England

If I were to say to you, "Manchester or Barcelona?" and you weren't a football (soccer) fan, you'd probably think it an odd question. If you are a football fan, you'll already know the answer. The answer is Barcelona.

In the second grand contest of European supremacy in as many weeks, Manchester United and Barcelona kicked off at Olympic Stadium in Rome to determine the winner of the the UEFA Champions League cup. Manchester United looked okay to start (according to those that know such things), but when Barcelona scored on their first shot with only 10 minutes gone in the game, Manchester lost the plot and ended up playing an awful game of football.

So Barcelona and Spain take round two of European Supremacy! Norway - 1, Spain - 1 and U.K., well... null points.

This past weekend also saw the last games played in the Premiership, which is the top flight league of English football teams. Manchester United fared better here, ending the season atop the table with 90 points, ahead of Liverpool with 86 and London based Chelsea with 83. Arsenal, the closest stadium to my new place in King's Cross, finished fourth.

So Manchester United were both crowned champions and were the bridesmaid in the same week. To make it even more confusing, Manchester United also won the Carling Cup back in March, which is a cup awarded to the winner of a tournament of the 92 best football teams in England, but they aren't playing in this weekend's FA Cup, which is awarded to the winner of a tournament involving 761 clubs from across England. Man U, are, however, holders of the FIFA Club World Cup...

Me and the FA Cup - to be played this weekend between Chelsea and Everton

The end of the premiership also sees 3 unlucky teams get booted out of the Premiership, those being Newcastle United, Middlesbrough and West Bromwich Albion this year. The three lowest teams get sent to a lower league, with three teams coming up to join the premiership next year. This is known as relegation.

It's so different here than in North America. I mean, could you imagine if last year the Washington Nationals, Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres were told to go and play AAA baseball while Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Durham Bulls and the San Francisco Seals were brought up to the big leagues?

Anyway, it's all a little hard to track for me sometimes, exactly what a match is being played for. Turn on the TV and see a football match, and it could be a Premiership game, Carling Cup, FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League or FIFA Club World Cup game. Enough to make the head spin.

I did keep my head on straight enough to compete in a Premiership Fantasy Football pool this year. I think I did pretty well for a novice, coming in 8th out of 30 players. Well above the relegation zone.

Thursday was the last day of my project in Sheffield, and at 6:27 in the evening I boarded a train and headed down to London. Even before I boarded the train, I knew I wouldn’t be eating my supper in Sheffield on Thursday, instead waiting until I got back to London and to my flat.

Therefore, on Wednesday evening I knew I would be having my last proper meal in Sheffield, so I headed to my favourite place to eat, the Dev Cat.

When I first arrived in Sheffield, I found myself faced with a lot of chain restaurants in the centre of town. Now, I am not against chain restaurants per se, but there are only so many times you can dine at Café Rouge, Nando’s, J.D. Wetherspoon’s or Wagamama’s before you are thinking you’d like a change of place.

One day, a few weeks after first arriving here in Sheffield, I asked some of the locals I work with for some restaurant suggestions in the centre.

“Do you like burgers?” asked one of the women I work with.

“Uh-huh,” I replied, saliva building up in my mouth.

“Do you like beer?” she asked.

“Mmmmmm, beer and burgers,” I replied, drool rolling down my chin and eyes rolling back in my head, cutting a truly Homeresque figure.

(That’s Homer as in Simpson, not Homer as in Grecian poet. Or was he a Roman poet? I always get the Ancient Greek and Roman Empires mixed up, which probably doesn’t make the Greeks or Italians especially happy. In my defense though, I think they are easy to mix up. They both featured dudes in white sheets, lots of marble architecture, statues of naked, buff folks and way too many Gods for me to remember.)

“Oh, you’ll have to check out the Dev Cat,” she said.

The Dev Cat, or more properly The Devonshire Cat is a pub in central Sheffield on Wellington Street. Offering a selection of 12 beers on draught and over 60 beers in bottles, as well as hand-made burgers all at a good price, the place is very popular with students, city-centre workers and locals alike.

The first time I saw the Dev Cat, I must admit I was not overly impressed. Even though I have been in England for almost a year now and have been in enough pubs that I should know better, when I hear the word pub I still imagine a dark, musty space in rickety, turn of the century house with lead-glass windows, low ceilings and wobbly, uneven floors. The Dev Cat is on the ground floor of a modern apartment block that is home to students of nearby Sheffield University, and is light and airy inside with floors so even you could bowl on them, if the tables weren’t in the way.

Sitting at a table and perusing the beer and food menus, though, put me back at ease, and once I took that first bite into a Dev Cat burger, any qualms about the appearance of the pub disappeared. The burgers were excellent, and the selection of beer impressive.

The Dev Cat doesn’t have the biggest beer menu I’ve ever seen, but it has to be the most eclectic. Like many brew pubs, it has selections from different countries, but the Dev Cat seems to go for the weirdest beers they can find. Spontaneously fermenting Lambic beers from Belgium share the menu with pilsners from the Czech Republic. Brews from monasteries are available along side saxon ciders. Kolschs from Germany along side Sierra Nevada from the USA. They also offer Tusker from Kenya, a beer that I drank extensively when I was in Tanzania (which may explain why I never made it to the top of Kilimanjaro).

(As an aside, I know this is the kind of shameless fawning that professional travel writers get paid to do. I’m not getting paid by anyone, which either makes me an unbiased and trustworthy source of information, or a sucker. I’m not sure which, but I fear it’s probably the sucker.)

On my last Wednesday, I started with a pint of Bernard Light Tap lager on draught and placed an order for a brie and bacon burger.

I was a quarter way through my meal when I finished off my pint. As a tipple for the rest of the meal, I decided to try something a little different. I went for a bottle of the Schlenferla Rauchbier. Rauch means smoke and the beer is made by kilning the barley malt over burning beachwood logs, a traditional method from early Franconian history that can be compared with the kilning over peat used to make Islay Whisky (according to the beer menu).

Taking a sniff of the dark beer, it smelt like your t-shirt smells after spending a night at a bonfire. The first sip of the beer was strange. It tasted like I imagine drinking a pureed smoked kielbasa would taste like. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but neither would I call it enjoyable.

Then I had a bite of the burger, followed by a sip of the beer, and it was much better. The meaty taste of the burger, the smoothness of the brie and saltiness of the bacon went very well with the smoke of the beer. By alternating a bite of burger with a sip of the beer, I managed to find a nice mix of complimenting tastes. I will admit in ordering the Rauchbier, I had hoped that it would compliment a grilled burger, and it turned out to work really well.

The smoky beer did not work well with chips and mayonnaise. Luckily I had finished off most of the chips while drinking the lager, which was much better with the chips and mayo.

I finished up my burger and beer and headed out into the warm and sunny evening in Sheffield. I would have hung around and tried a few more of the unusual beers on offer, but Arsenal and Man U were about to kick off. Despite having a lot going for it including the best burgers and beers in Sheffield, two things that the Dev Cat doesn’t have is either Sky Sports or TVs on which to show Sky Sports. The Dev Cat just isn’t the kind of place you can be at when an important sporting match is on.

See, that’s the kind of honest appraisal you won’t get from those endorsed travel writers. Perhaps I am not a sucker after all. No, I’m probably still a sucker.

Sucker or not, either way I’ll miss the Dev Cat’s burgers.

Goodbye, Sheffield.

Hillsborough stadium, just outside of central Sheffield in the part of town called Hillsborough is home to football club Sheffield Wednesday. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club was established in 1892 to keep the local cricket club in shape during the off season. The cricket club was named for the day of the week on which they played, Wednesday. The name ended up transferring over to the FC club. The club is also known as the Owls after a mascot given to them in the early 20th century. In 1899, the club moved to a football stadium just to the north of Hillsborough Park. Though the stands have received some renovations over the years, the Owls have played on the grounds in 1899.

On April 15, 1989, the grounds was to play host to an FA-Cup semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. As was standard practice at most important matches, fans were segregated to try and keep any trouble to a minimum. Nottingham Forest fans were assigned the Spion Kop End, with Liverpool fans being given the Leppings Lane side of the stadium, named after the street on which the entrance to the stand is.

Kick-off was scheduled for 3:00 pm, with fans told to show up 30 minutes before the match. However, fans were late, many due to unscheduled road works on the M62 that runs between Liverpool and Sheffield. Many fans were still outside the stadium as kick-off time was drawing near.

Due to the fears soccer hooliganism, at the time fans were enclosed by high steel fences to keep them off the pitch. As more and more Liverpool fans tried to stream into the stadium, those at the front started to be crushed against the fence, with no escape routes. Generally, police and stewards would have stood at the entrance to the tunnel directing fans away from the full central pens and to the side pens. This did not happen during this match.

With kick-off near, the police outside of the stadium were unaware of the crush at the front of the stands. Fearing a crush of fans or violence outside the stadium, they opened a large gate that was to be used as an exit, causing a rush of fans into the stadium.

When the match started at 3:00 pm, already fans were being killed in the crush. Fans at the back of the mass were unaware of the problems up front, and with their focus on the match, continued to surge forward. Some Liverpool fans were lucky enough to climb over the fences, alerting the police to the problem. The police stopped the match at 3:06 pm.

Clive Betts, MP for Sheffield was at the match, and in April 14th edition of the Sheffield Star is quoted as saying, "The game kicked off and there was what looked like crowd problems. Then people starting climbing over the fences to get out. There were more and more people trying to get out. The referee stopped the game and the players walked off. It took a long time for the scale of disaster to become apparent, for people to realise that people were dead on the pitch, that there was resuscitation going on. People were absolutely stunned. Things like this don't happen at football matches."

The human crush ended up killing 96 Liverpool fans and injuring over 700 people. The force of the fans must have been enormous. Richard Caborn, MP for Sheffield Central, was also at the match. "I was on the terrace and saw one of the bars which was supposed to keep crowds from surging forward. It was bent, and I was told it would have taken something like a quarter of a tonne to have done that."

The deaths and injuries at the match brought about many changes in football stadium in the UK. Standing room and general admission with penned-in fans were replaced by all-seating stadiums.

In 1999, on the tenth anniversary of the disaster, a memorial was unveiled at Hillsborough in the memory of the fans who died there. Today, the day before the 20th, some of those who lost people, as well as other Liverpool fans affected by the tragedy, stopped by to drop off flowers, pictures and scarves in honour of the dead, before heading off to see Liverpool play Chelsea in an EUFA Champions league Quarter final game.

The anniversary brings about mixed feelings here in Sheffield, as people are obviously horrified at the loss of life and the injuries, but also sensitive about the South Yorkshire police taking a lot of the blame for the tragedy. Many from Liverpool are still angry that those in charge of security that day were not charged with any crimes.

However, the people of Sheffield will mark the disaster quietly tomorrow, with two minutes of silence from 3:06 to 3:08 pm in the city centre, at Meadowhall (the regions largest shopping mall) and of course at Hillsborough stadium and along Leppings Lane.

It has been two weeks since I got back from Lille, though thanks to my verbose writing, you've still been reading about it for weeks. In the time since returning, not too much exciting has occurred.

Spring has sprung in London. Here's a picture of the cherry tree outside my place. I took the photo a few weeks ago. The bright pink blossoms have now given way to tree of dark red leaves.

Even better, my hay fever, which was causing me much aggravation in the middle of March has disappeared. Hopefully it doesn't come back. It's strange to have been suffering the effects of hay fever at a time of year when back in Toronto they snow wouldn't have even been off the ground.

• * *

Right before I went away to Lille, I had to take my Apple down to the Apple Store. The CD drive had stopped working, which was impairing my ability to play the new U2 CD. To repair the CD drive and also fix the screen (which I had water damaged due to an ill advised attempted cleaning) cost £360. That is in fact more than my other computer, a Packard Bell Windows machine cost in total. Macs are a lot like German cars, I think. They are finely crafted and you pay a premium to own one. They run really well, and rarely have problems, but when they do... look out, because your wallet is going to be a lot lighter.

Well waiting for a "genius" from the "genius bar" to help me (god, sometimes you really have to hate the arrogance of the Apple folks, don't you), I went and bought a new phone. That was another £40. The previous day I had spent £180 on a U2 ticket. I don't know what I am thinking. I better hope I don't lose my job, otherwise all this conspicuous consumption is going to catch up with me. Trips to France, computers, phones, fancy soups from Sainsbury's. I tell you, I'm going wild.

Anyway, the genius at the genius bar, who looked like Earl Hickey from My Name is Earl, only with less hair, told me that he'd need to replace the drive, and that it would take a while, so I left the computer with them and plodded off to France. When in Lille, I got a call that I could come pick it up. Once back home, I dropped into the Apple Store, and picked up the machine. Nice and clean with a new, non-water damaged screen. Only one last thing to try. "Can I borrow a CD to check out the drive," I asked.

"Sure," the genius said, and went to retrieve a disk. Greatest 1950s TV hits, or some such thing. My computer apparently didn't like 1950s TV, because it refused to play the disk.

"Hmm, not working," I said.

The genius looked confused. "I need to take this in the back and get one of the technicians to look at it," he said. Not so smart, it seems, for a genius.

Anyway, turns out they had to replace the connector to the CD drive as well. I asked the obvious question - "Can you be sure that the CD drive needed to be replaced in the first place? I mean, perhaps the CD drive was fine all along, and it was only the connector that was busted." No, I was assured, that both the CD drive and the connector needed to be replaced. *sigh* Just like an auto mechanic. What can you do? Buy a PC that you can work on yourself, I guess... But there not nearly as cool as the Mac, right?

• * *

I returned to Sheffield, and was in for a treat. I walked into my hotel room for the week to find something I had never seen in a hotel room before. I've stayed in lots of hotels over the years, and seen some pretty decent things. I've stayed in places that had flat-screen TVs that arise from cabinets, sitting rooms with small bars and fridges, places wired for sound with decent hi-fi systems. I even once had a hotel room that had a jacuzzi tub that overlooked the Las Vegas strip. I could have, if I had the time and wasn't working, have spent a lazy evening watching the Bellagio water show from a bubble bath.

This room in Sheffield had something that none of those rooms had ever had, though. It had stairs.

The hotel room was split into two separate floors. One the main floor, where the door was, was the bathroom and a sitting room, with a TV and the internet connection.

On the upper floor, the bedroom with another TV.

So sweet. Now this is luxury I could get used to.

Of course, I didn't get to spend too much time in the room. Mainly just came back at night after dinner and crashed. I had a lot of work to complete that week, so I was in the office late.

How come I never get fancy rooms like that when I go away on vacation?

• * *

April 4th I was back in London. My flatmate said that the Grand National was on that day. The Grand National is an annual horse race that is held in Liverpool at the Aintree race course. It is, according to the pre-race hype on the BBC, the most famous race horse in the world. I'd never heard of it before, but I'm just a sample of one, so perhaps that is not indicative of its true fame.

My flatmate and her family has a yearly tradition of picking some horses and putting down a small wager on it. I joined in by picking a couple horses, and we debated about going down to the local Ladbrokes to put a tenner down on the action, but in the end just agreed on a gentlemen's wager.

I suppose that the Grand National would be similar to the Kentucky Derby back in North America (though I had previously thought that is what I would say about the Ascot, so who knows). Anyway, it is a big day for betting on the ponies, and folks who normally wouldn't watch horses race do so when the Grand National is running.

There is an image of the Brits has been a little prissy and uptight, not like the rough and tumble Americans. But horse racing here the UK certainly shatters that image. The Grand National makes that Kentucky Derby look a little bit like a merry-go-round.

The Grand National is a four-mile long steeple chase, with a total of thirty fences to jump. Riders fall off all the time, and the free horses run along with the race, sometimes impeding the progress of those still on their horses. Even the start is maniacal, with the riders all lining up behind a wire strung across the track, which sometimes doesn't get lifted fast enough at the start and you wind up with jockeys getting clothes-lined.

We each picked a long-shot and a decent odds horse. I picked Fleet Street at 100-1 for my long shot, simply because I liked the name, it being a street and all here in London. For my decent odds horse, I debated between the cool-named Comply or Die, but ended up going with Hear the Echo, who was listed as 15:1 in the paper, but by the time the race started had dropped to 33:1.

The race was exciting to watch. It took 9 and a half minutes to run, and only 17 horses finished. At one point, the leader of the race, a horse named Black Apalachi, was out in front with a comfortable lead, when he fell on the 22nd jump. The jockey curled up into a ball as the rest of the field jumped the fence and tried not to stomp on him.

In the end, Mon Mome won the race, a 100:1 shot! Sadly, my pick, Hear the Echo collapsed on the final ran to the wire and later died. Hear the Echo was the 58th horse to die in the 162 runnings of the race.

• * *

The next week in Sheffield, I had a regular sized European hotel room. It felt small, cluttered and claustrophobic after last weeks two story affair. *sigh* The good ol' days.

• * *

This weekend was Easter weekend, which means a four day weekend. Despite having four days to play with, I did very little. I took no trips, I didn't splash out on any big purchases. Nope, just stayed home for the most part, went out a few times. Nothing big at all...

...well, I guess I did buy a ticket for the Monaco Grand Prix at the end of May... For £500. Plus hotel and travel and food...

Prior to the recession, I was quite a little saver. Now, though, I seem to have transformed into a big spender. Oh well, I guess that I am doing my part to try and bring the world back 'round.

Mr. Gordon Brown, you can send your thanks later.

• * *

I did slightly better in my NHL hockey pool, which I wrote about attending back in Toronto in October. I ended up winning the pool for the second year running. While this shot is from last year, as the trophy is currently safely in Toronto and not here in London with me, this is what I would be doing if I had the trophy here.

Get ready for next year. THREEPEAT, BABY!!!

In 1964, when that other Liverpool band The Beatles was growing into the phenomenon that would become Beatlemania, Gerry & the Pacemakers were releasing their seventh single, a slow song called "Ferry Cross the Mersey." A tribute to the Liverpool area, the song implores the ferry to cross the Mersey River, to return the singer to the land he loves.

So Ferry, cross the Mersey
'cause this land's the place I love
and here I'll stay

On Sunday I ferried myself cross the Mersey to see Liverpool's opposite bank - Wallasey, New Brighton and Birkenhead.

Ferries have been crossing the Mersey river for probably over 1000 years. There was a record of a ferry crossing the Mersey from Seacombe in the Domesday Book in 1086. By 1150, Benedictine Monks in Birkenhead were running a ferry service. In 1330 they were granted a charter by King Edward III to run the ferries forever. They ran ferries until 1536, when King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and took over the license for the ferry.

In the 1800s, modern ferry service began, provided by two separate companies - The Wallasey and Birkenhead companies. The ferry service was taken over 1968 by the Merseyside Passenger Transport Executive (also known as MerseyTravel) and the two services were merged into the single company. Wallasey tended to name their ferries after flowers, and thus to link with history one of the current ferries is named Snowdrop, though it is branded with Birkenhead colours.

During the week at rush hour, the ferry service is a commuter service, running between the Seacombe ferry terminal in Wallasey, the Birkenhead ferry terminal and the Pierhead in Liverpool. Off hours and during the weekend, though, the ferries run River Explorer Cruises. These cruises run for about an hour, with two stops. In the summer, the ferry runs downstream towards New Brighton before turning back and stopping at Seacombe and Birkenhead. In the winter, when I took the cruise, after leaving Liverpool, the ferry stops at Seacombe and Birkenhead before running upstream towards Eastham.

You can hop off at each of the stops and pick up a later ferry, so after crossing the Mersey, my first stop of the day was Seacombe.

I was actually happy that the ferry wasn't on it's summer route, as the trip downstream to New Brighton is something that you can do by walking along the 3 kilometre long Millennium Trail.

The trail is paved and flat, keeping to the river side. There are certain places where you can get down onto the beach (assuming the tide is co-operating with you). The water was cold, so even the birds were staying out of the water, instead just strolling along the water's edge.

Just after leaving the Seacombe Ferry Terminal, you will see the impressive Wallasey Town Hall. The town hall was opened in 1916, and interestingly faces away from the town and out across the river. I wonder what that says about the government's opinion of it's people at that time.

Three kilometres later, and I arrived in New Brighton. New Brighton is a seaside resort town, with the requisite seaside walk with arcade and funfair.

Out on a point on the border between the Liverpool Bay in the Irish Sea and the mouth of the River Mersey sits Fort Perch Rock. The fortress is a coastal defence battery built in 1829 to protect the Port of Liverpool. Today it is a museum.

Out from Fort Perch Rock is the New Brighton Lighthouse. When I was there, the tide was high and the base of the lighthouse was underwater.

It took me about 1 hour to walk from the Seacombe Ferry Terminal to New Brighton. Ferries run every hour, so upon arriving at New Brighton, I had a choice. I could turn right around and head back to catch the ferry with a 2 hour run trip, or I could hang around in New Brighton for an hour. I choice to spend the hour, and was bored after 10 minutes. That is the problem with the ferry schedule. Either you see nothing of New Brighton, which is less than you want to see, or you see 1 hour of New Brighton, which is 50 minutes more than you want to see.

I decided to head back by walking along the road instead of along the riverside promenade to see a different side of New Brighton and Wallasey. There was a few nice sites along the way.

I also came across a couple street names I liked. First up, home sweet home!

And then, this street. Depending on your age, you might be imaging a furry red muppet with a halo, but because I was a teenager in the 1980s, I remember the excellent Brat Pack movie, "St. Elmo's Fire," and the theme song by John Parr. For the rest of the day, I was humming the chorus to myself.

I can see a new horizon
Underneath the blazin' sky
I'll be where the eagle's
Flyin' higher and higher
Gonna be your man in motion
All I need is a pair of wheels
Take me where my future's lyin'
St. Elmo's Fire

I continued my motion, though via my feet and not a pair of wheels back to Seacombe Ferry in time to grab the boat to Birkenhead. Along the way we passed the car ferry terminal, where ferries leave for Belfast and Dublin.

At the ferry terminal in Birkenhead, the more industrial port like nature of the Liverpool area is very visible. Downstream you can still see the Ireland ferries, and upstream there is an oil refinery and a few dry docks.

After the 6 kilometre round trip walk in Wallasey, I wasn't in for too long a trip in Birkenhead. Instead, I just took a quick jog up to the city centre, just 10 minutes on foot.

Just outside the ferry terminal, I passed a double-decker wooden trolley.

Birkenhead had the first street tramway in Europe. Opened in 1860 the first line ran from the Woodside ferry terminal to Birkenhead Park. This early system was horse-drawn. Today, two replica trams, imported from Hong Kong, have been brought into service as part of a heritage tramway.

10 minutes walk up hill, and I was in Hamilton Square.

Hamilton Square built in the late Georgian and early Victorian area. 3 of the sides of the square are Georgian terrace houses, with the four side having the town hall (which is now a museum). It is second only to Trafalgar Square in London for having the most Grade I listed buildings in a single square.

Birkenhead is connected to the underground train system called MerseyRail. I loved the motto on this train station tower. "Frequent Electric Trains." Oh, if they are electric, then I will take one! I guess the motto probably made more sense when the choice was underground steam engines, which history documents as being very sooty and chocking.

After my quick tour of Hamilton Square, I still had 40 minutes to wait for the next ferry, so looked for a place for a quick pint. Sadly, it seemed that Hamilton Square wasn't the only thing with Victorian elements - the morals of the place must still be Victorian, as all the pubs were closed on Sunday.

None for me, at least not that day.

Instead I went back and sat on the river side watching the river roll by.

The ferry arrived, and I completed my round trip. We powered upstream against a fast current to see the oil refineries, dry docks and oil tankers.

The boat finally turned back, and quickly moved downstream towards Liverpool's Pier Head dock. I took a seat on the deck and watched the sun shimmer off the River Mersey.

Ferry, cross the Mersey.
cause this land's a place for a tourist to love
and here I may not stay, but it was nice to visit...