Spurs 81

While we were in Perth favourite Daughter, who knows I collect pictures of personalised plates, and that I love a soccer team called Tottenham Hotspur aka Spurs, spotted this classic number plate in the rear view mirror and I was able to turn and snap the pic before the lights went green.
1981 was a very good year for Spurs fans like me. Tottenham made won the FA Cup in a classic final, the hilight of which was a wonder goal by Argentine import Ricardo Villa to win the game 3-2 against Manchester City. It was a replayed final, the first game having finished 1-1. I was in Nathalia staying with my cousin Kathy at the time of the final and the replay came on TV at about 4am Victorian time. I got up to watch it but with the rest of the house fast asleep had to keep quiet throughout which proved extremely difficult considering the intense excitement and closeness of the game.
When Villa scored the winning goal after weaving and dribbling past about 4 defenders I stood and screamed in total silence!! I was shaking all over, jumping around and carrying on, all without making a sound!

The following year, 1982, Spurs made the Cup Final again and I decided to fulfill a childhood dream and go to England to see them win the cup.
I sold my car and a caravan I owned and bought a one way ticket to London.
I was met at the airport by my pen-friend Tania, a fellow Spurs fan and on the way back to her place we stopped outside White Hart Lane, Tottenham's home ground in north London. A policeman on the gate allowed us to go in and let us walk on the "halllowed turf".

What happened next was one of the "miracles" of my life and a marker post from which many other events are measured.

The policeman said to me:
"Have you come over for the Cup Final?"

"Yeah"

"Have you got a ticket yet?"

"No, not yet"

"Well, I've been looking for a worthy cause, here you go" as he handed me a winning ballot card in the club's cup final ticket lottery!

I'd been in England for two hours and I had a ticket to the FA Cup Final!

Tania's mouth fell open and she said" people have tried their whole lives without getting a ticket to the cup final!"

"I know" I said, "But I did come half way round the world to get it!"

Spurs went on to win the Cup again, beating Queens Park Rangers in another replay, 1-0 after a 1-1 draw. I got a ticket to the replay quite easily by lining up outside Wembley Stadium the morning after the game and buying one for about 5 pounds.

Footnote
A month and a half later I was in Madrid and managed to get a ticket to the World Cup Final between Italy and West Germany. Within a six week period I'd been to the two biggest soccer games in the world!

Tottenham Eliminated

Rats!
Spurs are out of the UEFA Cup.
Despite drawing 2-2 tonight they lost to Sevilla 3-4 on aggregate!
Darn it!
Conceding an own goal in the first three minutes didn't help and letting in another goal 5 minutes later virtually killed the game.
To be fair Sevilla played fantastic football and looked the better team, especially in the first half.

Give me the Jackhammer

I had an MRI in Bunbury this morning, on my ankle. The Dr warned me it sounded like a jackhammer and then gave me chunky headphones with piped music; literally, there were two plastic pipes attached to the ear pieces, and proceeded to play me a selection of crooner music circa 1965. The only track I can recall the name of was "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones! It was a close contest between the piped music and the jackhammer!
The results will come back in a few days, requiring another trip to Bunbury to see the surgeon.

While in Bunbury I went to the Post Office to pay one of my speeding fines, preferring the relative anonymity of Bunbury to the "can't get away with much cause someone's always watching" confines of Busselton to pay my debt to society. It didn't work. The bloke behind the counter plays in my footy team! Busted!

After work I came home to work on a project in my makeshift workshop, the table on the back patio. I'm making a "Blokey" sculpture/piece of art out of an old jarrah weatherboard and a bunch of old guages, door handles, hooks and assorted hardware. It looks pretty good and once I apply the finishing touches I'm going to enter it in the Bloke's Art Exhibition down at the Courthouse Gallery. (Well, that's the plan, based on them accepting it!)
I worked on several paintings tonight, using a hot glue gun to create some interesting texture and patterns before applying the paint. It's quite effective, and fun to play around with a new technique.

Good news on the Sports Result front, Tottenham beat Fulham 4-0 last night to proceed to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup. I'm trying to arrange for The Heir to go and see a Spurs game while he's still in England, and I commented to him last night on Skype how cool it would be if Tottenham made it to the Cup Final and he was able to go, repeating my experience of 25 years ago. Here's hoping!