Since the last post worked, I'll try once more at a longer post before I head back to the office. I'm in our data centre which is a nice place to be left alone by the various people who are likely to hassle me to do things for them in the office! Having driven round the M50 to get here for all of about 10 mins work I cant quite face the drive back straight away... Although it might be wise to leave before they test the fire alarm.

Welcome to C, a new reader! Courtesy of S giving her blog address out to anyone and C being clever enough to then find mine! (Some would think following the link is easy, but I know some who haven't managed it).

I am still recovering from last week - where I did a kids holiday club in the mornings with S (on one side of Dublin) and Crinken Youth Week in the evenings (the other side of Dublin - so much time was spent on the M50). Both were excellent and great fun to be part of. We hired Sumo Suits one day in youth week, excellent fun! Funniest moment was K (a female leader about the same size as S) taking on A (our largest 17 year old rugby playing guy). Some thought he'd go easy on her, but no...

I've probably been here long enough and should go sit on the M50 for a while so I'm back in the office in time for morning coffee!

Just wrote a reasonable long post and the bloody thing lost it again. Different error to all the recent problems I've had but damn annoying none the less. Can I complain that a free service has gone crap? Yes, but I don't expect them to do anything about it...

I have tried to post several times in the last couple of weeks but blogger has always been playing up. Time to think about hosting this elsewhere I think...

Worked a 10 and a half hour day today so that I could have tomorrow off. My parents were meant to be with Ss parents by now, but their ferry got cancelled and they're not due to sail until 2:45am.... The idea was that S and I go down to see them all tomorrow, but on reflection a day with my parents and Ss in the same place sounds like a total nightmare!!! No idea what's going to happen now though as dont even know if they'll get any sleep tonight.

I know I've just written a post, but I feel this topic deserves a separate posting and I cant wait until tomorrow to get this out of my system (the separate post also means if you don't care about football, SFC or the turmoil that both leave me in, then skip to the next post!).

I have been in denial for a blissful couple of months now. Since the end of last season my brain hasn't really managed to grasp the fact that for the first time since I can remember, Southampton FC have been relegated out of the premier league. It didn't really seem to mean much other than our best players cleared off (no real change there, LeTis excepted) people I'd never heard of were bought. When the fixture list came out with a string of very depressing names it began to dawn on me what it really meant.

So today "The Championship" kicked off. Firstly, who the hell are they kidding? It was dumb enough having it called "division 1" when it was clearly the second best division in English football. But to call it this is laughable. It does nothing to change the fact that it is not England's top division and has some shockingly bad teams from the arse end of England (and Wales) in it. What is more worrying is that it has teams who were once in the top division, some for almost as long as Saints. Teams that have done shockingly badly in this division, some even fell out the bottom of that, least looking like they'll ever get back up. This season really is crunch time for SFC, more than last. If we get promoted, a season of actually winning games could do us wonders. If we fail and we lose what reasonable players we have now, we are f**ked. For a long long time.

So today, we kicked off with what is probably the most attractive home fixture of the season. Sadly that wasn't down to the quality of opposition (although I suspect as it turned out that it was one of the most attractive games for that reason too) but down to an ex Saints manager being their current manager. I would have thought the stadium would have been fuller to have a go at Hoddle, but on Sky it looked really badly attended. If one of the leagues best opposition with the added factor of Judas manager to have a go at gets a small crowed, I hope Rupert (SFC chairman) realises the seriousness relegation will have on the cash flow, cause it's unlikely to get any better. Perhaps unless we look like winning the league (I'll stop laughing now).

So the game: I hadn't heard of half our players, probably down to my strategy of denial that football existed over the last couple of months. The defence was shocking (nothing new there then for SFC) and Claus even managed to get sent off (certainly nothing new there!), so normal service was resumed at St Marys. Actually I thought the middle of the park looked OK, more skillful than Wolves in getting the ball, but had no notion of what to do with it. I guess the front 2 being new means the team simply hasn't had time to gel yet. But with so many games coming up they don't have much time! The 2nd half was so much better. How we didn't score (Fuller?) I have no idea. Again, new to the team I guess. The 16 year old they put on looked fantastic too. If nothing else he can be the answer to the cash flow problem in a year or so!

The game ended 0-0 but was actually fairly good to watch (you'll see more boring games in the prem for sure). It took me half the game to realise the difference between a season where survival is the goal, to a season where promotion is the goal. I was thinking that this is probably as good as the opposition gets, so we'll be OK this season, until I realise that was anti-relegation talk and that for promotion we needed to beat every bloody opposition at home and not struggle for a 0-0! I'll give them time to get it sorted as there were some promising things today, but not sure how much time they have....

S arrived back fine yesterday, along with C who was staying the night at ours before helping with the club that started today. S seems to have had a really good week. It was up early this morning though, had a hair cut before being on the road at 9:30 to transport the holiday club material (and believe me, there's a lot of it! Takes up both cars!) to the next club. I am very jealous of those doing the club as could feel the club vibe again as we stayed for a few hours to help get set up. They have all the ingredients for a fantastic club - including some girls from Northern Ireland (it seems every club should have some!). How much more would I rather be spending a week there than what I have in store at work.... Speaking of work, Thursday night was easy as night work goes. In at midnight, done by 2.

I have just learned the hard way what German for "restart your computer now" is... I managed to download 3 versions of the same software, one was Chinese, although I could get through the install wizard it was hard work so I gave up. The German version was a little easier to cope with, until I rebooted unexpectedly, so I deleted that again. Managed to find the English version now!

S was meant to come back from NI today, but woke up with a migraine and was sick every time she tried to eat or drink anything, so wasn't able to drive. So I have an unplanned night alone. I've got to be in work for midnight anyway... She was doing much better later in the day and was keeping water down and was going to try some chicken. Hope she can drive back tomorrow!

Had an 8:30 meeting this morning, so managed to get here in time for breakfast before hand. While walking up to the 6th floor I was not going to have a fryup, not going to have a fryup.... Get to the 6th floor and order a fryup! Oh well, the intention was there... Supplier turned up 20mins late to the meeting. It was a reasonably in depth technical discussion which I was meant to be the tech lead, but all I could think about was kids songs from holiday club. Until half way through I decided to have a rant at some inconsistency they had designed. Attempting to argue my point while SMSing J and A re said songs at the same time. Makes meetings more fun!

S returns today! Although I have just spoken to her and she sounds awful, poor girl. She woke up with a migraine and really didn't sound good. Hope she's able to drive back later.

S left for NI yesterday morning while I was playing trombone at the morning service. She is away until Thursday at a week for 16-25 year olds and while she doesn't quite fit the target age group she has gone as a leader as it's the Belfast office of her work that's organised the event. She seems to be having fun each time I've texted or spoken to her!

So what to do while the wife's away... Go out with the lads? Order the adult channel and hope she doesn't look at the NTL bill?? Well yesterday I played at 2 services and caught up on some reading while having discovered the stereo volume control... The "lads" are all away anyway as no locals stay in Dublin for a bank holiday weekend. I'm sure the neighbours will be very happy when S returns and promptly complains that it's too loud!! I stayed up late enough chatting to J and L, who had both just popped in to see S (the event is held in the metropolis where J,L and A live and to demonstrate how big it is, J was hassling S in the background while I was on the phone to her, and by the time I'd hung up, walked upstairs and gone on MSN, she'd gone home and logged in too).

Today I got up late, even though my stupid phone kind of woke me up at 8 with its normal sports text. I'm on call this week so turning it off seems a little unreasonable however tempting. I had to log into work to divert the oncall number to me, so having got that far I read my email. Discovered one from the PM to say that all had been sorted re my award and I was going to get it after all. While I was looking forward to a big fight with my manager tomorrow I guess there's no point now, although the money itself isn't really the issue!

I spent the afternoon in front of the PC editing video from the Sligo club to make a DVD for us leaders. There's some fun footage there, about 45 mins worth probably having cut out the rubbish. I hope to work out how to put still photos on it too as various people didn't have cameras with them (phones don't count! The videos I took with my phone are terrible quality when played on the PC!). I was amazed at how much of the day that took, and by 6 I stopped and "almost cooked" myself a large steak. It was very nice! Realised I'd not been out the house or seen a real person all day so have just been for a walk. The local pub was trying to entice me in for a pint by blaring out "Feeling hot hot hot" which didn't quite do it. An icecream van pulled out of the car park and stopped at a green light, then drove off the moment it went red. Maybe I'll never get used to living in Ireland....

So back to work tomorrow and I've got to attempt to make myself care enough to get on with mountain of stuff I've got to catch up on.