Plostcard Flom Hong Kong...

Harro Leeder,

So, here I am, half way through my two weeks in Hong Kong and I'm enjoying an enforced day off today.  The reason for this "day off" is because there's a "typhoon 8" warning and I've been told by the client not to go into the office as it will be closed. OK, suits me just fine because this unexpected break gives me the opportunity to write this "Plostcard Flom Hong Kong..."

To be honest there's really not much to report apart from it's wet, hot, and sticky (the weather that is...) which is most unpleasant, even more so when The Mink informs me that the weather is lovely and sunny at home... TYPICAL! I come all this bloody way and end up getting soaked while the weather in the UK turns into a late summer. 

Anyway, at this point I suppose I should mention a bit about the food. Well what can I say about the local cuisine? It's very nice, just as long as you like noodles and rice and even more noodles, all washed down with Jasmine Tea. 

 

Now as anyone will tell you, I am quite partial to a Chinese Take Away but I'm now starting to crave a nice pork chop with mash, cauliflower, and Bisto gravy, or better still, a Chicken Dansak, Sag Aloo, and a poppadom with mango chutney, you know what I'm saying, really good, traditional English food.

At least I've managed to visit the hotel gym every day this week in an attempt to: 

(A) get fit

(B) burn off the extra calories the local grub is loaded with. 

The gym is loaded with some really good equipment such running treadmills, exercise bikes, rowing machines, cross trainers, but my favourite one of all is the vending machine. Do you know what? I can really get an exhaustive work out just by trying to get a free Kit Kat out of it...

Actually, I think the gym sessions must be working because I really do feel much fitter now. This is good news for my ongoing football "career" as I should now be able to last the full ninety minutes on the pitch as opposed to my usual seventy-five minutes and then spending the last fifteen "blowing out of my arse," wishing the referee would blow for full time...

Well, that's about it for now evleewon so, all that remains for me to do now is to sign off with my own variation on the old postcard cliché and say, "wish I was there..."

Speak soon,

Luv

Woodo

 

New Beach Football Club, the source of my reveries...

In my last post I spoke about the script I'm writing. The story is based loosely on some of the youthful antics me and my fellow football team mates got up to in the late seventies and early eighties playing for New Beach Football Club and how we are in the present day.

This a photo from November 1979 just before we hammered some poor team who had the audacity to actually turn up and play us... Yes, we were THAT good...  So, these are the reprobates I played football with back then, went drinking with, nightclubbing, played golf, went to parties with, basically, we were all very close.

Even in the summer close season we were getting together for the afore mentioned golf days and lazy sunny afternoons in local pub gardens, quite idyllic to a twenty-two year lad back then...

Ok, now fast forward to 2011 and, believe it or not, we are all middle aged chaps with families, responsibilities, greying hair and thickening waist lines (me in particular) but we still keep in touch. We hold a "New Beach Reunion" every six months where we get together up in Leicester Square or Covent Garden, drink, get drunk, and play "D'you Remember" where we would talk about the "good old days" and relive the goals we'd scored (funny how once a scuffed shot from ten yards that just about trickled into the bottom corner of the goal ends up as a blinding volley from the edge of the penalty area and screamed into the net...).

Once the booze had completely robbed us of any coherent speech we'd then then go for a Chinese meal... Lovely stuff you'd agree but it's also to make sure that no one has died within the ranks and we haven't missed out on a massive piss up at the funeral wake...

This (above) is one such reunion at All Bar One in Leicester Square on a balmy autumn evening back in September 2004 and, as you can see, everyone is quite merry and total "bollocks" is being spouted by one and all...

Of course after a few beers we were always talking about playing a veterans match just so we can relive the thrill of putting on the old sky & navy blue, rubbing in the white horse oils (if they still make it), warming up (two days in advance...) and kicking off against appropriate like-minded opposition. Sounds great doesn't it? and we actually did it too back in 2005, 2006, and 2007 but that's another story for another post...

Anyway, this kinda gives you an idea of the camaraderie we all have within New Beach, even to this day, and it's on those relationships I've based my story on augmented with some of the stuff I see nowadays playing in the SBCVL for Wheatleys Veterans FC.

Right then, enough for today, thanks for reading this drivel and I'll see you soon (or maybe not...)
Luv
Woodo

Introduction

Hello, I'm Colin Wood aka Woodo (a football nickname that's stuck for more years than I can shake a stick at) and this blog will be an extension of the ramblings I post on Twitter regarding life, love, and basically old men still trying to play football in their late middle age.

Anyway, the purpose of this introduction is to inform whoever is bored enough to read this blog a bit about who I am and basically what the f**k this nonsense is all about.

Ok then, here we go... I'm 54 (mental age 22), married to a blond, blue eyed Essex Girl know as "The Mink." I have twins from a previous marriage (and there's been a few...) and my day job is a Business Consultant however, I do have a secret ambition to become a scriptwriter which, while it appears to be a rather exciting hobby it is in fact bloody hard to fulfil as the day job tends to get in the way, still I persevere with my current "project" and hope one day (before I get my bus pass) I'll get it taken up by Channel 4 or BBC2 or The Rayleigh Amateur Operatic Society...

Now this brings me nicely onto what, and who, I'm writing about. Despite my "advanced" years I still manage to play football in the second division of the Southend Borough Combination Veterans League (SBCVL for short) where it's supposed to be a nice sedate game of organised Sunday league football for old bastards. Hah, no f**king way José, it can get damn intense and you see some pretty tasty tackles flying about... Well of course you do, all of us in the SBCVL take it seriously and if you're gonna suffer three days of post match aching with a risk of becoming addicted to Nurofen+ then you're not turning out for a Sunday morning stroll are you?


My little story is set here in the present, interspersed with a few excursions into the past (mine to be precise along with the guys I used to play football with long ago), as my script explores the joys of playing veteran league football and where some of us (maybe all) that still play are trying to recapture lost youth and prove we're not "Passed It" (as in Past it... Heh, geddit, see what I did there???).

With this blog I'll also try to entertain the odd visitor with some hopefully amusing comments on the current shit we're all living with and delve back into nostalgia, looking fondly at how fings used to be in the good old days (oooh, I sounded like my dad a bit there...).

Right then, that's all for now as I've got to do some proper work to do so I'll leave you with this thought... why does hair growth increase in the ears and up the nostrils when you hit forty (and not just with men either)?

Speak soon,
Luv
Woodo