Weekend entertainment

Good weekends just seem to go so fast and now it's Monday morning again.

Good to see both H and B in the Swan Saturday night, glad to see you are both well.

Also very pleasing to hear that B and L are returning to the UK from NZ next Summer, B being a supremely talented cricketer and all round decent fellow he will be Alton's overseas player this coming season.

Top night with A and a rather worse for wear J in the Railway Arms.

Wedding fayre at the Maltings Sunday, still feel a bit uncomfortable being approached by people, would always prefer to ask if I want more information rather than being jumped upon as I near a stand, but that's me I guess.

Why exactly would anybody book a man dressed as a chimney sweep to come to your wedding, I know it's a bizarre world out there but that made so little sense to me.

We have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off this week, over a quarter of the way through my working week, which is always nice.

DIY to do Wednesday and Thursday and Friday are meetings with various people for the Wedding and shopping for bits and bobs.

Will hopefully get to do some more painting tonight or tomorrow evening, Arsenal play CSKA Moscow Wednesday so will be watching that.

Arsenal managed a draw against Everton Saturday at the Emirates. A very defensively minded Everton side fortuitously took the lead from a scrambled 10th Minute corner, and it took a bad free kick decision by the ref to allow Robin Van Persie to equalise with 20 minutes to go. Arsenal absolutely battered Everton for the whole 90 minutes and it would have been a travesty if they hadn't been able to equalise. Arsenal are still hanging in there, but we will need to win our game in hand to ensure that we stay in the title race.

West Ham away nest Sunday, Predictions for Arsenal games this week

2-0 Win against CSKA
2-1 Win against West Ham

Up the Arsenal!!

Art Project - First Picture

So here is the first rough sketch of the picture I decided on for the next Art Project.

It is probably one of the harder things that I have attempted so bear with me.

I can't seem to manage to make the image any darker, though as it is very rough and needs more work doing I am not unhappy I must say.

Re-create a favourite moment

General fumblings on t'internet have revealed a website, from which you can submit a photo, and thie Company will turn it into a personalised "paint by numbers" kit.

http://www.craftbynumbers.com/painting/ though a little expensive at £34.99 plus postage it could really make a loved one's Christmas extra special, especially as they suggest that your kit will take a week to arrive from the date of order.

Each kit contains more than £26 worth of Daler-Rowney art products, including paints, brushes and a mixing palette.

Sounds ideal, especially if you are like me and could use the assistance when painting.

Art Project Vote

I have received seven responses to my Art Project vote, so far the votes are close, with three paintings currently on two votes each. I am hopeful of finding some canvasses from the shop currently occupying the old QS store in Woking, thanks for the tip Mel, and so will probably decide which to do before I leave this evening.

I hope to be able to keep a decent photographic log of my progress so keep checking back to see how I am getting along.

Meanwhile if you have any comments please feel free to drop me a line by clicking on "comments" underneath this blog entry.

Weekend

Well that was a fairly interesting weekend.

Having started with a top early evening out with some of my work colleagues, I headed off back to Alton to meet up with L who was out with her friends from Pilates.

They headed off to the Baker's and the the Weybridge so I left them to it and headed off home. Whilst out, L managed to hurt her foot and so by the time she made it back home around midnight or so she was seriously having problems and could hardly put any weight on it.

Saturday morning arrived and with the foot still causing a real problem her Mum took her to Basingstoke A & E to have it checked out. X-rays showed it was just a bad sprain thankfully but her inability to drive forced us to postpone our planned trip to Chichester to see my Mum and Dad and to have a wander round and look at the Wedding Cake shop.

Taxi to the White Horse for a great night out, T and J our friends were out and we had a really enjoyable time chatting and drinking with them. Taxi home couple more drinks and then bed.

Sunday, a beautiful day in Alton, not, being too tight to get a taxi to and from Sainbury's I walked down to get as much of our weekly shopping as I could, then settled down to watch th e football.

A professional Arsenal performance against Reading, with the Gunners sweeping aside the Berkshire based side with relative ease. Henry opened the scoring with just 58 seconds on the clock after great work from Fabregas, and Hleb made it two after a one-two again with Fabregas. Henry played in Hleb who cut back for Van Persie to make it 3 and Henry played in Fabregas who was felled by Hannemann in the Reading goal for a penalty and Henry stepped up a slotted home Arsenal's 4th. Rosicky could have added another as he attempted to round Hannemann but the American did well to deny him with an outstretched arm.

The game drifted for the last 20 minutes with the hard work done Arsenal attempted to keep the ball and even the Arsenal changes did not inject any more urgency into the game.

Carling Cup this week and hopefully an opportunity for the youngsters to show their skills against West Brom.

New Art Project

Ok you lot, I am undecided as to what I should undertake as my next Art project, and so I shall leave it up to you, the faithful few Blog readers, to vote on which you think I should go for.

Obviously my ability prevents me from taking on anything too ambitious and I am a touch lazy so it needs to be something I actually would like to paint. To that end, I am selecting the pictures for you to choose from (so you don't pick anything too hard for me).

Here are the options. Several are Magritte pictures, like "Homesickness"(Lion and Man on bridge) and my version of "Son of Man" (the one with the Man and the Apple). I very much enjoy Magritte's paintings, they seem to allow the mind to question what exactly he is trying to portray, and although I like paintings of everyday objects, the unusual subject matter of Magritte seems to suit me better.

So here they are, working left to right, top to bottom, 1,2,3,4 please feel free to vote for the one you think I should try to reproduce.

Obviously these are copyrighted images and are shown here purely for artistic reasons, no commercial interest is intended in anyway at all.

I will update you as to the votes next week.

Disappointment in Moscow

Arsenal's thundering fightback came to a halt last night as a classy CSKA Moscow side outclassed the Gunners, winning a closely fought battle 1-0 in freezing temperatures.

The atrocious pitch hardly assisted Arsenal as they tried to implement their impeccable passing game on the Russians, who having started the game brightly, continued to harry and hassle Gilberto and Fabregas into mistakes.

The winning goal game from a 24th minute free kick, a rather soft award by the Spanish referee (not the last interesting decision of the night) the Brazilian Carvalho hammering a thunderous shot home from the edge of the box, a slight dip in trajectory meant that although Lehman was close to saving, the ball was past him and into the net before he could adjust.

Arsenal continued to press but to no real avail, Gilberto and Van Persie forging good chances as the half went on.

The second half continued along the same lines as the first, Arsenal being harried into making mistake, Vagner Love, when not throwing himself dramatically to the floor looking for fouls, was exceptional for CSKA and continually found space between Djourou, Toure Gilberto and Fabregas and caused many problems.

65 minutes gone and Mr Wenger looked to ring the changes, sadly he left Hleb on who was having a shocker, choosing instead to withdraw Van Persie, Djourou and Rosicky, with Clichy, Adebayor and Walcott replacing them.

Arsenal immediately looked more incisive with Fabregas' touch returning as the Gunners mounted attack after attack. Gallas and Toure mopping up nicely at the back as Arsenal pushed for the equaliser.

And it came from Henry only to be scandalously ruled out for handball, with Henry picking up a booking. Replays clearly show the mercurial Frenchman controlling with his stomach before slotting home past the impressive young Russian goalkeeper, the linesman apparently gave the decision, with none of the CSKA defence close to Henry even appealing for anything, they just looked dejected that Arsenal had grabbed such a late equaliser. Appaling decision but one which we hope will not be decisive in the long run.

Arsenal have three games in the group left now, CSKA and Hamburg at the Emirates and Porto away, qualification should be straight forward.

Away to Reading Saturday, get the padded helmet out Jens.

Predicition : A flourishing return to form for the Arsenal 3 points

Homesickness painting finished

I finally found the time to sit and finish my painting of Magritte's "Homesickness" last night, am not unhappy with it and need to remember the level of my actual painting ability.

Am off to Chichester at the weekend to meet up with my parents, so am hopeful I will find a shop selling more canvasses and start to prepare for the next project.

If you have any ideas please feel free to comment.

Arsenal away to CSKA Moscow this evening, young Brazilian Denilson is in the squad for his first senior game. Walcott's sensational first Arsenal start at the weekend hopefully will continue, especially as Ljunberg is injured.

Likely line up to be.

Lehman, Hoyte, Toure, Gallas, Clichy, Hleb, Silva, Fabregas, Rosicky, Henry and Adebayor.

A draw away from home on a difficult pitch and in rather cold weather would be a great result, up the Arsenal

Lacklustre to say the least

Another shoddy performance by England has thrown the group open.

Steve Maclaren, the man not even his own club wanted as Manager looks a little out of his depth, having chosen to change formation to a 3-5-2.

That had to be the first time that I can recall us looking completely second best and not looking likely to be able to compete. Let's just hope that we can turn in some better performances when the qualifiers resume on 5 months, though he may go if we carry on playing that poorly, so it wouldn't be all bad.

Work quiz

Ok so it's been a fair while since I last blogged, but work has been on the busy side, especially as we have been a couple of people short.

Well, you'll be pleased to learn that you haven't missed anything particularly interesting, Arsenal brushed aside Porto 2-0 and then beat Charlton 2-1 with a Van Persie double, one of them being a cracking volley.

The boys are currently 8th in the league, 5 points behind Man U, but with a game in hand.

Work quiz last night, superb turn out (47 people), great fun and our team of youngsters (hey stop laughing) gave a very creditable performance and came in 4th or 5th out 10 teams.

Will post the pics here once I have sorted them out.

Haven't done any painting recently, may do some tonight especially if England play as badly as they did against Macedonia, it was actually like watching paint dry.

M