’ says John Freeman, Regulatory Services Officer at Ealing Council.

He’s talking about lessons to be learned from the council’s response to the new asphalt plant built in neighbouring Hillingdon borough in 2014.

‘We didn’t expect there to be so much odour from a new building, or so many complaints.’

Moving swiftly on.

Oppressive odour

The highly contaminated old gasworks site in Southall has been kicking up a stink, too.

Carcinogenic benzene and naphthalene, among a cocktail of polyaromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and particulates large and small, are in the air.

‘The odour is oppressive,’ says Damian Leydon.

There are twenty or thirty people in the room.

No one bats an eyelid.

Upset residents

Damian is the Operations Director at 'Southall Waterside', as the gasworks site is being marketed.

It's wedged between the grand union canal, Yeading Brook and Minet Park to the north-west of the site, and two of the twenty percent most economically deprived council wards in England. Southall Green to the south, and Southall Broadway to the north and north-east.

‘The last thing we want to do is upset residents,’ says Damian.

It’s a bit late for that.

Please stop

Damian previously worked as the Construction Manager on Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in Somerset, and the Athletes Village at the 2012 London Olympics.

Presumably, there were no carcinogenic leaks, oppressed, or upset residents there.

Three times I ask Damian, ‘How many residents are you prepared to upset before you will stop?’

No answers

As for almost every question that night, at Ealing Council’s Air Quality Scrutiny Panel meeting in September 2018, there is no answer.

The meeting concludes, and later the ‘minutes’ are published, but such minutiae do not make the cut.

Was I at a different meeting?

The final report of the ‘scrutiny’ panel, six months later, reads as if the problem is in the past, finished, with yet more ‘lessons to be learned’ (and immediately forgotten).

Friends with benefits

As I leave the meeting, I see Damian having a cosy-looking chat in the corridor (of power) outside the meeting room with Julian Bell, Ealing Council's Leader.

Councillor Bell sat through the two hour meeting in silence.

I ask Julian if he’s booking his holiday in Cannes?

The south of France resort hosts the annual MIPIM property developers’ ‘booze and hookerfest’ (as Private Eye magazine calls it).

Julian is a regular attendee, all expenses paid for by Damian’s employer Berkeley Group, despite claiming to be teetotal. Peter Mason, my ward councillor, is a new attendee. He is not teetotal.

‘If my son gets cancer because of this, you better not stand so close to me,’ I say to Leydon.

He rolls his eyes.

‘David, don’t let’s make this personal,’ says Bell.

We can't breathe!

For two and a half years, my family, my neighbours and friends, have been harassed, attacked, and gassed in our own homes and gardens.

Our children have been forced to breathe ‘stinky’, poisonous air in their school playgrounds, and in our public parks.

We have been laid under siege through three hot summers, including last year’s extended heatwave.

Despite many repeated requests to stop, Damian’s uncovered, unenclosed cesspit of decontamination of a hundred years of toxic waste continues unabated.

Good neighbours

‘Be a good and respectful neighbour,’ says Councillor Mason, at the ward forum.

‘It’s unpleasant’ we are told. ‘It will clear in days, and it’s not harmful to health,’ Ealing Council namelessly tweeted. In June 2017.

Round and round we go.

Is this corrupt?

‘It’s the wrong kind of wind,’ claims Bell.

‘It’s not our responsibility, it’s the Environment Agency.’

‘It’s not us, it’s Public Health England.’

‘I’ll phone Julian and get him to put a councillor on it for you,’ Tony Pidgley, founder and chair of Berkeley Group tells us.

“Cash. Always cash.” (Tony Pidgley)

We started a campaign. Clean Air for Southall and Hayes. CASH for short.

‘I DO NOT TAKE CASH! I DO NOT TAKE CASH!’ is our MP Virendra Sharma’s frankly bizarre opening statement, shouted at us when we go to meet him.

What’s going on?

When is remediation NOT remediation?

Back to the future with John Freeman.

I email John to ask him when remediation of the soil (the cleaning of the contaminated land) is due to be completed. It’s the excavation, the turning, the moving of the toxic waste that has laid at rest for fifty years or more that we’re told is likely to be the main source of the odour nuisance and air pollution.

‘March 2019. It’s finished already.’

‘But it still stinks.’

‘Did you leave the cooker on?’

‘But I’ve seen the planning documents where it says remediation is scheduled to be completed in 2038.’

John consults his colleague, James Potter, Ealing’s Contaminated Land Officer, whose post was initially funded by none other than Berkeley Group.

A very simple explanation as it turns out.

‘The remediation for the next nineteen years is, in a sense, NOT remediation.’

Berkeley bribes?

Then there is the fact, confirmed (and denied) by Public Health England, that the majority Asian and African population of Southall, due to genetic factors, have an increased risk from exposure to naphthalene.

And then there’s Berkeley Group's track record of paying off their former finance director to keep quiet about allegations of bribery and corruption at the top of the company.

Understandably, we doubt the veracity of their own reports of the air quality monitoring data recorded by their business partner, data which they refuse to share with us.

Enough is enough.

Stop the work at the gasworks site while it is made safe.

Stop poisoning Southall.

Please donate to our legal campaign for justice: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/cleanairforsouthallandhayes/

Wife says we should have named our cat Bjork.

Because she’s small, cute and makes funny noises.

BONFIRE OF THE POTATOES

Abstract: Everyone needs good neighbours. Tags: Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes, neighbours

On Saturday night, I shared a bonfire - in honour of the last person to enter the UK Parliament with honest intentions - with three Bolivians (all of whom have jobs, and at least one of whom has a cat), a Pole, a Catalan, an Irishman, several English people (one of Asian extraction and one born in Africa), a Roman candle or two, a Chinese lantern, twelve Lincolnshire sausages, some French’s American mustard, a large bag of pomme de terres of Peruvian ancestry, and a guy that looked like Frank Sidebottom.

Oh, and - long-time readers of my blog who have not yet required a psychotherapeutic intervention will be pleased to note - some onions.

The onions went down particularly well. I fried them myself. They were so good, people asked me ‘How did you make them?’. ‘I fried them,’ I said. Did I sweat them, or cook them slowly? Not deliberately. There was a lot of them. No, I have never made French onion soup.

I also cooked the sausages. All I did was put them under the grill and turn them over occasionally, in between supping hot mulled wine in our neighbours’ garden and nipping back across the close to knock back some warm English ale and make sure our house wasn’t on fire. Unfortunately, that’s also when they burned FrankGuy. So, sorry, no pics. (I also conducted a thought experiment about making a vegetarian alternative to sausages.)

One of the Bolivians wrapped the pomme de terres in tin foil and buried them in the burning embers of the bonfire to cook while a committee of English people tried to work out how to set the Chinese lantern alight. The token environmental activist present complained that setting a Chinese lantern alight wasn’t very environmentally friendly, and to be honest, I had some sympathy with her. Still, we were getting drunk, and this Chinese lantern was going up, one way or another. And up it went.

Perhaps the launching committee might have considered the location of the launchpad - well, actually, they did. ‘There’s a park five minutes walk from here,’ I said. ‘We’re not going there,’ they said. So, finally, we lit and launched the lantern in the close, and it rose up and up. Up and straight into the tree. Where it stayed, burning away in amongst the damp Autumn leaves. It’s still there now.

We burned some more pallets on the fire and then dug out the apples of the earth with a spade. The foil came off some of them in the process, to reveal glowing red potato coals within. Someone expertly cut the spuds in half and applied butter to the hot flesh, and passed them around with napkins and spoons. It was the best tasting potato I’ve ever had.

UNITED, BORN AND BRED: SUPER GLUE MACARI

The only United match I’ve been to in recent years was last season’s FA Cup tie at home to Spurs, courtesy of E.on’s sponsorship and their Family Football initiative. I went with a couple of my ‘clients’ from work, had a great road trip and fantastic all-round experience. One’s a Spurs fan, and I know he felt a mixture of joy and anxiety sat in amongst all the United fans (even in the Family stand) when Spurs went 1-0 up. But both were amazed by the genuine friendliness and good-natured humour of the locals as we mingled around outside the stadium before kick-off. I’m pleased to say that both are working or about to start work now. I really believe that going to this match (and we also went to Wembley and White Hart Lane) helped to put a bit of the spark back into their lives, to begin to believe and to hope again. The Theatre of Dreams, indeed!

I went to a few games in the ’90s when I was working in Manchester, mostly European nights, which then weren’t that well supported. I remember seeing David Beckham play one of his first games and you could see right away that he was a special talent. Before that, I saw Roy Keane when he was still at Forest. I think he scored a hat-trick at Bolton (where I was studying) and he was another one that you could see was on another level, right away. My favourite game in the 90’s, though, has to be Sheffield United away in a midweek game. We won 3-0, fabulous counter-attacking stuff and fantastic goals from Cantona, Hughes and Sharpe!

Back to the late 70’s again, my dad took me to see United get walloped 4-0 at OT by Cloughie’s Forest and I saw the 3-5 thrashing we received at the hands of West Brom, not to mention the 0-0 versus Wolves with George Berry. We were frigging crap a lot of the time, occasionally brilliant, but never consistently good enough.

I have a lot to thank my dad for. Thanks, Dad! He got me a Subbuteo set one Xmas and meticulously painted on the United colours, numbers and even facial hair of the players. I was gutted when my ickle Lou Macari broke both legs and he was never the same player again despite being able to return for the next match thanks to a tube of superglue!

The best thing about all of this, though, is being able to immediately rebut all the ABUs1 who, when I tell them who I support, start their tired old accusations of glory-hunting, London Reds, etc. I started watching United when they were at their lowest ebb (in terms of league status) since they became popular worldwide. I’ve personally endured almost twenty of the “years of hurt” growing up watching those other reds (funny how so many of the kids I went to school with in Lincolnshire were Liverpool fans) win year after year with just a few crumbs of comfort coming our way in the FA Cup. Both my mum and dad were and still are ardent United supporters and if it wasn’t for them I’d probably be a Mariner or worse!

So, thanks, mum and dad, for uniting and ensuring that I was born in Stretford General!

RED MISSED: HOW STEWART HOUSTON AND GORDON HILL MADE ME ANGRY AND DEPRESSED

United’s FA Cup tie with Wolves last weekend and Auntie’s ‘flashback’ (Rio Ferdinand?), reminded me to finally get around to posting a few of my own memories, originally prompted by George Best’s sad demise in November.

George had quit United long before I can first remember watching them. But Best remained an important part of my United life - the school chant was “Georgie Best, Superstar, He walks like a woman and he wears a bra!” - and Dad would always remind me that whatever “my” United did they were never as good as Best, Law an Charlton and the rest of Busby’s Babes.

I can see what he meant, now! And he did concede that watching Cantona, Kanchelskis and Giggs at their peak was probably just as exciting.

Anyway, 1974-5 season was my first, when United were in the old League Division Two. I didn’t understand the significance of the different divisions then, just enjoyed the BBC’s and Yorkshire TV’s occasional match coverage when we took on the regional challengers of the time - the big guns of York City, Rotherham United, Hull City and Sheffield Wednesday, if my memory serves me.

That year we won the D2 title and returned to the top division.

We then got to three out of the next four Cup Finals (when that meant something), winning just once (but against Treble-chasing Liverpool).

Six years after we had won the European Cup with Best, Law, Charlton and the rest we had teams comprising (as I remember them):

1 Alex Stepney, then Paddy Roche, then Gary Bailey
2 Alex Forsyth, then Jimmy Nichol
3 Stuart Houston, then Arthur Albiston (who popped up on Five Live recently)
4 Gerry Daly, then Brian Greenhof, then Sammy McIlroy
5 Brian Greenhoff, then Gordon McQueen
6 Martin Buchan (c)
7 Steve Coppell
8 Sammy McIlroy, then Jimmy Greenhoff
9 Stuart Pearson, then Joe Jordan
10 Lou Macari
11 Gordon Hill, then Mickey Thomas
12 David McCreery, then Ashley Grimes

Stepney was a legend, the last of Sir Matt’s European Champions. Bailey was talented - I remember a couple of full-stretch diving saves he made in the 5-3 home defeat by West Brom….Houston was the first person I’d ever heard tell someone else to fuck off. That he did it in response to baiting from a total stranger on the terraces was even more startling to me then.

Ever since I always had a sense that Houston was quite evil. I’m sure he isn’t! It reminds me, too, of the televised live England game when Ray Wilkins told the (Uruguyan?) ball boy to “give me the fucking ball”. Not to mention when Eric jumped into the crowd feet first!

McIlroy was ‘the last of the Busby Babes’ (probably also ‘the new George Best’), but never quite managed to live up to it, despite being a great servant to the club. I was really sad when he had to leave not long after Bryan Robson and Remi Moses arrived a few years later. Not long before he moved on he scored a fantastic solo goal against Wolves.

Buchan was the ever-dependable rock and heartbeat of the team. Scored a couple of last minute
equalisers, drives from outside the penalty area, one at home to Everton?

Coppell had an economics degree apparently. Probably would make a good manager one day…. Career cut short by injury.

Pearson was an up-and-at-them, no fear, old-fashioned centre forward, replaced by Joe Jordan, an up-and-at-them, no fear, old-fashioned centre forward with no front teeth. Wonderful!

Macari was the mischief-maker-in-chief, apparently ran a chip shop outside the ground and provided the role model for free-scoring (Celtic) strikers to sign for United, dry up and move back into midfield….

Gordon Hill’s demise was a source of childhood grief for me, which even now I find difficult to understand. Lee Sharpe followed suit more recently. Thomas was a cheeky-chappy, work-hard, play-hard type with silly hair.

McCreery was our not-so-supersub and Grimes was never a United player, surely?

Which brings me back to the current team/squad. Who are the Ashley Grimeses of today? Van der Sar looks a bit like Paddy Roche, but so did Roy Carroll. We need a world class keeper, still.

Gary Neville will be looking forward to the Liverpool rematch in the Cup, no doubt!

Wes Brown might still come through as genuine class, but realistically he’s always going to be a squaddie. Same applies to Mikael Silvestre. Gabriel Heinze has been missed and I expect he will partner Rio in central defence next season, that’s if Patrice Evra comes through at left back.

Then there’s Vidic, O’Shea, Richardson, Bardsley….

Who will replace Roy Keane? That’s probably the wrong question. Football’s a team game and the best teams don’t rely on one player, but on individuals gelling as units within the team. United at their best could win without Keane (and his central midfield ‘unit’ partner Scholes, as they did in Barcelona) or Cantona or Beckham.

As a TV-highlights-and-live-radio-only kind of fan I’ve seen and heard Alan Smith, Darren Fletcher, John O’Shea all do well in there. Let’s hope Scholesy can return and even that Giggsy is allowed to play out his last years through the middle.

Out wide we have Ronaldo, Park, Solskjaer and Richardson - we need reinforements there, too.

Up front we look strong with Rooney, Ruud, Saha (when fit) and Rossi, although there’s always room for improvement.

What’s our first XI look like now? I don’t think Sir Alex knows, which is half the problem. Mine, assuming everyone is injury-free:

1 Howard - may as well give him his second chance, now
2 Neville - no brainer (the choice, not Gary)
3 Heinze (leave him at full back for now)
4 O’Shea (I’d like to see him given a run in the ‘holding’ role)
5 Ferdinand (with O’Shea holding the defensive cover in midfield this would free up Rio to be more adventurous)
6 Brown (he’s fit, playing well, give him a run)
7 Ronaldo (just stick with him)
8 Rooney (start him wide left, but let him play wherever he sees fit like Eric did)
9 Saha (start as central striker)
10 Van Nistelrooy
11 Giggs (central midfield role, playmaker, can swap with Rooney and Saha
12 Scholes (back up for Wayne or swap with Saha or Ruud for a less gung-ho approach!)

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2nd XI:
1 Van der Sar
2 Bardsley
3 Evra
4 Fortune
5 Vidic
6 Silvestre
7 Park
8 Fletcher
9 Smith
10 Rossi
11 Richardson
12 Solskjaer
13 Pique

Did I miss anyone?