How many people can you fit in a Ford Fiesta?

Matt's been active this week. Whether it was from rescuing a frisbee from a tree "Jack Bauer styley" like I did today and scraping the skin off of my arms and legs in the process, I'm a self proclaimed hero and definitely need an MBE for services to errrrm, frisbee rescuing. Elsewhere this week, the cold snap turned to a full on 16 degree heatwave and the shorts are now out on display for all to see. But the main attraction in my life of the past week was definitely the visit to the brand-spanking new, £800m Wembley Stadium to see the first competitive footy match between England's Under 21s and their Italian counterparts.

With it being an early 12.30 kick off, and with us all wanting a look around at the new ground, I headed up to meet the others and left at the ridiculous time of half 7 from Aygemang station. Trains are one of the most soul-destroying, boring and downright miserable places to be when you're on your own. Conductors who are happy to play with the tannoy system and update you with everything that's going on - "carriages are being attached, keep hold of all your hot drinks" and just being irritating. I know I whinge at most things, but conductors are power-crazed people. Give them a tannoy system and they're set for life to irritate millions of train users.

But hey, this day was going to be special - having met with a few of the others at Waterloo, we travelled up to Wembley Park with lots of other excited people to see whether the new Wembley was worth a 7, what should have been 6, year wait. And when we stepped off the tube onto the sparkling new platform, we gazed down the new Wembley Way at the massive structure that would be home to English football once again. I'm not kidding when I say it really did take my breath away. The arch is stunning and more than an adequate replacement for the Twin Towers and will look magic lit up at night. We ambled round the stadium for a bit and had a cracking view of the building sites next door, obviously all part of the 'new Wembley experience'. We decided to go in and look at the stadium from the inside and went through the surprisingly casual security checks. I don't think the security bloke knew what he was doing, he felt my pockets, dangerously close to my crotch area, sick bastard. But then we turned round and wondered how to get upto our seats...An escaltor! I've never seen escalators at a football ground before, but with £800m being spent, with was obviously no expense spared. What a novelty that was.

We stepped out into the vast bowl that is Wembley and it was ridiculously overwhelming. 90,000 brand new, shiny red seats and the new grass down below. It's a stunning stadium. Many pictures were taken but it was so cold outside that you could have mistaken some of the white seats for polar bears. We headed onto the concourse that was so wide you could have driven a fleet combine harvesters through it. I needed CPR to bring me round from seeing the food prices. £4.50 for a hot dog for crying out loud! I settled for a hot chocolate at the extorcianate £1.70.

12.30 came around, the teams were out on the pitch and by 12.31 the Italians were already 1-0 up. Giampaolo Pazzini rifled in a shot from 25 yards that stunned the 56,000 crowd. Cue wild Italian group-sex orgy celebrations in the corner. Imagine the grease in that bundle....England equalised through a great free kick from David Bentley. Half time came and went with the pitch looking like it had passed through a cheese grater, blender and shredder. Soon after the restart, ex-Palace winger Wayne Routledge slipped a shot in to make it 2-1. But with ruthless efficiency, the Azzuri equalised 2 minutes later through that man Pazzini who was terrorising Anton Ferdinand for the entire game, saying that, who doesn't terrorise Anton Ferdinand on the football pitch? Matt Derbyshire (great name) put England 3-2 up before Pazzini completed his hat-trick with a snap shot that squirmed under Lee Camp (if you put the QPR keeper in goal, you get a QPR goalkeeper's performance....) and the game ended 3-3. Kieron Richardson was shite by the way, does he ever play at Man U?

Now we needed to get to the tube station with the 56,000 other people. A quick sweepstake was had as to how long we'd be at the station with guesses ranging from an hour to 2 hours and 34 minutes. We were in fact there in 25 minutes which was very quick considering the volume of people. Dodging the horse-shit on Wembley Way, we were on a tube back to London to have a drink or two in front of the England game.

.....

Those four or five hours are a bit of a blur to be honest. And the England game was awful, so I've been told. I was back home by midnight and ready for another riveting day at Haskins where I was asked whether we had a postbox. For f*cks sake - we're not a bloody post office.

Last night was a bloody good night. 80s night at East with cocktails and that beforehand. Highlight of the night being Flain 'getting off' (if you can call it that) with Mike - hilarious, just a shame Jez didn't catch it on camera. I decided, for some reason that I don't really know now, to drive there so was lumbered with the 'honour' of taking everyone back in my little Ford Fiesta called Shiela. Only really meant to fit 5 in, at a push, 7 people in the car meant that Shiela's legs were struggling with the weight a bit....not to worry, she's alright now.

So yeah, next step....8 people in my car. It's one to try in the summer....

Bish, Ben and Matt do Manchester, Part 2

We'd already met Park Ji-Sung at a service station, listened to hours of crap infectious pop music, taken a wrong turn or two and I'd unsurprisingly spent my whole time whilst driving with road rage at the number of car transporters on the motorway. I kid you not, there were bloody loads of them, all seemingly carrying Vauxhall Astras as well. Makes you wonder whether there really is a market for Vauxhalls after all...

But we were here for a football match. We'd parked in a school playground patrolled by a couple of the locals who bore a big resemblance to the Elephant Man. Now we needed to find the ground, a 78,000 seater stadium shouldn't be too hard to find. We spotted it in the distance and walked round the backstreets of Manchester to get there. It's an experience I don't want to relive in a hurry. And until last Tuesday, I didn't know Manchester had ghettos....

We found it with relative ease in the end and were hit by the smell of burgers and hot dogs being stewed by the convoy of vans parked at various points around the stadium. The three of us had an hour or two to kill before the game started so we began to wander around the absolutely massive structure that is Old Trafford. It quickly dawned on me that the local females had very little attraction and had more bacteria on them than your average toilet brush. Many were wearing tracksuits and had those god-awful fluffy boots on, as if things weren't bad enough. In retrospect, the song "Northern Birds" is certainly true, perhaps the smell of burgers wasn't actually the burgers after all, eh Bishop? After the obligatory few pictures outside the big old glass wall that Sky Sports News often report outside (left) we went into the Megastore. Naturally my idea of hell, being surrounded by more Asians than I could shake a stick at, all salivating over some overpriced Manchester United alarm clock. It was rampacked with people, after a number of kickups with a mini football in the corner, we left, all empty handed, which was surprising as Bishop and Ben both said they'd buy something. Obviously put off by the stupid mark-up on a training shirt...

Having ambled round the shop, we decided to wait for the players to arrive at the entrance to the tunnel. Big mistake. We mistakenly stood next to some people from Birmingham. All of whom sounded to have blocked noses and say "blooooooooooimey" at every opportunity. Certainly pissed me off no end. However, after a good 20 minutes or so of waiting, a car turned up, everyone got excited and it turned out to be the referees. Cue disappointment. But just 5 minutes later, a big old coach turned up with the United team on and dropped them as close to the door as possible so no-one could see who it was. B*stards. We couldn't be arsed to wait for the European XI to turn up so we decided to go into the ground and gawp and gaze at the largest league ground in the country.

Having scaled at least 56,000 stairs to get to our level on which our seats were on, braving nosebleeds and needing oxygen on our ascent to level 5 of the North Stand, we were eager to see our vantage point from where we'd be watching the game. And boy, was the trip worth it, the picture above doesn't do it justice, Old Trafford is a truly stunning stadium, combining modern with bits of "old-skool" thrown in for good measure. It's definitely one worth visiting if you ever get a chance. Having metaphorically ejaculated over the stadium (Bishop almost feinted, bless him) the lure of a hot-dog and a coke was too much to bear and we all parted £4 for the pleasure of having a luke-warm oversized sausage in a bun far too small. And who said that football charged crazy prices? No sooner had we finished our hot dogs had the teams come out to warm up. We were busy spotting which stars had actually turned up for the Europe XI. Ronaldinho was apparently otherwise engaged because his teeth had got stuck in a car door. Whilst Juninho Pernambucano was busy writing his full name on a tax return form. But that wasn't going to spoil what was already a very enjoyable day.

8pm came and the teams stepped out in front of 74,000 people, the formalities of a fair-play handshake were exchanged and the game got underway at a predictably casual pace. 5 minutes in and Ryan Giggs' sliderule pass found Wayne Rooney, I celebrated about 10 seconds too early before Rooney coolly stepped over the ball and slipped it past Santiago Canizares. The second goal soon followed when Giggs' trickery from one of the game's numerous short corners provided Wes Brown (is he ginger or blonde? Black or white?) with a simple tap-in. The next 10 minutes were filled with some stunning trickery from Cristiano Ronaldo who stepped over the ball more times than I've had hot dinners, he's a excellent player to see 'live'. However, Florent Malouda's 25 yard wonder strike past Kusczack was certainly a pleasing thing on the eye. Andrea Pirlo's dictating of play for Europe in midfield was as good as I've seen, unsurprising from a World Cup winner but he's a dreadfully underrated player. But when he tripped Paul Scholes up 30 or so yards out. Cristiano Ronaldo was sizing it up; I turned to Bish and Ben and said "He'll never score this, the angle's not right and it's too far out". A vicious dip and swerve or two later and the crowd were on their feet to see the ball fly into the top corner. I've never seen a free kick like it. Half-time was drawing near and a sweeping Man United counter attack saw Wayne Rooney slide home from our mate from the services, Park Ji-Sung's cross. Half time came and there was a rapturous ovation for David Bekkum who returned to Old Trafford to say thanks to the United fans. But the best was to come after half-time...

And that was amongst the 5,698 substitutions, my hero was on. John O'Shea, utility man extrordinaire had taken to right back and boy did he not disappoint. He ran up and down the right wing like a man possessed and provided the biggest cheer of the night, well between Bish, Ben and I anyway, when he was through on goal and sliced his shot 10 yards wide. Class. World class. The second half was a slow affair taken up by loads of Mexican Waves, and booing of Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Robbie Fowler whenever they touched the ball; Bishop enjoyed that. An El-Hadji Diouf brace made the score 4-3 and that's how the match finished. Great entertainment for a good cause if you ask me...

The trek back to the car was easy now we knew where we were going. We got back onto the motorway in the blink of an eye, drugged ourselves up on caffeine with Relentless and made ourselves ready for the trip home. Same route back, no cars, foot down, crap music and four or so hours later - I was in bed by about half 3 having had as good a day as I'd had in a long, long time. Absolutely brilliant.

Ben, Bish and Matt do Manchester (Part 1)

Our faith was placed in a grey box containing a woman in a box who sounded like she was on her period. Would Ben's sat-nav get us to Manchester in one piece for the Man Utd vs. Europe XI charidee game at Old Trafford? Read on, trust me, it's worth it....

I prayed to God the night before for Michael Fish, weather god, to bring us some decent weather for the 500 mile round trip and he did. Blazing sunshine. Magic. We were soon on our way and it didn't take long for Bishop's tacky crap music to infect my ears, thankfully Ben was fresh out of JoJo (well, only one song) but the one-song rule meant that she got one playing. No sooner had "Leave, Get Out" stopped playing, than we'd stopped for petrol. £30.86 to fill up, this country's going to the dogs and it's all Tony Blair/George Dubya's fault, well and Gordon Brown for making us pay stupid taxes on petrol. I'd gladly trap them all in a room, naked, full of hungry badgers. But anyway, we were really ready to go and we were on the nation's most treasured road to nowhere, the M25 in no time. It was full of many characters, including 'Beemer Bob' (left) who drove like all pretentious BMW drivers do, like wankers, and the Adcock van man who seemed happy to tailgate for much of our time on that particular bit of road. Abuse certainly flew out of my mouth, but it was alright, Ben was driving - I could give them a good fist waving.

The M25 was soon behind us and we were on the M40, the road up north. The road to the northern monkeys, hotpot and whippets. The music was getting marginally better as the trip went on though still entwined with the rubbish that only 10 year olds, and Bishop, listen to. Girls Aloud videos are only good when on mute and with the ginger one pixellated out, they're not well known in my head for their musical "talents". But anyway, Bishop stunned us all with his knowledge of crap celebrities during the numberplate game, where he got Terry Butcher from is anyone's guess. I definitely stunned Ben and Bishop with my call of June Whitfield though. Our mission of making up chants using modern day songs was coming along....slowly. Conversation of the upcoming game was largely revolved around John O'Shea and his many talents. Has he really played in every position on the field?

Sooner than you could say "Bang bang, Darren Fletcher", we hit a service station for a break and a driver changeover. But this wasn't any old service station, this was one of beauty, a building to rival that of the new Wembley Stadium with its shiny glass and many wire cables that held it up from blowing away in the wind. Inside was full of various football fans, ones from Burnley, Ipswich and Wolves, all of whom were understandably shocked at the ridiculous prices of food and drink. I could shit a burger and sell it in a service station for £6.50, such is people's desperation for it. Bloody supply and demand economics. Anyway, queuing up for my Wimpy I noticed someone familiar wandering aimlessly looking at his phone. Now, I know all Koreans look the same, but Park Ji-Sung was definitely just north of Birmingham at the same time as us. He was in full-kit for the evening's match as well. Amazing. I was tempted to ask for an autograph, but he looked distracted, well at least I thought he did, his hair was covering his eyes. I got a piccy though (below). After our burger, we all went to the toilet together, which sounds very gay - but we did all go at the same time. Bishop wasn't happy though so duly complained using their nifty little toilet voting system (right).

We left the services and I was in the driving seat. This meant the standard of driving decreased and Ben was in charge of the camera which was an absolutely disastrous decision. We hit the M6 toll road, more money for the bloody government, and it was as clear as the sky. Few cars, but full of egotistical tossers in their gas-guzzling, air polluting 4x4s practically hogging two lanes because their car was so bloody wide. Having got off of that road, the regular M6 was busy as feck. Full of lorries trying to deliver flat-caps up north no doubt though we were soon off the motorway and trying to find our way into Manchester. One wrong turn later, which was definitely the sat-nav's fault, we were on the inner-roads of the city. Lovely. I swear Manchester's residents are all inbred, they look and talk funny, "hey, give me 6", but we parked in a school playground in no-time and some bloke with an ASBO took our 6 quid with much pleasure.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Ain't nature brilliant?

I don't know who said it, but the best things in life are free. The conformity of having material possessions; the iPods, the laptops and new pairs of trainers give you a great buzz whenever you open the box and use them for the first few times. The novelty soon wears off, and you take these kinds of items for granted after a while. To put it bluntly, and before I get too sentimental, new technology and new possessions can give you an artificial erection, much like that of one on viagra, trust me, I know. But nature, when you look at it closely, is something that just keeps pumping the blood through into the end of your knob for as long as you need, there's no danger of it ever going limp.

(I'm bloody proud of that analogy, btw)

Whoever created this world, this land, this planet in this bloody brilliant universe of ours - be it God, the Big Bang, Allah, Mohammad or David Beckham, depending on who you believe. Anyway, whoever, or whatever made it is certainly the best thing before sliced bread was invented. I could go on for days about it, but thinking about it all, the whole idea of space, the universe and all that jazz is mindblowing and will put more knots in your brain than a Ronaldinho flip-flap. The lunar eclipse last night was one of the most awesome things I've ever seen in my life, it really was beautiful, though strangely creepy at the same time. The way the moon slowly descended into shadow, before being illuminated in a pinkish-reddish light was incredible. Just hung in the sky, like nothing I've seen before. I'd bloody love to go to Jupiter to lie on the grass up there (they do have grass in Jupiter...right?) and stare up at the sky, to see 12 moons circling, of all different sizes - it'd be incredible. I love nature.

And then there's the sea, the waves which are all affected by gravity and the moon which is bloomin' clever if you ask me. Walking, or running as I sometimes do, down the beach with the waves crashing against the shore is another one of those feelings that money cannot buy, and you'll never, ever get bored of. It's magic. Thunder and lightning - the latter especially, bolts of it ripping through the sky and electrifying the environment, and my mind - feck me, nature's a real treat when it wants to be. It really does get bad coverage in the press, "Mother Nature destroys New Orleans", "Tsunami terror hits Asia" - perhaps Mother Nature didn't take too kindly to 9/11 and decided the latter was its idea of revenge. Still, in that vein, I hope George Bush doesn't get a weather machine.

Assuming I've not lost your attention during my tribute to nature and all its tricks, I would highly not recommend getting stuck in your room. I woke up on Wednesday to find that my door was stuck and I couldn't get out. 4 days later, it's still stuck and I've not been out of it, I've lived on eating books and rationing a bottle of Fanta in my bag - I feel like Ray Mears, but prisoner to my door, as opposed to the elements.

With the summer A-level exams about three months away, and a university place, and my future at stake - I think I'm going to ease myself back into a revision plan this week and slowly build it up as the weeks build, so expect a flurry of updates on how my revision posters, tools, timetables and tomfoolery all help me, or rather hinder my goal to conquer A-level trigonometry and the taxation policy of Papua New Guinea, thankfully not in tandem with one another.

On the footballing front, Palace's 1-1 draw with Burnley puts us firmly in the driving seat to be the most average team in the average division with the most average goal difference and average group of players, which is rather uninspiring. Though on an uplifting note - I'll be off to watch some proper players play football a week Tuesday when a Matt/Ben/Bish trio embark on a road trip to Manchester to watch Man Utd play a special UEFA eleven, including Ronaldinho, David Beckham, Juninho Per-whassisface-cambo and Stevie G, with more players set to be named. Providing we all get back safely, hopefully I'll be able to dedicate a blog to the day, accomponied by many pictures, hopefully including one of me showing Cristiano Ronaldo how to dive properly.

Now everyone go out and look at the stars - there's more to it all than white dots and a bit of light.