Result!  No mention of the words 'bored' or 'boring' today.  I played Football Manager again, I had almost finished my Physics homework, but I still had Maths, French, German and Chemistry to do.  Note to self, if you know that you had so much homework to do, why pray, did you leave it until the Thursday before the Monday that you're due to go back to school.  There's a room in the secondary school that I went to in which I spent many a frantic half hour before school finishing homework that I should have done the night before.  And I still carry out tasks in the same rushed manner!

I went to bed at 10.30 after the 'best day for yonks.'

Oh no.  Another 'boring' day.  Again, I played Football Manager on the C64.  I also went to the library, and amongst all those books I was still bored.

At least Man Utd could offer us some entertainment as they lost 2-1 at home to Chelsea this evening.

And over on Channel 4 we had some seminal 1980's TV, Prospects.  Following the adventures of Jimmy 'Pincey' Pince, played by the late great Gary Olsen and Billy, played by Brian Bovell, Prospects was a cult hit for Channel 4 - one of the programmes that only Channel 4 could make.

The sun sets on the Thames, another day comes to an end...

Just as boring today as it was yesterday.  Oh dear.  I played Football Manager on the C64, and did a little catching up, by doing some Physics homework.  I reported that I was thinking of buying a stereo if my brother, 'tightness' was agreeable.  Just a quickie about this, I was a spendthrift and my brother was very careful.  Careful to the extent that he would eschew spending his own money on things, wait for muggins to buy it and then make with it like it was his own!  The bleeder.  He wasn't stupid was he...

Now, I must have been out and about earlier in the week as reading this diary entry has jogged my memory of my paper round.  I had a morning round and Monday through Saturday must have delivered no more than 20 newspapers plus the odd periodical.  But then on Sunday, good grief, I must have had forty to carry and of course with it being Sunday, they were much much bigger - and heavier.

I had a racing bike.  It was a Peugeot and it arrived, I remember, from me Mum's Kays catalogue on Live Aid Day in the summer of 1985.  The wheels on this thing were like razor blades and it went like stink.  It didn't go so quickly however, with 40 Sunday newspapers slung over me left shoulder.  More to the point, I was probably unsafe, wobbling the mile up the road at the mercy of all sorts of car wielding lunatics.  So on Sundays, me Dad would go down in the car and pick up the newspapers for me.  I still had to walk around and deliver 'em mind.

The lucrative part of the round though, was the collection of people's paper bills.  I divided my labour up into two parts. First, I would walk round and deliver the papers.  I'd get home around 10 or 10.30, have a cup of coffee and then go out again for another hour collecting the money.  My idea was that they wanted their papers early, but they didn't want me knocking on the door too early in order to collect the money.

Anyway, this week, I collected the princely sum of £93.47, of which I think my share was 3%.  I'd even written a programme in BASIC on my C64 to tot up the notes and coins and then tell me how much I'd earned.

In the afternoon of this cold and frosty day, we settled down to watch Tony Cottee score the only goal in West Ham's victory over Charlton at Selhurst Park in the 3rd round of the FA Cup.  It was, I noted, "[the] first televised TV (? football, surely) for yonks."  It started at 3pm and was on BBC1.

I must have actually not played on Football Manager today.  I do however, comment on the weather, "snowed" and sum up the match in around 10 words, "Town had it won but couldn't finish and lost 1-0."

In other news, Liverpool beat Norwich City 5-0, with goals from MacDonald, Walsh, Whelan, McMahon and Wark.

Another day bashin' the chunky keys on the even chunkier keyboard of the C64.  "Yup, Football Manager again."  I commented, "pretty exciting stuff eh?"  Let's not be too coy about it, yes it was.  Kevin Toms, the creator of FM had written a really cool game and it did get me hooked.

My other entry for this day is, I think, oxymoronic, and sums up the life of a computer obsessed 16 year old who happens to be a fan of real live grass and boots with studs football.  My Mum had been to town and bought me a ticket for the following day's 3rd round FA Cup tie between 2nd division Shrewsbury Town and (I think 1st division) Chelsea.  Cost of the ticket?  Three English pounds.

I got up late, again, well it was still the Christmas holidays!  Played Football Manager again and didn't do an awful lot else.  So it's probably safe to say that I didn't make my bed, or do any washing up.  And there is no way that I would have made any of the meals that I ate during the course of my day playing Football Manager. I may have had a bath, but after having done so, I wouldn't have rinsed it afterwards.  Mm Mm!  Delightful.

After seeing in the New Year, my bed was found at ten minutes to one. I can't remember if I had a drink or not, it's possible I suppose.  I slept in until 10 o'clock and then played Football Manager on my Commodore 64 (C64).  Now let's be clear here, if Shirley Crabtree was The (Big) Daddy of the wrestling ring, then the C64 was The Daddy of gaming computers in the 1980's.

Football Manager was addictive stuff, I remember.  You started with your team in the fourth division (renamed division 2 nowadays!?) and you then had to pick your team to best advantage in order to move up the divisions.  Graphics were rudimentary (but they looked fantastic back then, or did they?) and the game had the uncanny knack of actually making time accelerate.

Later on, in the evening I guess, I watched Rocky II.  I can't remember anything much about the film, but my diary comment, "Wot a con!?" is unequivocal yet seems to leave the door ajar for a reassessment as necessary. I'm sure that my brother was highly enamoured with it!