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Can’t grumble I suppose. The UK weather wasn’t too draconian when we got back from the blue skies and sun of Kalkan. Images and memories of the taste sensations of Marbled Steak at the Wapiano, Steak Minions at the Zula, Steak Tornado at Soprano’s and harbourside breakfasts slowly faded.

A couple of days after we left there was an earthquake over there that was felt in the town, only a few shakes, the centre of it was a 100 miles away; so just after midnight as people wandered back to their hotels and apartments they could be forgiven for thinking they’d just had few too many drinks.

M&S was already full of Christmas stuff already, most Garden Centres were filled up with Christmas tat, Blatter was suspended, Qatar won the bid to host his leaving do, Rodgers was sacked at Liverpool, Advocaat left Sunderland; it was all happening. And that’s even before you mention the Tory Conference. On a local website a guy was asking where he could get good manure from. The Tory conference was my immediate reply. Continue reading Stumps Runs and Rock and Roll

With the nights drawing in and autumn settling over Yorkshire and Lancashire and our brains still tingling after the win over Sheffield Wednesday, within a couple of days we were back for part two of the double-header.

This time it was against that team from Milton Keynes. MK Dons have been around for a while but it’s still a name that seems false and artificial. I couldn’t help wondering what the hell they were doing in the Championship at Turf Moor. They were formed under false pretences it always seemed to me.

But here they were so all that remained was to continue the good Burnley work and send them packing. Never mind the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, we thought. We need hot sun. So straight after the game we were off to Kalkan to meet a new chum as well, Mehmet (pictured above) the owner of the Café Zula who bit by bit I was converting to Claretianity and the good news was that with the Derby game on SKY we’d be able to find a bar and see it. Continue reading Sojourn in Kalkan

(“Lancaster Castle” by Photo by Tom Oates. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lancaster_Castle.jpg#/media/File:Lancaster_Castle.jpg)

We were waiting for Joey. The flurry of publicity and media focus had died down. Nor did he play in the reserve game against Manchester City that featured Lowton, Marney, and the two Longs in their search for fitness.

Having signed for Burnley JB had hit out at Premier clubs that hadn’t been prepared to take a gamble on him. His attitude was clear. Any club in the bottom half would have found him a good addition to their team. By ignoring him they were being ‘lazy.’

Perhaps, he thought, that having him at their clubs would have been like inviting Charles Manson or Fred West into the building. He was being judged on past reputation, he argued, rather than on pure footballing ability. It’s a ridiculous legacy I have, he said. They tune in to things I did in 2006 and 2007, rather than his last two or three years and how his family circumstances have changed. Continue reading A new hero is born

All of us I guess were stunned by the news that after just 8 weeks Jelle Vossen had gone back to Belgium, this time to Bruges. Conspiracy theories abounded and maybe not quite as far-fetched as you might think.

There was one story that wouldn’t go away:

The red neon sign outside the hotel bedroom window had flashed on and off all night but somehow Frank had managed to drop off to sleep despite the luminous glow in his room that went on, off, on off, with its endless recurrence. It was like it was some sort of scene from a cheap American gangster movie where someone is holed up hiding from the Feds, or one of those Mickey Spillane dime paperback novels from the fifties.

In his subconscious he heard a phone ringing. It’s a dream he thought and wanted to ignore it; but in fact it wasn’t. Groggily he picked up the receiver as if it was some kind of Pavlovian response.  In his job, if the phone rang you answered it. But while Pavlov always gave his dog a biscuit, Frank more often than not ended up with nothing. Continue reading The strange case of a disappearing Jelle