Just back from watching Mansfield lose 1-4 at home to Bury.  Certainly cheered me up after Saturday's game!  They are really struggling and it won't surprise me if they drop back into the Conference next season. But what really took me by surprise was some very heavy-handed stewarding with the stewards just looking for people to eject among their own fans, for the slightest reason.  In the end, they homed in on their drummer allegedly for making an obscene gesture.  We were sat near them as they decided to target him and to make sure that his drum was ejected with him!!!!  Clearly the home fans aren't encouraged to create an atmosphere at Field Mill.

Based on the last time I tried to raise the subject of music, I bet many of you probably think of me as some crazy glowstick-wielding raver along the lines of this happy chappy...

But I'm not, honestly. I'm currently listening to violin covers of songs, such as this:

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01dU6QO8PuU

And this:

>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKV-ZLQheaM

So let's revive the subject of music (easily one of my pleasures in life, alongside family, football, food, and my missus). I want you to talk about what you listen to, post a video of your favourite song of all time, a guilty pleasure... elaborate as much as you can guys and girls!

It's shrove Tuesay has anyone had pancakes today then? Our Grandson George was adamant that he didn't like them but we persuaded him to try one of his Granny's and he has now decided they are "cool" and he loves them. We put orange juice and brown sugar on ours.

It's funny how kids get it in their heads they don't like something. Last week our other Grandson said he didn't want a banana split because he didn't like them, so Mrs. H. made one for herself, split a banana put squirty cream down the middle and strawberries on top, it looked great. She put it under his nose and asked him if he was sure he didn't want one and he changed his mind and wolfed it down.

NOTTS County could be set to raid the emergency loan market in order to cope with Jimmy Spencer's suspension.

The Magpies will be without the forward in the next three games after he was shown a straight red card in the 3-2 defeat against Shrewsbury.

His ban has left Notts short of options up front and they could add a fresh face before the weekend's trip to Rotherham.

Assistant boss Greg Abbott says he and manager Shaun Derry are scouring the market but accepts finding quality at this stage of the season will be tough.

"We are going to be without Jimmy for the next three games which leaves us a little short and naturally we would like to address that if we could," he said.

"When we lost Ronan (Murray) for three games after he was sent off at Peterborough and now Jim, it's certainly not an ideal situation to be in at this stage of the season.

"But Jim Rodwell, Ray and Aileen Trew have been brilliant and they've given us their full support. The problem is that finding that quality at this stage is difficult because clubs are reluctant to let players go, especially those at the top.

"But we will keep trying and searching. The one thing we won't do is give up."

Notts do have forward Enoch Showunmi available, but he has had to make do with a place on the substitutes' bench after losing his place to Spencer.

Kwesi Appiah, on loan from Crystal Palace, could also come into contention after extending his loan deal from Selhurst Park last week. Abbott says the striker can count himself unfortunate not to have broke into the starting 11.

"Kwesi's attitude has been absolutely spot-on and can count himself unlucky not to have started really," he said.

"He's got a lot of ability which is why we wanted to keep him."

Read more: http://www.nottinghampost.com/Notts-County-raid-emergency-loan-market-striker/story-20705104-detail/story.html#ixzz2uS2bsdYv

Copied from the Post today.

Not sure its worth it now we have Murray back in contention. We either play these guys or release them tbh. If they aren't good enough then why keep them. Appiah is a prime example. Now my anger over the weekend has slowly subsided, he needs to start a match in a positive formation to see if he can cut it or not. If the answer is not then why bother extending the loan? We have too many loans already dont we?

We've all seen them, dirty, bedraggled, sitting in a doorway with a blanket round them and usually a mangy looking dog at the side of them. I encountered one in York recently as we passed he asked quietly if we had any change, I looked down at him and then carried on walking as we walked away he politely wished us a good day. I am never sure whether to give money to beggars, sure I have enough money and I am comfortably off but do they actually use the money to buy food or drugs? Are they as bad off as they seem or are they making a living out of begging and at the end of the day pop round the corner and get in a car to travel back to their comfortable home in the suburbs.

I feel guilty at ignoring them and sometimes think "there but for the grace of God go I", that could be me in that doorway if life hadn't been kind to me, I could be homeless, living on the street with no prospect of getting a job and somewhere to live.

What do others think, should we give a little change to beggars to help them out or are the majority of them frauds? Are they just using the money to feed their drug habit?

This Saturday's fixtures:

Burnley v Derby County

Nottingham Forest v Wigan Athletic

Crawley Town v Peterborough United

Tranmere Rovers v Oldham Athletic

Fleetwood Town v AFC Wimbledon

Rochdale v Oxford United

Mrs H and myself had a day off today and took ourselves up to Carsington Reservoir in Derbyshire. We walked right round, a total of 8 miles, we were rather proud of that, it was a lovely day but very windy walking over the exposed dam.

We finished the day with a nice cup of cappuccino in the visitor centre and a well deserved sit down.

We have our gas and electric supplied by British Gas and pay each bill monthly by Direct Debit.On the 11th of this month both our meters were read. In fact they were read twice because the chap doing the readings had a problem with his monitor thingy..On Monday our gas bill arrived which contained our annual review and last quarter usage..You can imagine my language when I noticed that our monthly payments  were to be almost doubled. On further scrutiny of the bill I noticed that the last month's gas usage was considerably higher than the previous 2 months of the quarter.Anyway I decided to read our gas meter myself and was relieved to note that my reading was 08218 compared to the bill reading - 08717.It appeared obvious to me that  a 7 instead of a 2 had been entered by the gas man.I  tried to phone British Gas but there was a 15 minute waiting time.

   The next day our Electric bill arrived but this time I was pleased to note a reduction of £1 per month on the bill.

   I did eventually get the gas bill sorted out .It's staying the same!

   This could be quite upsetting for some people.Has anyone else had similar problems?

To Torquay on an emergency loan. Which leaves us even shorter on strikers.

Not sure myself. Very inconsistent and no improvement in discipline, i would stick with him even if or when we go down,

What would yours be, based on what you've seen? 23 to pick 

3 GK

Hart

Foster

Ruddy/Forster

Left Back

Cole

Baines

Right Back

Johnson

Jones (can play CB)

Centre Back

Lescott

Jageilka

Cahill 

Wingers

Townsend

Walcott

Milner

Oxlade-Chamberlain or Lennon or another not sure

Centre Mids

Lallana

Barkley

Wilshere

Gerrard

Barry/Henderson 

Strikers

Sturridge

Rooney

Welbeck

If he can get himself fit then Carroll (need a target man) otherwise Rodriguez or Lambert

Rotherham United vs Notts County this Saturday, will you be in attendance? How many travelling magpies do you think will make the trip? What will the overall attendance be?

For opinions on the game please visit - Match Thread

It's confession time! Let PoN know..

Happy Birthday Super Ram!

Many will know how much work my father puts in, he's now a part of the furniture and I once had to pester him to join in.

His articles and posts greatly helps and for the next week it shall be no picking on him from me.

He is (old) after all. Hehe

Have a great day!

Good prices on the shirts in there today. kids down to £15 and adults down to £20.

Shame they didn't reduce the price of the name and number printing. I nearly had a heart attack when I got the bill. By that time when the question had been asked "Do you want the children to have their names on them?" I could hardly say no could I. After a little more encouragement from the shop assistant the kids had convinced me to have names on mine and their Grandads as well.

It was only then when she'd put it all through the till did she tell me the cost. £12 per print. £48 in total just for the naming. (Normally I wouldn't moan, but the bill hitting £118 did surprise me a little!)

Oh well. We'll all set the scanners off in morrisions when we self scan now with the bar codes!

What's happening to the English clubs in the first leg of the Champions league this year?

Man City 0 - 2 Barcelona

Arsenal 0 - 2 Bayern Munich

Olympiakos 2 - 0 Man United

Is it worth lumping on a bet for Chelsea to lose 2-0 tomorrow against Galatasaray?

The future is looking bleak for Eastwood Town, I really hope they can find some kind of settlement to this problem, I would hate for them to disappear.

http://www.footballtradedirectory.com/news/2014/february/evostik-npl-division-1-south-side.html

Please vote for February's Member of the Month!

The plan was to start voting on Saturday, however thanks to @hissingdwarf I shall now leave the poll open for 8 days.

One Vote - Please choose who you feel is the most deserving, if you're in the running please vote for someone else and hopefully this will be fun for all involved! Voting ends on the 27th at 7:30pm, not long after the winner will be announced. It's been nice to see the site growing, so your support and contributions are greatly appreciated. I hope you enjoy the site and best of luck to the nominations! Good Luck everyone!

Thank you to everyone for your contributions!

Please do vote as normal, let's see if we can beat 30? I hope so! You Pies!

At 11:13 this morning, Hinckley United Football Club was officially pronounced dead. Very sad but not unexpected news, the supporters said their goodbyes on Saturday. Yet another club that was not protected against greedy and incompetent owners. Another club allowed to die without a care in the world for the supporters.

I truly hope they can re-form and start again. There have been many great examples of fan owned clubs working. They had a very nice ground too.

I truly fear for the future of grass roots football. While the rich get richer, the poor continue to get poorer and there's very little light at the end of the tunnel. Hinckley won't be the last club to go to the wall.

Typically, absolutely no coverage on Sky Sports News. They're more interested in talking about £70million players, the very transfer fees which have gone some way to helping destroy the game.

R.I.P Hinckley United. As the motto went: Hinckley United - proud to be average

http://www.newsnow.co.uk/h/Sport/Football/League+One/Notts+County

Check out this article above...I found it whilst looking for something re tomorrows game. It's in the bottom right of the page in a column entitled top stories last 24 hours. The article itself is FC Kansas City transfer Scott to Notts County.

The reason I thought some might find it interesting is that we apparently 'paid a significant fee' for her. I wonder what sort of money we're talking about for a female player?

By the way, I haven't highlighted this just so people can say 'huh, Ray won't pay for a transfer to the mens team'. I'm wondering if having a ladies team in the superleague, if they do well particularly, might benefit Notts County as a whole

Sorry, it wouldn't let me link the actual article page so I've had to put in the directions above, but below is a c and p of the article...

FC Kansas City and the NWSL complete transfer to Notts County FC

A section on racial abuse in football. Jonno talking about it outside ground. Recording it as Hull v Brighton on itv4

i would love to see kasper back at notts county he was one of the nicest players loyal and help notts county to league one all while taking a pay cut not being payed bonus and so forth i would love to see him back at county

Does anyone know what they are there for, don't even have a flag or owt. Must be getting paid a decent amount. Are they allowed to make descisions.

I'll start talking to myself if you're not careful...

Rumours will start...

Allegations will abound...

Small wars may start...

You have been warned...

When I was 16 my dad opened an account for me with the TSB .This served me very well over the years as there was a branch in my home town,Alfreton ,and a branch just down the road from where I worked. Some time during the 1990's the TSB merged with LLoyds and eventually became LLoyds TSB.. No problems at all for 40 years.Then last summer I received a letter saying that LLoyds and TSB were to become separate banks again.Last July I was asked to go to the Low Pavement branch (This has been my named branch since about 1965)  of Lloyds TSB so they could update me in person.So I went down a few days later and was told that this branch was reverting to TSB but that my local branch in Aspley was changing to Lloyds.They told me I would be receiving a new  temporary VISA debit card but would be able to continue using the card at both TSB and Lloyds branches.My accounts were split between Lloyds and TSB.This was all fine with me. A week or so later I received the new card which was still Lloyds and a covering letter saying I would get my TSB card sometime in the next 6 months or so.Everything carried on as before until I tried to pay Tesco online. I got in touch with the bank who said everything should be OK and it must be Tesco's fault.Tesco told me it must be the bank's fault.I tired of phoning the bank and Tesco's so decided to wait for my next new card to arrive.In the meantime I've been transferring funds weekly to Joe and Cheeky's account and using their details to pay Tesco. I could still withdraw from the cash machine locally,that is until just after christmas when I tried to make a withdrawal and was refused.I went inside to make a withdrawal at the counter and was told that I would soon no longer  be able to use Lloyds facilities unless I transferred my account to Lloyds. Anyway to save anymore waffling I'll just explain that I went to the local Lloyds bank branch and they arranged for all TSB accounts to be transferred.Last Saturday along with 3 Gas letters I received 2 letters from TSB .One letter told me my accounts were being transferred to Lloyds.The other letter contained a new TSB VISA DEBIT CARD..WHY? I'm pleased to say Tesco accepted my new Lloyds details and the cash machine  paid out today too. Why couldn't TSB have been up front from the start and saved me all this hassle.