String fellow

Charlie Aitken, the long-serving Aston Villa defender died yesterday. City fans of my generation will remember his name from our games against Villa in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, he scored against us at Villa Park in a 2-2 draw on 28th August 1965 in the then League Division One.

We already are! Of all the clubs in the top 2 tiers, City are 4th in the yo-yo club league table. Birmingham City (32), Cardiff City (26), Burnley (24) then Leicester City (22) are the top four, the numbers in brackets showing the times each has changed division.

They lost their first game, then won 14 on the trot, so it was 14 wins from their first 15 games, and one of those wins was against Leicester Fosse! They had no interruptions for cup games, unlike City this season.

I know exactly how your friend feels. The problem is that nobody else can ever replace a son's mother, so no matter how well-meaning others are towards the grieving individual, none of them is that one person they really want back. They just have to accept the new reality, which can take weeks or even months. If it takes too long, then 'complicated grief' may have occurred, in which case therapy can be sought.

As this is a science thread on a football forum, here's a fun fact that seems appropriate just here. Q: What's the link between a famous Leicester City defender who often wore the number 5 shirt during the 1960s, and the radioactive element with atomic number 106? A: The name Sjöberg. John Sjöberg was, of course, the defender in question and element 106 is Seaborgium. It was named after the American nuclear physicist Glenn Seaborg, whose family emigrated from Sweden to the USA early last century. Upon arrival, the immigration officials anglicized their name from Sjöberg to Seaborg. Maybe John Sjöberg was distantly related to the Nobel prize winner!

I get the feeling that this expected ground invasion of Gaza isn't going to happen after all. The delay brought about by American shuttle diplomacy plus the threats of escalation from Iran and the difficulty of urban warfare all suggest to me that the Israeli government has decided not to use the Hamas attack as a pretext for what they perhaps now consider too high a risk operation to go through with, despite all the earlier rhetoric.

Let's not forget about the hostages being held by Hamas, probably underground and probably fearing that they'll soon be murdered, and in the most barbaric way imaginable.

Did anyone get stuck today on the M1? When I drove southbound at about 2.00pm towards the M69 turn-off, the northbound side was one massive car-park, with cars in the outside lane parked partly on the central reservation and their occupants standing around.

Supermarkets with two rows of self scanners, only one of which accepts cash payments. If you're waiting to use one of those, someone in the queue of payers behind you is likely to start moaning when you don't move forward to use one of the card only machines instead, if that becomes vacant first. Yesterday, I got a right load abuse from a guy because of this. These shops maybe need to have lines on the floor to usher shoppers into the correct queue, to avoid this issue, even if there is a shop assistant hovering nearby to help out.

Fingers crossed, friggatriskaidekaphobics like me will survive the day today unscathed!

All four episodes are on BBC iPlayer. Having watched them all, I agree that he had an Oedipus complex, maybe brought on by a combination of an absent father and an inability to form any sort of meaningful relationship with anyone of the opposite sex. He also seemed to have an excellent way with words and could make almost everyone believe his lies. The series itself included some scenes which were only included for dramatic purposes, so I found myself wondering which ones were based on reality and which were made up. His death came at the right time for him, as the truth about his darker side was clearly going to emerge sooner or later. Steve Coogan's acting was brilliant, with every Savile mannerism portrayed perfectly.

Ali Khamenei, the Iranian leader, wants to kiss the hands of those who planned all this. Sometimes, I totally despair of so-called humanity.

When I was young, Israel was in the Near East. Did they move it to the Middle East one day without telling us?

The above article talks about a two-state solution to the on-going conflict. This isn't what Hamas want - they want Israel destroyed and so do their backers in Tehran. Like everyone else, I don't know the answer, but murdering 250+ civilians at a music festival seems utterly pointless both from a strategic and propaganda point of view.

...and the once very large populations of Jews living elsewhere in North Africa and the Middle East until Israel was created, were also made refugees or met a worse fate, according to this Hansard report from 2019. All that, of course, took place after Hitler tried to exterminate them completely in Europe. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2019-06-19/debates/F75D29CB-C4C8-447D-A028-1FA05CD3594D/JewishRefugeesFromTheMiddleEastAndNorthAfrica

... and got as many points as we had last season with just 2 games remaining.

A ballistic missile killed 51 civilians yesterday at a funeral wake in north east Ukraine. Imo, such atrocities should be given as much publicity as the Prighozin or Sokolov stories.

On the basis that the plural of 'ox' is 'oxen', then surely the plural of 'fox' should be 'foxen'. That would have serious ramifications for not only the club's nickname but also the name of this forum!

We're in the wrong league, as are Luton. Maybe the PL should allow the two clubs to swap leagues - not at the end of the season, but now!

I've got a funny feeling that you don't agree with it!

Lee v. Hunter was fun! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YinglsjO4Kw

Next Sunday, you can guarantee that Brighton will find themselves battling against the referee and VAR, who'll both be giving every close call in Liverpool's favour.

Car dealers who persuade you to pay a returnable £100 reservation fee on a car that you're tempted to buy, and then are extremely reluctant to pay back the fee, if you decide not to go ahead with the purchase. Don't they understand that things like that virtually guarantee that the customer will go elsewhere next time round? Maybe that's what they want - to dissuade what they regard as time-wasters coming back!

We won 5 successive away games in the Championship in 2013/14. That was in late December and January, and like this current run of league wins, it was interrupted by an away defeat in a cup competition. Btw, it's not often that all 7 Lancashire clubs in the top two divisions lose over one weekend.

... or when Liverpool survived a very late 'winner' by Wolves, which was ruled offside by VAR in the FA Cup at Anfield in January. (All five Lancashire clubs losing today is quite rare.)