Strike!

Colindale, London, England // 7.05 pm // Mostly cloudy 16ºc / 61ºf

First blog post in June. Been quite busy over the last fortnight, and even when I've been in the flat with some spare time, I've been preoccupying myself with watching football online. Even though the football season has ended in most of Europe, there is still plenty happening around the world, and a surprising number of websites streaming the games live. The legitimacy of some of the sites is question, but one that is kosher is the Ladbrokes website. I had no idea they stream several games live daily. I've just finished watching the Macedonia vs Iceland World Cup Qualifier, of interest to me as they are in the same group as Scotland. And over the last week or so I've watched stuff from African WC qualifiers to the Indian Premier League to MLS. It's really great stuff, and very addictive. I'm gonna watch a bit of the Faroes vs Serbia at 7.15pm before the England game starts at 8.15pm.

Speaking of football on TV, Setanta Sports seems to be on the brink of ruin. Once again, a minnow takes on Sky, and Sky wins. I've been a huge supporter of Setanta for years, since they bought the rights to the Scottish Premier League, and I'm currently a subscriber to their feed on Freeview. I remember being quite ecstatic when the EU ruled that the English Premiership packages could no longer all go to Sky, and Setanta snapped up two of those. Unfortunately, what was supposed to make Setanta, broke it as they lost one of those packages. Unfortunately for them they put too much reliance on the expected increased subscription numbers, which weren't as high as expected. I'll be surprised if they still exist come the new football season. What happens to live SPL coverage I have no idea. Come on Channel 5, you know what to do!!

Staying with football, Celtic still don't officially have a manager, but it looks pretty likely that it will be Tony Mowbray. The more and more I read about it and think about it, I think he is a fantastic choice for the job. And he's a Celtic man at heart, unlike Gordan Strachan. Can't wait for the Wembley Cup in July.

So in the last couple of weeks I continued the Central Line pub crawl, completing another ten stations last week. Next time I continue the crawl, my friend Stephen from back home will be here, and we'll do another ten stations together.

I haven't cooked for a couple of weeks, but will be doing so twice in the next week.

On Saturday night Elle and I went to her friend Becky's place in West Ealing for what was supposed to be a BBQ, but the poor weather saw to that. Actually, food was still cooked on the BBQ, but we stayed inside. It was a nice, chilled night where we ended up watching a couple of films before we left at 11pm.

Actually, I've watched a few films recently, which is really unusual for me. In the last couple of weeks I've watched The Good Shepherd, The Last King of Scotland and Phone Booth.

This week has seen the start of a 48-hour tube strike here in London. Thankfully I only rely on the tube to get back from work at the moment, but yesterday - a few hours after the strike started - was to be the first time I was affected by it as I tried to get home from the radio station. When I left the station, the Northern line was still reporting good service, but I didn't want to risk it. So I got the DLR from Shadwell to Bank, a bus from Bank to City Thameslink station, and a National Rail train from City Thameslink to Mill Hill Broadway, where Elle was waiting to pick me up. Annoyingly, when I got home the Northern line was still reporting a good service!

Amazingly, that's also been the case for the whole of today! So I managed to do my usual tube journey home (Victoria line from Oxford Circus to Euston, Northern line from Euston to Colindale) with no problems at all. In fact it was quicker than usual, thanks to a couple of closed stations, and the train was emptier than usual as I suppose many people didn't think any line was working.

Apparently 40% or so of tube drivers crossed picket lines to report to work as normal. Good on you.