Surrey Calling!

I am making a big change in my life. It is bigger than anything I have done before. I am upping sticks completely and moving to Surrey!

Sophie is at University in Farnham, at the U.C.C.A. there. She's going to (hopefully) be there for another two years. That's a hell of a long time to be travelling up and back from Devon... it's hard going more than a few days without seeing her. My solution: Move there.

First off, I wanted to find a place to live. Being a non-student (and seeking a job), I thought this might be difficult. Indeed, Sophie's first phone call involved a woman laughing at her, telling her she'd never heard of such a thing and that we'd need luck. Thankfully, the next call proved more positive!

The tenancy agreement is signed and ready to go and we will have a "two room suite" in a five bedroom shared house in Hale Road, Farnham. It will be redecorated too, and we have the opportunity to add our personal influence to the house, as the landlord is very open to what we want to do. That includes putting my dartboard up and hopefully improving my form!

As well as a house, I needed to sort a job out. How else would I be paying the rent; Sophie's loan won't cover it! I took a couple days off and had three interviews. At the second interview, for a firm in Alton, I felt right at home as soon as I sat down. Wettone Matthews' office is very similar to Easterbrooks' Sidmouth office. Thankfully, they liked me as much as I liked them and offered me the position of Trainee Accountant. I will be starting ACCA training next year and will be getting a nice pay rise!

What else in my life will change with this move?

Well, my duties with Rockbeare Rangers Football Club will reduce drastically, as they have already begun to. As of next season, I shall merely be Webmaster. And President or Non-Executive Director! I want a poncy name after being one of the Club founders! I will miss playing, especially with Ian on board to change the Club's fortunes...

Goodridge (link requires Facebook account) will also be doing without my services! They have replaced me with Johnny Beer and I guess he can do the job! I will be getting a team shirt and might play the occasional game when I'm back visiting any weekend! My testimonial will be coming up soon, hopefully against Mikey P's team.

I will not text my postcode to 66611 and neither should you. But I digress.

Darts is taking a back foot. Which it needs! Instead, I shall help Sophie improve her game. She's really keen to get better. Actually, I think she just wants to beat me!

I'm leaving my friends and family behind. It's lucky most of them are on my Facebook really! It's going to be difficult at first, knowing only Sophie's Uni mates, my new housemates and my new work colleagues. This is the only scary bit of the move really. My increasing social anxiety worries me, as I don't want to freeze among new people. First impressions mean a lot!

The move is the weekend of 19th July. My new job started on Monday 21st July. I think I'll start a Facebook group. I mean, you'll wanna know when the Leaving Do, Housewarming and other such parties are... right?

My Life in Thirty Seconds...

Which is probably how long it'll take you to read this post!

My life is far more complicated than is absolutely necessary, usually by my own doing. I take a lot on, often too much at once. I help people out, as I feel I am a naturally caring person, and this has led to me getting shafted by various people.


Rockbeare Rangers are having a mixed season. And I've certainly had my ups and downs at the Club. I've given my two penny' worth to people that have asked, but for those of you that haven't, here's the quick version:

I helped form the Club, with Mark Walters (Chairman) and Ed Haine (Club Treasurer), as a number of us fancied playing regular football in the league. Some of us had played before and weren't happy with where we were, some of us fancied a change, some of us had never played league football before.

We needed someone to take control, and given my extensive Football Manager knowledge, I thought I'd have a go. A few positive friendlies later, I fuck up the start to our season by changing formation. I wonder if it would have made a difference.

After five or so games, the so-called Player Rep decides he's taking over. No discussion with the Board, just the players. And so begins the internal war. Now, I distanced myself from the Club for a bit by spending time with Sophie in Farnham. I still went to training (was injured for one week) but I was never likely to make the first XI. I was fine with that.
But the Board as whole were becoming more and more annoyed by the players trying to run the Club we had started. And not for the right reasons. So the Manager was replaced, in the proper manner.

This Manager subsequently left for personal reasons! We have now found an experienced Coach to come in and show us what has been going wrong. And after one training session and one half time team talk, things are already being learnt! We have a tough match at home to Awliscombe United tomorrow, who beat us 1-5 at their place. The report will be on the site on Monday!

We currently sit fifth from bottom in Inter 2. We have the promise to finish higher...


Money is a real concern right now. My "friend" Codge has his Mum die in October 2006. I leant him my Credit Card to help pay for the funeral. See? A nice guy, I am.
He screws me over. I'm left having to pay £125 a month to pay off his Credit Card debt, while he gives me between nothing and £300 a month... usually nothing. This leaves me a tad short, given I have my own debts to contend with!!

In addition, my previous house has outstanding bills. One of my former housemates is rubbish with money, choosing mainly to spend his on drugs. It leaves the rest of us trying to keep the debt collectors at bay.

Help will be at hand in May, when I upgrade my o2 mobile phone account. I'm thinking of getting a Sony Ericsson k850i, the latest model in my current phone's range on Online 30 (24 month tariff) as it includes unlimited o2 to o2 calls. I shall read the small print before I do...!


My love life really couldn't be better! Sophie and I have been together for over a year now and are closer than we've ever been. I could gush about how great she is, but you may be eating so I'll direct you to my Facebook profile if you wanna know how fantastic she is. Having started as a long distance relationship (she's originally from Hull), we have gone full circle while she is away at Uni in Farnham. We spend every weekend together though and are constantly on the phone or MSN to each other.

We do make the most of our time together, and try very hard not to take it for granted. We go for drives in the country, try to visit our families (mine is easier to visit as they're closer) or just stay in and enjoy each others company. Needless to say, we have an amazing sex life! We are so in tune with each other and that makes all the difference.

Sophie is currently doing a three year university course in journalism at Farnham UCCA. If she follows the journalist route, she would need to live quite close to London. To this end, I shall be attempting to relocate to Farnham in the summer. For someone who has never lived more than 14 miles from his place of birth, this represents a huge step. This is proving rather difficult though, as changing jobs and houses at the same time is nigh on impossible sometimes. It's all very much in the mixer at the moment, nothing is definite, apart from the intent!


Darts isn't going well. As many people know, I've played darts for over half my life... and once upon a time I used to be quite good at it. I've represented my county at Under-21 level and have gotten to the second round of the National Youth Competition. I captained my own side in the Sidmouth League for many years and now loosely captain a team in the Honiton League, not by choice! But my season has been appalling. Never have I suffered from such nerves. I am confident in my ability and know I can beat a lot of players in the leagues in which I play. But recently, my nerves have cost me games and I even missed the board completely going for bull!

So I'm taking a step back. Regardless of what happens in the summer, I will not be playing league darts next season. I will practice, play for fun and teach Sophie how to play. The way it's been going, I have not been enjoying my darts. And that's despite playing with two teams of people I really gt on with (mostly). Playing for fun is the only way to get my enjoyment of the game back...!


Work is alright. We've just had a hectic January at Easterbrook Eaton Limited. But on top of that I have a few personal clients. For privacy reasons I won't go into detail, but taken on this work outside of my usual office hours has been a little stressful! I can't help that I'm so damned good at it...

If I do end up moving, I will look at what I want to do. No doubt I won't change vocations just now... but a man of my intelligence should probably put it to the best use possible. I will apply myself more!


Well, there's a short (!) look at my life. I know... it's not that bad really!

The State of English Football!

So, what can be said about Steve MclAren's reign and the way it ended on Wednesday night? Whatever I say about it usually involves a few expletives!

We can all look to Wednesday night's game against Croatia at Wembley and say we lost that and that's why we aren't going to Austria and Switzerland next year, but in truth that's not it at all! The whole campaign has been rather shit. Drawing to teams have of England haven't even heard of, let alone know where they are! The main problem we've had is not scoring goals when we need them most.

Before we lost 2-3 to Croatia, we'd only let in four goals in the whole Qualifying Campaign! Not bad. My Rockbeare Rangers side would have been proud of a record like that! So it certainly wasn't defensively we've struggled... with John Terry and Rio Ferdinand at the back we have one of the best centre back pairings in the world (obviously Kolo and Willy Gallas are better!). With Micah Richards coming through and other able deputies proving they can move up to the next level, like Nicky Shorey at left back, English defending has rarely looked stronger...

...until Wednesday night!
Back then, when you shove a 22 year old goalie between the sticks for his competitive debut in a MUST-NOT-LOSE game, that's a helluva lot of pressure! And fucking up the first thing he had to do probably didn't help. Was Scott Carson to blame? Not in my opinion... it's McLaren's fault for gambling in such a crunch tie. David James wouldn't have let any of those goals in.

On a plus note, I loved Crouch's volley. I was calling for Becks to come on (I love him, in a completely heterosexual way) and he did what he does, pings a superb cross in. And ol' Lanky did the rest.


Everyone now is going to blame the decline on English football, as they usually do, on foreign players at English clubs. Bollocks. If we had good English players coming through, and if the prices for home grown talent weren't so extortionately high (how much for Gareth Bale?!) then Mr. Wenger, who usually gets the brunt of the stick, wouldn't have to nick half of Barca's youth team!

Trying to limit the amount of foreigners that can play for a club is against everything the E.U. stands for these days and is never gonna happen. If bloody Exeter can fill up with bloody Poles who run off owing you £400 (that's another story), then Arsenal can have a few French blokes and Chelsea can have all the nationalities under the sun. Of course, Man Utd should never have been allowed that diving, crying, whining little fuck.

The English CLUB game is the best in the world. Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea are amongst the elite clubs. We have overtaken Italy and Spain as the club footballing world superpower and Arsenal's football in particular is a joy to watch!


So fuck it. England's national team and McLaren himself got what they deserved. Nothing. We'll go on the come third in a home nations cup next year (behind Scotland and Northern Ireland!) and I'll carry on watching Rockbeare Rangers steam up the local leagues...!

Heroes. No, not the TV Show!

For years, I have not really thought myself as having a hero. I preferred to live my life how I saw fit. I did not need a role model and not want to copy anyone else's way of living. And, in a way, I still believe that.

I think most people have others they aspire to. If I were honest, I'd like to be a top footballer in the Francesco Totti or David Beckham mould. I'd love to be in a position to help others, something I think Mr. Beckham in particular takes seriously. It's never gonna happen, and I'm quite happy playing for the lesser known Rockbeare Rangers. My time at Arsenal will never materialise!


But I DO have a hero. I do have someone who I look at and think, "that's how I want to live my life". That person is Tim Waterfield, my brother.

You never see him unhappy. He always has a smile on his face, and is only to happy to share it! The room lights up when he enters and he commands people attention, which he loves receiving. I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about him and he seems to know the whole world!

I know, as my brother, he should be the first one to come to my aid but in that he has never let me down. I am a depressive, as many of you know, and he's always there when things are getting me down. Not that that is much of a problem at the moment, as I have Sophie keeping me happy!

He has been devoted (almost entirely) to one girl, his wife Julia. He loves kids and I'd be happy if I'm anywhere near as good with my own children (when we have them) than he is with any child he meets! He loves nature although that has gotten him into trouble (and as a result I'm now petrified of wasps!)... it's a wonder his house isn't full of animals like our Dad's is!


So if I aspire to be like anybody, it isn't a footballer, a musician, an actor. It's a white van man from Sidmouth who just happens to have a great big brother!

Long Distance Relationships: Can They Work?

It's been said, that long distance relationships do not work. That view may be changing though, due to the rise of instant messengers and social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace.

I feel that I, more than most, can comment on this as I've had both good and bad long distance relationships. A lot depends on how you both feel, whether you are both willing to make the extra effort needed...


My current relationship started online. On occasion, usually late at night when I'm bored and am finding any excuse not to sleep, I frequent a chat site - lovingly referred to by it's users as shit-web. I would usually just sit there, offering random shards of wisdom and watching the roleplayers fight in their Final Fantasy kind of way! But I got talking to a girl who was already in a long distance relationship with a bloke she'd only ever met online. Her screenname I forget (she uses Phee mostly these days) and her name, as most of you know, is Sophie.

After a few months of sporadic chats, we exchanged MSN addresses and talked to each other on an almost daily basis. We would talk about how our days had been, what we enjoyed doing and, increasingly other more intimate subjects. This lead to the exchanging of mobile phone numbers and our daily instant messages became daily (nightly) phone calls. You can get to know someone fairly well without having met them... if they're being honest.

There is a growing trend on news sites and bulletins on TV whereby they constantly warn of the hazards of chat rooms and other internet based services. True, people must be vigilant as there are some strange people out there and bad things DO happen. But you never hear about the good things that can happen if done in a safe manner.

Just before the winter holidays, Sophie came down to Devon (from her home in a village just outside Hull) to stay with me for christmas. A lot of people thought it was strange/dangerous and, to an extent, there was an amount of risk attached to it. But it was worth it.

Since then we have spent six of the nine months we've been together with no less than 100 miles between us, as she has now started a university course in Surrey. Yet our relationship is far stronger than most others I know. We both love each other a great deal. We make sure the time we do spend together is spent wisely, doing things we both enjoy. We appreciate each other more!


So yes... they can work and they are becoming more common. With more and more of our lives being lived online, soon it'll be the only way to have a relationship!

First Blog.

So, my loyal fans (do I even have any? I'd like to think so!)... this is my shiny new blog. It is taking over from my myspace blog which, to be fair, isn't really used with the takeover of facebook! Search for Carl Waterfield on there, by the way, if you haven't added me already!

I shall not write about anything specific on here right now, but in the future I shall do my best to keep it to one topic per post. It makes it easier that way. I shall also tr to give my opinion, should anyone care, on more than just my life!

Please feel free to leave nice (or nasty if you must) comments. I enjoy reading other people's opinions too! Especially if they are different to mine!

So for now, take care. I shall be speaking to you soon!