Off Topic And Now for Something Completely Different

please log in to view this image

 

Oo er missus!

 

Pervcam catches another one.

 

33% of farmers have sex at least once a day according to survey.

https://www.irishmirror.ie/lifestyl...DM4_kG1idsnGl1bSgZiZJye-6HBkmEgPDf3tGyetZl46c

 

perv?
how so?

 

i saw monty python live at bardney festiavl in may 1972.its near lincoln

 

Follow his stare.

 

Absolutely brilliant read


Proud Athletic Bilbao are on a journey to find ways to win beyond ball games
Sid LoweSat 2 Nov 2019 20.00 GMT
The Basque club’s book-publishing and literature and film festivals are a model for how smaller clubs can express their identities in an era of super-club domination

please log in to view this image

“They push me against the wall, hands on my head. They frisk me, recriminating me in a language I don’t understand. Something’s happening, but I don’t know what. Before I know it, it’s happening. I respond to their threats by shouting: ‘Please, help, please!’” So begins Togo, a book in which fear is a recurring theme. Written by Óscar de Marcos, it tells the story of the journeys that shaped him, the chapters alternating between his arrival in Africa and at Athletic Club Bilbao.

In the book De Marcos says his parents wanted him to be happy, seeing football as a means of education. But players, he writes, become vain and fall fast, pressure bringing a realisation that you are alone. He explains how Togo “tore away that bubble, that nonsense, that fame, in one go”. The opening scene is just a moment but also a metaphor. “When I read the [first draft of the] book back, I thought ‘it’s too much’,” he admits. “I wasn’t planning to open up like that.”

He was not planning to write a book at all. But, having first said no, De Marcos gave in. There is nothing unusual about a footballer writing a book but this is a little different. There is no contract and no money made. “They’re friends, they’ve been working with us 10 years; it’s hard to say no,” De Marcos says.

“They” means José Mari Isasi, from Athletic’s communications department, and Galder Reguera, cultural director at the club’s foundation, which this week published two books: Togo by De Marcos and the Basque-language Bizitzu Eskukadaka by Ainhoa Tirpau, goalkeeper and captain of the women’s team. Thirteen thousand copies will be distributed to schools and local clubs as well as being available, for free, in the club store and bookshops.

please log in to view this image

Athletic ‘s annual literature festival is now in its 10th year. Photograph: No Credit
Athletic have commissioned and published 10 books before – from authors including David Trueba and David Safier, who read his from the centre spot at San Mamés – but this is the first time players have written them. They have read them, though. De Marcos and Tirpau’s books have been published as part of Athletic’s annual Fútbol y Letras (football and letters) literature festival. Run by Reguera, author of a wonderful book about how father-son relationships are forged through football, the festival is now in its 10th year, championing the link between culture and sport. It has drawn authors such as Jorge Valdano, Philip Kerr and Eduardo Galeano.

As part of that programme Athletic set up the Athletic Reading Club, where supporters recommend books from which a selection is made. In the first year the president, manager and captain volunteered to read and report back on chosen texts. Every year since, players have taken part, reading books, discussing them and making recommendations of their own.

please log in to view this image

The films shown at the club’s film festival often have a social or political dimension. Photograph: No Credit
Ernesto Valverde, the Barcelona manager, put forward Ronnie Reng’s A Life Too Short, about the suicide in 2009 of the Hannover goalkeeper Robert Enke, and Edward Bunker’s memoirs, Education of a Felon. Xabi Etxeita, whose dad died when he was young, read Hector Facionlince’s Oblivion, about his father’s murder by Colombian paramilitaries. The former Liverpool defender Mikel San José read Andre Agassi’s Open, a book that is full of lessons about the dangers of élite sport, with parents of the club’s youth-teamers.

Then there is the film festival, Thinking Football. Almost 100 films have been screened over seven years, often with a marked social or political dimension, although De Marcos describes projects like these, like his, as “human”.

Perhaps the most “local” club there is also includes an international aspect. British films have been successful – the Dalglish film Kenny won last year, like Next Goal Wins and The Pass before – with recent screenings including 89, about Arsenal’s title win, Kaiser! and I Believe in Miracles, about Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, with directors, actors and protagonists invited and players: Ossie Ardíles, Ledley King, Lee Dixon. It is a shame no one recorded John Robertson’s catalogue of jokes when he came.

For the past six years Athletic have also worked with Real Sociedad, staging a bertso derbia before each derby – a kind of competitive, improvised traditional Basque street poetry between “teams” representing the clubs.

Then, come kick-off, the identity remains. Seventeen of the 22 starters this season were Basque. The Basque Country makes up 1.4% of Spain’s territory, 4.9% of its population and 20% of its top-flight football teams: Alavés, Eibar, Real Sociedad and Athletic. Include Osasuna (the name is Basque) and Navarre (some consider it one of seven historic Basque provinces) and it has a quarter of first division teams. All five have Basque managers. Athletic famously have only Basque players – and have never been relegated.

please log in to view this image

Each derby with Real Sociedad is preceded by competitive, improvised traditional Basque street poetry between ‘teams’ representing the clubs. Photograph: No Credit
Here talk of values does not sound empty. They call San Mamés the Cathedral; go and you may understand why. No, they are not the only club who have a foundation or who run social projects or champion literacy crusades. But events such as this reinforce that personality, reflected in the way they choose to express their identity.

In part that is because trophies cannot – a growing predicament in the super-club era. There must be something other than success, some other measurement of it. “They think about more than winning games,” says the American coach Bob Bradley, who introduced American Pharaoh at the festival. There must be something, full stop. So there is: themselves. Yet it goes beyond that, to something more universal, to ideals celebrated in others too.

Athletic set up the One Club Man/Woman award, designed to celebrate loyalty, which has been awarded to Billy McNeil and Malin Mostrom (2019), Carles Puyol (2018), Sepp Maier (2017) and Paolo Maldini (2016). T-shirts echo a line from the first winner, Matt Le Tissier: It’s a challenge to play for a big club, but it’s a bigger challenge to play against them and beat them.

Most of the time, you will not beat them but there are other ways to win. There is something beyond the ball, expressed through culture and belonging. Sport is something to be shared, communicated: on film, in books, verbally. “The relationship between club and culture is unique,” said David Stewart, the director of 89. “It’s an important lesson for clubs around the world. If you were designing a football club, this would be a fantastic model.”

As Óscar de Marcos says: “Athletic wouldn’t be Athletic without this.” In Togohe describes discovering who he is one day in Africa. In it he connects this moment’s realisation to the club where he had just begun and where he still plays a decade on, for whom he has now written a book. “It’s like Athletic,” he writes, “which without identity is nothing.”

 

please log in to view this image

 

please log in to view this image

 

I've been performing a valuable service for years.

 

A friend of mine found a suitcase on the side of a narrow country lane just outside of Hull.......
He stopped the car and could not see any obvious owner or other cars.
He opened it and inside there was a fox and some fox cubs.
He rang the RSPCA to report it, and see what to do next.
They said "are the foxes moving"....to which he replied yes....
They said "ah...that will explain the suitcase then"......

 

Fascinating story.

Dirk Schlegel and Falko Götz: The East Berlin footballers who fled from the Stasi



By Patrick Jennings

BBC Sport in Berlin

• 3 hours ago
• From the sectionEuropean Football

Sharethis page

please log in to view this image

please log in to view this image

Götz (left) and Schlegel (right) pictured in 1984 - a year after what Schlegel calls their "great adventure"
Dirk Schlegel and Falko Götz had been friends for years by the time they decided to risk everything.

They had grown up together, two football-obsessed kids from the same side of a divided Berlin. They lived close to the wall that had defined their city since it was built in 1961. Their world as children was divided into good and bad, west and east, capitalist imperialism and communist utopia. They both knew not to mention the western TV they secretly watched at home.

Schlegel and Götz rose through the same Dynamo Berlin youth teams. They were part of a sporting organisation embraced tightly by the Stasi - East Germany's brutal and invasive secret police. Erich Mielke, the infamous Stasi leader, was Dynamo's honorary president.

The two players had something else in common. In the eyes of the state, neither could be fully be trusted.

"We both had problems with the authorities and with Dynamo because our history was the same," Schlegel says.

"He had family in West Germany and I had an aunt in England. That kind of thing was not good for our future. There was suspicion. But it was better for our friendship."

Götz made his senior debut for Dynamo in 1979, at the age of 17. Schlegel made his two years later, aged 20.

The two friends broke into their country's strongest team, despite difficult years in the youth academy. They say they were often wilfully overlooked, and their parents were told it would not be correct politically to see them rewarded - not with their background.

But their talent was impossible to ignore. As they developed, both players also began to appear for East Germany's national youth teams. As athletes, they were part of a very select number of citizens who travelled abroad - always under close scrutiny.

The Stasi monitored every aspect of East German daily life, gathering intelligence through a network of informers - and informers who informed on the informers. Some estimates suggest it employed one in every 63 people. The structure was sophisticated, bold, all-powerful. The purpose was to keep order: to further the Communist cause. Football also played its role.

Mielke believed Dynamo should become the most successful side in East Germany. They won the league a record 10 consecutive times between 1979 and 1988. There were often accusations of officials giving them preferential treatment, and - as Schlegel recalls - opposition fans hugely resented their victories.

While playing for East Germany's Under-21s in Sweden, Götz began to seriously consider an alternative.

"As I started to play regularly for Dynamo's first team, and internationally too, I began to understand more about what a career in football could mean," he says.

"I had to then ask myself the question: Where do I want it to take me? Do I want to play all the time in East Germany with a club that doesn't offer the best treatment? That from one day to the next could say, 'thank you but now because of who you are, football stops'?"

Schlegel was having similar thoughts, brought to a head by the experience of playing abroad in May 1982 at a youth competition in France.

By the summer of 1983, the friends had decided. They had to get out of East Germany. And they had a plan. But they would have to be careful.


You couldn't just talk anywhere, not about something like this. Schlegel and Götz did a lot of walking - just the two of them. They would go off for hours in the forest. It was the only safe place.

"We discussed it," says Schlegel. "Could we do this big thing? It was not so easy.

"We had to think about the Stasi and the other people in our club. It was a big secret for me and Falko - no-one else."

As champions of East Germany, Dynamo would qualify each year for the European Cup. In those days, the competition featured a straight knockout format - home and away in each round. The best Dynamo achieved was reaching the quarter-finals in 1980, when they lost to eventual winners Nottingham Forest.

The first idea was to try to escape wherever the competition might take them that season - 1983-84. The draw was kind.

In the first round came Jeunesse Esch - champions of Luxembourg. It was an easy tie that would guarantee another chance to escape if the opportunity didn't present itself. And they had a friend who they thought might be able to help.

The first leg was at home. Götz opened the scoring in a 4-1 victory. The second leg was on 28 September 1983.

Their friend had recently been granted permission to move to West Germany - there was an official process by which it was difficult, but not impossible, to legally emigrate - and was living close to the border with Luxembourg.

They had considered the possibility of getting him to meet them and whisk them away in his car, but the timing was off. The friend wouldn't be able to help - he still hadn't received his full identification papers and so couldn't travel across the border into Luxembourg from his new home in West Germany.

Still, Götz and Schlegel thought there might be a chance.


Götz pictured in Dynamo Berlin kit as a 17-year-old in 1979, the year of his senior debut
In private, Götz told his father about their intentions. All he said was there was a possibility he would be leaving for good - sometime soon. Schlegel did not say a word to anyone - not even his mum and dad.

The match was played in Esch-sur-Alzette, right on the border with France. Belgium was only another 10km to the west and West Germany about half an hour's drive to the east. Götz and Schlegel were on the lookout for anything they could take advantage of. Any moment of quiet or confusion that might allow them to slip away.

"It just wasn't possible," Schlegel says. "We had no opportunity at all.

"Everywhere we went - to the hotel, to lunch, to training, to the stadium - we were all together, accompanied by a lot of our 'friends' from the Stasi. We had even flown there in Erich Mielke's private plane. It wasn't an ordinary tourist trip. It was simply too dangerous for us."

Dynamo won 2-0, and the players returned to Berlin. Just days after discussing the possibility of not seeing him again, Götz's father welcomed his son home.

They would have another chance very soon.


Dynamo were next drawn against Partizan Belgrade - the champions of what was then Yugoslavia. This was even better.

In Luxembourg security was tight, but this would be different. Yugoslavia was a fellow Communist country, though not in the Eastern Bloc of states officially allied with the Soviet Union, like East Germany. Surely it would be considered low risk?

Again, Dynamo were at home in the first leg. Again, Götz scored the opener - in the first minute. It finished 2-0 to the East Germans. Bring on the return fixture - in Belgrade.

At about midday on the day of the match - 2 November 1983 - the team travelled together by bus into the centre of Yugoslavia's capital city.

As they pulled up, a member of Dynamo's staff rose out of his seat and told the players: "You have one hour free time. We meet back here at 13:00."

Schlegel and Götz were sitting on opposite sides of the bus.


Schlegel (right) made his Dynamo debut two years later than Götz, in 1981
"We didn't talk; we only looked each other in the eyes," says Schlegel. "We realised it was the moment. And we knew how dangerous it was going to be."

As their team-mates filed off, Schlegel and Götz had still not spoken. They said nothing of the risk they were taking, nothing of the gravity of this one pivotal moment in a life's course.

"I remember we were angry about all the moments we'd already tried to get away but couldn't," Götz says. "On the first day after training it was too risky, the same thing next morning after breakfast. There were too many people around.

"But now in these few seconds we were totally clear on what had to happen. We had everything in our pockets. Papers, a little money. One view of it was enough - this was our chance. Now or never."

The clock was ticking. The rest of the Dynamo squad wanted to spend the hour shopping. Götz and Schlegel tagged along. Their first stop was a record store close by.

As the two went in, Götz spotted something to the side of the building - a slightly hidden entrance and exit, separate to where they had come in. He and Schlegel gave nothing away.

"We tried to stay very close to each other," Götz says. "All the guys around us were buying used records for their families.

"The one special moment was when we saw the door. We saw there was a way you can get out of the shop without anybody noticing. When the time was right, that's when we said: 'Let's go.'"

They steadily peeled away from the larger group. They made sure they weren't being watched. They moved to the door, then went through it. And ran.

"Once we'd made it outside, you're not really thinking about anything," Götz says. "We were only thinking about running. To quickly get as far away from our team as possible.

"We ran for about five minutes in one direction. Then we saw a taxi. We got in but then there was a panic because he didn't want to take us to the West German embassy.

"We had to hail a second cab. As we got in I gave the driver 10 Deutschmarks. He must have driven us about one kilometre - it probably would have been easier to go by foot.

"We looked back to see if anyone had followed us. We couldn't see anybody."

Half an hour earlier, they had been sitting with their team-mates. Now they were inside the West German embassy, talking to staff about what they should do next.

"We were incredibly nervous," says Schlegel. "It was just very incredible what we'd done. Suddenly we were discussing a plan to get us out of Yugoslavia and into West Germany. We were coming up with a schedule for our lives."

The plan began to take shape. First they would be driven to Zagreb, about four hours away. The embassy staff thought it best to get them out of the building - and out of Belgrade - as quickly as possible. The embassy would be the first place the authorities would come looking.

As their car emerged from the underground car park, the players were sitting in the back seats.

"On the way, the deepest thinking was only about surviving this situation," says Götz.

"You are afraid something might happen because you made the first step in a big story. That is why the biggest emotion is just to live through it. That you can do it, you have to do it. Because in something like this, when the end is not good you will have a lot of trouble. A lot of trouble."

In Zagreb, the plan was finalised. At the West German consulate there, Götz and Schlegel were given false papers - two new West German identities to help get them out of Yugoslavia.

Staff told them that driving out, across the Yugoslav border with Austria, would normally cause no issues. But things were a little different that week, they said, and it wasn't totally safe. The pair never got a full explanation but it was decided it would be best to go by train. They were to say they had been on holiday, had lost their passports and had to get new ones, and were on their way 'home' to Munich.

The advice was to travel on the night train from Ljubljana. It would leave at midnight, and they should arrive as close to departure as possible. It was now about 6pm - they had been on the run for six hours.

They were given some food. The staff seemed relaxed - this had been done before, and they were calm and confident of the plan's success. To some extent, this succeeded in soothing the pair's worries. But still, the level of danger they faced was hard to ignore.


The BBC reports from the scene as the Berlin Wall goes up
Back in Berlin, Götz's father tuned in to watch Partizan v Dynamo. The broadcast began at 7pm. Kick-off was 8pm. His son wasn't in the starting XI. Strange - he was one of their best players. Schlegel was missing too, and neither were even on the bench. No explanation was given, but he knew. It must have happened. Had they been successful? Or had they been caught?

There was one final hurdle to clear.

Schlegel and Götz were driven to Ljubljana. They arrived at the station just before their train was set to depart, tickets in hand, the owners of new identities. Schlegel's name was Norman Meier. Götz can't recall who he was supposed to be.

The train set off. There were about 30 kilometres to cover before it would arrive at the border and Yugoslav customs.

Then the train halted.

In the half light, sitting up in their sleeping compartment, the pair could hear the taps on doors.

They could hear the approaching sound of heavy boots, the guard dogs panting and the jangle of their chains.

"We were both so incredibly nervous but the policeman looked at our documents and said 'OK, fine' and left. It was maybe 20 seconds," Götz says.

"It was so easy. It was nothing.

"For the whole day, we had existed in this state of high tension, where in your mind you are always worried.

"We didn't know what we had started. We didn't know what kind of dangers we might face. But when we got past the Austrian side and the train hadn't been stopped to get the two footballers off, we knew we were safe.

"I think we arrived in Munich at about 6am. I can't believe it today, but we even slept a couple of hours."

In the newspaper stands around the station that morning, their names were already in the press. The headlines read: 'East German players escape to West.'

But the story wasn't quite over. There would be consequences.


The West German diplomatic staff who arranged their false papers had given Schlegel and Götz instructions on what to do. They were to travel to Giessen, where there was a facility that processed refugees.

They arrived late in the afternoon. It was about 7pm by the time either could make a phone call home. Schlegel rang his mum.

"She was a little bit worried," he says.

"It was a big surprise. She knew nothing of our plans but she had heard about our escape from reports on West German TV. I said it was all OK, that I was safe and that was it. We knew the Stasi would be listening."

Götz also rang home.

"My parents directly gave me word to say they were not alone," he says.

"It was: 'OK fine, you are OK, good, we talk later.' Because when something like this happens, you know the authorities are in reaction mode."

Both players realised they would have to be very careful.

"When a player from Dynamo Berlin leaves the club, he is not a good boy," Schlegel says.

"Falko and I had decided that in all interviews we should not talk at all about politics, not about any criticisms of the East, to only talk about football. It would not have been safe - for us or our families.

"We knew that the Stasi also have a lot of people in the West too. That there were people watching us. Spies."

Götz and Schlegel called upon Jorg Berger, a former East Germany youth coach who had fled to the west in 1979.

Berger helped arrange contact with prospective new clubs. They chose to sign for Bayer Leverkusen, but would have to wait a year to make their debuts - Dynamo Berlin would not acknowledge the move. Fifa's 12-month playing ban was seen as a compromise to smooth over their illegal transfer.

At the time, Berger was manager of KSV Hessen Kassel, then in the West German second tier. Before he died in 2010 at the age of 65 after suffering from cancer, he wrote an autobiography in which he claimed he was targeted for assassination in the 1980s, that he was poisoned by a Stasi agent.

Berger also spoke several times about Lutz Eigendorf, a former Dynamo player who defected to the west on the way back from a match in Kaiserslautern in 1979. He had been especially vocal in his criticisms of East Germany after defection.

In March 1983, eight months before Schlegel and Götz arrived secretly in Munich, Eigendorf died in a car crash. Berger believed the accident showed the signs of a Stasi operation - where the driver of a vehicle would be blinded by a bright light while driving at high speed. Tests showed alcohol in Eigendorf's blood, but his friends said he had not been drinking before getting into his car.


Schlegel (far right) and Götz (third from left) pictured in their debut season for Leverkusen, 1984-85
Götz and Schlegel had made it to the Bundesliga. They trained with Leverkusen, they settled into their new surroundings, but their old lives were never far behind. They were being watched very closely.

"That's why the Stasi was so famous - for what they did," says Götz.

"They watched us in Leverkusen, and they followed my parents all day long. Not in secret, they wanted them to see. There were interviews, interrogations, pressure. When I was able to access my files at the Stasi archives, when they were made available after German reunification, I found things that I would now rather not talk about.

"But for me at that time, it was important not to say that everything in East Germany is bad, that communists are bad, not only because I knew what the reaction to this would be but also because it wasn't.

"My time in Dynamo made a very good player of me. I had 12 years at the club. They helped me start a professional career. Our motivation was not politics."

As the Cold War thawed towards the end of the 1980s, both players were able to keep up more regular contact with their families, while also contributing on the pitch after their suspensions expired. That they would appear every Saturday night on the Bundesliga highlights programmes - still watched secretly in so many East Berlin homes - was a source of great pride for their parents.

Götz stayed at Leverkusen until 1988. After winning the Uefa Cup, he left to join Cologne.

Schlegel left Leverkusen in 1985 and had a season with Stuttgart before signing for Blau-Weiss Berlin in 1986. He now lived on the west side of the city where he was born. But of course, he could never cross to the other side.

He only managed to see his mum and dad again in 1987, in Czechoslovakia. For Götz it was the summer of 1988, in Hungary.

Then came 9 November 1989.


Schlegel was in a hotel with his team-mates when he heard the news. He'd just got back from training when someone shouted over from the bar: "Hey Dirk, the wall has come down."

He thought it was a joke - for at least five minutes he wouldn't believe it, even after he'd seen the TV pictures, the thousands of smiling East Germans walking through checkpoints, past the barbed wire, past the spotlights, past the stunned border officials. What now exactly?

"I said: 'Oh come on! The wall came down and I was not in Berlin!' We could hardly have been further away in Germany too - we were playing an away match against Schalke," says Schlegel.

"That was just a crazy experience for me; it was unthinkable. Watching it, I thought maybe it's a drama or a movie. It was something unbelievable.

"On the weekend, I came back from the game at Schalke and my family finally came over to visit me with two friends. We had dinner at home, talking, drinking."

It wasn't until December that Götz returned to the East side of Berlin for the first time since he and Schlegel had left with their Dynamo team-mates in 1983. He went back home - "nothing had changed, it was exactly the same" - and spent time with his family during that season's winter break. His mother could finally pass on the few belongings she had been able to hide and keep safe for him.

Thirty years on, the friendship between Schlegel and Götz endures.

They enjoy looking back on their daring feat and speak regularly - usually by phone as Götz still lives on the other side of the country.

"My son is very proud," says Schlegel as we talk at a cafe near his west Berlin home.

Now he has to go. He and Götz are employed as scouts; work is calling.

I don't even have to ask the final question.

"I have been asked on many occasions," Schlegel says. "Would I do it again?

"Absolutely. Without question. Every time. I did it for my life. It was about setting up my future, shaping my life, choosing my own path."



.https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50289343

 

https://www.marksandspencer.com/tig...b9VxBUgLwYjvizAE5nZ3Pla_Jybpnr8fpd-NfmFC1u1F4

please log in to view this image

please log in to view this image

please log in to view this image

 

Two Swedish artists playing a song for some American prisoners.
Fascinating how a song can make people so emotional really.

 

Marks & Spencer profits plunge as clothing sales continue to fall .

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...nd-spencer-profits-plunge-clothing-sales-fall

 

My wife and I have been invited to an 80's pop star themed fancy dress party at the weekend. She doesn't want to go but I'm adamant ........

 

I bet your wife Kim goes wild at theme parties.