A weekend away
Last weekend, I had a trip away with my lovely fiancée, Claire. As we were only going for one night, we decided to keep it local and visit the Paris of the West Country, more commonly known as Chippenham.

It was all quite short notice, Claire booking a night in the Premier Inn a few weeks ago. Even though we did not travel far or stay away for long, it was still very nice to get a mini-break away. The only disappointment was that we didn’t see Lenny Henry.

Next time we have a break, we might travel a little further afield and go for a bit longer. A couple of nights in Salisbury, perhaps!

New owners. Same old Leeds
The excitement of Leeds United’s November takeover has well and truly gone. The team have won a small handful of games since Ken Bates sold his stake in the club, but there have also been a lot of defeats; most notably a hammering at Hull and a truly embarrassing loss at Barnsley, although as a Leeds fan I’m used to our annual defeat at Oakwell.

What has been disappointing is the lack of activity in the transfer window. I think I’m being realistic and wasn’t expecting the likes of Messi, Ronaldo and Gary Lineker to sign for Leeds, but a player of some quality, or any player at all, would be nice.

The new owners are from Dubai. It’s just typical of Leeds United that in a country rich for its oil trade, Leeds seem to have found a group of owners whose money seems to come from selling The Big Issue.*

* for legal reasons, I cannot back this up. I don’t want to be sued, even if my money might fund a transfer.

It seems my football club moans are identical to those of my Arsenal-supporting friend, Simon – no investment, no ambition, no quality, overpriced tickets. Pfft!

A win at last
My other team, Bath City, has also been down on its luck in recent months. I’ve travelled to most of the away games. Most of which have ended in defeat. The hardest and most recent to take was a couple of weekends ago when The Romans lost 2-1 to fellow strugglers, Basingstoke Town. Yes, Basingstoke do have a football team!

I was therefore slightly disappointed when, through not feeling well, I missed last Tuesday’s marvellous away victory over Weston Super Mare. A 4-1 win! That really made up for the Boxing Day debacle when Weston won.

There’s a game at Twerton Park tonight which I’m off to. Bromley. Seeing as we have never beaten Bromley at Twerton and more importantly I’m in attendance, I won’t be holding out much hope for 3 points!

Africa
I have become a bit of an David Attenborough Addict in recent weeks, as my previous blog mentioned. Most recently I have been watching his latest television series, Africa – shown on Wednesday nights on BBC1.

It really fascinates me. A couple of weeks ago, there was a breathtaking fight between two giraffes. A young male against a much older, experienced counterpart. Just when it looked like the more mature giraffe was about to lose the battle, he managed to avoid a potentially fatal blow from the younger animal, before knocking him off his feet and winning the duel, reclaiming is territory. I was almost cheering at the television.

Last weeks episode was not so uplifting. Filmed during a severe drought, a family of elephants battled for survival. A young calf was dying and it’s mother had to make a choice – abandon her baby or stay with the infant, yet be left behind by her herd. She choice to stay with her baby, who died in the most heartbreaking of circumstances, leaving her all alone. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen on television.