Round 430: The Shendish Hundred

Darts Thrown: June 9th 2020
Blog Written: June 21st 2020

Highest Score: 140
Lowest Score: 7
Sixties: 50
100+: 20
180s: 0
180s Missed: 0

Blogger's Note: Written in haste, so there will be spelling mistakes and slapdash grammar.

When we went into lockdown, I thought I would come out the other end playing darts like Peter Wright. Instead, most days I play darts more like Edgar Wright. So, it's nice to occasionally play a half decent round. My first 50-Sixties round in a long, long time.

I put it down to my anarcho-capitalist/Pe簽arol dart flights:

*'The Shendish Hundred'? It's a Hemel Hempstead pub darts term from back in the day.

Now for a random video. Alex R. shared this one on Facebook a few days ago. I'd never heard of them before, and part of the reason I'm posting it on the blog is because I know I'll forget it otherwise. The comments on YouTube are annoying 'cos people will insist on making the Talking Heads comparison . . . but it's better than that. I'll need to dig out the lyrics sometime as I'm sure they hold up. But it's the tune that grabbed me initially, and I was adult enough to put to one side that grown men shouldn't be on skateboards.

De Lux - "Oh Man The Future"

Football, It's a Minging Life! by Rick Holden (DB Publishing 2010)

Let’s end with an amusing little anecdote at Watford. One weekend when Jean was away, a few of the players and I went out on the town after the game. We ended up at a night club in Hemel called the Living Room, which was renowned as a ‘grab a granny’ venue. Somehow, we’d been split up into two pairs. Myself and Lee Richardson, whose never-to-be-forgotten domestic skills included cleaning vomit up with the vacuum cleaner, and Tony Coton and Mel Rees, two daft ’keepers. Lee and I went for a curry, and the two rocket scientists went back to my house to wait for us to return. When we returned I found a cat-sized hole in the ceiling of my conservatory and Mingan sitting next to half a dozen empty lager cans. I was convinced for months that Mingan was the culprit; being a Leeds cat he would have no problem getting stuck into the drink. It hadn’t really occurred to me that the two stooges had got bored of waiting for me to return and had broken in through my bedroom window, putting their feet through the roof as they climbed. That’s goalkeepers for you. I cleared away the lager cans and, to this day, Jean thinks the hole was made by the cat jumping off the window ledge onto the conservatory roof.

Hating on HP Clash style

Looks like a certain someone won't be getting a civic reception from Dacorum Borough Council any time soon:

What one song would feature on the soundtrack to your life?
London Calling by the Clash. It reminds me of opening my eyes, looking around at Hemel Hempstead and thinking, "I'll get out of here." [Claire Skinner interviewed in yesterday's Guardian.]

And there was me thinking that she was from Kings Langley. It could have been worse. She could have been from Tring..

Longdean's most famous son . . .

. . . gets a write-up in the Football Guardian.

And, yep, the blog still gets periodic hits from people in search of Longdean's most famous daughter.

Phil Neville's Everton teammates politely ask him if he meant to score an own goal for Man United

What an absolutely brilliant result.

I hate Chelsea more than the Sparts hate the International Bolshevik Tendency. That's how much I hate Abramovich's mercenaries.

Just sat through the Chelsea versus Bolton game on Fox Soccer Channel, becoming increasingly exasperated by Drogba's histrionics and Bolton defence's desire to shoot themselves in the foot by trying to pass to Chelsea forwards in and around the Bolton penalty box. (They were that bad, they thankfully missed.)

It was wonderful watching the unfolding drama of the crowd at Stamford Bridge as the tv cameras panned across the changing fizzogs of the Chelski faithful as they went from being the shiny happy faces of fans whose team were winning 2-1 in the spring sun, whilst their rivals were losing 2-0 away from home, to becoming a seeming open audition of emo mums, dads and kids as they witnessed the sudden seismic shift in fortunes of Davies's equalising goal for Bolton with the accompanying news coming through from Goodison that Manchester United had taken a 3-2 lead via a Wayne Rooney goal.

Chelsea fans hadn't looked that miserable since they heard the false rumour that Gordon Brown was thinking of putting a special tax on id bracelets.

Loved it that Phil Neville scored an own goal against his old club to make it 2-2. Never mind that I'm still getting regular hits to the blog via the 'Gary Neville' + 'socialist' google search; he's the wrong Neville brother. Phil Neville is my working class hero.

Also sweet to note that Chris Eagles scored the fourth goal for United in their 4-2 win. What's the big deal with that? Only that Chris Eagles has now officially replaced Julia Bolino as the most famous person ever to have attended Longdean Comprehensive School.