Confidential's Shameless book plug

BOXED UP!: The story about a group of unlikely misfits - thrown together on a crippled container ship. A story of sex, greed, paranoia, murder and badly fitting trousers.
Published by Amazon

Learn more: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08C4J11J5/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_A8BG5BRKBHVE07X5S77M

Fully aware that this site's been gathering dust over the years but this is no ordinary Bloggers Blockage. This is the Rogue Male Bloggers Block,the mother of all that's holy Block. The Block that would sneer at Dyno-Rod. The Block that would hold back the M25 in the rush hour. Now it's time for a change so I'm shamelessly plugging my book which I started over 10 years ago but have finally got round to finishing and getting published thanks to COVID-19.

If anyone's interested, the book is available via Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions (cheap)and concerns a weird assortment of characters adrift on a disabled container ship and their spoof adventures that follow them on around the world.

Keep On Rocking In The Free World . (not CAFC related)

Perhaps there's a perceived modern negativity toward living in the past. I guess some of us of a certain age, relate more to it than others. Anyone over the age of 50 should by now be aware that they're more than half-way through their "Unique Planetary Experience" as USCorp/Disney (crisisincapitalism.com) might say. Certainly nostalgia currently seems to be in vogue via the media. That and a variety of news bulletins which depending on which version you prefer to watch would make you wondering if you were on the same planet. Try comparing the uncorruptable Ch4 News with Sky, or even the normally stolid BBC. Perhaps we need a Watchdog to watch the News...

Technology has successfully made old people redundant. In times past, the elders of a village were seen as wise, all knowing sources of advice for dealing with difficult decisions which needed to be made e.g when to harvest, when to intervene or council in a dispute, when to move to a new home and which axe looks best with this loincloth. (There are still many places where this is normal everyday life and they're not the ones' fuxxing up the planet!). These were all important decisions which needed the wisdom of accumulated experiences. Nowadays none of it's needed. Old folk are often seen as a general nuisance. The sons and daughters ask "what shall we do with them when they can't get upstairs". Wisdom has been rendered obsolete. Now it's all there via broadband, every second, every day. Everything you'll ever need to know about anything...

So while we're all here Living In Paradise let's listen to the undoubted hero of Glastonbury, Mr Neil Young, singing in the free world. Oops can't paste it cos it's been removed from the BBC Ipod thing, sorry folks,but it was the best..Honestly. Time for bed and blanket bath...nurse.??Technology has successfully made old people redundant. In times past, the elders of a village were seen as wise, all knowing sources of advice for dealing with difficult decisions which needed to be made e.g when to harvest, when to intervene or council in a dispute, when to move to a new home and which axe looks best with this loincloth. (There are still many places where this is normal everyday life and they're not the ones' fuxxing up the planet!). These were all important decisions which needed the wisdom of accumulated experiences. Nowadays none of it's needed. Old folk are often seen as a general nuisance. The sons and daughters ask "what shall we do with them when they can't get upstairs". Wisdom has been rendered obsolete. Now it's all there via broadband, every second, every day. Everything you'll ever need to know about anything...
So while we're all here Living In Paradise let's listen to the undoubted hero of Glastonbury, Mr Neil Young, singing in the free world. Oops can't paste it cos it's been removed from the BBC Ipod thing, sorry folks,but it was the best..Honestly. Time for bed and blanket bath...nurse.??


Fully aware that this site's been gathering dust but this is no ordinary Bloggers Blockage. This is the Rogue Male Bloggers Block,the mother of all that's holy Block. The Block that would sneer at Dyno-Rod. The Block that would hold back the M25 in the rush hour.The Block that would solve BP's Gulf problems.

The decision's been made and Confidential is moving to a different site with a theme a million miles from football."So what's new?" I hear you say.

Anyway it's time for a change so good luck to Charlton and to all my CAFC blogging mates.I won't name names, you know who you are. Keep up the good work and the very impressive high standards..

If anyone's interested, there's a strange new story with the first instalments going back to 2010. The link is opposite called Boxed Up!

Fully aware that this site's been gathering dust but this is no ordinary Bloggers Blockage. This is the Rogue Male Bloggers Block,the mother of all that's holy Block. The Block that would sneer at Dyno-Rod. The Block that would hold back the M25 in the rush hour.The Block that would solve BP's Gulf problems.

The decision's been made and Confidential is moving to a different site with a theme a million miles from football."So what's new?" I hear you say.

Anyway it's time for a change so good luck to Charlton and to all my CAFC blogging mates.I won't name names, you know who you are. Keep up the good work and the very impressive high standards..

If anyone's interested, there's a strange new story with the first instalments going back to 2010. The link is opposite called Boxed Up!

Over The Bridge To Wales.(not CAFC related)

Earlier in the year Confidential went nostalgic (and partly for a spoken promise) took a trip back to his native birthplace, Barry, near Cardiff in Wales. It's best known for the TV show Gavin&Stacey and Barry Island and that's about it..I chose a wet weekend to feel the real flavour of the place and it didn't disapoint.As a child I remember very little about every day so the first stop was at the old council house where I grew up.The two nice young ladies puffing away on something on the side step were very pleasant but not up to showing a complete stranger with slightly mad eyes around their private house..
Back down the hill (still slightly raining)to where the heaving docks used to be,you can see new terracota herring bone laid paving and not much else. Barry used to be the biggest docks for the export of Welsh coal to the world. The yearly tonnage was staggering. The coal would be mined further up in the valleys and brought down by rail to vast, elaborate shunting yards and then transfered to waiting cargo ships and the "smokestack cutters".
So moving on (still with wipers) across the short causeway towards Barry Island the dog needed a wee and, for a variety of bizarre resons,I wanted to stop off at the old coal marshalling yards. When the coal stopped, so did the steam. There was no coal coming out of the valleys so there was no need for trains. And if there's no coal to put into a steam train, it stops...So what do you do with over 200 old redundant stream trains ? Simple,you give them a one-way only railpass back to the yards where they used to work and cut them up for scrap and take the bits away in a lorry.That was the start of a very unique contribution to British Heritage,made possible by a Welshman Mr Dai Woodham, the Barry Scrapyard owner.
The old marshalling yards quickly became a scrapyard on rails and with Dr Beeching doing his very best around the country, the yard soon filled up with trains and trucks for demolition. Luckily Dai found it much easier and more profitable to cut up straightforward trucks rather than the difficult locomotives and so,by a twist of fate, the steam locomotives were left alone to quietly rust.Then a few years later we all remembered our love of the good old days and invented Preservation Railways that needed steam. Most of the shiny machines that we enjoy on our afternoons out are restored and polished survivors from Dai's scrapyard. Without Dai's yard there would hardly be any period British steam trains left to see (apart from India, Africa and China of course. How come they can fix'em up with just a hammer and some oil? We should have thought of that..).
Nowadays the place is a perfectly flattened brownfield site with no visible takers.The rails and tracks have long gone. There is not a single trace of what was once there. Nothing except ghosts. As if giving it the final accolade my dog trundled over to the middle in the rain and did an enormous turd...
Barry Island itself is more of a bay really with a nice big sandy beach,protected at each end by cliffs and headlands. There used to be a Butlins here but now just a perfunctory amusement park surrounded by arcades,one-stops and handy take-ways.The walks along the headland are invigorating (still raining) and the whole place must be much cleaner and healthier than 60 years ago, when everything had a thin covering of coal dust..
At this point Confidential did something out of character and started a conversation with a homeless person who despite everything looked quite happy with a nice tan and all his worldly possesions in two laundry bags. There he was under the arches,out of the rain,reading a good paperback and thoroughly enjoying the story when some idiot comes along and interrupts to make small talk. oops...sorry..
I'd planned on an overnight stay but with the very fine but very wet rain still falling and the dog semi-confused,decided to go home. Job done.
The moment we drove back up onto the Severn Bridge it stopped raining. 

Blue Screen Living

I'm a great lover of action movies me...lots of slo-mo shots of baddies getting chopped up in lots of despicable ways, lots of Detroit steel getting smashed up expensively, lots of lovely beautiful women getting caught up in interesting and most unlikely situations hmm....
I recently watched Sin-City and wow what a movie. Real Art. It was only afterwards when I watched the "bonus bits or how it's all done bit" that they explained that EVERY scene was shot against a blue screen. (For those who don't know, shooting against a Blue Screen enables any shot anywhere,to be added to,deleted, superimposed, digitally added to whatever blah blah but you knew that anyway).
I have to say that knowing all this info actually made the film not quite so great..somehow the magic had gone. Still a great film though, can't wait for Sin-City2.
So here's a title for the next Government Information pack. Why don't we all start living our lives against a Blue Screen ? You could be standing there with your mate in the road talking about the usual mates stuff like "I see they've opened a new KCC" or "isn't it great that Charlton are back in the Premiership under the partnership of Curbs&Reg" or perhaps "maybe that Marcel Proust had a point after all",and be anywhere you like.
With Blue Screen,all of those stimulating and society bonding conversations could be held in much more interesting places. The Manhatten Skyline perhaps or on top of Everest or being chased down the street by Terminator 4.
Maybe we should ask Speilburg or someone to come over to sort this out.There could be some UK votes in it..Speaking as a shallow person,I personaly like the idea of sweeping down to the shops in a convertible '60s American muscle car with a woman sitting next to me who regularly inspire's oil paintings, with some Leonard Cohen sorry ...some ZZtop playing. We could lazily drive down the Santa Monica Boulevard and live our next scene in my fully equiped shining beach-house next to the sea. To make it edgy there has to be some drama so just after a late dinner overlooking the Pacific, settling down with aforsaid oil-painting, a gang of LA lowlife mutants,all of whom are completely off their tits, come crashing in through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels which I happen to know - as a DIY expert of years standing waiting to pay - will enable me to effortlessly remove the razor sharp shards with the right grade of industrial workware and cut the gang to pieces in an heroic slo-mo sort of way..and hey presto I'm a hero in my partners dreamy eyes.... sorted.
The best is, it can all be done in the living room. None of that annoying business of having to mix with other people.
Think of the benefits. No more being herded into holding pens at the airport. No more having to take your shoes off before you stand in-line with your belongings in a washing-up bowl.
Who needs a swimming pool in Marbella when we've got Blue Screen...

Confidential's Feminine Side

A sad day here at Confidential Towers. I'm immensly fortunate and with hard work,lucky to live near one of Sussex's most lovely rivers.Every day the river goes past and shows new things, new life. Nature at it's best.For a while now I've been following the daily antics of the Swan family. I think as a couple they've only just started so they're making loads of mistakes, but hey, show me a Swan who hasn't....Anyhow, yesterday this new dozy Swan family set up afternoon quarters on the lovely grassy bank with family of five very young cygnets. Unfortunately the aforsaid bank is also a footpath so it wasn't too long before "homo-sapiens" had to make an appearance and despite Mum Swan's desparate flapping and hissing it was a stand off. You may ask where's Dad Swan ? At this significant make or break time for the family,Dad Swan had decided to go off for his evening swim...typical!.
The homo-sapiens sort of won, mainly because they had two small dogs, armfulls of shopping and no idea how to take on a rabid Swan that was protecting her children and therefore out for their blood.The upshot of this was that the mother and five baby cygnets had to tumble and fall into the river for safety despite the fact that the tide had nearly gone out and there was a 10ft drop down the riverbank to the safety of water.
Today again, the swan family went majestically past but with one less.Instead of five cygnets, only four were still with us.During the night Mum had lost one of the family to something.Possibly a predator or maybe it was injured in the fall.
Re CAFC Looking forward to the 23rd June. Hope your're rite about the news Ketts.

Still To Come..

I see from tonights TV News that Democracy - that great catch-all word like Freedom that seems to mean different things to different folks - is now back in safe hands. Behind Parliament's closed doors it's been decided that Nanny knows best and a leader we didn't vote for is being supported by a scratch group of hopefulls, who I don't recall voting for.. and who would certainly not get carried, shoulder-high into the House of Commons on the strength of the UK voters,.. are going to look after us...again.

That's OK then.

Regarding the imminent takeover of the club, Confidential can reveal (after peering through the keyhole in the Directors Suite until his one good eye went bloodshot).. that after extensive talks at the Valley today there's a real possibility that a Bulgarian Cava Consortium (BCC) which specialises in watered-down drinks, will be taking a major shareholding at board level. It's understood that extensive studies by Bulgarian master chemists and vitners have uncovered a gap in the market in SE7 for Bulgarian Cava which they wish to exploit. BCC's CEO released the following press statement - through their PR company WaggoWords - to journalists waiting at the Valley gates today;
"For several seasons we have been conducting in-depth analysis to see just how much water can be added to the lager in the various Valley outlets before complaints have been registered. As the customers are clearly very pleased with the quality and price of the served beverages we see our expansion into this market as the logical way forward."

A shirt sponsor still has to be found.

Art For Art's Sake..so why a blank screen ?

Not much happening at the moment at CAFC so here's a picture of some recent trouble down the local gym when the over-use of steroids caused problems in the dressing rooms.
Wyn's recent worrying blog about the Valley screen going blank for next season sounds pretty dire.It's going to be bad enough willing the team to play themselves up the table and not get sidetracked by the pigeons playing in the floodlights. Now, it looks like we won't even get the diversion of a fish on the screen. Just think folks,when the game could be shite (unlikely I know), we could be having to endure 90+ mins of 150 square metres of silicon-packed grey emptiness.
So..instead of trying to hook a big sponsor to pay for an entire home season, why not sell matchday sponsorship to anyone (fans preferred) who've got something to say or want to publicise, like a stupid joke,a Magaluf type prank, a birthday, a celebration or just their own small business or personal remark or message.
It can't cost that much to fire up the software and get some entertaining messages or graphics going for, say £250 sponsorship a match. Anything, please, to make the day more rewarding.