Cup Fever is Here!

It's back on the cup trail for the Leeds Rhinos again as the forth round of the Powergen Challenge Cup gets underway.
This year, Leeds will hope to go one better than last years runners-up place and travel to Leigh for a 'should-win' game on their first step on the road to wherever.
I say wherever, it should be the road to Wembley but seeing as, once again, London has proved how shit it is, it probably won't be played 'under the arch'. Instead, it'll probably be at Twickenham, but who knows. At the moment it may aswell be the road to Amarillo.
Depending on which way you look at it, Leeds either do well, or badly in the cup. Good from the point of view that, bar twice, we've got to at least the semi-finals in the last ten years and got to the final six times from the last 12 years. However, Leeds have done badly in the sense that the last time they won the thing was 1999 and the last time before that was 1978! Still, I have the obligatory, annual "funny feeling about this year".

My 'second' team Bramley got knocked out some time ago, probably because they're concentrating on the league ;) but they do have a tasty tie with the Lakers in the Northern Rail Cup. Not Kobe Bryant's Lakers, the Lakers of Doncaster - not quite as exotic is it?

After that, Leeds travel to Hull to play the team that beat us in last years cup final then it's the big one, the Yorkshire derby - Leeds Rhinos vs Bradford Bulls, the team that beat Leeds in last years Grand Final. Is their a pattern here?

It's supposed to be summer isn't it?

This weekend saw the official start of British Summer Time. Last night we had to sacrifice an hour in bed in return for lighter evenings and better weather.
So I feel short changed, because I haven't got the nicer weather, I haven't got the lighter evenings and I'm getting tired from sleep deprivation.
British Summer Time 2006 has started badly, almost as badly as Wigan started the Super League season.
On Friday, I managed a free blag to Odsal to see how badly Wigan actually were as they took on Bradford, well that was the plan anyway.

The truth was, I saw very little. That's not because I was drunk or not paying attention, but because of the thickest fog I can ever remember.
Imagine a Bond film, just before the villan makes a getaway and sets off a smoke bomb so that everyone is blinded whilst he sneaks out undetected, it wasn't far off that.



To make matters worse, Odsal has a speedway track around it, meaning that, at best, you are at least ten meters from the pitch and if you're an away fan, at least double that - and thats if you manage to get to the front.
One Wigan try wasn't noticed by their fans until the it was announced by the PA announcer and the other, a full length run, wasn't seen until the player with the ball emerged from the fog about 10m away from the try line.
Still, it made for a funny night with chants of "We can't see a f**king thing". One thing is for sure, nobody noticed the famed 'Wigan Walk'.

BST continued it's poor form on Saturday today by absolutly peeing it down in the afternoon. The feat was repeated today, just as I finished work.

I thought global warming was supposed to stop this kind of weather? If this form carries on, I might try and bag some more 5p flights to Perpignan.

Car sharing - it's the future!

You might remember some time ago, I mentioned how Leeds got screwed over on a Supertram scheme that would have saved the city from complete gridlock. If you don't, I'll give you the gist.

Leeds is a big city, with lots of people. Unfortunately, we don't have a public transport system (well, we do, but not that you'd notice). Leeds tried to get a transport system, and was told we could have one. But then London decided that it wanted a really big party in 2012, so transport secretary Alistair Darling told Leeds to forget about a Supertram, and think about buying some more buses instead.

Well today, Mr Darling came back up North to face the wrath of the loiners. He'd very proudly announced that he'd turn one of the busiest stretches of motorway in the country into a "high occupancy lane".
Basically, what that means is that unless you have two or more people in your car, driving between Bradford and Leeds will soon become a living hell.

He spoke this morning of reducing the number of bottlenecks on our roads which cause the congestion problems that we end up with and his idea new involved making even more bottlenecks. Essentially he plans on shutting off a one mile stretch of the M62 to anyone with just one person in their car which by his logic, would mean that we’d all save around 8 minutes on our journeys. Why it’s only a one mile stretch you’d have to ask him, but basically he’s spending £2.5m on a bit of white paint.
Mr Darling was, for some reason, particularly proud of his new ill-thought out idea but after all, our Alistair is a strange character. Firstly, he has the most silver hair you have ever seen yet, despite this, his eyebrows look like two slugs that have been stuck to his forehead. They are unbelievably black.
Secondly, for some inexplicable reason, he thought it’d be a good idea to put a bus lane on the M4, despite the fact that no buses use the M4.

Alistair Darling seriously pissed off Leeds City Council over the whole Supertram debacle. So it seems more than a co-incidence that whilst Darling was boasting about how good 2+ lanes are and how they’re the solution to all of lives problems, Leeds City Council came out and admitted that the high occupancy lane we already have in the city isn’t working at all. In fact, it’s completely useless.

I’ll raise a glass to the Council worker who released that statement. It might not get us the Supertram, but it’ll show Darling up for an even bigger idiot than he already is.

Lets get physical

In the age of ‘keep fit’ and healthy living, I’ve decided to try and beat the bulge and get rid of the beer gut.
I spent a lot of time boozing whilst in Perpignan watching Leeds Rhinos tonk Les Catalans and I doubt that it’s done much for my physique.

So, in my fight against the flab, I headed on down to my local gym at Pudsey.
I’ve been a member for a while, but hardly been and I can tell why.

My muscles are killing. In fact, I’ve probably gone through about four tubes of deep heat just so that I can type this blog entry.
Anyway, I had a decent workout on the treadmills, bikes, that sort of thing but it’s the weights that have probably knackered me out, even though I wasn’t lifting that much.

That said, I’m going to stick it out. I even considered becoming a fully paid up member for £20 a month on the basis that if I paid up front, in true Yorkshire fashion, I’d try and get my moneys worth.
I’ve not gone completely mad though. I’ve not raced out and bought those videos by Davina McCall or Mr Motivator that tell me how to do super aerobic, cardiovascular somersaults in my own front room. That would be going too far!

En Français!

The Engage Super League is up and running. My team Leeds have got off to a decent start, with 3 wins from 4 despite not looking their best, but it's early days yet.
Last Friday's game at home to Castleford was a strange game, as it didn't happen. Despite being a summer sport, the match had to be moved to Sunday because of a frozen pitch.
This weekend sees our eagerly awaited European leg of the Rhinos tour 2006, with a trip to Perpignan, France to take on the French new-boys Les Catalans Dragons.
Tomorrow afternoon we hit the A1 towards Stansted and it's chocks-away for the South of France!
It seems that I;ve got everything packed; clothes, passport, tickets, documents but I just know that I'll get to the airport and found I've left something behind.

Anyway, after we get back from a boozy weekend, it's back home for the visit of Salford. This will "hopefully" be my first home game of the season. It would have been Friday's game, but that got postponed at the last minute to Sunday, when I unfortunatly have to be working. Still, I managed to test out my fancy new electronic season ticket.
The weekend after, it's a trip down south to play Harlequins before the Powergen Challenge Cup kicks-off, one of the three competitions that Leeds came second in last year.

So, enjoy your Rugby, and watch out for some (probably drunk) ramblings as soon as I touch down back in blighty on Sunday.

Return of the Corned Beef Tin

It would seem that Princess Foods happen to read this 'ere blog.
Just days after my escapade with the Corned Beef tin, in which I came away with a damaged right thumb, a bruised ego, and one of the most tedious, longest running threads to grace RLFANS, I set out to put the whole trauma behind me.
I ventured into the Horsforth branch of Morrisons and proceeded to the 'tinned meats' section where I would confront my foe.

As I lifted the tin up, I proceeded to look for the key and to my suprise, there wasn't one. But then, to my suprise, on the bottom of the can was a ring-pull.

Brilliant! I will claim this as a victory for "View fron the Bar". No more will the ordinary working man risk finger injuries and bloody worktops in his quest for a corned beef sandwich.

Hat's off to Princess Foods!

Work Appraisals

You have to wonder sometimes if your boss has anything better to do.

Most workplaces have a policy of doing staff appraisals or reviews, but rarely bother doing them.
Last week I had my 3^rd 3-monthly appraisal for just over 4 years service, so we do them more regularly than most.

The boss calls me up, gives me the usual cock-and-bull story about where the firm is going, what plans they have and what my role is in those plans (usually just to shut up and do what they tell me to do). Then he starts asking me questions suggesting he cares about my opinion although I just nod and agree because I just can’t be arsed to strike up a conversation with him. I did hold the record for the longest appraisal a few years ago (31mins) but I couldn’t care less anymore. I wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and I think he wanted me out of there as well.
After that he starts marking my performance, out of 5, on this ‘new starters’ sheet. Only with the phase “new starter” crossed out and the phrase “one-to-one review” written on, so I knew he was taking it seriously. After a few 4’s, a couple of 5’s and a 3 (for motivation), he sends me on my way to send the next bored looking sap up to his offices. He looked like he’d run out of pointless busy work to do, so was trying to make his own and in all honesty it wouldn’t have surprised me if he just made paper aeroplanes out of the forms after he’d done.

I really didn’t see the point in the whole escapade, and I’m interested to know how productive he thought that 3 minutes was.

The Lethal Weapon in my kitchen

We're constantly being told that the kitchen is the most dangerous room in the home. Apparently, more accidents happen there than any other room. But all these home safety boffins will ever warn you against is how you shouldn't play with gas hob, run around with knives, drink the chemicals from the cupboard under the sink or perform surgical activity with the turkey carver. What they don't tell you about is the death trap known as the corned beef tin.

Corned beef tins as you may well know, aren’t like normal circular cans that you open with a tin opener, or better yet, a ring-pull. No, the corned beef tin is some sort of prism type cube affair, with a key attached to the side.
Here's where the trouble starts. You wrap the key around this little catch and twist it around the outside of the can, and hey presto, you have your beef. Except it doesn't work like that. What happens instead is that the key usually breaks halfway around leaving you with the dilemma of getting it open.
I posted this dilemma yesterday lunchtime on a popular message board that I often frequent and currently, the post is up to 7 pages and 91 messages of ways in which I could open the said can.
After various methods, I eventually tried to prise open the offending article with a large knife and a slightly smaller knife. Needless to say, it didn't end how I envisaged with a nice corned beef sandwich. Instead it ended in utter bloodshed.
The small knife slipped, my thumb went straight into the edge that had been cut and the kitchen worktop was covered in blood.
I eventually gave up and after rummaging through the fridge, found the same product in a sliced variety.

This was at around 12:30 on Wednesday afternoon. It is now 9:30pm on Thursday and the thumb is still bleeding.
If I was American, I'd already have Princess Food's ass in court!