dougbelshaw.com/blog

Welcome back!
I'm currently in Turkey with Nick Dennis presenting about technology to History educators at the request of EUROCLIO. Resources (in Turkish!) here...

We’re back from Wales. I forgot to take our ‘proper’ camera and the one in my N95 has stopped working. So no pics – unless you want to look at some of the area on Flickr. We had a great end to the week, although Hannah and I were struck down with a bug almost immediately upon arrival and then it proceeded to rain for 3 days…

Before I went away I mentioned on Twitter that it would be great if we could have a Twitter Fantasy Football league. Low and behold, @damian613 @iusher set it up and @tombarrett texted me whilst I was away to say it was going ahead.

If you’d like to get involved, get in touch and I’ll send you the details!

Here’s my team and the standings after the first games:

Congratulations to Lisa, but there’s a lot of games left to play…

I was at Villa Park, Birmingham, today to watch Aston Villa vs. Sunderland at the kind invitation of Ali Hall, a friend from church. The match ended 0-1: Sunderland’s first away win of the season, gaining some much-needed points to stay clear of the drop.

Below are some pictures of the day. Click on them to be taken to the larger versions on Flickr.

Sunderland are now on 30 points with 7 games left:

We’re not free from relegation worries by any means, but at least we’ve got a win under our belts and are not in the bottom 3! The final 7 games for Sunderland are:

• 29 March – Sunderland vs. West Ham
• 5 April – Fulham vs. Sunderland (a 6-pointer!)
• 12 April - Sunderland vs. Manchester City
• 20 April – Newcastle vs. Sunderland (local derby)
• 26 April - Sunderland vs. Middlesbrough (another local derby)
• 3 May – Bolton vs. Sunderland (another 6-pointer!)
• 11 May – Sunderland vs. Arsenal

Not the easiest of run-ins, then, but I’m sure we can snag 6 points or so…