Come On You Wands!

According to stargazers and astronomers, Venus has long since been believed to be the twin of our own planet, Earth. But, there is one major difference between where we live 'down here' and that brightly shining planet 'up there'. Venus is uninhabitable to humans. Venus is also closer to the Sun than we are, which accounts for its much more increased atmospheric volatility, thus being mostly responsible for its past oceans to boil resulting in a serious greenhouse effect. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when the B-movie style science fiction film genre was peaking, quite a number of films were made with Venus in the title, like "Stranger From Venus", "First Spaceship On Venus", "Zontar, the Thing from Venus" and "Venus Wars". Special effects in such films were nowhere near as polished as they are today but, the makers just had to do the best they could with the limited resources they had at their disposal. However, I am not writing t...

This is by no means a clever new recipe but rather an accidental coming together of five (or six) ingredients to add to pasta, be it tagliatelle, spaghetti, penne or whatever. The beauty of this is in the eye of the beholder's culinary skills. Sort of. You could call it a spagbol alternative. I found out this meal idea quite by experimentation than anything else. I had never read about it, I had never seen it on a TV cookery show, nor had I watched it on a YouTube video. I could claim it was my own invention but I cannot be 100% sure. Maybe someone, somewhere on this planet or even in a parallel universe has come up with the same idea; I just don't know. It is based on the fact that my wife and I found the 'Chicken Tonight' chicken sauce a bit bland when we added it to our prepared chicken pieces and it needed a bit of a kick. So, the next time we had it, I looked around for something to pep the sauce up a bit. That's when I found the Maggi Mexican powder mix. The r...

According to the Isthmian League website, newly promoted AFC Whyteleafe are moving in to Flamingo Park to groundshare with Cray Wanderers next season. They are the re-formed club of the original Whyteleafe that the Wands used to play against in days gone by. AFC Whyteleafe won their promotion to the Isthmian League Premier Division as a result of the Isthmian League South East Division play-offs, beating AFC Croydon Athletic 5-4 on penalties in the final following a 1-1 score line. Considering that it is quite a haul around the M25 between Whyteleafe in Surrey and Cray's ground in Chislehurst, I find the groundshare between the two clubs a little bit surprising, as surely there are clubs with Step 3 ready grounds a lot nearer to the 'Leafe that could have offered a groundshare option. Having said that, Cray Wanderers have always been a helpful lot, most certainly all of my lifetime, so I am not surprised if AFC Whyteleafe put out a 'Mayday!' request and the Wands gladly...

It is with great sadness that I have to report the passing of Del Pullman, one of my fellow ex-article writers for the Wands' matchday programmes. Del was a regular goalkeeper for various local clubs in the 1970s and would pop up in goal occasionally at Oxford Road to face the Cray teams of the time. In his younger years, before his non-League playing days, Del was an avid supporter of the Wands, a position which he came back to after he had hung up his gloves.  I recall that Del also appeared between the sticks for the Wands towards the back end of his playing career. That was when I first met him on a personal basis rather than when I used to try and put him off from behind the goal when he took his goal kicks. Del had a philosophical mind which was often reflected in his article writing and when speaking with him. I guess it is inevitable that, the older I get, the more the long-time friends I have made through my association with Cray Wanderers over the years are likely to no l...

It is a reasonably well-known fact that, Keith Peacock of Charlton Athletic became the first-ever substitute in the English Football League (EFL) to play a part in a game, when he came on to replace injured goalie Mike Rose in the 11th minute, against Bolton Wanderers at Burnden Park on 21 August 1965. At the time, the introduction of only one substitute was permitted per team per match that season, and then only for proper injury purposes. The 1965-66 campaign had started on that day. Tactical substitutions were permitted two seasons later, from the 1967-68 season. Substitutes in the World Cup were not allowed until the 1970 tournament in Mexico. What you might not know, however, is that substitutes were used in matches long before the 1960s. As long ago as 1880, an International match involving Wales and Scotland saw the Welsh team replace an already-named player who had failed to turn up. Technically not an 'off-the-bench' type of substitute but a replacement, and therefore ...

**This post now includes a video which backs up my article. Fellow writers and anyone who reads books and articles are encouraged to read this post to the end and to watch the video when you come to it.** As time goes by, new ways and styles of writing seem to be produced out of thin air. Some of them are good, some of them are reasonable and some of them beggar belief. And it is that last option that I wish to concentrate on here. I am a true believer in researching and writing my own work. The interested reader might consider that some of my stuff is brilliant (how I wish!) while other jottings not so much. I tend to write as I find and as I speak. Sometimes, that's unfortunate for the grammar police to comprehend but, what the heck? My blog site so my rules, as the saying goes, at least that's how it could be viewed and accepted. I try to ensure that my work is readable, enjoyable and thought-provoking. From the feedback I've received over the years, I must be doing some...

Did you know that most football clubs, both in the English Football League and non-League, boasted more than one fanzine during the 1980s and 1990s? Also, according to a fanzines listings website I came across recently, it shows that Cray Wanderers only produced one fanzine, named appropriately enough for the club's Oxford Road days as "What Slope?" yet I also know that there was a second, more prolonged, fanzine called "Cray Chatter". From what I recall from liaising with Pete Goringe and Jerry Dowlen a few years ago, there were only a small amount of issues of "What Slope?" ever published and that "Cray Chatter" somewhat more successfully replaced it and was produced for several seasons. I wasn't around at Oxford Road when either of those two fanzines were introduced but I still experienced the fanzine goldrush thanks to one of my ex-work colleagues, who was a Dover Athletic supporter. I often received the Dover fanzine to read at my le...

It is happening in football more frequently nowadays. Only the Saturday just gone, there was an incident where an English Premier League (EPL) footballer got his marching orders after VAR picked up on the fact that he had 'tugged' at an opponent's hair. But, was it intentional or not (see further reference below)? Currently, as the Laws of the Game stand, committing such an 'offence' is dismissible under the terms of Law 12 which covers fouls and misconduct, even though hair pulling is not specifically mentioned. Now, here's the interesting part. Hair pulling is not actually forbidden in the game of association football. However, those wonderful Laws of the Game changers who rewrite those laws to suit their own aims, the International Football Association Board (IFAB), have decided that pigtail-pulling is an offence punishable by a direct red card and a three-match ban. In one particular incident I watched live on TV recently, VAR got over-excited at such an i...