Welcome back....

Despite the frenetic social change, brought about by the overpowering digital age, I can still remember the time when holidays were a genuine release from the daily grind of work and the inherent need to know what was going on in the world. A time when news from the first weekend of the football season could only be found by restoring order to a hallway floor covered by newspapers, the gas bill, a polite reminder from ‘the taxman’ and an invitation to contribute to the Salvation Army Christmas Appeal.

But today iPhones give instant access to information ameliorating the inevitable ‘first match nerves’. So as the final whistle blew at the Recreation Ground, Aldershot, on the opening day of the season, I was already toasting a 3v1 win over Darlington in the sophisticated surroundings of the Kalkan Regency in Turkey.


Yes, a couple of weeks in one of the Mediterranean’s finest hotels was surely going to be long enough for me to gather my thoughts for the new season and to decide whether or not to continue with my blog……

For all of his life Chairman Mao loved swimming. He considered it to be the best of all sports; a struggle of man against nature.

And I have no doubt that it was his powerful association with the Yangtze River that inspired him to write the famous ‘Little Red Book’. The overwhelming desire to publish his thoughts in 1966, as part of the Cultural Revolution, balanced by the allure of the mud brown waters of the Yangtze stretching out before his ‘holiday eyes’, and with the horizon no more than a beckoning portal to his imagination. Time given over to a few passages of political or social insight, punctuated only by the odd recreational moment.

Life does become easier to understand as the mind and body is detoxified of the ‘everyday trivia’ that destroys our ability to create and innovate. Freedom from Government, politicians, MPs expenses, the money markets, rising unemployment, school league tables, rain, vegetables rotting in the ground…….

So as I sat looking out over Kalkan Bay, with just the odd boat aimlessly drifting across the horizon to accompany my thoughts, I decided that perhaps my mind was sufficiently regenerated to give this blog another season – like fresh shoots appearing to replace the retreating blanket of winter snow or buds bursting to fill the skeletal landscape with texture and colour ‘A Shot from Wales' was indeed ready for the travails that lay ahead.

And then having reached such a simple decision I could see quite clearly how a few weeks in Glenrothes or Kirkcaldy would also work for Gordon Brown and how his advice to colleagues – ‘take a few days in a tent in the Lakes, or a B&B in Great Yarmouth or a caravan in Cleethorpes’, would see the ‘New Labour’ ideals bloom just in time for a spring 2010 General Election.

Mao once observed, ‘The Yangtze is a big river, people say. It is big but not frightening. Is imperialist America big? We challenged it, nothing happened. So there are things in this world that are big but not frightening.’

As Aldershot start their second season back in the Football League a reminder to Gary Waddock (Manager ATFC) and all of the players – there are some big clubs in the division, we have some big games ahead……but they are not frightening.