The Chronicles of Ostrick ....

[Kaz]

Another fun read Ossie

As an aside my sister lived in Yeading for a year or two when first married, blooming noisy and right next to Heathrow!

[TheOstrich]

28/01 – following last weekend’s weather-related problems, it’s remained very cold down here in the Vale, and it was no surprise that Tuesday evening’s game at Gillingham Town was postponed. Still, one bonus has been the sighting of a small number of redwings, a thrush-like bird and winter migrant, grubbing around under the trees at the entrance to our country park, and much more spectacularly on Thursday morning, a snowy-white heron-like bird flapped languorously over the road in front of the car as I drove back home from the town and flopped down on the banks of the River Stour. I had a vague inkling that this could have been an egret, and duly confirmed it via the excellent RSBP website. Apparently they established themselves along the south coast in the late 1980’s and first bred in this country in 1996 in Dorset. There are a few hundred breeding pairs in the country, some around Poole Harbour, but in the winter, according to the website, there’s an influx of visitors from the continent, where of course it has also been extremely cold of late, and then you do see them further inland (we’re around 35 miles from the coast). They’re slowly spreading north, year by year, so keep your eyes open!

On Friday, however, the temperature rose a bit and today dawned reasonably bright and sunny, so it was off in a northerly direction this week, to Bremhill View, home of the Lilywhites - a rather strange nickname as Wiltshire club Calne Town play in black and white stripes. The easiest way to get there seemed to be to head up to Melksham and turn right, but first one has to navigate Trowbridge, the centre of which gets pretty congested. However, there is a relief route that avoids the town, signposted off the A361 in Southwick, and as you turn to follow this deviation, there your problems begin …….

Firstly, that signpost pointing you eastwards at Southwick is about the only signpost on the whole damn route. In fact, the next most noticeable directional sign is a finger-post pointing down a minor road off to the right that says (I kid you not):
“Scotland
Ireland”
…. two local hamlets, but not entirely a confidence booster that you’re going in the right direction.

Carry on, and you will inexorably finish up where you do not want to be, which is either (a) on the outskirts of Westbury, where there is a roundabout conveniently placed to enable you to conduct a U-turn and go back the way you were coming from (I wasn’t the only car doing this today!! ), or (b) totally lost in the middle of the voluminous White Horse Business Park. On this occasion, I excelled myself by managing to achieve both options (a) and (b). I don’t know about “Lost in Translation” starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannsson, they should remake it and call it “Lost in Trowbridge” . And anyone managing to transverse that relief road, without deviation or repetition as they say in “Just a Minute”, deserves a Duke Of Edinburgh’s Award Badge as an absolute minimum.

I eventually pulled up in the car-park at Calne Town around 1:30 to find the turnstile already manned. There’s the “Bremhill View Social Club” next to the ground which I assumed was the football clubhouse, but the chap on the gate said, no, it’s not, the council have reclaimed it from the football club, so they use the other club 50 yards up the road. This turned out to be the “North Star Club” and I was warmly welcomed outside the entrance before being ushered in to find a packed throng in the bar. It thought it was pretty thriving, despite no BT Sport soccer on the widescreen, and it was only after poking round the room for a bit and alighting on a table of free refreshments and printed sheets that I suddenly realised I’d gate-crashed a wake! Now the Ostrich is an Honourable Bird, and not even he would help himself to such free largesse in the circumstances, but he did grab a “programme” before sidling back out the door – where it had inconveniently started raining! Ossie then blagged his way into the members-only Bremhill View Social Club and perched on a stool to watch Wolves managing to thwart Liverpool in the early televised FA Cup game.

Calne Town are one off the bottom of the table and were today hosting the third placed club Cheddar, alias The Cheesemen . I may have over-panicked about teams from this league being relegated down into County Leagues, as scuttlebutt apparently is that there are no teams in a position to come up; none have the relevant ground grading. So there could well be no teams being relegated at all. A pretty even game ensued, Calne taking the lead on 18m with a tap-in from a right wing cross, and holding off Cheddar until the 71m when a home defender got a foot to a cross and unfortunately diverted it away from his keeper and just inside the post. The game finished in a welter of bookings as both teams tired on a pretty heavy, muddy pitch, but it was an entertaining affair, nevertheless; plenty of chances and goalmouth action. The only other noteworthy item to report was the sighting of the First Ice-Cream Van of the Year, passing outside the ground after 84m!

Western League Division 1 (Level 6): Calne Town 1 Cheddar 1
Admission £3, excellent programme £1, raffle £1, cream of vegetable cuppa-soup and pasty from the hatch £2.50, J2O in the club £1.60, canvas Calne Town FC tote bag £2.50 , attendance 54.

[Ally]

And now I want a pasty!

Great read Ossie!

[Kaz]

Ossie!!!!

Wow @ seeing the egret

[victor]

good report Ossie

[cromwell]

We haven't seen any egrets or redwings up here Os, but we have been visited by Waxwings.

The wake! Oh dear! Reminds me of the time MrsC and I went to a wedding evening do in a massive country house. We'd been there half an hour before we realised there was more than one wedding do going on in the place, and we were in the wrong one!

Great report, as ever.

[TheOstrich]

The pasty was rather nice; actually I had two .....

LOL @ the wedding debacle, Crommers.
I saw there was a bit in the papers re waxwings coming in from Scandinavia a few days back; apparently flocks of them strip all the berries from your bushes and then move on ...... they said they might be spreading south but we're probably too far west for them.

[Kaz]

Cromwell

[JoM]

We took John to Old Trafford last night. We have swipe cards to get in so our 'tickets' are added electronically but John had to ave a paper ticket. I got £5 member discount off it and the price after discount was printed on it. I told him that it was the full price and that it he'd got to take a fiver off it.
Traffic meant we didn't get into the stadium until 7.50 for the 8pm kick off so didn't have time to go to Tesco for a meal deal so had to buy something inside.
Two steak pies, a large hotdog, two packets of Walkers (the slightly larger bag), a kingsize Twix, two bottles of water and a bottle of Coke. £20.

Joe is finally turning into a right old moaner like his mother. Not just about the team but the support. A lot are tourists. They can be spotted wearing half and half scarves, which are banned from several pubs near the ground. If you don't know, half of the scarf is in the colours and badge etc of the home team and the other half is for the away team, with the date of the fixture on it. Looks like two scarves have been cut down the middle and stitched together, but sold by the scarf sellers around the ground as a souvenir. Take the Chinese fella in front of us who spent more time filming the away support on his phone than watching the game. The group of Chinese taking selfies every few minutes with the match going on behind them. The Zlatan fangirls from Sweden a few rows in front who screamed and waved a homemade large banner/sheet with his name and some hearts on it whenever he came near.
Joe whinged about our support for a good half hour afterwards.

[TheOstrich]

Two steak pies, a large hotdog, two packets of Walkers (the slightly larger bag), a kingsize Twix, two bottles of water and a bottle of Coke .....

Master O is down from London on furlough at the moment. I read this list out to him and he immediately said £25. He then went on to say £40 if you were at Wembley ....

Re the tourists, I remember a few years back now being invited by a mate to Burton Albion's ground for a Women's International friendly, England vs Japan (1-1 draw). Japan were the world champions at the time. The crowd consisted of the Sheffield Wednesday Supporters drum band, about 4,000 teenage girls from local schools all armed with vuvuzelas, a few bemused locals, us, and a horde of Japanese tourists. Although the match was being played out in front of us, the Japanese were all watching it (and recording it, I assume) through their smart tablets. It was pretty weird sitting amongst all these people holding screens up to their faces .....

Never heard of those half-and-half scarves before. I can see it's a souvenir of the game, but I'd rather be old-fashioned and just buy a programme .....

Goalless draw, Jo, wasn't it? ...... Tell your Joe he'd be better off watching Hednesford ...