Happy New Year

Another year over. A new one just begun.

About this time every year I sit with a pen and paper and write a list of resolutions and personal goals. I’ve done it for years but last year I wrote just two things:

Lose weight
Get fit

New look

A new look then to honour the Addicks new look. I hope you like, it’s taken me a few days to fiddle around with but I wanted something that more resembled a magazine with a clean look. I think my previous design was a little bland, although to be honest I have spent so much time staring at this new page that for the life of me I can hardly remember what the old one looked like!

The new-look Addicks meanwhile are out in Spain being put through their paces and we had a very decent win over Bristol City Tuesday night in Lepe. On Friday the Addicks play Cardiff City at the Estadio Guadalquivir of Coria FC in Seville and return to Blighty on Saturday.

Shout out

It’s about time I gave a shout-out to a few new Addick Bloggers. It is a fact that no other football club on the planet has as many Blogs dedicated to it. We may have lost a few old stagers, one tragically, and whilst some others are less prolific it’s good to know that the Charlton Blogger Academy is still unearthing some first team gems.

Paul Weaver – Charlton North Downs RIP

As other bloggers have posted, many of us received an email from Paul’s sister Carol over the weekend saying that Paul passed away on February 5th after suffering a heart attack whilst playing the sport that he loved, tennis.

I had met Paul a couple times mostly in the Rose of Denmark. He had normally darted up from a morning tennis game and enjoyed a pre-match beer, although he did once drop a pint all over me in the RoD and I used to continue to give him stick about it.

Paul started to blog in 2007, the season we were relegated from the Premiership, but I know that work stresses in the past year or so had prevented him from writing as much as he’d liked. As NYA said, his final post was sadly very poignant.

I loved Paul’s writing, it was lucid and always from the heart, and I loved that he blogged about his travels. He was a lovely and genuine man and my heart goes out to his wife Jill and their two children.

New home

Ah, I’m glad you found me hiding over here, well not exactly hiding but setting up home at WordPress after six years with Blogger. I am no Tim Berners-Lee but I had outgrown Blogger and was getting frustrated by it’s limitations.

My Blogger page chicagoaddick.blogspot.com will remain but will be put into retirement and all my future posts will continue on here.

On the right hand-side there you can read a lot more about me than you really need to know, I also explain my Blogger archive and also link to my back catalogue of travel posts.

I would love to hear of any comments you have, as always.