On Saturday, I was lucky enough to get a last minute invite to Craven Cottage to watch Fulham play Manchester United. My unexpected treat came courtesy of a friend who works for a construction company who have 10 corporate tickets at Fulham. Ordinarily, he would have taken his son but, fortunately for me, the poor lad was serving the last day of a grounding as a result of a serious, undisclosed misdemeanour. ...

The latest update in this occasional and very popular series. I am currently working in the delightful city of Bern, near Switzerland. I have been here a couple of times before and last April I watched United beat Barcelona 1-0 in the Champions League semi-final thanks to a great goal from Paul Scholes. Unusually for me, I watched that game with a colleague. Unfortunately for him, I don’t think I was very good company. Well, I mean - who really wants to discuss whether ’late delivery of the extracts pose a serious risk to the success of the project’ when you’re watching your team play in the crucial second leg of the European Cup semi-final. ...

I have most of my music available in digital format and have occasionally pondered the purchase of a wireless streaming device so I could listen to music anywhere in the house. Another possibility would be to upload all the music to my own server and stream music from any computer using freely available software (e.g. Icecast). Of course, both those options cost money and more importantly, time so, as always, I chose to so absolutely nothing apart from duplicating my iTunes library on my two main (home/work) computers. ...

Last Friday, I found myself standing in a short queue at Newcastle airport. I could immediately discern that the global economic recession is starting to take hold up in the bleak, industrial North. Normally, at this time, Newcastle airport is packed with hordes of Geordie holidaymakers bound for the Mediterranean and beer swilling lads in Newcastle football shirts going on a, err, cultural visit to Prague. However, to my surprise, last Friday, the airport was eerily quiet. No queue for the self-service kiosk. No queue to check the bag, No queue to enter the security area. No snaking queues with temporary barriers to navigate. No smiling, happy, expectant people discussing their fourth overseas holiday of the year. ...

Or as New Order once sang ‘In a lonely place’. Much has been made of Rafa Benitez’s so-called rant against Alex Ferguson. Of course, Benitez is correct for the most part but the most amusing part was when he pulled out a sheet of A4 with the charge sheet. Benitez is pretty new to this game and he would have been better advised to speak out after Liverpool had won 4-0 extending their lead and avoiding the use of the phrase ‘mind games’ - particularly when he’s not getting involved in them. Supposedly. ...