Chris’s Newsflash: various

Footie chums,

Well my good friends we are slowing digging a tunnel to escape newsflashes and house parties!!

Our first steps back to doing what we all love best , playing football, are underway. ( more on this in Chris’ corner).

However, until the tunnel is dug, propped up and safe, we have a bit more home made fun.

This week provides a little preview of what it feels like to get back to training. It also sign-posts House Party 4.

There is a section on ‘the best put downs’ and a priceless perspective on Santa, from an engineer.

We have a great player profile on Mark and the usual footie quiz.

Just think for some of you ,it’s just 2 sleeps till footie training ? ?

Enjoy the read!

Chris’ Corner

 Well the big news of the week is that we are taking our first steps back to footie.

There has been a fantastic response to our proposed first pilot session , starting on Tuesday 16th June , in Melbourne Park.

We have also put in place a specific o70’ session on Wednesday the 17th June and a general overspill session for Thursday 18th June.

We have had over 30 people sign -up , underlining the significant enthusiasm to get reconnected and kick a ball.

I have sent out several communications re the format and rules that need to be adhered to, so I am not going to repeat them all here.

I will, however, reiterate that this is a first step forward . We cannot be complacent in our preparation or discipline on the day(s). The virus has not gone away.

It is also important that in our enthusiasm to reconnect , that we remember  we constitute a visible gathering (albeit in structured groups of 6), so we

have to remember that the reputation of the club is on public display. We are all long in the tooth , so I’m sure everyone can work it out. ?

I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge that not all club mates are ready to return (for reasons various). I just wanted to say that you remain in our thoughts

and that we will stay connected until such time you can get back to footie.

If you are not shielding , but are restricted by an injury or other non-COVID medical issues, then why not consider coming along as a spectator and feel reconnected to club mates?

So, what was it like back last week when we did our assessment session to test whether all this could be a runner (or walker)?

Firstly, we ( Gary, Bill S, Mark , Bob, Peter, me) were there with our serious heads on, because we needed to structure and test how sessions could be safely run.

We were largely undertaking a risk assessment on your behalf.

Whilst we did what we had to do, our serious heads gave way, understandably, to enjoying the experience.

Doing some basic fitness work was great ( don’t expect too much too soon) , we were soon blowing! Kicking a ball was magic. 

As much as watching Bill H doing’ keepie uppies’ in  his wellington boots on Bob’ video was entertaining, it’s absolutely no substitute for kicking your own ball (sorry Bill ?)

But ……. the greatest joy was being back together, laughing, having a bit of banter, checking in on people, feeling the buzz from being with your club mates.

It is undoubtedly the much needed shot in the arm that many of us need !!

Good luck in the coming week (s) with your own first step back to footie!

 House Party 4 – 

Friday 26th June 19.00 -21.00

Well we are hurtling towards House Party 4.

There is the usual star studded line up of home grown talent.

In addition to some of our familiar features (quiz ; comedy ; higher lower game; best holiday; a monologue; ) we have ideas for some new stuff.

This could include ‘the worst place you’ve played football’ and ‘provide a new caption to classic seaside naughty postcodes’.

I will drop out a separate e mail shortly, inviting you to book your seats.

How to be a superstar series

 There are others in the can, Smudge Part 2 , Bill H and Spence have all made it off the editing floor! 

Bob can still use more volunteers.

If you have a job, hobby, passion that you would like to talk about for 5-10 mins give Bob a shout at  bob@bobwillis.co.uk or call him on 01245 351502.

Player profile

Mark was born in Chelmsford on 12th March 1959, the second of non-identical twins.

Both his grandfather and father were very keen Chelmsford City supporters, so Saturday afternoon’ were invariably spent watching Chelmsford City at the New Writtle Street ground.

Mark’ father owned an electrical shop in Baddow Road, a business started by his great-grandfather in 1911.

Marks next door neighbour was Peter Gillott, who had signed for Chelmsford City from Barnsley. His earliest memories of football were kicking a ball around with Peter’s sons, Peter Jnr and David.

At Marks first school, St Cedds, Tony Butcher (Chelmsford City’ all-time top scorer) was their sports master. However, despite Tony’ best efforts, he couldn’t transform the team’ success.

Mark (third from the right) being coached by Tony Butcher.

Mark played in goal, which was quite a busy job given that the team often struggled. He remembers often getting congratulated, sometimes for a fine save, but mostly just for keeping the goal tally to something respectable!

At senior school Mark found a niche as a left winger in the school team partly because Peter Gillott had taught him to use his left foot, partly because George Best was Marks idol.

A part from a season playing for a Galleywood Sunday league team in his early 20 s (hampered by late Saturday nights, cold early Sunday mornings and an argument with a referee) his football career dwindled.

Mark’ main sport was tennis. He started playing aged 10, joining his local club Grove LTC, winning their Men’s Singles Championship at 17.

At 19 he won the Chelmsford and District men’s singles championship having been the beaten finalist the year before.

By this time, he had joined Great Baddow LTC whose men’ first team competed in Division 1 of the Essex League 

Mark’ tennis career reached its peak in the mid 1980s with an appearance in the men’ doubles final at Great Baddow.

Mark also started coaching, taking his LTA Part 1 and then USPTR Intermediate in Switzerland in 1985. Although he coached juniors his main focus was adult beginners who needed to improve to be able to join a club.

In 1997 Mark won the Chelmsford and District men’ doubles championship and then the veterans’ men’ doubles (Over 45) at Great Baddow in 2004.

During his early 30s he had started playing 5 a side football, regularly competing in local leagues. He found that he enjoyed the 5 a side game much more than 11 a side.

In 1998 Mark took up karate having regular individual lessons with Simon Kidd who represented Gt Britain at the 1988 Olympics and in his 7 years of training he progressed to brown belt. However, at the age of 45 he stopped enjoying the sport and gave up.

Marks father owned an electrical business which he took over in 1991. He expanded the business to specialize more in decorative lighting as well as the basics of electrical contracting and supplying electrical accessories.

Mark says that he purchased his first property in 1978 at the age of 19, he rented this out successfully for two and a half years. However, due to some dodgy tenants and his sister using the place for a party it needed urgent refurbishment. He converted it into two flats living in one and renting out the other one.

Over the years Mark expanded his property rental portfolio which allowed him to sell the electrical business in 2007 and retire (this only lasted about 6 months as the need to get busy kicked in).

In 1996 he met my future wife Janet (they were married in 2000). Janet managed a day nursery for Anglia Polytechnic University in Brentwood. 

However, the nursery was forced to close as the university wanted to sell the site for development. After several meetings with the Chief Executive of Brentwood Council they managed to persuade him to facilitate the rental of the old Coach House at Merrymeade House in Brentwood. 

In 2001 Mark & Janet opened Phoenix Day Nursery Ltd which they ran in partnership for 10 years until their divorce in 2011.

In 2009, really bored with early retirement he started Mark One Electrical (and of course became CCWFC’ first shirt sponsor). 

As the years went by, he found it more difficult playing football against younger, faster players and turned to walking football, joining CCWFC in 2016 

There have been some playing highlights over the last 4 years.

Mark was part of the CCWFC o60’ Essex League winning team in 2018 as well as representing the Essex League at both o50 and o60.

Mark with his CCWFC o60’ 2018 Essex League champions teammates.

He was also captain of the CCWFC side which finished 3rd in the Amelo City Cup in 2018. In fact, Mark scored the last penalty in the shoot out against the Germans to send Chelmsford into the semi-finals (now that’s not something you hear very often !!).

Mark was also a part of the winning South East England team last October which won the first WFA Regional over 60 competition.

Mark has a had a long-standing competitive thirst, whether developing his left foot, winning tennis competitions, developing businesses, or more recently finding success in walking football.

I’m sure that it is destined to continue!

The greatest put downs

“Tell him I can only deal with one s*** at a time”.  – Winston Churchill on being disturbed in his toilet by a call from the Lord Privy Seal.

“A modest man, who has much to be modest about.” – on Clement Attlee

 “Elizabeth Taylor’s so fat, she puts ­mayonnaise on her aspirins” – Joan Rivers

“What problems do you have, apart from being blind, unemployed and a moron?” – John McEnroe to Wimbledon spectator

“The only time my wife and I had a simultaneous orgasm was when the judge signed the divorce papers” – Woody Allen

“She ran the whole gamut of the emotions from A to B.” – critic Dorothy Parker on Audrey Hepburn’s acting in a play

“She can’t be with us tonight. She’s busy attending the birth of her next husband.” – snooker champ John Parrott on Joan Collin

“She speaks five languages and can’t act in any of them.” – Sir John Gielgud on Casablanca star Ingrid Bergman

“Michael Jackson’s album was called Bad because there wasn’t enough room on the sleeve for Pathetic.” – Prince

“The easiest way for you to lose 10 pounds is just to take off your wig.” – Madonna to Elton John

“My dear, you are ugly, but tomorrow I shall be sober and you will still be ugly.” – Winston Churchill

“I like your opera. I think I will set it to music.” – Beethoven, slapping another composer down

You Gotta Laugh

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. 

However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the World Population Census). 

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). 

This works out to 967.7 visits per second. 

This is to say that, for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, hop back into the sleigh, and get to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. 

This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second – 3,000 times the speed of sound.

For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. 

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. 

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them – Santa would need 360,000 of them. 

This increases the payload — not counting the weight of Santa, which is reported to be fairly impressive — to 600,000 tons.

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance — this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. 

The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. 

In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. 

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right away, and just before the sleigh, presents, and Santa followed.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s now dead!.

____________________________________________________________

 

Why did the Chicken Cross the Road?

KINDERGARTEN TEACHER: To get to the other side.

SADDAM HUSSEIN: This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it. 

JACK NICHOLSON: ‘cause it f…..g wanted to. That’s the f…..g reason.

CAPTAIN JAMES T. KIRK: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

FREUD: The fact that you are at all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

BILL GATES: I have just released the new Chicken Office 2020, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your accounts..

OLIVER STONE: The question is not, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Rather, it is, “Who was crossing the road at the same time, whom we overlooked in our haste to observe the chicken crossing?”

EINSTEIN: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends upon your frame of reference

COLONEL SANDERS: I missed one?

___________________________________________________________

A policeman  pulls over a car during a traffic check and as he’s asking the driver for his licence, he spots three penguins sitting on the backseat.

“Sir, what are you doing with three penguins in your car?” asked the copper.

“That’s a funny story.” answered the man, “I won these off of a friend of mine during a poker game, and now I have no idea what to do with them.”

“Why don’t you take them to the zoo then?” suggested the officer.

The driver blinked a moment and then smiled, “That’s a great idea, we’ll go right away!” 

Two days later, the policeman sees the same car. 

Curious, he waves the driver over and when he walks up he notices that there’s still three penguins sitting in the backseat. Only this time they’re wearing shirts and caps.

“I thought you were going to take these guys to the zoo?” he asked the driver.

“I did!” came the answer “And we had so much fun, we’re going to Legoland today!”

____________________________________________________________

Remember physio Sam – a reminder

Just to let you know that Sam is back up for business.

He officially re open for business on the 4th July, but he will do consultations for existing clients or walking footie folks from 15/6

If you need him, he is on 07587 054854

November Quiz night

I have 68 tickets ‘sold’, if you want tickets and haven’t booked them, let me know. 

As a reminder, the details are:

Spencer P’ big quiz night; 6th Nov 7-30 -11.00; Chelmsford City clubhouse; fish & chip supper; charity raffle; £10 a ticket; pre -form a team of 6 or make one up on the night.

Footie Quiz

Here are 10 questions that are true or false. You have a 50/50 chance!

  1. It took Cristiano Ronaldo 27 games to score his first Champions League goal.
  2. The phrase ‘park the bus arose when Jose Mourinho was forced to park the Chelsea team bus after the bus driver fell ill.
  3. Singer in Irish boyband Westlife Nicky Byrne played for Leeds United before moving into music.
  4. Sir Alex Ferguson managed the Scotland national team.
  5. Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish is known as ‘King Kenny’ because he is related to the British Royal Family.
  6. Frank Lampard has scored more Premier League goals than Thierry Henry, Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen.
  7. Bayern Munich star Thomas Muller is a keen chess player and once won a Bavarian chess tournament.
  8. Former Brazil and Barcelona star Ronaldinho spent time in prison after being found to have used a fake passport.
  9. David Beckham took ballet lessons during his time at Manchester United in order to improve his agility.
  10. Brazil icon Pele once starred in a Hollywood movie alongside Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone.

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Well folks that’s it for now. 

There are a few tickets available for the Nov 6th quiz, again let me know your requirements if you haven’t got tickets yet.

Look out for the invite to House Party 4.

If you are taking a first step back to training this week – enjoy yourself !! ?

Best wishes

Chris ?

Footie quiz answers

  1. True
  2. False
  3. True
  4. True
  5. False
  6. True
  7. False
  8. True
  9. False
  10. True

Author: Chris Jullings