You know how far you've fallen when playing Shrewsbury is a possibility

Shrewsbury Town have an excellent chance of making it into the Coca-Cola League 2 play-offs. By my reckoning they need one more point from their final league game at Gay Meadow to make it. Then who knows, it could be a win at Wembley for the first time ever and promotion.

Meanwhile Leeds United are all-but-mathematically relegated from the Coca-Cola Championship. Unless they win their last game 9-0 and Hull lose, they'll be playing in Coca-Cola League 1, which, confusingly, is the third tier of English football and will be the lowest they've ever played at. And if Town do get to Wembley and win, then Leeds will be visiting the New Meadow next season.

I casually pointed this out to a Leeds fan at work who was already feeling pretty miserable about the relegation. "That's great!" he said. "Six years ago we were playing Barcelona and now we'll be playing Shrewsbury. That's how bad it is."

There was a pause. "No offence, though," he added.

“You’ve got hippos”

Cathy’s bought Zoo Puzzle for the PS2, where basically you have to match up animals into lines of three or more to make them disappear. Think Tetris with fauna and you’ll be there. It's also blummin' addictive.





Playing it in company inevitably results in people trying to help by telling you which animals you can line up next. Hence: "You’ve got hippos!" which sounds like a particularly awkward kind of ailment.

"Sorry, I can’t come in to work today. I’ve got a bad case of the hippos."

Action Force

Ah, the 1980s. A more innocent place for kids. The idea of that one day they might do Star Wars prequels was a source of hope rather than despair. When someone gave you 50p to spend, it was a big deal, mainly because it was a huge coin. And toys weren’t aggressively marketed by tie-in TV shows, at least until He-Man came along.

Action Force was probably the last great populist British toy line (since then we’ve been importing American and Japanese fads). It gave Star Wars figures a good run for their money, despite being made by the same company initially, Palitoy. A scaled down version of Action Man, my blue helicopter pilot figure from the first series is the first toy I remember buying when we came back from Africa.

The second wave of figures was split into the four components of the Action Force, and faced off against evil terrorist mastermind Baron Ironblood, now referred to in our house as ‘Bucket head’. Together with his Red Shadows, Muton robots, and later Kraken reptile beasts, this megalomaniac threatened to take over the whole world. Fortunately the might of Action Force, an international force of military experts who were bizarrely exclusively white, stood in his way, thwarting his evil plans.

Why the nostalgia? A few years ago I was well into collecting AF, but I hadn’t bought any for a while. Until today when, visiting a relocated retro toy store in the city centre, I found some carded figures, including three Q Force (the naval elite of Action Force) figures that I only possessed as loose figures before. So, it looks like I’m still a collector.

The slightly blurred photos don’t do them justice. For toy nerds, the Sea Skimmer figure was only released in the third wave of British figures, before the toy line got subsumed by Hasbro and marketed as the Euro version of GI Joe. All three cards have third wave backs and the mail in offer is the Skeletron. All three cards are in English and Italian, hence the Deep Sea Defender’s alter ego "Palombaro."

Light bedtime reading

This has been the working week, if not from Hell, then from somewhere nearby. Purgatory perhaps, now that the Pope has gone and abolished Limbo. To cheer me up Cathy bought me a little gift - Mark Thomas' polemic about the arms trade called As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela.

It sounds grim, and in places it is, but I'm enjoying reading something so passionate about an important topic for a change. I'm a third of the way through, but here are a few quotes that have made me laugh so far:

"For many in Old Labour, the day Blair dies is the day that Judas will be found muttering in the depths of Hell, 'I bet he comes and sits next to me.'"

"All we had to do was smile and lie, and not just little lies either - we had to lie like estate agents."

"To the best of my knowledge not even the most cap-doffing historian has dared to describe the British Empire as an 'ethical empire', although there is bound to be one out there somewhere, just as there is bound to be a Conservative Party leader who doesn't look like a smug twat, if only we could be bothered to look."

There's lots more, but you should really go and buy your own copy.

Keep it short and snappy

I've seen a number of films on DVD, on planes etc recently, so thought I'd update the film review section on here with a quick run down. If you don't like to know the ending, look away now.

Superman Returns
Lame attempt to revive the franchise, despite the presence of Kevin Spacey as Lex Luthor. A few of the baddies die in the end, although I was so bored I couldn't care less by then.
4/10

The Prestige
Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are rival stage magicians. They both die in the end.
5/10

The Departed
Oscar liked this film. I thought it was OK, if a bit bleak. Everybody dies in the end.
6/10

The Good Shepherd
Matt Damon sets up the CIA and then has to decide what to do to protect his son, who's also joined the agency. He ends up arranging for his son's Russian spy wife to be killed. Or something. To be honest this was bleaker than The Departed. At least that had Jack Nicholson in it.
3/10

Phenomenon
Bit of an oldie, but pretty good. John Travolta is an everyman who sees a UFO, except it turns out to be a brain tumour. He then takes a long time to die.
7/10

Casino Royale
Gives the Bond franchise a shot in the arm. Bond plays cards a lot, and both his love interests die. At the end he shoots a man as a conversation starter.
6/10

Ocean's Twelve
Convoluted heist thriller sequel that's also a convoluted heist thriller. Nobody dies, but you wish they would.
4/10

Quality time with my spouse

A week after arriving back from New York, Cath and I went to a stamp fair where I tried to fill in some of the gaps in my Statue of Liberty collection. I found both stamps I was looking for, a large stamp sheet that included Lady Liberty on a stamp and on the sheet itself and several commemorative covers etc.

And I also found a tenner that someone had carelessly dropped, so that effectively paid for the stuff I bought. Woo hoo.

I knew this was coming

A new project looms...

Three months ago in a meeting
"What are we going to have to in media?"
"Oh nothing, nothing, the publishers are handling that..."

Three months ago in a different meeting
"Should we put something in the magazine?"
"No, it's too soon..."

This afternoon
"The big boss has decreed that we have a week to come up with a campaign and write/design something to slot into the magazine before it mails on Monday 30th." No pressure then.

I tell you, there's nothing like good, strategic planning from the very top (and this is nothing like...)

Job description

The line that says: "and any other duties in keeping with the role." Today that meant registering/programming my boss's new mobile phone. At least he didn't lose this one on a canoeing trip, unlike his last one...

Once I made sure it was working I took a picture of myself with the camera phone and set it as his wallpaper, as a "reminder of your favourite employee."

Get happy, but don't OD

Perhaps ironically (I started back to work today), I followed the link to this game from Late Edition. You've got to play it, if only to see what happens if you have too much of a good thing.

Happy Pill

My candy is safe

After flying halfway round the world how on earth did KLM manage to lose my case full of candy and cereal at Amsterdam airport? We were there for five hours waiting for our connecting flight to Cardiff. Still at least it was delivered safely today, so I'm reunited with my Hot Tamales and Froot Loops. Hurrah.

Now it's just a case of waiting for the jet lag to hit me in time for a return to work tomorrow.