Personally, I think they are one of the most overrated bands there’s been. That’s not to say I don’t like them. They did a few very good songs and one brilliant one, but I’ve always been somewhat bemused by thei […]

Then you saw the same outcome as I did at my first game. Barnsley 4 Workington 0, Easter 1977, my Easter present from my grandad. I then started going to all the Saturday matches with him from the start of the […]

Yes, a Barnsley thing. Wednesday are the Fowls, whilst United are the Blunts, or sometimes the Pigs. In return, we are apparently the Dingles. Something to do with an Emmerdale family who were low down the food […]

We had another play-off game whilst Wembley was being rebuilt, albeit a division lower. What was particularly fab about it, apart from winning on penalties, was that the roof was closed. It was odd, but I’m glad w […]

Loads of local derbies there. Must have been a bank holiday. And I don’t remember watching us draw 0-0 at home to the Fowls, so that puts it either Christmas 82 or Easter 83, judging by the divisions the teams a […]

I was back home and went to bed at about 6pm. I didn’t use to take losing well (see also 1986 World Cup QF, 1990 World Cup SF and, especially, the 1996 Euro SF, although that one was complicated by the presence o […]

My collection is 90% Batman. I spent absolutely ages working out a timeline for the Batman stories post Year One in 1984. There are a few resources online that contradict each other in places, but I have it all […]

When Barnsley played at Arsenal in the Premier League they stuffed us 5-0. As we were walking towards some pub or other down Upper Street one of the lads called his missus. We could obviously only hear his side of […]

I thought we lost the second leg 2-1? It was a bit of a non-event though, after that freaky first leg. We’d never played at Wembley and this was the last chance, as they were knocking it down that summer. I’d dre […]

My initial reaction was to be up in arms at them stopping reading the results out, until I thought about it and couldn’t remember the last time I tuned in to listen to them. Maybe if we’re on the way back from an […]

I’d quite like Barnsley FC to stop printing them, as I’m running out of space. I have every Barnsley home programme since 1955 (apart from a game that was postponed, but someone grabbed a few copies before the res […]

Well I was supposed to be coming off Tramadol on the recommendation of a gastroenterologist that I saw a few weeks ago, as he says it might be at the root of the stomach problems I’ve been having for the past f […]

There’s a reason for that though…

When I went for my spinal cord tumour removing I was in a bad way. I could hardly walk by this stage, couldn’t dress myself, use cutlery, it was grim. If I knew how to add p […]

Thanks Steve. My original post was really looking for confirmation that my amp was old and rubbish and the record player had no options to improve things, as a precursor to buying new ones, but the lesson I […]

The problem I have now is that I pulled all the boxed sets out, to get to the preamp and to be able to turn the record player and amp round. I’m now surrounded by them all, wishing I’d taken a photo of where the […]

That’s exactly what I did. By keeping the preamp in place it all sounded distorted. I wonder if that’s what Kevin Shields once did, that gave him a great idea? But when I bypassed it everything sounded great

My ears are shite, what with the tinnitus, hence I had to use someone else’s ears for the test. I was comfortably able to play the records at a volume higher than I would normally have it, and I tend to have it l […]

Not much fiddling. I cut out the pre-amp and one of my new singles that arrived today, Airport by The Motors, is sounding perfect, with the dial just turned up a little higher than I have it for CDs, but not that […]

Okay, now it has gone extremely loud, but distorted. So loud that the Bob Marley LP in question reaches the adequate volume with the dial set to 1, considerably lower than the 19, when using the phono out! This is […]

That is the right turntable. I shall clear a path to the back of it and have a fiddle…

I should also say that I must have been so excited to set this up and start playing records that this is the first time I h […]