With today’s news that Tranmere Rovers have sacked their manager John Barnes and assistant Jason McAteer, putting the team physio in temporary charge, the following fan known as ‘ByeJohn’ posted this to the BBC’s 606 sports forum. It’s a classic…

“As a lifelong Rovers fan I thought I would translate the clubs press release;

The Tranmere Rovers board have concluded that for Monday’s crucial home game against fellow Championship 1 strugglers Stockport, the team will be in better hands under the guidance of the club masseuse than under John Barnes (he was honestly that bad), and the current manager will now be geeing the players up as well as giving them a good rub down.

With the weight of John and Jason’s ineptitude lifted from the club we look forward to the inevitable and ultimately futile relegation dog fight, but I would like to reassure the fans that the board is fully committed to aimlessly wandering around the board room for the remainder of the season, occasionally bumping into things, and wondering how on earth they have managed to turn a perfectly respectable local club into the biggest joke in football since Thomas Brolin’s waistline.”

Now that would have been a great press release!

The Leisure Society – Last of the Melting Snow

This is the best contemporary band I’ve found out about for a while. Their viral marketing is nice too! Here’s a Youtube video of them performing in one of a series entitled ‘bandstand busking’ (proving they can do it live as well as in the studio).

Clever lyrics, great playing and a style reminiscent of… well, perhaps a cross between Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Elbow. I’m a fan now – remarkable, as I was drawn in by a simple one-off ad on Spotify!

Story on ‘The Register’ – Nice article about lazy journalism and the way it might be being exploited by the very newspapers which employ them as well as businesses. I remember reading the story on the BBC news website. What happened to accuracy? When do we trust BBC News to get things right? We’re paying these guys, remember!

The latest industry publication, The Cask Report, reveals some interestings facts about the real ale market. Cask ale had…

Real ale is a comparative success story at a time when beer sales are in decline and pub closures are running at 52 a week.

I was chatting to a local publican the other day and asked him why he only offered a single brand of ale. He intimated that his ‘wet’ turnover was too small and that if he stocked more, he’d end up throwing half away (it needs to be fresh and in good condition to sell). I suggested he might be able to offer more choice of ales by approaching local brewers and stocking smaller polypins instead of 9-gallon barrels. That might also give his business a Unique Selling Point – purely locally-brewed ales and locally produced food. Would that be viable, I wonder?

I was Googling around, as you do, when I spotted a photo of Fakenham on Google Images that looked familiar. Sure enough, it was one of mine – but not on one of my sites. Looking at the site itself (it was a local accommodation website) threw up several photos nicked off FakenhamWeb without permission. Whats more, the author had also swiped loads of my text too – without so much as a ‘by your leave’. A swift email got the required response and the offending material was removed.

But this had me wondering what else was out there - and this was quite an interesting exercise…  I did a search for a phrase I’d used on one of my pages – “Pretty brick-and-flint faced buildings” – click the link and you’ll see what I found. Cool.

A subject close to my heart – beer. Lager to be more precise – and Norfolk Pilsener lager to be even more preciser. Norfolk brewer Uncle Stuarts at Wroxham Barns have just brewed an authentic-style Pilsener which they hope will attract lager drinkers to their products.

I’m not sure it’ll appeal to the majority of lagerites, as I’m guessing the flavour may be a little too challenging for them – the major brands available in the UK are bland and characterless compared to craft beer. However, I’d like to try some (even though I usually prefer darker ales) as it’s probably a quality brew. I’ll look for it when I next visit The Real Ale Shop in Wells.

Read the whole story at the EDP website

I’ve just installed some code into my WordPress blog and it should now post to Facebook automatically. Earlier, I got my blog to accept posts via email and publish them – also automagically. Isn’t science wonderful?

Having made a start on the creation of this site, I now have a clearer idea of what it will be all about. There are two sides to it all – the info about Fakenham which was originally created for FakenhamWeb (I’ll be migrating that across over time) and also the ‘newsy’ blog thing which will be more random in its content but less ‘dry’. Well, quite moist actually. Or just plain wet – sodden, you might say. You get the idea.

I’ll also be using the blog as a promotional tool for the town, local businesses, my own clients and my own business ventures. Need something promoting locally? Get in touch.

This is the first time I’ve used WordPress. It’s strange trying to find my way around the ‘back-end’ but I’m sure I’ll be up to speed soon. I’ll be trying to sort  out some tasty plugins and add-ons to jazz it up a bit too, linking it in with Facebook and that kind of thing.  I bet you can’t wait. You lucky people.

Welcome to the new Fakenham.org.uk blog – an unofficial site for the Fakenham area. This will be developed over the coming weeks to reflect the new content being created for the new ‘official’ Fakenham site being written by the Kickstart Fakenham group.

This site will eventually replace FakenhamWeb, which has been the only town ‘community’ site for many years – since 1999 in fact! Content from FakenhamWeb will be transferred and included here for archival purposes where appropriate.