Tears for Keano

Yesterday, it was confirmed that Spurs legend Robbie Keane had completed a transfer to Liverpool for £20.3m. It had been rumoured for a while that Liverpool had made advances and that if a bid was made, Keane would accept as they were the team he supported as a child. It was a shock that he would even contemplate leaving as he's been a loyal player for the past six years and it seemed that he would be there for the rest of his career, as he'd hinted previously. He had, as us fans says, Lillywhite blood running through his veins and no-one could see him playing for any other team. Always the fans' favourite, the chant 'there's only one Keano' would be sang at every single game.

When I heard on the radio yesterday morning that he was going for his medical at Anfield, that's pretty much a done deal so I was absolutely shell shocked. I felt tears welling up and the terrible sinking feeling you get when you get bad news. I know on the scheme of things, in reality, it's only football (a game!) but Spurs is a huge part of my life and this was the worst news possible, jointly with the expectation before the transfer window ends, that Berbatov will also leave. One of them going is enough to bear but both strikers is agony, as they are my all-time favourite players.

When the news was confirmed of Keane's departure and I read his statement on the internet last night, the floodgates opened. I've never cried for a player before (although I did shed tears when manager Martin Jol was sacked unceremoniously last year). Here' what he said:

"I would like to place on record my thanks to the board, players and fans of Tottenham for the past six years, which were the best and most enjoyable of my career to date."

"I will never forget them. I would specifically like to thank chairman Daniel Levy for understanding, that, as a fan, joining Liverpool is a lifelong dream of mine and one I couldn't let pass me by.

"I hope one day the Spurs fans, who have been brilliant to me, can understand this too.

"I have only good things to say about my time at Tottenham and expect them to go from strength to strength under Juande Ramos and Daniel Levy."

I've just watched his press conference and oh God, the blubbling has started again. What a baby I am. What can I say? I love Robbie; I will never forget the good times he brought to the Lane, his brilliant goal tally, his loyalty (because 6 years in this day and age is a long time), and his unique charisma. I will look back with pride that he played for my beloved team.

I wish him good luck and happiness at Liverpool and thank heaven that he didn't sign for one of the scum teams. He will most certainly get applauded by the fans when he comes back to the Lane in his red shirt.

"There's only one Keano"!

Busy family weekend & stuff

John's cousin Marie, her hubby Tony, daughter Shalina, son Darren, his partner Nyrie & their one year old baby Jasmine, arrived from Australia last week, one day later than planned. What a fiasco and complete nightmare! The story is that we had their flight info and John's brother Chris viewed the website to check the flights were still on schedule. It stated that the connecting flight from Kuala Lumpur was cancelled so John decided to ring Marie to find out the new flight details. It was 05:30 in the morning their time and John woke them up but good job really. To cut a long story short, it turned out that they should have been on the flight that left 00:15, five hours earlier! Well, poor Marie was in bits, so upset at the thought that they may not be able to even make it over here, having to book another flight for 5 adults and a baby. Fortunately, they managed to get on the exact same flight the following day and the aeroplane turned out to be virtually empty! That was one hurdle sorted but as they also had a flight to Rome arranged for the Wednesday, they missed that too and this also had to be changed. All that extra cost has now left them with little spending money and John reckons this is worrying Marie a lot. The purpose of the whole trip is to get Shalina to a twirling competition in Dublin at the end of this week. She is one of the top performers in the world and at 22 years old, is probably a veteran in her field. What she does with a baton is truly amazing!

Saturday was a hectic day. In the afternoon John and I went to a kids' party. Dylan, my friend Ellie's oldest son was 5 and the garden was all geared up for a fun day with two paddling pools, a trampoline and a sand pit. The weather couldn't have been any better; in fact it was too hot and I found what shade I could. Unfortunately we could only stay a couple of hours as we had to get back to ours to host a family barbecue. Seventeen of us in all: Chris, Sandy & the kids, Marie, Tony, Shalina, Darren, Nyrie & Jasmine, Jacqui and Kevin, Paul, my parents and us. As usual, John didn't let the coals cool down before he put the food on the grill and promptly we had black burgers and bangers! He will never learn and he certainly can't take criticism. Clearly a man's barbie is his castle!!! Lots of hints were flying in and eventually my dad took over and the food became edible! I'm so glad I don't eat meat so everything on my plate is the right colour! Anyway, we sat outside till dusk as it was so warm, then adjourned into the living room for some games. Some played Dingbats, others were on the wii and we were also introduced to an Aussie game which Marie brought along, which apparently, is no longer available and no-one can get it anywhere - not even on the internet! I can't remember what it's called but it was very good. It involved several large pictures which were made up on hundreds of objects, scenes and events. On each picture you had to list as many things as you could see starting with a certain letter of the alphabet, but you only had a minute to do it. Once the minute was up, you pass the picture to your left and so on and once everyone's seen all the pictures, you do the scoring. For every unique word you've written, you gain a point. Very simple but very good.

On Sunday, I had a lie-in after the late night, caught up with some TV I'd recorded Friday and Saturday including the Celebrity MasterChef final. I was pleased that Liz McClarnon won it as before she entered the competition she'd never ever used an oven! There's hope for me yet! I spent the rest of the day in the garden, reading, chilling out and falling asleep! Another amazingly hot and sunny day. We were invited to Chris and Sandy's for the evening and dinner which we took in the garden as by that time, it was a tad cooler, and certainly less stuffy that sitting indoors. The bugs were biting at dusk and John and Paul were the victims; they didn't touch me! I don't know what they were, nothing like gnats, but come Monday, Paul's foot had swollen right up and puss was oozing out of one of the bites. Yuck. I made sure he went to the chemist this morning to get it sorted- Lisa's orders! Anyway, back to Sunday night, and we had a return match of the Aussie game I can't remember the name of which took bloody ages when it came to the scoring as there were ten of us playing. John was drinking stronger lager than he's used to and got hammered. When this happens, he gets louder and louder which I have to admit embarrasses me, even if we're around family. The funny part was that he couldn't read hardly any of the words he'd written down and couldn't focus to read them anyway! It wasn't until midnight that we finally finished! We got home half an hour later; poor John had to get up for work just after 5am although actually, I have no sympathy for him because he got hammered and then kept me awake with his snoring for ages. He had a hangover which was self inflicted so hahaha!

My week off

Well I suppose I can't complain too much about the weather this past week. The first half was cracking, and as soon as I got up last Saturday morning I was raring to have a clearout of some sort! I decided on one of the sheds and after a couple of hours it was transformed to something of beauty and ordiliness (is that a word?). During the rest of that day, Monday and some of Tuesday, I spent on more garden projects, thus also making the most of the sunshine: clearing leaves, weeding, trimming ivy, going to the garden centre and planting a few patio pots, sweeping and getting rid of rubbish. It looks so much nicer now and I felt well and truly accomplished.

On Tuesday evening John and I went to see Mamma Mia the movie at the Odeon. John's seen the stage musical about half a dozen times, myself twice, and so we were eager to see how they'd managed to convert it into a film. Unbeknown to me, John had downloaded it from the internet and watched it earlier on in the day - WHY WHY WHY would you do that if you're seeing at the flicks?! Anyway, the film far exceeded my expectations. It was so much fun I immediately wanted to see it again. We were both perplexed when we heard that Meryl Streep had been cast in the role of Sophie's mum but she was great! Julie Walters was a blast as per usual - she could quite have easily stolen the show but the filmmakers were clever. Pierce Brosnan's singing would probably appeal to an audience somewhere...? bless - shall we say a good attempt? The end credits were a hoot and Colin Firth's costume had me in fits. If you don't come out of the theatre singing and smiling, there's something wrong with you! 10/10 and easily the best film I've seen in an age.

Wednesday morning, John and I went to see my Nan who had a fall a few days beforehand. She's been having dizzy spells (she is a long suffering vertigo sufferer) and she fell against a stool which had an exposes screw in one of the legs; unfortunately she caught her leg on it and now it's all bandaged up. She has paper thin skin as it is so any damage to it is really bad. Nan didn't look well at all; in fact she's looking very old and frail now. However, her mind is as active as ever and she'll always have enough strength to give her opinion (and the only opinion) on current affairs.

The rest of the day was spent looking around DIY stores for a replacement for the rotten wooden shelf around our raised rockery - I wanted slabs but couldn't find anything suitable. Typical. They probably don't make what we're looking for. We bought a few more plants and then did the food shopping. Boring but essential.

We went into London on Thursday afternoon. The weather wasn't great so visited the Science Museum first of all before heading to theatreland, having something to eat and then taking our seats for the evening performance of Les Miserables. I haven't seen this show since 2000 when we were in New York, whereas John is probably in double figures. The seats were great - 4th row right in the middle. Great! It's such a brilliant show and the music is fantastic. I enjoyed it so much more than previously and found myself getting really tearful at the particularly sad parts.

With the weather a bit grotty on Friday, I started make a list of people to invite to my forthcoming 40th birthday party on 27th September. Also, I started designing invitations on the laptop, including making suggestions for fancy dress which has a theme of TV and film characters. I spent hours scouring the net for costume ideas for me; there are so many sites dedicated to fancy dress it's unreal! So much choice - too much in fact. I'm not really any closer to making a decision - I think it will be best to go to a few shops and actually try stuff on first. If I find the perfect costume using this method, then I will hire one, otherwise, I will buy one online.
In the evening, Tina and the kids came round for a couple of hours, at the same time, collecting some empty cardboard boxes for her move to Pitsea in August. Dave will be staying at the house and renting out a room to a mate to help with the mortgage. Shame the kids will be further away, not just down the road like they are now but Tina doesn't have much of a choice. You should see Ronnie playing on the wii - he comes straight in and asks to play 'boxing'. He doesn't know exactly what he's doing but does the motions and thinks he's knocking down daddy even when it's him that has been knocked down by Kasey! Kasey always wants to play hide and seek with my fake fruit and she always forgets where she's put it. I found a peach amongst my soft toys when I was dusting yesterday! (yes, me dusting!) lol

I spent most of Saturday in the garden reading and falling asleep and reading and falling asleep. Well you get the picture. A very lazy day.















Today, John and I and my Mum and Dad went for a day out visiting Scotney Castle near Tunbridge Wells. Not so much a castle but an old house with a rotunda and a fairly large pond all the way around it (not really a moat). This was really pretty and looking even nicer when the sun came out. There was also an old house in the grounds which you can also have a nose around - it wasn't anything special. As it was only 3pm when we'd exhausted this site, we travelled 20 miles down the road to Battle in Sussex (1066 and all that), and had a cream tea. It was the biggest scone I'd ever seen and only managed half of it. Stuffed for the rest of the day, I only just managed to eat a jacket potato at my parents' house on our return. The rest of them had a roast dinner!

So that's it; a fairly uneventful week. Back to work tomorrow.