Come On You Wands!

Back in the 1960s and 1970s (and, I dare say, several decades before then) the county and London cup ties were always played at weekends, with replays generally taking place the following weekends as required. The FA and Amateur Cups also went along those guidelines but, strangely, there never seemed to be any real congestion build-ups with league games; not even in the 1967-68 season, when Cray did really well in the cups and had to play games on both Saturdays and Sundays at Grassmeade at the end of the season.  Because Saturdays were seen as match days proper, most non-League football clubs of the era played full-strength teams; it was also borne out of necessity due to the fact that the first team 'squads' consisted mainly of 11 (only 10 before the introduction of substitutes) outfield players and one goalkeeper. The more affluent amateur sides had a nice array of 'fill-in' players neatly nestled in their Reserves' teams who could be called upon one week to ...

Have you ever heard of the saying "White Rabbits"? It is a two-word phrase that can either be used to greet someone (everyone!) on the first day of every new month, or it can be the first thing someone says when they wake up on those days. My mum always said it, without fail, on the first of each month and the 'tradition' soon rubbed off on me. I still say it to this day. My wife thinks I am bonkers! However, the reference to saying "White Rabbits" goes back to at least the 1940s in war-torn Britain and, unsurprisingly it has its connotations linked to the hope of bringing the person saying it luck and good fortune. It is a belief that RAF fighter pilots and their bomber crews said it as a protective measure prior to flying their missions. Sadly, I guess for them, it didn't always work. Yet, really, does it work? Interestingly, yes... and no. I have been saying "White Rabbits" every first day of a new month since before I was a teenager, which ...

For many years now scientists have been baffling themselves over the possibilities and likelihood of 'time travel'. Some practitioners may even claim to have experienced this elusive phenomenon but they have yet to prove that they have done so. Which brings us back to the ever far-reaching and elusive question: "Does time travel really exist?" Well, I for one would never hazard a guess at this, just as much as I could never rule out the faintest of possibilities, especially when there are so many self-styled 'experts' around ready to ridicule and scoff even the slightest positive — or negative — approach by such lesser mortals as myself... even more so if they get to read the theory that I am about to put forward on the subject! For, you see, I can really claim to have time travelled. Indeed, I managed this 'elusive' feat every working day of my life between 1994 and 2009. I have even time travelled when I went on holiday! You should either now be int...

Can you play the ukulele? According to 'experts' on the internet, learning to play the ukulele is as easy as pie. Then they proceed to run through the chords and strumming actions required to produce something resembling a tune. The problem is, they've no doubt had tons of spare time to practice, practice, practice. When I was a young boy, one of my relatives bought me a ukulele for Christmas. Never having heard of a ukulele before, I naturally thought it was a guitar for a little boy and I fitted that bill precisely. It was only when I heard my parents talking about the uke that I realised it had to be a different musical instrument to a guitar. I couldn't get a decent tune out of it, though, as it emitted a noise that definitely got on my family's nerves! I don't know whatever happened to that ukulele. I think maybe that it may have got 'accidentally' trodden or stamped on by one of my brothers. It wasn't an instrument that I associated too much wi...

I am typing this article on an Asus EeePC netbook computer. “What's one of those?” I hear you ask. I'll explain. Back at the start of the 21st century, some workers for Acer, another computer company, moved away and formed their own company called Asus. Similar names but with differing ideas. By the by, Asus eventually created and marketed a very mini laptop computer. They called it the Asus EeePC 701. For marketing reasons, they later changed the 701 to 4G. We have the 4G version, which is running a lightweight version of Linux from a very small solid state drive (SSD), which (in case you don't know) is a type of hard disk drive without any moving parts and it has a single 512MB RAM stick fitted. Back in the early 2000s, SSDs were yet to catch on. We were all still using mechanical disk drives at the time. This machine, however, can be upgraded to 2GB of RAM or so I am reliably informed. I do have several 2GB sticks of RAM hanging about this house that I've swapped out...

Moving grounds and stadia has, since organised football commenced in the 1870s, been a regular occurence - with some clubs having to 'up sticks' more frequently than others. We should all know by now Cray Wanderers' path to Flamingo Park has been littered with ground moves. Flamingo Park, by my reckoning, is the ninth such ground they have played at since the club formed in 1860. There has been (in no particular order) Star Lane, St Mary Cray Rec (at least twice), Fordcroft, Tothills, Twysden's Meadow, Grassmeade, Oxford Road, (groundsharing at) Hayes Lane and now Flamingo Park. Coincidentally, there are nine letters in the name 'Wanderers', so perhaps Cray were always destined to find their forever home at the ninth attempt. But, apart from the Wands, other clubs over the years have faced a nomadic experience although probably none as severe as Cray Wanderers. One of the furthest moves must be that of Wimbledon FC. Before their controversial move to Milton Keyn...

This is the way I used to prepare and write my articles for the matchday programmes. My fellow article writers in the Cray Wanderers programmes may or may not have had their own ways to reach the same end result, I am sure, as we all studiously brought supporters a varied selection of interesting articles to read. To address the elephant in the room from the very start, I do not use artificial intelligence (AI) to either write my articles, to research my articles or to create graphics that occasionally appeared alongside my articles in the Cray Wanderers programmes.  That is not to say that I haven't dabbled with the likes of ChatGPT; of course I have.  But, I come from an era in which I was taught how to research and compose my written work and to create graphics from scratch, the hard way.  The big concern with using AI to 'write' articles is the potential to breach copyright on existing work. Such use could also be riddled with plagiarism within AI-generated articles....

When my grandad died at Easter in 1968, I was handed his very old Acme Thunderer whistle, along with the message that "Grandad would have wanted you to have it". I was thrilled to bits. From that time onwards, I was 'the kid with the whistle' down our street, which very quickly opened some doors for me in a strange way. No, this is not going to be a "Billy's Boots" type of story, although by saying that I have just come up with a brilliant idea for a short story. Blimey, I surprise myself sometimes! Anyway, back to what I was saying. This is a true story of how I used that whistle before I lent it to my mum to use for her Brown Owl duties and before she promptly gave it away without realising the sentimental significance of it to me and, of how it sort of paved my way following an injury after a freak accident that ended my footballing days.  Try, if you can, to imagine me as a 12-year-old schoolboy. Yes, I was young once. Saddened by the sudden death of...

Have you ever been taken in by any of those 'diet plans' that are advertised with ever more frequency on the commercial TV channels?  The ones I am specifically talking about show a lady attempting to flog her own 'plan' by knocking off a hundred quid and she has women giving their testimonials into the camera while they look radiantly slim. Or, the bloke who claims to be a chef and shows a woman with a perfectly-shaped body talking to the camera (as in, talking to you), about how much weight she's lost since going on the 'plan'.  Neither ads show a 'before' condition, only an 'after' state and they expect we the viewing public to believe it unconditionally, without them providing conclusive proof that they've lost weight by following those diets. For all we know, those ladies could have been and probably were slim to start with. Telling is not the same as showing. The trouble is, those adverts and others like them are only being aimed at...

Have you ever noticed how, the older you get, the faster time seems to fly? Yes, me too. I started watching Cray Wanderers in 1967, not long after I had reached the grand old age of 12 years, yet it seems like only yesterday. I spent most of the 1970s serving as a committee member for the club; that time spent also still seems like yesterday. I can recall both eras with a high degree of accuracy. But, I am no longer a young whippersnapper, I'm just one of those old farts that I and many of my contemporaries used to make fun of. Ageing is a strange phenomenon and one that we couldn't possibly understand or comprehend in our youth. When you are young you think that ageing is what happens to old people; it doesn't occur to any of us when we're young that we will eventually grow old ourselves. To put another slant on time, what you or I experience about it may result in two totally different experiences. Your perception of time may not necessarily agree with my perception o...