wilsontown

Saw my first swifts of the year earlier today.

Sightings on today's "daily exercise" bike ride: lapwing, yellowhammer, skylark, jay. Some swallows knocking about but they seem to be feeling the cold. Should be looking out for the first swifts over the next week or so.

Out on the bike today during my "lunch break" (this working from home could be worse). Chiff-chaffs are definitely about and skylarks making themselves known too. No sign of any hirundines around here so far. Got a really good view of a kestrel that was hovering over the road verge as I passed underneath.

I watched Wednesday vs Man City last night. I thought Wednesday acquitted themselves reasonably well, but there never looked to be any chance they would win the tie. The gulf in resources is ridiculous, as exemplified when City brought Sterling on as a sub. It could certainly have been worse as even most of our fans were predicting an absolute pasting by seven or eight clear goals. You could get odds of around 15:1 for the home team to win.

For anyone travelling between Scarborough and Liverpool via York, Leeds and Huddersfield, the new loco-hauled Transpennine Express trains have finally started running. Haven't managed to try one yet but they certainly look (and sound) impressive.

I was genuinely shocked by the behaviour of the Cameroon players. I've never seen anything like it, good riddance to them. And well done to England for maintaining their professionalism in the face of that farce.

I really enjoyed my trips to Portsmouth following York City, sadly it seems highly likely that we'll never play them again. The Old Town had a good selection of pubs and more history than you'll time to appreciate.

Yes, and 1895 cup - though I don't think any 1895 cup games will be on the 1st.

Do not buy from the Trainline under any circumstances, they charge a booking fee and the tickets would be available from any of the TOCs for less. Using them to figure out the fare makes sense though.

This is correct. I've saved a good bit of money doing this in the past. The cross-country route between York, Birmingham and the southwest is a favourite as you can get good discounts, even if you do end up carrying a pile of tickets around.

It gets dafter than that, you can often save significant sums of money by splitting tickets even when you aren't changing trains.

Was out minding my own business on my bike yesterday when some nutcase in a car behind me sounded his horn, zoomed past with his wing mirror centimetres from my handlebars, slowed down right in front of me and started yelling out of the window that I should "get off the f***king road" while gesticulating and giving me two fingers. I was a bit taken aback by this, but managed to shout back "no, YOU get off the f***cking road" before he hurtled away up the road. Shouldn't be allowed out with anger management issues like that. Then of course I was trying to figure out what I'd done wrong. Nothing, I was just riding along the road where I was perfectly entitled to be.

I watched the Steel City derby last night, and even as an Owl it was abhorrently bloody boring.