And who could blame him? …. only two local midweek Wednesday fixtures, Warminster and Sherborne Town, and in due remembrance of last week’s gluttony, as Mr Speaker John Bercow would intone after a Commons vote – “The Pies ‘ave it – the Pies ‘ave it!” 
So armed with plastic fork, our intrepid bird turned up at the refreshment hut at Sherborne Town, this time for a first team Western League fixture vs Bishops Lydeard, only to find – no pies! 
A public enquiry was immediately launched. If I’ve got this right, it transpires that the guy who makes the pies gives 30p profit for each one sold to the club, whereas if the club themselves fire up the chip fryer and serve the usual staple of burgers and hot dogs, they make 50-70p profit per serving. So the pies will only be on sale at Reserves matches, where they don’t expect such a big crowd, and the First Team supporters will get the usual bog standard football fayre. Ossie bought a plate of chips and subsided crossly into a seat in the stand ….. 
The other interesting feature of this match was the referee, Linda Lindskog, who you may recall we met on a couple of occasions officiating in the Dorset Premier League last season, when she had a couple of very good games. Well, she got her promotion to the higher-grade Western League (despite some fitness issues, I gathered), and was in the middle tonight. She had a bit of a nervy start and should have stamped her authority on the game as early as the 5th minute after a minor clash, but didn’t do so. I don’t think the assessor sitting behind me was overly impressed! In a rumbustious game, two of the four goals were own-goals, which tells you all you need to know about the standard of the two defences, and Bishops Lydeard won it 1-3.
Saturday morning, Ossie stepped out of the back door armed with the washing basket and pegs (and ostrich feather whisk to terrorise the hard-spinning Dorset spiders on the rotary line
), to be greeted with a fly-past by the Red Arrows, in arrow formation, right over the house! 
Looking on their website, they were at Sidmouth Regatta yesterday evening, and were to display at a festival at Overton, Hampshire late this morning, so I guess they may have billeted overnight at RNAS Yeovilton, about 15 miles away from us. Quite an unexpected sight!Today’s game featured a team that play in claret and blue and whose club badge features two crossed hammers. Not West Ham, however – Hamworthy United
Hamworthy is at the end of the B3068 which runs down the western side of Poole Harbour, and if I’d driven any further south, I’d have been in the English Channel! In fact, just at the back of the football ground, I could see what appeared to be a modern sculpture comprising two triangular spinnaker-like sails. I thought no more about this until I glanced across to it – and it seemed to have vanished! 
About 10 minutes later, it had reappeared again. Confused, I asked a local. “Oh, that’s Twin Sails,” I was told. “It’s a bridge across the Harbour basin.” And keeping an eye on it, I suddenly saw what appeared to be a single edifice split in two and lower slowly to the horizontal. Quite weird! Here’s a link to Wikipedia:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Sails_Bridge
Hamworthy United play at the County Ground which is also the administrative headquarters of the Dorset County Football Association. It’s a 3G synthetic turf pitch, which is about a year old and cost, I’m told, the best part of half a million quid. It’s still got lots of rubber crumb on the surface which tends to spurt up as the ball bounces. It was a game with a lot of “incident” in it, overseen by a referee who rather took offence at the constant low-level dissent from both sides, and with that and petty fouls, booked at least eight players.
But it didn’t really seem that sort of game. Hamworthy came out with a shoot on sight policy and the Fareham keeper pulled off one excellent diving save before being substituted after 19m, presumably for an injury, but it wasn’t obvious. Fareham had already had an attempt of their own cleared off the line by then. An almighty but fruitless scramble in the Fareham penalty area left one of their defenders needing lengthy attention, and just before the interval, the home keeper pulled off a brilliant save, diverting an effort from Fareham’s James Carrier. The cynic in me was getting resigned to my second 0-0 of the season … 
Eventually, Hamworthy got the breakthrough on 57m when the away keeper spilled a long-range effort, and O’Sullivan tapped in the rebound. Fareham were being worn down and pegged back, and the second goal came after 80m, substitute Rose heading home a right-wing cross. Fareham might feel aggrieved they didn’t get at least a point out of this match, but Hamworthy simply ground out a win today.
Wessex League Premier Division (step 5): Hamworthy United 2 Fareham Town 0
Admission: £4, programme £1, scratch-card £1, orange J2O and salt ‘n vinegar crisps from the bar £3, two bacon rolls at £2 each, attendance 84.
) and (c) I can get a programme before they sell out. I then hole up in the bar with a juice and watch BT Sports or Sky Sports on the widescreen .... 
The shape, the size, and the barred plumage on the breast, were a bit of a give-away. A few months back, our neighbour opposite told me he’d also spotted one, so we weren’t overly surprised. 