Come On You Wands!

Every year, around November or December time, I always look out for a sealed envelope dropping onto our front door mat from the Cabinet Office. Known as a 'sounding letter', the contents of that sealed envelope contain a notification of an award or title in the New Year's Honours List, and the recipient's agreement to accept the honour that is to be bestowed upon him or her. Either acceptance or rejection carries with it the proviso that the details of the list must remain confidential and not revealed until after the official announcement around the end of December. A sort of 'Official Secrets Act' order. Considering why some people have been awarded a knighthood, damehood, CBE, OBE or an MBE over the years, I like to think that I have done more than enough in my seven decades of life on this planet to equal or better some of the awarded efforts of those lucky enough to have been picked, proposed and seconded in the first place. Not everyone, mind, just a few. ...

It is with deep sadness that I have to report the passing of my old friend Doug Alexander. I received the sad news via email on Christmas Eve from Doug's grandson, James. I first met Doug way back in the summer of 1972 when Cray were still playing at Grassmeade. Doug was a member of the 279 Chislehurst football club that was swallowed up by a merger with Cray Wanderers. He arrived on the scene just as the Wands were trying to rebuild the team after the mass walkout of the club's previous players and manager earlier in 1972. John Biddle became manager and Doug became a voluntary behind-the-scenes helper. I last met and spoke with Doug and his daughter Jane at the Aveley game in 2009, when Cray had just been promoted to the Isthmian League Premier Division for the first time. We chatted about old times of the 1970s at Oxford Road. Among other things, Doug used to drive Cray's old Bedford coach to away games and, he was a barman in the clubhouse at Grassmeade while we were sti...

I have just arrived back indoors having been out to post a couple of Christmas cards into neighbours' houses. It took me less than 5 minutes. This year, I only had to deliver two and, I know they will be reciprocated. Last year, I delivered four. Previous years, it was in double figures. So, what's changed? People have changed. And so has the economy. Cards - and especially postage - are no longer the inexpensive option they once were. Neighbours move away and others pass away. That's called 'life', paradoxically. And, of course, we now have smartphones and other gadgets to contact each other by. Every second of every hour of every day of every week of the year. Sending Christmas cards is a dying pastime. Even our posted Christmas cards have dwindled over the years. Six out this year and six in. Only a couple of years ago it was double that. One of our neighbours decided that they are no longer going to send Christmas cards to anybody; at least they made their inten...

Back in 2012, I was sent the following article by long-time Wands supporter, Ian Fordyce. Ian had been a supporter since the mid-1950s and had a wealth of knowledge about our club stored in his head. He was always a very useful source of information to 'tap' about Cray Wanderers and, at the time that I received Ian's email containing this article, I had not long set up the dedicated Cray Wanderers History website.  I agreed with Ian to publish this article on the History site but, after I closed that site, I thought this very interesting piece of work had been lost forever. But then I decided to interrogate my email account and successfully found the message where this article was attached. Sadly, Ian has since passed away after providing the following account, but I believe that his work should live on - especially as it is relevant to the history of Cray Wanderers Football Club. I have supported the Wands since 1955 and I started researching the club history in 1958.  By ...

I have now started to populate the 'From the Archives' page with an ongoing list of my written articles that appeared in Cray Wanderers' matchday programmes between 2010 and 2025. Please be advised that this is quite a slow process, as I have to retype each article before uploading it to this site and there's a fair few of them... Further details about the articles can be found by clicking on the new 'From the Archives' link in the main menu (above).

On Thursday, 11 December 2025, I received an email from Pete Goringe informing me that sadly John Biddle had passed away the previous day. As I was not invited this time by Cray Wanderers to write a tribute in their matchday programme, I have decided to pay my respects to John on this site instead. I first met John Biddle back in 1972. He was about to take over the reins as manager of Cray Wanderers at Grassmeade. He seemed quite an affable kind of bloke and I quickly found out that he would happily do a favour for someone if called upon to do so. John had come from a club called 279 Chislehurst and brought with him the full playing staff of his former team. Bidds didn't seem to mind what duties he undertook while the club was still playing games at Grassmeade. Quite often he could be found serving behind the bar in the old clubhouse. By the time I was voted onto the Cray Wanderers committee, our club had moved to Oxford Road. I dare say that many managers in the same or similar si...

Have you sometimes got to the point where, quite unexpectedly, the external hard drive you bought to give your computer more storage space decides to give up the ghost? What do you do about it? Do you put the drive at the back of a cupboard, drawer or even the wardrobe? Or do you throw it out or take it to the municipal tip? I really hope for your sake that you keep those drives and don't bin the non-workers. Why do I say that? Well, believe it or not, around 99 times out of 100 it is not the drive that's failed but the casing it comes in. Or, rather, the electronics within the casing. If, when you plug the external drive into your computer via the USB port, it does nothing onscreen but the drive's pilot or progress light comes on (generally a red or a blue light) and you hear a purring sound of the drive from within, it's not the hard drive that's failed but most probably the SATA to USB component that is attached to the casing. All your valuable data is probably ...

When I was much younger, in the days when I couldn't attend the Cray Wanderers away games, we never had the internet. Nor did we have local radio stations like Radio Medway (which later morphed into Radio Kent). And that meant we couldn't follow each game on a Saturday afternoon via news bulletins or website updates. There were also no mobile phones or even their immediate predecessors the belt pagers. Unless I knew somebody who had attended an away game, and that was never too likely as a 12-year-old, just how did I learn of Cray's exploits 'on the road'? Well, it was my dad who first 'discovered' the way. He was looking at his Sunday newspaper the day after the Wands had played away to Met Police in the Metropolitan League. In fact, he was looking at the sports pages and, if anyone reading this knew my dad, you would know that the only reason he did that was to check the Pools numbers against his coupon. Other than that, he was not particularly a sporting ...