Now, children, this is what grownups call a cop-out…
The National League Board met earlier today and has reviewed its prior decision to suspend the competition until at least 3rd April 2020.
In consideration of the very serious and unprecedented national public health emergency caused by the coronavirus, the Board has taken the decision to suspend the National League, National League North and National League South competitions indefinitely.
The National League is currently obtaining specialist legal advice, is consulting regularly with The Football Association and other stakeholders, and is committed to involving its member clubs in a pending decision on how best to conclude the 2019/20 season.
Those responsible for making the decisions must have very sore bottoms. Their rear ends will be full of splinters, after sitting on top of that fence for so long.
After Roman’s Sunday tantrum, where he ate part of a carpet and caused no end of trouble; Claire and I thought that he would be better behaved yesterday – especially as we would both be spending the day downstairs and keeping him company.
How wrong we were…
Roman had probably been in his run for less than an hour, when, upon entering the front room, we saw to our horror that he had started a repeat of his bad behaviour from the weekend – destroying and consuming carpet!
He naturally received a stern telling off, which seemed to curb his craziness. The little shit ended up sulking and grooming himself – disproving the theory that you can’t polish a turd.
Roman has never behaved in this manner before. While he can be grumpy from time to time, the last couple of days he has been borderline psychotic!
I now have a theory to explain all of this…
As a treat, Roman is given dried mango twice a day. He goes absolutely crazy for the stuff. The bunny has a good appetite at the best of times, but will devour this tropical treat faster than any fresh vegetable, nugget or other dried fruit.
Mango is considerably sweeter than any other morsel he may be given. I remember an occasion when Roman was allowed to run around our front room, shortly after I had eaten a doughnut.
Bits of sugar from my Krispy Kreme (only the best for us) had fallen onto the Leeds United rug beneath my feet. Normally this would be cleaned up, but for whatever reason – probably Roman demanding he be let out – this time it didn’t happen.
When Romy hopped over to see his human daddy, he seemed very excited. He had clearly discovered the remains of my doughnut, and was licking it all up, before we could stop him.
It was clear that our rabbit had a sweet tooth. It’s not as odd as it may sound. Many years ago, I had a bunny named Sparky (after the dog on South Park*), who ate chocolate cake. She only tried cake once, and the bit she did eat, she had stolen from me.
* South Park fans with a good memory will recall that Sparky was Stan’s gay dog. Sparky the rabbit was a birthday present for me. My mum promises that the pet shop told her that she was buying a male rabbit. I therefore thought it was amusingly ironic how my other pet rabbit, Snowy – also a boy – kept trying to mount Sparky, whenever they came into contact. A couple of months later, I found out why, when I discovered a pile of baby bunnies.
I hope you enjoyed that sub-story. Two blog posts for the price of one and all that. Now back to the madness of King Roman…
The fact that Roman was eagerly lapping up each and every grain of doughnut sugar told me that he had taste for sweet things.
This sweet tooth of his, would also explain how he would go wild for dried mango. It even suggested to me why he had been acting insane the last two days.
Sugar is addictive. If you were to eat a sweet treat at the same time every day, your body would feel physically and mentally unwell, should you ever stop consuming it.
A day or two before Roman’s first outburst, we had stopped feeding him mango treats. This wasn’t a punishment. The dried mango we had for him looked poor quality, and we didn’t want to make him ill.
My theory is that this lack of mango and the associated sugar, was responsible for all the recent trouble.
Claire and I have already decided, that if mango has such a bad effect on our rabbit, he won’t be getting any again… ever. This may sound harsh, but we wouldn’t be responsible bunny parents, if we fed him something which could impact negatively on his health.
We also both love him very much – despite calling him a “little shit” on my blog – and would like him to live a long, healthy life.
He will simply have to go cold turkey, until his body has recovered from the sugar. It’ll be hard on our boy – I should know, as I have experience of drug withdrawal… I’ve seen it on Trainspotting.
Sorry, Rome. At least you’ve still got your dried carrot – until we discover you’ve developed night vision.
Yesterday, Roman behaved terribly. He did something awful – most definitely the worst thing he has ever done.
Instead of blogging about it in my normal manner, I decided to go all creative and write it in the style of a proper, real, grownup author. Which means it’ll be even more rubbish than usual.
When choosing which author I should imitate, for telling my tale of Roman, I did consider Stephen King. It would have certainly been appropriate considering what he did!
Instead I decided to rip-off the work of a lady who died almost 80 years ago. If by a miracle – and it bloody well would be – this crap gets published, I can’t get sued.
Here is Roman’s story, told in the style of Beatrix Potter… although expect more Brian Potter.
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THE VERY NAUGHTY BUNNY RABBIT
ONCE upon a time there was a little bunny rabbit, and his name was Roman. He had a grey and white coat; and would hop and skip around his room and entertained his human parents.
BUT one morning Roman’s mother – Mrs. Claire Nose-Twitchin – had to leave the house for the day; so fetched Roman into his exercise run, to be fed and given a drink, before going outdoors herself.
FIRST she would let Roman hop from his cage into his run.
THEN she prepared a delicious dinner for him.
THEN she gave him a piece of apple as a treat. Roman was very naughty, and he snatched the fruit.
MRS. NOSE-TWITCHIN tidied up his toys; and then she made what Roman thought was a terrible noise by using the vacuum cleaner.
ROMAN was very messy and yesterday had kicked his droppings everywhere. His mother cleaned these up with her Dyson.
WHEN Roman’s run had been prepared, Mrs. Nose-Twitchin prepared herself to leave the house; for she had to be at work, and did not wish to be late. To Roman, she said “Goodbye!”, before telling his father – Mr. Sean Nose-Twitchin – that it was time for her to go.
SADLY, Mr. Nose-Twitchin was unwell. He had to remain upstairs, and had been told that he must not leave the house, because he could become rather unwell if he caught coronavirus.
ROMAN’S parents and their friends did not know where coronavirus had come from. Roman and all of the other animals knew that the virus had been given to Mr. McGregor’s cousin in China, after he put their friend David Batty in a pie and ate him!
ROMAN hopped happily around his run. Occasionally he would run through his cardboard tubes, as if he was being chased by a fox or a veterinary nurse.
AFTER a short while, Roman lost interest in his toys. “Where have mummy and daddy gone?” he said to himself. Roman could hear what sounded like talking from upstairs. Mr. Nose-Twitchin was listening to one of his audiobooks. As Roman neither knew or cared what an audiobook was, he began to feel angry.
ROMAN was quite unable to escape from his run or stamp his foot loud enough for his father to hear.
HE was left with absolutely no choice but to destroy his exercise run. Roman knew that if he was to shake the bars of the run with his teeth, one of his parents would appear. Sometimes they would be angry with him, and on other occasions they would stroke his head and neck.
ROMAN shook the bars of his run shake-rattle shake-rattle shake-rattle-rattle! He did this with such strength and for so long that he began to give himself a headache. By this point he was furious. He felt like Mr. and Mrs. Nose-Twitchin were ignoring him and his need for attention.
WHILE there were difficulties in getting noticed by anyone, he knew that there was one way in which he could always get his mother and father to listen. Roman told himself that if he was to eat the rug within his exercise run, somebody would come to see him.
ROMAN did not enjoy eating carpet. It tasted horrible and made him feel rather sick. His mother and father were always very angry when he did this and would shout. Normally Roman would not like this but today he did not care.
UPSTAIRS, Mr. Nose-Twitchin was in the bedroom and heard Roman making a terrible noise downstairs. Tug-a-tear tug-a-tear tug-tug-tear!
LUCKILY, Roman’s father had a very nice mobile telephone – a Samsung S10. When Roman was a very little bunny, Mr. Nose-Twitchin had placed a webcam downstairs so he could spy on him.
ROMAN had seen the webcam on the wall, but did not know that his father was using it to look at him; he also did not know what a webcam was. This is because he is a rabbit and there are many humans more intelligent than rabbits. Sadly, Watership Down is not a true story.
MR. NOSE-TWITCHIN was able to use his smartphone to connect to the webcam. Once he had seen that Roman was eating carpet, he became very worried. Mr. Nose-Twitchin shouted at Roman to stop what he was doing,
ROMAN had heard his father’s cries, but as he was a very naughty little bunny, he continued to eat more of the rug! Nom-nom nom-nom nom-nom!
BY this point Mr. Nose-Twitchin was scared. He sent a message using WhatsApp to Roman’s mother telling her everything that had happened. Mr. Nose-Twitchin’s new smartphone was so clever that it could even be used to make telephone calls. He rang his own father, Grandad Nose-Twitchin to ask for his help.
GRANDAD NOSE-TWITCHIN was quick to climb into his motorcar and drive from his Bristol burrow to Roman’s retreat in Bath. He was careful not to get seen by any police officer. Boris the Bull had told all humans to remain in the safety of their homes, to avoid getting the nasty coronavirus. Had Grandad Nose-Twitchin been caught by the police he would have been fined! That would cost Roman many weeks of pocket money to pay.
I AM sorry to say that by the time Grandad Nose-Twitchin arrived in Bath, Roman had a bad tummy ache. He had stopped rug munching and sat in the corner of his run, not feeling very well. Despite feeling poorly, Roman was excited to see his Grandfather and ran up and down his run as if he had forgotten all about his bad stomach.
ROMAN was sent straight to bed and left in his cage all day and night. He didn’t feel very well and wished he was a rabbit in a Beatrix Potter book where he would have been given camomile tea. Unfortunately for Roman, the only tea kept by Mrs. Nose-Twitchin was PG Tips; and as we all know only monkeys drink this type of tea.
AND despite behaving like a mischievous monkey, Roman remains very much a rabbit. A very naughty rabbit.
THE END
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I know that many of you like to read about how Roman is getting on.
Here is the furry little scamp in all his cuteness…
“It’s Water O’Clock!”
I make no apologies for posting a photo of Romy’s poop (again), dainty placed at the rear of his litter tray.
Proof that not all fecal matter is the same. If I was a dog owner and blogged a huge photo of Penny’s excrement, all over the entrance to a local primary school, you would rightly be mortified. Instead, everyone who looks at Roman’s little currants, lets out a collective “awwww”.
Last, but by no means least, is this masterpiece. This decorative plate is a birthday present, created especially for me by my aunt, Madeline.
Unfortunately, I’m going to have to wait for my plate, as it is currently in London, where she lives. Plates are generally too fragile to transport by courier. Madeline can’t even hand deliver the plate to me, as humans are generally too fragile to leave their houses right now.
Claire and I tried one of those vegan pizzas in the week.
We are both vegetarian and are always on the lookout for meat alternatives – especially me, after turning veggie in 2018.
The recent vegan craze has given rise to lots of meat-free alternatives, many from plant-based ingredients. Some of these new creations have been very nice – the Burger King Rebel Whopper especially.
Therefore, when we saw a new vegan pizza in the Chicago Town ‘Takeaway’ range, our attention was caught.
We’re not vegans, but we both love a pizza. The ‘Sticky BBQ’ sauce was also a temptation for me.
As I was nearing the end of my carnivorous days, I ate a Chicago Town Takeaway pizza. I seem to recall it contained a BBQ sauce, as well as a lot of meat. I remember particularly enjoying this sauce.
I had tried jackfruit on pizza before. It wasn’t a success, but I was prepared to give it another chance, thinking that the sticky BBQ may bring out the best in this pretend meat.
The sauce did nothing to make jackfruit any more appealing. To make matters worse, the cheese wasn’t dairy. It was fake cheese.
“THIS IS FAKE CHEESE, FOLKS”
Before you all ask me what we expected from a vegan pizza – of course we knew that the cheese would be dairy-free. What we did not expect was for it to be horrible.
The pizza looked nasty and didn’t smell too good. I did try some, but it was barely a nibble – more of a lick.
I don’t think I’ll be buying fake cheese again. As for jackfruit…
Jackfruit is a terrible meat alternative. Linda McCartney would be spinning in her grave.
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
