EasyJet Latest; Biased Referee and Quiz Update

Just relaxing after supper on the first day back at the Centre, although Tuesday for me is not very long, nor very problematic (now Wednesday is a different kettle of fish, but that's another story). I enjoyed my short trip. last week, to the north of England, where I stayed with some old friends, and also with my brother and his family. As on previous occasions, I flew with EasyJet, about which I had quite a bit to say at the end of last summer.

Well, I don't know whether anyone at EasyJet has been reading the blog, but one of my main objections, the poor quality, duration and self-evident nature of the announcements, has to some extent been addressed. The stewards and stewardesses still speak in those sing-song tones reminiscent of a nine-year-old schoolgirl reciting a poem she doesn't understand but which she is determined to get through at all costs, if possible without taking a breath, and they still emphasise all the wrong words: "put your bags IN the overhead locker"; "the captain HAS switched on the fasten seat belts sign". They still tend to shout into the microphone, though to be fair, a few of them no longer do; they still talk about the mysterious "choice of airlines" on the Madrid-Liverpool run when they have a monopoly of it; and some of them, and this included our co-pilot last Sunday, are clearly wannabe Radio 2 disc jockeys, with their chumminess and inconsequential chattering about the weather in Madrid and so forth. And they still bang on about not smoking, though they now refer to a "non-smoking flight", rather than a "non-smoking policy", which is a big improvement.

But they no longer welcome you to your destination, having arrived there with you; and they don't go into detail about what will happen if things fall out of the overhead lockers, evidently accepting that we can all work that one out for ourselves.

My suggestion that there might have been something significant about Mr Halsey, the referee in charge of , and according to some, responsible for, Charlton's awful experience against WBA, being from Bolton, was just something I wrote down off the top of my head, but it turns out that not only is he from Bolton, but gets to go training with Big Sam and the Trotters, too. And then while I was in England, a paragraph appeared in the Daily Mirror pointing out that this was just not on. Though no one seems to have responded overmuch.

As for the quiz, there was a very low turnout last night as many people were still on holiday, so it was another "Charity Shield"-type event where visiting friends and complete strangers sat down to make up ad-hoc teams. I and another two guys from our usual team joined our old rival David, who didn't have any team-mates at all, and there was another team made up of another member of our team, a friend of his, and an old friend of mine (who is also an old friend of theirs) who is visiting from Scotland. There were three other teams as well, but right at the start of the first round, two of them decided to merge, which took them to the illegal figure of seven team members. They won, too. But I suspect no one will respond overmuch to that, either.