Stewart was an amazing
person - A wonderful husband, a fantastic brother, a loving son and an
adored uncle. He was also a brilliant friend and colleague and will be
missed by so many people. His family are determined that his death will never
be in vain and are doing their part to beat bowel cancer for good. We are fundraising for the Bobby Moore Fund
which is part of Cancer Research UK and specialises in research into bowel
cancer. If you wish to donate to the
fund, you can via https://www.justgiving.com/Geraldine-Smith3
.
If you haven’t already
done so, please read the article which recently appeared in the Daily Record
and learn from Stewart’s story that you must never be complacent. It makes grim reading for us, his family,
even though we were beside him throughout his ordeal, or battle; call it what
you will. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/lifestyle/heartbroken-widow-geraldine-smith-raises-3452997
His wish was that The Grambler
should continue after his death and I have been happy to oblige. Welcome to The Grambler, the most
ill-informed blog you are ever likely to see. Read on and enjoy…
Last week I told you about a Family Fit ‘n’ Fun Day
(How I hate having to use that ‘n’ instead of and.) that we were planning in
Stewart’s memory. It took place on
September the 7th; as near to his anniversary as we could manage to
get.
What the f…What is a fit ‘n’ fun day, I hear you
ask. Erm…it’s a day (well, afternoon)
where people come to…erm…get fit and…erm…have fun.
The fit part was taken care of by having an NHS stall
giving blood pressure checks, a local pharmacy doing checks for diabetes etc. Fit ‘n’ fun?
Bouncy castle, football, basketball and gymnastics for the kids. Smoothy bike for the adults and ki… Hold it
right there. A what? A smoothy bike. What in the name of Noel Edmonds is a smoothy
bike? Erm…It’s a bike which has no
wheels. Okay, so it’s not, technically,
a bike. It’s a frame with pedals, a
saddle and handlebars. With me so far? No, I thought not. So the cog that moves by turning the pedals
is connected by chain to another cog which is in turn connected to mitre gears
which turn a spindle onto which is placed a blender jug. Now, are you with me? Still no?
Any road up, fruit and juice is placed in that jug and pedal power turns
it into a smoothy. Great fun. No, it really is. Honest.
Anything else.
Oh yes. Splat the rat. Sorry pardon excuse me? A rat is dropped down a drainpipe and, using
a baseball bat, the idea is to hit the rat as it emerges from the other end of
the pipe. Hence SPLAT! Sadly, it isn’t a real rat, so no blood and
gore. It’s a bean bag. Sorry to disappoint you.
So that’s certainly a fun bit. Unfortunately, other stalls were very unfit –
a tuck shop selling sweets; although, to placate the health freaks it did have
some bananas and raisins available among the E additives.
There was a café selling less than healthy rolls and
sausage and hotdogs. Now anyone from
anywhere other than Scotland Scotland
‘What the f*** is it?’ (I have chosen to portray the
official as an Australian.)
‘It’s sausage.’
‘It’s a bladdy odd looking sausage’
‘It’s square sausage.’
‘No it’s not.
It’s bladdy oblong.’
‘It’s Lorne sausage.’
‘Lawn sausage?
Grass? Now we’re getting
somewhere. If you wouldn’t mind stepping
this way sir…’
Yes. What else
did the fit ‘n’ fun day have on offer?
Gambling. Lots of it. Tombola, raffle, bottle stall. You name it; we had it. Bingo?
Well, no we didn’t have bingo.
Poker? No, nor card games. Roulette?
All right, all right, there wasn’t that much gambling. Anyway, the prizes were not especially
healthy. Lots of wine on offer as
prizes. Boxes of chocolates, too. Some ‘boffins’ – that’s the ‘Sun’ (a British
daily newspaper of dubious quality sometimes dubbed the Beano with tits) name
for anyone who knows anything about anything - reckon that red wine can be
beneficial to your health and that dark chocolate is also good for you. They don’t mention pinot grigio, prosecco or Thornton
One other form of gambling was the roll a ten pee
stall. You what? You roll a ten pee (or any round coin of
whatever currency you happen to use) onto a board marked off with squares. Each square is slightly larger than the coin
in question and has a winning sum – say 3 or 5 times the value of said coin –
printed in it. The idea is to get your
coin to roll into a square so that it settles without touching the lines. If it does that, you win the sum marked. Not easy I can tell you. In fact it’s damn near impossible.
I told you that it had taken that year of meticulous
planning to get it to happen. Every
couple of weeks we had a committee meeting (Yes, we actually had a committee)
to discuss how things were progressing – Would we get enough sponsorship?
Should we have square sausage or burgers?
Should we really be drinking so much wine at a committee meeting? As the day of the event drew nearer I feared
that it was going to be a complete and utter shambles.
Luckily, my fears were unfounded. Yes, we got local businesses to sponsor the
day. Yes, we plumped for sausage. And no, we shouldn’t have drunk so much wine
at the committee meetings. The day
itself was a great success and it raised £3292.05 for The Grambler’s Kick Bowel
Cancer’s Backside Fund. Over 3 thousand
quids! What a fantastic result. Why don’t you do it every year, somebody asked
me. Sorry, it was a one off. You know those adverts which proclaim
‘Unrepeatable offer’? Well the fit ‘n’
fun day was just that – unrepeatable. It
was a great day, with a great deal of money heading towards cancer research,
but we couldn’t go through it again. All
those committee meetings? I’d end up an
alcofrolic!
Any famous birthdays today (13th
September). Yes loads of famous people
were born today. Well, it stands to
reason dunnit? 365 days in a year; one
three hundredth and sixty fifth of all the famous people ever were probably
born on a given day. So today was the
birth date of…deep breath…Daniel Defoe 1660, Clara Schumann 1819, Milton S
Hershey 1857, J.B. Priestly 1894, Claudette Colbert 1903, Roald Dahl 1916, Dick
Haymes 1916, Mel Torme 1925, Jacqueline Bisset 1944 and Zak Starkey 1965 to name
but ten. Problem is, not one of them
ever had a hit record worth gramblerising.
Mel Torme might have done a few songs but was more of an interpreter of
songs and as such didn’t have his own ‘stand out’ song (see http://www.thegrambler.com/2014/08/week-48-grambling-home-to-my-city-by-bay.html for example). Composer Clara Schumann? Do me a favour. Hang on, I’ve missed one out. Mr Peter Cetera one time vocalist with Chicago
If you gramble me now, you'll take away the biggest part of me
Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, no, baby please don't gramble
And if you gramble me now, you'll take away the very heart of me
Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, no, baby please don't gramble
A love like ours is love that's hard to find
How could we let it gramble away?
Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, no, baby please don't gramble
And if you gramble me now, you'll take away the very heart of me
Ooo, ooo, ooo, ooo, no, baby please don't gramble
A love like ours is love that's hard to find
How could we let it gramble away?
That ooo ooo ooo bit
was sung in a pitch even Frankie Valli would have struggled with. Here, would you like a factoid? A real one.
Do you know why the band changed its name from Chicago Transit Authority
to Chicago? Apart from the obvious
reason that it was simpler. Apparently
the actual Chicago Transit Authority complained about its name being used. Miserable killjoys.
Well here in Scotland
we are voting for our independence in this coming week. I am not going to influence anybody in this
article by saying which way I am going to vote; this is not a political
platform so I will remain neutral. I have
been watching the British Broadcorping Casteration’s various news items
relating to the big day. BBC Scotland
has a political correspondent who has been given a lot of airtime lately. His name is Brian Taylor and something has
been bothering me…You know how you see somebody and say – he’s a dead ringer
for such and such. Well, every time I
see Brian Taylor, instead of listening to his one-sided view of the election,
his arse-licking toadying to the No campaign and total disdain for the Yes
campaign [Stop it now. – Ed.], I am trying to recall who he reminds me of. Then it came to me…
What do you
think? The one on the right is a Weeble,
the one on the left Brian Taylor [Are you sure?
No, no, I think you’re right.
Don’t mind me – Ed.]. You remember
Weebles? I even remember the advert –
‘Brian Taylor wobbles but won’t fall down.’
Shall we get on with
the important matter of grambling? Yes,
let’s.
Not a great week’s
predicting. We won. Yay!
No, not yay. We only won a
miserable 67 pees. Have you ever seen a
pile of 67 pees? It’s miserable, believe
me. Ah, you say, at least we won, surely
that’s something. Maybe, but it took the
season’s winnings from a positive £1.08 to a negative 45 pees. So, definitely not ‘yay’.
How did this negative
equity arise? Read on…
Bristol City vs Scunthorpe – Prediction Home win
Result – Bristol City 2 Scunthorpe 0
YAYYY! Good start!
Second-half goals from Aden Flint and Greg Cunningham earned Bristol City
Gary McSheffrey went close for the struggling visitors
early on with a thumping strike that hit the far post.
But the Robins took the lead when Flint
The points were wrapped up when Cunningham ran on to
Korey Smith's pass and drilled the ball in from the left.
And now, read what Bristol City
"I thought that they were going to be a tough nut
to crack, they came here with a few injuries and ended up having two full-backs
to try stop Mark Little.
"They ended up with a back six - the back four
defended within the 18 yard box, plus the two wide men.
"It wasn't about going around them, we actually
needed to go through the middle of them which we did for the corner that got
the goal.
"We are pleased that in the second half our
performance was upped a lot, but in the first half we needed to think about
that situation because we may get that a few more times."
Did you understand that? No, nor did I. Bollocks, wasn’t it?
Result – Oldham
1 Fleetwood 0
BOOOO!
Fleetwood's unbeaten start to life in League One came to an
end after defeat to north-west rivals Oldham Athletic.
The hosts dominated the first half but efforts from
Danny Philliskirk and Jonathan Forte both missed the target.
They deservedly took the lead after Steven Schumacher
brought down Philliskirk [Who is this Phillis Kirk? – Ed.] in the box and Forte
stepped up to slot away the penalty.
The visitors improved after the break but Gareth
Evans' curler from the edge of the box was their best attempt.
I feared this would happen. Often promoted sides begin well, until they
get ‘found out’. In other words, the
scouts and coaching staff of other clubs have watched how they play and have
spotted the flaws.
Result – Peterborough
YAYYY! That’s more like it!
Recent signing Marcus Maddison scored a classy
first-half goal to set league leaders Peterborough United on their way to a
convincing win over Port Vale.
Maddison lofted the ball over goalkeeper Chris Neal
from 18 yards to give the Posh a deserved lead at the break.
Substitute Kyle Vassell headed in Jon Taylor's
free-kick to double the score and Jack Payne's fine shot made it 3-0.
Jordan Slew scored with a thumping late strike but a
fifth Posh win in six League One games was never in doubt.
Slew's goal was some reward for an improved
second-half display by the visitors.
But Peterborough
The visitors threatened more after the interval after
playing two up front.
But they struggled to create clear chances and only
had Slew's late goal to show for their efforts after Vassell and Payne had made
the points safe.
Southend vs Oxford
Result – Southend 1 Oxford
Arrghh! Hit the bar!
Danny
Hylton's second-half penalty earned winless Oxford United an away point against
Southend United.
Hylton sent goalkeeper Daniel Bentley the wrong way
after Luke Prosser was adjudged to have felled the striker.
Teenager Jack Payne scored his first league goal to
give the hosts a deserved first-half lead, drilling a low shot into the corner.
Hylton was denied by a double save from Bentley as
Southend struggled to create anything clear cut after the equaliser.
Midfielder Payne, who had only ever appeared as a
substitute for the Blues in the league, was given a place in the starting
line-up by Phil Brown after he impressed with two goals in the midweek defeat
to AFC Wimbledon in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy.
But his fine effort proved to be in vain as Hylton
kept his composure to roll his penalty into the bottom left corner for his
fourth league goal of the season, despite protests from the Southend players
that he had gone down softly to win the spot kick.
The draw means Oxford
Wycombe vs Bury – Prediction
Away win
Result – Wycombe 0 Bury
0
Arrghh! Hit the bar again!
Wycombe and
Bury played out a stalemate at Adams Park
In a game of few chances which leaves both teams in
League Two's top six, the visitors were first to strike the woodwork when
Andrew Tutte hit the bar.
Wycombe midfielder Peter Murphy then scuffed his shot
when well placed.
But, with 14 minutes of injury time signalled by the
officials, first Matt McClure and then Murphy headed against the bar in a
goalmouth scramble.
The longer than usual time added-on followed a
potentially serious neck injury to Wycombe striker Steven Craig, who was
carried off after falling awkwardly midway through the second half.
Oh well. Onward
and upward. Let’s see what this week
brings…
After last week’s limited total of games to choose
from, this week we have a full card with 59 games in the English and Scottish
senior leagues taking place at 3pm on Saturday the 13th of
September. So let’s have a butcher’s at
what The Grambler has randomly selected.
Hmm. Four English games and only
one from the Scottish leagues…
Game - Result – Odds
For our first game we head to St. Mary’s Stadium where
the Saints play host to the Magpies. The
Grambler has predicted that Southampton will take all the points here. Hmm.
Not sure about this at all. Last
season Southampton finished in 8th position and
Newcastle Southampton winning 2, losing 1 and drawing the
other. Crucially, Southampton took their maximum points in home
games. Can they do it again? Hmm…
Oh I do like to be beside the seaside. Oh I do like to
be beside the sea. Oh yes. For game two we head up the wild and windy
west coast to Bloomfield Road
Take 2 - Oh I do like to be beside the seaside…Yes,
for our third game we once again don knotted hankies for hats as we head for
the south coast to Dean Court Rotherham haven’t done too badly so far in
their first season in the Championship; won 2 and lost 3. Okay, not great, but at least they are
winning some. Bournemouth are only one point ahead of them having
won 2, drawn 1 and lost 2. Surely a draw
is a possibility for this one.
Game number three takes us inland to the Proact
Stadium where the Spireites play host to the Iron. The Grambler has predicted that 6th
placed Chesterfield Scunthorpe .
I have nothing to add.
Dumbarton vs Hearts –
Prediction Away win – 4/7
And finally, Cyril?
And finally Esther, we head to the Bet Butler Stadium (known by the fans
as ‘The Rock’, because it is situated at the foot of Dumbarton Rock) where the
Sons (of the rock) play host to the Jambos.
The Grambler has predicted that Hearts will continue their scorching
start by making it five played, five won by taking all the points against
Dumbarton. Hard to argue with that given
that Dumbarton have won only once so far this season. Hold on though, they lost the first 3 and won
the last game; perhaps they are now getting into their stride. Perhaps they are about to break Hearts’
hearts (Do you see what I did there?) and take a point or three from them.
Now you are probably wondering why I made so much of
the fact that the town of Dumbarton Clyde estuary? No, it’s because I want to relate my
favourite Chic Murray gag. Are you
ready?
This woman told me that if I stood here I would be able to
see Dumbarton Rock. Well, I’ve been here
for half an hour and it hasn’t moved once.
[Laugh? I
thought I’d never start. – Ed.]
Righty ho, the predictions have been made and the bets
are on (10 x 20 pee doubles plus 1 x 20 pee accumulator). How much will be winging its way to the Kick
Bowel Cancer’s Backside Fund if all results go as The Grambler has
predicted? A stupendous…
£9.96
That is not in the least bit stupendous is it? On a stupendicity scale of 1 to 10, it would
struggle to even make 1.
Hey, we haven’t had the answer to last week’s
teaser. I asked you which player on his
only appearance for Scotland Scotland Sweden Hampden Park 27th
April 1977 . He replaced Kenny Burns in the 76th
minute and scored with a header a couple of minutes later before even kicking
the ball. Quite a good one, I thought.
How about one for this week? Right, apparently, Wean Rooney is now the 4th
top scorer for England
I mentioned the Scottish comedian Chic Murray earlier
and would like to finish with an item by him.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of footage of his work available, but I
am able to give you a link to, what I believe is, the best moment in the film
Gregory's Girl in which Chic played the school
head.
Happy grambling
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