Matt’s Journal

It looks like winter is finally here. An example of this has to be Sunday, where I was in Rochford playing football, standing there in the middle of the field fighting off the snow/sleet/hail/rain and high winds. The ground went from being firm and icy to a sloppy muddy puddle in the space of an hour. At least we won.

This week has been busy, esepcially since the Budget report was released. It turns out that because the rate of VAT has dropped 2.5%, we are now having to credit quite a number of issued invoices, amend them and then resubmit them to all the customers wanting to go onto courses with us, great fun. This also means that my companies accounts will have a different flavour to them, coroporation tax, VAT and accounts all need to be filed within the next month.

You may have noticed from my Twitter feed, our household suddenly seems to have a rabbit in residence (in addition to our two cats). Katie was able to find a home for a friend’s house rabbit, but as they were on holiday we have been lumbered with the furry little critter. So far he has managed to gnaw his way through one of my CAT5 cables meaning internet access to the PC upstairs is now down until it can be replaced. Katie seems happy with it and I am able to see it go in a month or so.

Katie is soldiering on trying to get employment after her old employer fired her whilst she was off sick from her back surgery, she is getting stir crazy being in the house all the time. There seems to be some movement from some of her interviews so it shouldn’t be too long until she is working again.

Christmas isn’t far away, we are both looking forward to spending Christmas Day by ourselves in relative comfort without having to appease any family. We are spending less on each other this year, mainly because we seem to have all we want.

I have now taken delivery of two of the four products that I am aiming to start my new internet shop with, meaning I am not far from releasing to the world my new company! The products are productivity tools, helping you move awkward items and even lighten up doorways in complete darkness….so, watch this space.

In other news, Katie completed her first full event this weekend and she did it in her usual awesome style. Securing many repeat bookings and being lauded as a great asset to her company by exhibitors, the sky will be her limit!

I made the mistake of broadcasting the fact my football team would beat the second team in our club. Not only did we turn up with ten players and have to borrow one, we took a beating, coming out with with a 3-0 loss. Look at the image below to see how the winners got their own back!

Katie and I move into our new house in 5 days, excited isn’t the word!

There’s a scoreline you never thought you would have seen judging on recent performances. Credit to the players, it was honestly the best performance from an England side that I have seen for probably two years.

In the build-up to this game, England were heavily criticised for their performance in Andorra, criticism that they probably deserved for not being able to inflict a crushing goal difference against a team that barely made it out of their own half (David James incidentally touched the ball six times the entire match). So as the players waited in the tunnel at the The Maksimir Stadium before the match, nobody would have argued with you if you felt the team would be torn apart by the apparent 5th best team in the world.

Walking in half way through the first half (I was having my hair cut short at the time), you could see that Capello had studied the Croatian style and suitably trained his players to take the heat to their opponents, stopping any flowing football dead in it’s tracks.

In my opinion, Theo Walcott seemed way off the pace and seemed a little overawed by the occasion at first, but with the rest of the England team feeding him the ball at every opportunity, he soon got his chance to repay the teams confidence. Receiving the ball on the edge of the eighteen yard box and taking a steadying touch, he lashed home the first of his three goals that night, justifying the reasons why he was picked ahead of the ageing David Beckham.

Wayne Rooney took the first forty five minutes to get into the game but in the second half, he didn’t stray too far from his striking counterpart, Emile Heskey, allowing him to feed off flick on’s and receive the ball to feet in dangerous areas, not 50 years away from goal.

I think what this performance showed was that there is one attribute that can take apart any world class team……..PACE.

With Walcott, Rooney, Joe Cole, Ashley Cole and even Emile Heskey able to cover the turf rapidly, the Croatians were forced into mistakes when pressed and on the back foot when England came forward. It shows that with a good tactician and a youthful squad with accomplished heads, you can beat any team, not just with an odd goal, you can truly take them apart.

The Goals

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Tottenham’s kits for the 2008/09 premiership season have been unveiled, sporting a more minimal design. The look for the kits is an improvement on last year I think, the black/brown/gold one looks particularly nice. I am still not a massive fan of the blue one, never will be I think.

Anyways, take a look:

This weekend I was asked to referee a football match for the 2nd Team of my club. £30 would see me ref the whole 90 minutes in the freezing cold…….but I’ll come to that later.

On Friday night myself and Katie with friends; Lauren, Cheg and Graeme took to Southend for a chinese, knowing full well it was statistically the busiest night of the year for Christmas parties (some blond bird on GMTV told me this). We were lucky, we chose the place that myself and Katie held our Engagement Party and it was dead quiet, perhaps other people knew something we didnt (cats in the Egg Foo Yung?). After that, we ventured to a bar for a few Southern Comforts and then crashed out, staying up after 12am doesn’t feel as easy as it used too!

Saturday was a mixed bag, Katie had her piano re-tuned so we decided to head to the local music shop to purchase some piano song books…..and nothing else……I thought. Wandering in, we happened upon a family who were all musical genii (plural for geniuses?) who were strumming, beating, playing every instrument possible, I think it must have inspired Katie. Finding a few books with “I Will Always Love You” and “Tears In Heaven”, we ventured to the stringed section with lots of fantastic looking guitars.

A geeky looking bloke silently walks up to us and asks us for help; we kindly accept and get him to talk us through the guitars worth buying. He picks one up, plays it a little and tunes it, tells us thats the best for a beginner and plays a little ditty on it. He then proceeds to tell us he cant play guitar…..yeah and I don’t own a blog. The sales magic (or lack thereof) and Katie’s smiling little face persuaded me to give in and buy a guitar for both myself and Katie to learn, hopefully making our home a musical home when we eventually move in.

Sunday was of course Ref day. Arriving in all back, I went over to the pitch, received a ribbing from all my friends who played on the team that asked me to ref and waited for the opposing team to turn up….and waited and waited. Then struts over a coloured guy with a bunch of misfits behind him, 10 minutes late and grinning from ear to ear. We shake hands and attempt to get the match underway.

Little did I know they were a community team, full of migrants, ex-convicts and weird indiviudals. To be fair, they were completely fine bar a bald guy threatening to punch a guy from the home team and the extra fat goalkeeper who kept blaming the ball for his 3 yard kickouts. The game went smoothly, the home team winning 12-2 and my hands almost black with frostbite.

Later in the evening it was over to church again and singing carols, it’s a lovely church, but I must admit but it’s got it’s fair share of “different” people.

This weekend was different……I got fitted for my wedding suits, I attended a party (partly), saw the worst film ever, got soaked to the skin and sang in church.

Friday night after work, I came back to Katie’s and we planned to hit the cinema. We caught an early-ish showing of the film; “Shrooms”, a horror film focusing on a group of American students who visit Ireland to take some magic mushrooms in a nature park, only to be stalked by a local murderer madman hell bent on killing everything he comes near. Let me just say, it was the biggest piece of crap I have seen in a long while, I kept asking Katie if she was enjoying the film and I think she felt she had to nod and say yes as she didnt want to have wasted our time going to see such toilet! Luckily she agreed with my sentiments as we were walking out, look below for my rating!

Saturday morning myself, Katie and her father went into Southend early with the view to checking out the Wedding suits at a lovely gentlemans shop. The theme for the wedding is chocolate brown and gold, so the aim was to find a lovely chocolate brown suit that would look good on all of my groom party. The suit looked lovely, so it was just a matter of finding a nice waistcoat. I decided on a nice champagne colour waistcoat with a floral decoration and the rest of the groom party will be getting the same colour but without the decoration, meaning I stand out a tiny bit more.

I called up all the guys needed on the day, got them down and then put the depsoits down. See the pics below for what we actually look like!

Saturday evening Katie’s parents hosted their annual advent dinner, basically an excuse to get drunk and eat lots. Myself and Katie snuck off and did our own thing, there is nothing more embarrassing than both sets of parents trying to embarrass their children.

Sunday morning was my usual football match, this time with a twist. 50mph winds blew over the pitch and then the heavens opened. Think of Forrest Gump when he explains all types of rain, we had all that and more. I came out from the clubhouse soaked, luckily I had a change in the back of the car!

Sunday evening I went to church. As Katie and I have moved our wedding forward, we needed to secure a church to get married in. We chose a lovely church in Southend that was able to fit us in on the Monday we wanted to get married. We turned up, met the vicar and then proceeded to have a service with 5 other people (popular eh?!) in the church hall, singing hymns and reciting bible verses. The people there were so nice, they blessed our presence and made us feel very welcome. We left smiling as it’s so far removed from what we are normally like, but it was a good different, we have to go at least twice a month so we might as well try and enjoy it!