Jun 19
Happy Father’s Day Dads.
Sadly for me it will be another day isolating in the bedroom struggling with Covid, so I get to enjoy the lazy-do-nothing-all-day vibe but with no one to share it with, although the dog does come down and visit me occasionally.
Please click for moreI spent the last few days in New York, which has slowly come back to life with sidewalks and streets busier.
Downtown by the World Trade Center in an evening fog the city was as evocative as ever, and as I always do I walked past the two vast 9/11 memorial reflecting pools where water is sucked 30 feet into gigantic square basins on the site of the original twin towers
Please click for more🔝5️⃣ Two more of these Top Five’s to share. Bermuda is like no other place in the World in so many different ways. It’s is peculiar and beautiful in equal measures.
Please click for moreSo bored of Covid. It has had it’s fun and games, killed loved ones, turned upside down daily life and prevented us from seeing the people and things that make us happy. Please just do one. Of all the hopes and aspirations for 2022 I want Covid to become no more than a nuisance factor and it no longer gets to run roughshod over our lives.
Please click for moreIt’s been a little odd without football this Christmas week. Yet, it does look like we will be back in action on Saturday.
Jacko talked today of a decent sized group of players to pick from, but the unknown is which players are suffering Covid after-effects and have had none or little training due to isolation. It will certainly be hard to guess the line-up.
Please click for moreBack home indoors after almost a month away in the United States. The dog was ignoring me, but we rekindled a little on our morning walk earlier.
It was pretty restorative being away from this small isle for the past 4 weeks, travelling East Coast to West, and back again. When I left at the beginning of December Covid was in the rear view mirror and now it is back in the front seat. California and Florida have a complete different mindset when it comes to the pandemic, and one could easily see that after spending time in both States.
Please click for moreThe Gillingham home game at The Valley on Wednesday has also been postponed due to Covid cases within the playing squad.
Please click for moreThe Addicks’ Boxing Day clash at Wimbledon, the nearest we get to a derby these days, has been postponed due to Covid.
Sparrows Lane was closed earlier in the week due to new cases, although even yesterday Charlton were selling additional tickets for Sunday’s game, and Jacko was hopeful that Akin Famewo, Conor Washington and Josh Davison could all return after 7 days of isolation and no symptoms.
Please click for moreUnless Jacko signs a contract on Friday, Saturday will be his 58th day and 10th league game as caretaker manager. There’s a been a few additional cup games as well.
Negotiations are clearly happening, but sticking points I presume revolve around control, contract length and salary. Jason Euell is an interesting pawn in proceedings as well.
Please click for moreGood morning Addicks. How are we doing?
What a great feeling it is for Addicks’ fans to be back at The Valley, which other than for the odd Covid trial event, has sat ghost like for the past 17 months. It is been a weird time for everyone but routines will return this afternoon as friends and family gather to wake up this historic football stadium.
Please click for moreJust back from a little trip to Florida, a couple of days in Miami followed a couple in Fort Lauderdale, just 40 minutes north along the coast, and a place I hadn’t been for 13 years. It had changed significantly, and grown like a sunflower.
Neighbouring towns of Hollywood and Oakwood Park have been engulfed by Fort Lauderdale’s expansion. Once a renowned centre for spring-breakers’ high jinks the dive bar and burger joints had all but disappeared and have been replaced by boutique hotels, upscale apartment buildings and a burgeoning restaurant scene.
Nigel Adkins, several members of staff and players were each impacted by Covid last week meaning they had top self-isolate away front the rest of the squad and missed the pre-season run-out at Dartford.
Cases in the UK are surging as it fully opens tomorrow with the Delta variant spreading across Europe and countries arguing over who and who cannot enter.
Please click for moreI’m back in Bermuda after our little sojourn to Miami Beach. We stayed just a couple of miles south of Chaplain Towers in Surfide, the site of Thursday’s building collapse tragedy. We drove by it last Monday to have dinner in Bal Harbour, a condo building in a row of non-descript 1980 oceanfront buildings punctuated occasionally by plush hotels.
My heart goes out to every family and friend waiting on news of loved ones 💔
Please click for moreA little bit of a mini break for the next couple of days as we head to Miami later.
Florida has long moved on from the pandemic and apparently visitor numbers are almost back to pre-Covid times. Double vaccinated Americans are increasingly moving around the country and I expect Miami Beach to be busy.
Please click for moreJust as my son was, and I hope many of you were, tucking into a nice cold pint in the cold outside your favourite boozer, here in Bermuda we were entering a shelter in place order meaning we cannot leave our homes unless it is for essential services such as grocery stores, pharmacies, doctors, covid testing and vaccines.
We can exercise for an hour only within 1km of our homes, but only in two’s. Never understood that, when you can all sit in the kitchen indoors.
It’s the baby-faced-other-half’s big birthday tomorrow. Don’t tell her I told you.
She got back from a quick trip to Sarasota today. I have her locked in the shed quarantining. Our Premier has taken a leaf out of Boris’ rule book and our guidelines are now as equally as confusing and they can’t find time or be bothered to update the government website. We think double shot vacinated, post two weeks, still means ‘mobile quarantining’ until you get your Bermuda arrival test result. The shed is comfy I just told her when I left a bag of mini-eggs outside her door.
Our game next Tuesday at home to Lincoln City has been postponed due a Covid outbreak. The Imps were forced to close their training ground and had already called off their home game against MK Dons tomorrow.
That’s the third game we’ve seen postponed due to Covid, and none called off by us, despite some our own players contacting it. Interesting that their request coincides with a bad run of form.
💉 💪 I had my second Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 jab last week, three weeks after getting my first. So by Wednesday I should have 95% efficacy. That feels really good knowing that life can soon get back to normal, and that specifically means the abililty to go and see family and friends.
A fair number of people I know here were unwell after the 2nd shot, the impervious-other-half had flu symptoms and spent the day after hers in bed. I just had a nagging mild headache which dissapated the next morning. A sore arm from the first one is a seemingly popular complaint.
The year of all years crawls to a welcome end tonight. Sadly nothing will be much different when the sun rises tomorrow, and it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. Still, a new year brings new dreams and hopes of better times ahead.
We have a Chinese guy in our office, and after he returned to Bermuda from being back in China at the beginning of January he was made to stay at home. When he did come back to the office he wore a mask. It was odd to see him walk around with a mask and no one quite knew how to act around him.
Fast forward 12 months and the entire world has been heavily inflicted by Covid-19. This silent terror of a virus has literally changed the world we live in, a film set only previously in the minds of story tellers.
I’ve not left this little isle since February. The family since last December. 21 miles long, and a 1.75 miles wide at it’s very widest point can seem very, very small.
Yet, as I told the story the other day during the summer and into the early winter months you’d question yourself why you’d ever leave the beauty and reasonable normality of Bermuda during a global pandemic. Why throw yourself to the sharks, when we can swim with the parrot fish!
Two weeks ago whilst Addicks and other football fans at about half of the football clubs around the country were (were) venturing back into stadiums, Bermuda suddenly halted it’s football league and games were postponed indefinitely as the island suddenly wrestled with a cruel and quick re-emergence of Covid-19.
Bermuda was a Covid safe haven in the summer and early autumn. Those of us that live here boasted that we were in a bubble, life was normal, at least as much as it can be. From June to November Bermuda had zero active cases benefiting from a strict lockdown, which was very well observed. Our airport was closed and the cruise ship tap was long turned off. Very few people came or left the island and we moved around it quite freely.
In the Bristol Rovers’ camp.
“Tuesday’s game against Bristol Rovers at The Valley has been suspended due to an outbreak of Covid-19 at Bristol Rovers, with players and first-team staff required to self-isolate in line with EFL and Government guidance.” (more)
Just 7 hours before kick off, the EFL have suspended both of Rovers’ next two games against us and Oxford United on Saturday due to a Covid outbreak in their squad.
Great news that 2,000 Addicks can be in attendance tomorrow night at The Valley. I had grave reservations that the 1,000 masked souls that left SE7 disappointed after the Donny match were going to be the last fans able to watch the players on in the flesh this season, so chuffed and very jealous of those that are able to cheer them on.
The club’s ticketing staff, most of whom were on recent furlough, are doing an admirable job of working out all the logistics including not only the ballot, but the timing of arrivals around public transport, and seating allocations plus working around the government restrictions brought in last week with the whole of Kent in tier 3.
I felt very fortunate this week as the UK and large chunks of Europe go back into lockdown I was lucky enough to be outside watching live professional sport.
The Bermuda PGA Championship has been taking place this week at Port Royal Golf Course and ends today in what will be an exciting finish.
A bleak end to an oppressive and very fatiguing week for Addicks’ fans. Typical of course that we’d lose today as a 1,000 spectators were allowed into The Valley to watch their team for the first time since March 7th.
Lee Bowyer saying walking out onto the pitch to those 1,000 supporters gave him goosebumps, gave me goosebumps, and in some positive news it sounded as all went off very well with today’s ‘test case.’
Looks as if 1,000 Addicks will be allowed into The Valley on Saturday.
Charlton are one of 10 teams that will are be given test case status to house fans this coming weekend, although Luton chose to opt out this afternoon.
The game at The Valley will also be attended by members of the local council and Sports Ground Safety Authority to monitor procedures, with the ambition to admit up to 8,000 fans for home games post October.
Crewe Alexandra away actually would have been a decent trip for Addicks on opening day. An hour and a half from Euston, Gresty Road five minutes around the corner from the station, a pint in the Cheshire Inn on the way to the ground. Ugh, normal times — please come back!
21 years since we played at Gresty Road, 60 years since we were at Lincoln City, our second away trip. The more familiar names of Doncaster Rovers and Sunderland, the Addicks’ first two home games. Sunderland possibly our biggest home crowd of the season might be the game used as a trial to let fans return post Covid, although that was slated as September and we have just one home League game in that month.
Day 140 working from home (not that I’m counting 😩).
Like most others I’d imagine, I left the office on that Monday in March pretty unprepared for a long working stint at home, I walked out of the office re-assuring the team that I’d see them soon and was armed with my trusted laptop and notepad.
I was temporarily perched on the couch those first two weeks with laptop on lap, but with the TV news on a loop it became apparent how deep and bad the pandemic was.
I know some of you have good intelligence on Charlton’s young players so I’m interested in feedback on those released by the club this week.
Sadly Covid and the financial crisis around football clubs will make it even harder for some these young men to bounce back into the game, yet being a younger, hungrier and cheaper option than those at the twilight of their career may be beneficial as clubs lower down the ladder are more likely to fill their squads with cheaper rough diamonds than polished stones.
It was all going so well. The next game then in our mini-season.
The Coronavirus lockdown has changed so many things that became a normal part of our day, week and year. It has changed habits that were second nature to us unimaginably. Question is how does this new normal impact our regular humdrum go around with our friends from SE16?
A clean slate for Lee Bowyer’s squad this weekend. Forgotten are those not wanting to play and those that were injured pre-lockdown. Also forgotten is how bloody awful we were leading into that Hull game in March. Much worse than we were during that injury torn winless run leading up to Christmas.
No, not for Saturday, today. Football returns from the abyss at Villa Park this evening, which is 2pm here so I may grant myself a later lunch stop to soak in the artificial crowd noise. There will even be audio from the coin toss.
Players were warned that there should be social distancing goal celebrations, with a camera identified to celebrate in front off. With players naturally drawn to fans when they’ve scored, I look forward to the first player to score and give it the Sssh fingers to lips motion in front of an empty stand!
A Bermuda national holiday today. Once the Queen’s Birthday holiday, in recent times the island took to celebrating local historical figures, and renamed it National Heroes Day. Although from what I can make out very few heroes have ever been named, which seems very strange to me. I have long given up by being bewildered by Bermuda’s idiosyncrasies though.
In recent years this weekend became the focal point of a growing Carnival scene, attempting to emulate those in other Caribbean countries. Bermuda’s efforts have been rewarded as numbers have grown consistently helped by more and more tourists. From memory the number of visitors for last last year’s carnival weekend topped 1,500.
The EFL meet again tomorrow, whether that’s virtually or on a beach I don’t know. Curtailment of the season is expected to be voted for in League Two, whilst a vote could go either way in League One.
Clubs have put forward varying proposals including Barnsley in our division that suggests a general amendment to regulations that no club will be relegated from a division where that division fails to conclude its normal fixtures.
Whereas Lyle Taylor is never slow in publicly making his feelings clear, sensibly or non-sensical, Chris Solly throughout his career has always kept one’s counsel.
Lost in the hand wringing and abomination of Taylor’s decision not to play for us again, Solly slunk away to a quiet corner after making his even more improbable choice.
Tomorrow morning Lee Bowyer welcomes his players back to Sparrows Lane to start ‘small group training.’
Bowyer sounded delighted to be able to mix with his staff and players again but there are strict protocols that have to be adhered to.
So many chancers knocking around Charlton at the present time attempting to rip our famous club apart.
So, watching the Yann Kermorgant Valley Stories was a welcome reprieve and reminded us of what a wonderful player Yann was. A giant of a man on and off the pitch, genuine and honourable. Oh for a boardroom of Yann Kermorgant’s let alone team, as the old song used to go.
Although it’s not is it, although whether it’s the start or the middle, no one knows.
It would have been the final game of the season today. Elland Road hosting noisy and anxious hopes, dreams and tears. The final of nine games now suspended.
Before the EFL turned their attentions to us, they issued an open letter to fans of clubs on the 132nd anniversary of league football.
Rick Parry signed the letter, he only took over as chair late last year, but the overriding message was that when football does return it will be without fans. That has sadly become more and more obvious, but there doesn’t seem to be any other safe way.
Hardly surprising considering the economic state of everything, let alone league football clubs.
The management of the club, whoever that maybe these days will also not be topping up the 20%. Staff include both those in back offices and medical departments.
If February had 29 days, then March had 50, and April has so far had 500! Five weeks now since the Addicks and every other league club played a game of football. Unprecedented times indeed.
Who knows what will happen to remainder of the 2019/20 season. Planning our lives beyond taking one day at a time is impossible at the present, and that includes our much loved football. A straw poll amongst almost all fans would be getting the season finished, by hook or by crook. But, if that is to happen anytime before the autumn, it will almost certainly be behind closed doors.
Can’t believe it! We never show up for this game, even when no one shows up we still showed up bloody less than they did!
The players entered onto the hallowed Valley turf six feet apart from each other to the tune of the Red Red Robin. The referee who officiated the game from home got us underway late as always.
The Addicks started well kicking towards the Jimmy Seed stand with a strong wind blowing around barren seats creating an eerie “Millllllllll” type of wailing.
Tahnoon Nimer and Matt Southall should be shifting uncomfortably today because our football club has never been about them and their bogus duplicity. Really, no one cares about you.
Players and managers come and go and they get paid handsomely to do so. Football is about it’s fans and this morning the country and our football club lost one of it’s greatest. Seb Lewis known to us all was the true legend.
Seb died this morning of COVID-19, just 38 years old.
The biggest adversity the world has seen in many a generation. I truly hope that you are all staying safe and healthy.
A crazy and worrying time, harrowing for some, as the Coronavirus or COVID-19 sweeps every little corner of our world taking no prisoners. A global pandemic, only previously in the deep imaginative minds of movie writers, scientists, historians and risk officers. Now part of all of us, every day, every minute.
What an extraordinary week, unprecedented since the war years, or possibly 9/11 and 7/7, in my lifetime. The week moved quickly didn’t it. The Coronavirus moving across the world like a tidal wave, changing the way we live our lives almost instantly.
Then we just shake our heads at the farcical but possibly ruinous saga going on at Charlton. From whispers to chaos to realization in the space of a week.
The world’s markets crashed taking savings and pensions with them. Then this week I had my own personal work development, which will be transformational and unsettling at the same time.
Brexit…. All is forgiven.
Sarasota, Florida
