Four Weddings and a Penalty Shootout

[Ally]

Oooh I love Tuscan bean and tomato soup.

Plan C...

An onion bhaji sandwich?! Never heard of owt like it. Nearly as vomit inducing as a fish finger sandwich. (I know there folks on here that love a FF butty...our Debih in particular) but oh boy, it makes me ill at the thought!

Great read thanks Ossie and it sounds a lovely part of the world you live in.

Pasites off??!!!

[Kaz]

That sandwich! Bahji and sandwich do NOT belong together I love tuscan bean soup too

Ally, the West Country is lovely xx

[cromwell]

Great report Os. Running rugby is lovely to watch; also in winter to sit in the warmth watching the steam rise from two packs of forwards who are considerably warmer than the weather!
Onion bhaji sandwich???
What manner of madness is this?! Lasanga and chips is as exotic as things should get!

I hope your feet have recovered by now.

[TheOstrich]

Yes, that onion bhaji sandwich. Some sort of limited edition offering from the Co-op. Supposedly £2.50 for the pack, (but reduced to £1.50 on the afternoon), so not over-expensive in the normal scheme of sandwiches-to-go - especially at the Co-op who can be pricey beggars at the best of times.

I ate it on the platform of Topsham station, as I had 15 minutes or so to wait for the train. It was a little bit strange to be honest, not unpleasant but it seemed to be basically a salad sandwich smothered in mango chutney ...... 3 stars out of 5!

[TheOstrich]

17/03 - Walking through the town on Tuesday, on my way to pay the balance for the new curtains and blinds, as always I kept an eye open for anything comic I could include in Ossie’s weekly blog . Firstly, I found the War Memorial all fenced off and with “Hazardous Area” signs in prominent view. Then walking past the Church, an old boy accosted me and said “The damn things’ stopped again!” referring to the clock in the belltower, and indeed it had, just like the famous Nuclear Doomsday Clock, at one and a half minutes to midnight. Then, as related in the Café thread, I ran into the police motor-cyclist and had the jocular (if non-committal) exchange regarding the cordoning off of the road on my way home. So - although the War Memorial repairs were due to the frost getting into the coping stones, and the crows had probably started building a nest in the belfry and disrupted the clock mechanism, whilst the road closure, I thought, was no doubt to remove an abandoned car - I had all the material I needed for a short skit about “who needs Salisbury, we have enough drama in Gillingham!”

Hilariously, little did I know at the time that the road closure was indeed Salisbury-related ..... until the news broke later that day – a classic example of life imitating the Ostrich’s art!! And the incident was actually worthy of two pictures and a feature in The Times on Thursday (somewhat eclipsing the 10 second report on the local BBC News).

Mrs O has a friend who, like her, is a “voluntary listener” to kids reading at the local primary school, and all the drama took place outside her house. She was aware of a small police presence when she left home to take her grand-daughter to Sturminster Newton, but by the time she got back, she was greeted by the Army in bio-hazard suits and two of the largest recovery vehicles she’d ever seen! They were removing the tow truck which had been used to impound the Skripel’s car from Sainsbury’s car park in Salisbury, as it had been found the latter apparently was very highly contaminated. And the thing was – the residents were told nothing! No door to door or loudspeaker announcements to keep away. She only found out because her next door neighbour got nosey, happened to know a few of the police and asked what was going on.

As the police had a long wait for the Army to roll up, the neighbour had said they could use his toilet. I reckon the Army will be back next week to impound his loo!

With Wednesday night’s football at Westbury unsurprisingly called off due to waterlogging, attention turned to today, and what should have been a cheeky double at Chippenham RFC, with Chippenham 2nds playing at 12:00 before the first team game, didn’t materialise as their opponents Melksham failed to put in an appearance. Some miscommunication over kick off times was blamed, but in the event, an “home walk over” was officially awarded. The Chippenham 2nd team players looked more than slightly p*ssed off as they’d spent ¾ hour warming up outside in Arctic conditions for nothing! Still, having arrived early, this turn of events enabled Ossie to watch the whole of the entertaining Italy – Scotland rugby international game on the widescreen in the bar, and more importantly, to bag a comfy seat next to one of the picture windows overlooking the main pitch.

This was my second visit to Allington Fields; the ground is situated alongside the A350 bypass, just south of the A420 Bristol roundabout, but to access it, you have to drive down the A420 to the garden centre, turn left, and then a further ¾ mile or so on country roads before you find the entrance driveway down to the spacious car-park, where your admission fee will be extracted by a couple of likely lads by the entrance. The club owns 22 acres of land, with the clubhouse in the middle of the campus alongside a duck-pond (with ducks! ), and I think there’s 4 rugby pitches at a minimum scattered around. It’s not the biggest of clubhouses and the bar area certainly was pretty crowded by kick-off time, but it runs the length of the main pitch touchline, and definitely provided a much warmer viewing platform today than outside, to put it mildly. Allington Fields is completely open and totally windswept; today, the wind-chill factor meant it was indescribably cold. Other than the clubhouse, and a number of scaffolding video platforms, there’s just a discrete manual scoreboard in one corner, and certainly no shelter.

Old Patesians RFC (founded in 1913, and linked to Cheltenham Grammar School) arrived top of the table having lost only one game so far this season. Chippenham were third, and trying to give second-placed Banbury a run for their money. Pats had won the home tie fairly comfortably back in November, but Chippenham had accumulated 965 points so far this season, including a 124-3 whupping of Wimborne, and were looking forward to the contest.

Well, we got a pretty decent game of rugby, despite occasional outbreaks of heavy snow showers, and equally frequent bouts of handbags , one a 10-man melee following which the referee merely addressed both captains, but in the second half he did up the ante and sin-bin one from each side. Chippenham got off to a good start with a 6m converted try after the Pats’ defence had all been sucked into one corner of the pitch, allowing the home No.8 to wander in under the posts virtually unopposed after the ball had been recycled out to him. Chippenham’s Saunders made it 14-0 on 16m, finishing off a superb length-of-field break-out that saw 4 last-ditch Pats’ tackles thwarted by 4 last-ditch Chippenham hand-offs.

Pats opened their account with a 29th minute penalty try, and made it 14-12 before the interval. In the second half, the away forwards really got into their stride, with Chippenham constantly back-pedalling at the scrum and somehow just managing to desperately cling on to possession. They made it 21-12 when Surry latched on to a wildly bobbling cross-field kick which several other players missed, but ominously Pats came back with a push-over try from a 5 metre scrum that was still rapidly accelerating as it crossed the line.

Chippenham made the game safe on 65m when Doggett neatly intercepted a defensive pass to run in unopposed, and in the final minutes, Surry again went over in the corner. Wainwright’s conversion attempt looked to be sailing low and wide, but at the last moment curled in and landed just over the bar to bring up Chippenham’s 1,000th point of the season! Much celebrating in the bar!

South West 1 East (Level 6) : Chippenham RUFC 35 Old Patesians RUFC 17
Admission: £5 non member, including a programme which was mainly adverts but did include some exceptional colour photography.
Refreshments: from the bar, J2O and crisps £3.05 on arrival, but nothing after that as I daren’t risk losing my prime seat in front of the windows ......
Attendance: 49 brave souls around the pitch, plus at least another 60, including the Ostrich, holed up in the clubhouse

[Kaz]

Mick's played against Old Patesians Dunno about the handbags though - quite possibly

Bit that none of the locals were warned about that car!

[Ally]

Great read as usual Ossie although I think this week's report was slightly eclipsed by 'other goings on'.

It sounds chuffin freezin where you were! I look forward to a report which begins with: "in today's lovely sunshine......"

[cromwell]

Sounds like a good game Os, I hope you managed to stay warm, clubhouse or no!

I admire your dedication - no way I'd be venturing out these last couple of days.

[TheOstrich]

24/03 - Ossie's latest instalment is "behind the wall" on the Heath & Wellbeing board .....

[TheOstrich]

08/04 - Time for a rejuvenated Ossie to climb back into the saddle and hit the trail to that old coal mining outpost in the Somerset hills – Radstock Town!

However, I guess the locals were probably more impressed this week with a visit from the Man Engine, which beat the Ostrich to the town by a couple of days! The Man Engine is the largest mechanical puppet ever constructed in the UK, and stands three times as tall as a double decker bus. Like that Diplodocus from the Natural History Museum, it’s on a nationwide tour.

You can see it here:
https://www.somersetlive.co.uk/whats-on ... ril-763473

I think it’s a bit grotesque, to be honest ….

Anyway, this was my first major outing since the flu bug, which all told, lasted about three weeks. I still have an irritating cough (“You’re just irritating, never mind the cough,” says Mrs O ), but it was a warm, if overcast, day today, a fairly leisurely 25-mile each way journey, and the prospect of a stand to sit in this afternoon was also rather welcome, even if Radstock Town’s elderly wooden plank and corrugated iron construction doesn’t have the best of views, due to low-slung horizontal steel cross-beams.

I first visited Southfields at the tail end of last season, and it’s a quirky, attractive ground, perched high up on the north-east side of the town, with the changing rooms way off down by the entrance and a rather eclectic mix of buildings alongside the touchline, the whole affair surrounded by open parkland.

The Miner’s Pit Stop, as the refreshment hatch is known, was closed today due to unforeseen circumstances, but the club ladies laid on a half-time spread in the boardroom - tea in a proper china tea-cup, with a saucer and teaspoon, plus a choice of sandwiches (ham, ham salad, cheese, and cheese ‘n onion), also cakes and slices for a donation. It would have been churlish not to have indulged …… Mind you, it is quite difficult, I found at the start of the second half, to juggle a match-day programme, notepad, stopwatch, pen, Bakewell tart and custard slice …..

The opposition today were a team called Bristol Telephones, newly promoted this season from the Gloucestershire County League. Formed in 1948, they were originally known as Bristol Post Office Telephones Football Club, as they were then a “works team”, an amateur club drawn from Post Office and playing at the Bristol Civil Service grounds. However, when BT was privatised under Maggie Thatcher, the club were deemed no longer part of the Civil Service and were duly evicted from their ground!

This was the first ever meeting of these two teams, according to the programme, although their grounds are only 13 miles apart. The return league fixture, by a quirk of fate, is actually next Tuesday. 4th v 17th in the league before today’s game, but neither side had anything particular to play for, so it was all a rather laid-back affair, certainly in the first half. Telephones took an early 6m lead when Britton forced home a header from a corner, and the away team then defended quite well with a combination of skulduggery and the offside trap. This all fell apart around the half hour mark when Radstock rifled two goals, the first Biddescombe’s low direct free kick from the edge of the area into the corner of the net, and the second seeing Rustell just get onto a right wing cross from Millard and deflect it past the keeper.

Second half play was pretty even, but Telephones were noticeably getting more fractious, and the tackles were going in. There was a fair bit of whinging at the referee, and in the 74m, this culminated in Telephones’ Golding, booked for clattering an opponent, foolishly continue to protest, and the referee, who’d obviously had more than enough by that point , quickly awarded him a second yellow and an early bath! Four minutes later, Rustell converted a right wing cross, hooking it into the roof of the net, and the game concluded with two late penalties in the 87th and 91st minutes, the first a cast-iron award when Marsh was brought down from behind by Graham – only a yellow card, (many, including myself, felt it should have been a last-man challenge red card) - and the second, perhaps a slightly harsh decision, after Biddescombe was brought down on the edge of the area. Rustell calmly converted both.

As I left the ground, an aggrieved Bristol Telephones coach appeared to be having words with the referee. I think the general consensus of spectators around me was that they rather got what they deserved ……

Western League Division 1 (Step 6): Radstock Town 5 Bristol Telephones 1
Admission £3, excellent programme strangely entited "Sounds of the Sea" £1 **, refreshments descrobed above £3.50 donation to club funds, attendance 57.

** Considering Radstock is way inland, this does appear a bit obtuse, but apparently it refers to a song the spectators used to sing back in the 1920's, only nobody these days has any idea how it went!