That I might just be drenched on the way home...

have you ever at least once posted a pic of yourself on here? always curious what pcernie looks like until pcernie posts a pic of himself I have no choice but to imagine pcernie looking like this:

I wonder if I'll be able to get home tonight

Overhead line damage on my train line

This week's fashion column in the Times (seriously, it's worth reading):

I feel a bit self-conscious writing this column, partly because I’ve just had two weeks off and my brain is still somewhere on a beach in Portugal, but mainly because of the Olympics. The last two weeks have been golden ones for sport, camaraderie and human endeavour. But fashion? Fashion has never felt more unfashionable.
I mean, what is it? What does it do? It doesn’t run fast. It might inspire women (often through dubious means) to be thin, but it doesn’t inspire them to be fit. Much of the time, it makes them feel inadequate.
I know I was supposed to high five the telly when Kate Moss & Co. did their model-y turn at the closing ceremony, but actually I watched it through my fingers feeling slightly embarrassed. Surrounded by a phalanx of athletes, the models looked moody and underwhelming, their golden gowns symbols of a consumerism that felt strangely out of place. Yes, it was great for British fashion, for years neglected by the Establishment, to take centre stage at an event watched by billions. Kind of ironic, though, that most of the featured designers’ clothes come in sizes too small to fit the athletes.
I realise I’m far from alone, but that doesn’t make me feel any less stupid for being one of those closed-minded fashion types who, before the Olympics, viewed it as two weeks of abject boredom that, to paraphrase the equally misanthropic Morrissey, “said nothing to me about my life”. How I regret that negative stance, just as I regret not applying for tickets, and churlishly fleeing the country to escape “the travel chaos” that never materialised.
After 15 years immersed in frocks and shoes, along came the Olympics and confounded my idea of myself as someone who hated sport. I’ve lost count of the people I’ve heard exclaiming: “I never thought I’d say this, but . . .” before rhapsodising about how much they adored watching the boxing/dressage/kayaking.
To be taken out of your own closed world and inspired by another is a beautiful thing. Come October, I might not have taken up running like I swore to, but I hope I’ll still feel like this. I like the idea that the real legacy of the Olympics isn’t the running track or the Velodrome, but the positivity it inspired in those with a tendency to be negative.

It’s a strange thing indeed to devote much of your life to a single pursuit, when life has so many different things to offer. And it’s human nature to be attracted to subjects that are the polar opposite of the one you’ve been absorbed in. To the athlete, fashion offers glamour and escapism, two far less meaningful things than sporting excellence, but perhaps that’s precisely their appeal. More prosaically, fashion is also a giant cash cow, with brand endorsements and licensing deals offering the chosen ones the sort of wealth that their sporting achievements alone could never do.
So when Laura Trott, Nicola Adams et al do bag those advertising campaigns, please let there be no retouching. The London Olympics were extraordinarily positive for women. For 17 days, they were valued less for how they looked than what they did. Long may it continue.

It's odd but I've had a similar revelation about something I also value. It's almost traditional these days, whenever someone British excels at any sport other than football, to portray them as paragons of virtue against which football and footballers are unfavourably compared.

And I've always argued against this. I've always said it's unfair, to compare a once in a lifetime achievement or a tournament that happens occasionally to the daily turmoil of our national sport; that if athletes were subjected to the level of coverage footballers are, they too would fall from their lofty pedestal. And that if we spent each day in national rivalry the way football supporters are reminded of the tribes they follow every week, we'd all be raving xenophobes.

But you know what? I watched the charity shield last weekend - a supposedly friendly game between the best two teams in the country, in which a player was sent off in the first half, the rest of both teams generally acted like spoiled children and the half the crowd booed the other half's players and vice versa - and I just can't argue that any more. This Olympics has torn down the wall of denial I placed around the sport I used to love unconditionally. The althletes at the Olympics were subjected to an incredible level of exposure. Completely unprecedented, in fact. And they pretty much without exception turned out to be nice people. And in a stadium of 80,000 people, the winners were cheered whatever jersey they wore. Heck, the losers were cheered, even when they weren't British. And there were thousands of athletes at least as skilled and gifted as any footballer yet who earned a fraction what they did and seemed grateful for what they had, grateful for the opportunity to show what they can do to the world. As oppose to attempting to force their own constructive dismissal because their wages were 'only' £30,000 a week.

I can't do it. London 2012 has provided an entirely new context for what 'sporting excellence' means to me. And even the highest level of football in the UK no longer matches up to that standard.

Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking 'heck, what took you so long'. But I'm not jumping into that camp either. There's nothing worse than a zealous convert. I'm not about to join the crowd belittling football - that, to me, seems no more valid than the partizan football fan defending the worst excesses of some over-entitled Range Rover driving third choice left back who thinks he's god's gift - but I have gained a new perspective. I'm off to find a sport to try that I may actually like the people involved with it again.


I couldn't agree more.

I would never post a pic of myself online for all sorts of reasons.. did you know Ernie isn't my real name?

I Should hope not all ernie's I know are scum, one of them even banned me from his pub

How many Ernies do you know?

I think a lot of this is to do with money, and arrogance in football, there's too much of both. Not so with athletics, they're not in it for the money, a life in athletics is not a wise investment.

I've found out what the worst film is to get close to 8/10 on IMDb.

It is this bag of dried dog turds:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0485947/

Never even heard of it.

Eric?

please, its clearly Ern. Let's break down his username:

pc=he's a computer user
ern=his real name
ie=he's Irish