I’ll try harder in future.

Recent news;

I bought an iPhone! I decided to buy myself out of the last five months of my contract to get one as my previous phone was falling to pieces and I wasn’t happy with the reliability of the network (Three).

I wrote a letter to my Aunty in Spain which I had been planning to do for a while. Her husband (my Uncle) died recently and I wanted to let her know I was always here to talk if she needs me.

We’re off to London this Friday for a friend’s moving in/birthday party. Should be good but I’m anticipating a heavy-spending few days.

The clocks have gone back and hour. I like the fact that it’s bright in the mornings but dark nights walking home are not welcomed.

Not long ’til Christmas now! I love the few weeks approaching Christmas. Everywhere seems to have a good atmosphere.

Ian Usher achieved a degree of fame recently after advertising and successfully selling his entire life foro £192,000.

Usher auctioned everything he owned, his friends and his job on eBay a few months back, walking away from the transaction with only the clothes on his back, the proceeds from the sale and his passport. Since the sale, Usher has set up another website, 100goals100weeks.com, in which he has set out one hundred goals which he hopes to achieve in the coming one hundred weeks (that’s a month short of two years).

Some of the goals are pretty standard stuff; climb the Eiffel Tower, visit Oktoberfest in Munich etc. but some others are a little more outlandish; nude skyjumping, ride an osterich amongst others.

Usher has set up a blog which chronicles his experiences and it makes for an interesting read (I’m a bit surprised that only 45 people have subscribed to his posts in Google Reader). Tasks already marked as completed are:

• Attending the Tomatina festival in Bunol, Spain.
• Diving off the top diving-board in Bishop Auckland swimming pool.
• Paragliding.
• Bungee jumping.
• Snowboarding in Dubai’s indoor ski slope.
• Scuabe diving down to the Christ of the Deep statue off the coast of Genoa, Italy.
• Climbing the Eiffel Tower.
• Visiting the Oktoberfest beer festival in Munich.

Which I’m sure you’ll agree is already an impressive feat. Head over to 100goals100weeks.com to read about Ian’s progress.

Thank God.

For months now I haven’t been sleeping very well. The underlying reason, ignoring any other factors, is our mattress.

When Louise and I moved in to our house, she already had a double bed which she brought with her. Great, you’d think! Sadly not so, the mattress was described as being ‘soft’ and this was very much an understatement. Lying in bed near the edge of the bed caused the ends to curl up, reading at night was nigh on impossible as my bum sank almost to the slats and the springs inside the mattress let out a ‘ping’ with the slightest of movement.

Being a few stones heavier than Louise I suffered most at the hands (or should that be the springs?) of the nonsupporting mattress to the point where I was having to put a pillow underneath my back when I went to bed to offer some kind of support for my aching vertebrae.

This Saturday, we decided to head out to buy a replacement and bid farewall once and for all to for the torture device currently residing in our bedroom.

The first post of call was Sleepmasters – adjoined to Harvey’s Furniture. One look at the prices though (and the lack of choice – surprising for a shop that specialises in selling beds/mattresses) saw us walk out the door and round the corner to MFI. Now I’ve always thought MFI was meant to be pretty cheap. A walk round the kitchen section (this is the next ‘big thing’ on our list of to-do’s around the house) seemed to confirm this, but, as with Sleepmasters, MFI decided to charge an extortionate amount for their mattresses (we’re talking £300+). After another perusal of the kitchens we headed home empty-handed.

A scan on the Internet yielded some local ‘one-man-band’ bed places in Macclesfield so we decided to head out and give them a try (I was skeptical how such a small place could compete with the prices that the big chains could offer but decided to give it a go nonetheless).

We called in at a shop that, thinking back now, I could honestly not tell you what it was called. They seemed to have a good selection of mattresses from what we could see from the window and the lady at the back of the store (which resembled a warehouse) looked friendly enough.

i have a tendency when asked by shop assistants if “I’d like any help” to respond in the negative, even if I actually do want some help. This lady, however, proved to be my exception to the rule, possibly due to the fact that she looked shocked to see a customer in her store. She kindly showed us a number of spring and foam mattresses roughly within our budget (£100-£150). She pointed out that whilst spring mattresses are generally cheaper, they also have around a fifth of the lifespan and will wear out quicker. Nevertheless, cost was king and by the end of a couple of ‘test drives’ we had all but settled on a £140 spring mattress.

The lady asked us if, ignoring cost, would we prefer the £200 foam mattress that we had had a brief lie-down on earlier but jumped out of when the double-ton figure was banded about. We tried it again and, given that it was much more supportive than the spring, said yes, we would go for the foam at the right price.

The lady disappeared to tend to another customer (her lucky day) and Lou and I discussed the price and settled on paying no more than £170 for the mattress… a £30 premium on the spring that we had almost settled for.

Upon timid shop assistant’s return, she said she could let us have it for £170. Timid was evidently a mind-reader.

We went ahead and bought the mattress and took it home in the back of the car (one the benefits of the foam mattress is that it is stored like a stubby roll of carpet – even transportable in the back of a Ford Ka). It took a couple of hours for the mattress to fully fill out (it had been vacuum-packed after all) but sadly our first night’s sleep wasn’t great.

Whether it is because we’ve changed from a soft, probably broken mattress to what is described as an ‘Orthopedic firm feel’ bed or whether it is because foam mattresses seem to retain heat more than spring ones, we haven’t slept very well over the past couple of nights.

Lou says she finds the bed too hard (we didn’t ask what ‘firmness’ the bed was when we bought it, it turns out it’s an ‘orthopedic firm’ bed) and I haven’t slept great for some reason (although my back feels a lot better than it did previously).

We’re going to give it a couple of weeks to see if we can settle with it and start sleeping better. If not, I think we’ll be on the look-out for a ‘mattress topper’. These things tend to be about three inches thick and attach via elstic straps to your mattress to make it a bit softer. The question is, should we go for Canadian goose feather or made-made synthetic. Decisions, decisions.

I suppose if we’re in doubt we could always go and speak to Miss. Timid, she’ll probably be expecting us.

Woke up at 7:15 (what an ungodly hour to be awake at the weekend) but decided to get stuck in to reading my latest purchase – Watchmen.

What a superb read! The last few books I’ve read I’ve always looked forward to getting them out of the way. Not so with this! I’m reading it in small sittings to prolong the experience…

For those who don’t know, Watchmen is being made in to a film which is due for release in early 2009. You can view the trailer here.

The papers are full of the news that Daniel Agger, Liverpool’s number 5 centreback, is a target for Spanish side (and well known feather-rufflers) Real Madrid.

Real Vice-President Jose Angel Sanchez is quoted as announcing, in true Madrid fashion:

“What we need is a defender and a striker, and, at the moment, Daniel Agger is on top of our list,” he said.

“We already had plans about buying Agger this summer, along with some other players, but the Robinho situation took so much attention and demanded so many resources from the club that we had to drop the plans about putting a bid in for Agger and other players that we had in mind.

“He is a world-class player and without doubt he would fit into our plans – it is likely we will bid for him in January,”

Agger is a top, top defender. He was brought to Liverpool in the January transfer window of 2006 for a fee in the region of £5.8m, a fair amount for a player of his age and experience. For the first six months of his Liverpool career, Agger was used sparingly as he was slowly introduced into the English way of life and Premier League standard.

In the season 2006/07, Agger made the centre-back position his own but, after tremendous season, was unfortunate to experience that dreaded injury amongst footballers, the broken metatatrsal.

After almost a full year on the sidelines, this season has seen Agger slowly brought back to full fitness. During his extended absence from the side, Rafa signed the immensely scary Martin Skrtel from Russian side Zenit St. Petersburg. Skrtel ousted the older Sami Hyypia from the first eleven and because a regular at the back alongside club legend Jamie Carragher. Now that Agger has found his way back to full fitness, usurping one of Skrtel or Carragher is proving harder than expected. The Reds have started the campaign well, conceding only two goals in the league.

Rumours of Agger’s discontent with sitting on the sidelines have been abundant but Agger has moved to quash any rumours of a fall-out with Benitez.

As I mentioned earlier, Dan, when on form and in full fitness, is a fantastic player. He has all the attributes to be a fantastic player for years to come and, it is important to note, is only 23. Carragher, at thiry years of age, is surely coming to the end of his illustrious Liverpool career. In Srtel and Agger, Liverpool have, in my opinion, two of the finest young central defenders in Europe. Dan just needs a bit of patience and hopefully understands that, in the same way that if he was performing to the level Carra and Skrtel are, no player deserves to be dropped if they are playing well.

...or not.

My friends and I have been debating where to go to get something to eat this Friday in Manchester.

As if answering our prayers for guidance, the Guardian as published this excellent list/review of some top places to eat in Manchester.

It’s well worth a read.

I’ll update with a mini-review of the restaurant we end up chooosing at the weekend.

Image courtesy of The Daily Telegraph

Just when you thought the situation at Tottenham couldn’t get any worse. Good old Comolli goes and sacks the clubs scouting network for, wait for it, being too old (not that experience is somewhat vital in discovering hidden talent or anything).

Comolli, who many Spurs fans blame for the club’s current predicament has moved quickly to bring in some fella who used to sell greetings cards – no joke.

Furthermore, Juande Ramos, Spurs’ manager has done his best not to set the club up and potentially make his position untenable should the club fail to advance to the next round of the UEFA Cup tonight:

“We can only go little by little in terms of getting good performances. But it would be a disaster for Tottenham to be knocked out of European competition.”

Nice one, Juande. Good luck facing the vultures if you get eliminated.

Anyways, to recap my last few week or so…

1. Bucharest was nice. The city is pretty poverty-stricken in places but, as with most European capitals, there is a lot of fantastic architecture. Sadly, as predicted, I didn’t get any free time there and couln’t walk around the city as I like to do when I’m away on business. maybe next time.
2. I’ve been hitting the gym quite hard over the past couple of weeks and have put on nearly half a stone! I’m guessing it’s muscle as I haven been working out more than I did in the past and am still playing football every week and eating healthily.
3. I went on a massive cleaning sessions last night. I tidied the kitchen and living room until they were spotless! Once you’re in the mood you’ve got ot get it done!

In other news, Liverpool one again last night in a 3-1 victory against PSV Eindhoven of The Netherlands. The night was pretty well topped off with Steven Gerrard’s 100th goal for the club, Robbie Keane’s first and Rafa’s 250th in charge all coming on one night.

Anyways, apologies again for my lack of activity here, I hope to continue posting with the frequency I originally intended

In the meantime, here’s some amusing quotes from Republican Vice-Predential candidate Sarah Palin in a recent interview with Katie Kouric:

Katie Couric: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas, and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

Sarah Palin: That’s why I say, I like every American I’m speaking with we’re ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy. Helping the – Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas. And trade. We’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All those things under the umbrella of job creation. This bailout is a part of that.

Riiiiight…

Read the full interview here and be further baffled as to why Americans can even consider voting for her and John McCain.

‘Til next time.

I am off to Bucharest this Wednesday with work. Hopefully I may get  a few hours to walk around the city but the likelihood is that this will be a flying visit I’ll post any pics I manage to take on my camera phone in my Picasa Web Album.

Ever been? If so, suggestions where to eat would be greatly appreciated!