As good as it gets?

Well I hope not. Maximum 15 points from 5 games with a 4-0 win at Tranmere, but with two home games coming up even more wins are a strong possibility.

The only downside is Leeds United are matching Charlton's pace. Now Leeds, with apologies to the good citizens of Leeds, are not Britain's best loved team. In fact they are way up there with ManU, Chelsea and Arsenal. This maybe truer for those of a certain age who remember the Don Revie years, which admittedly were a long time ago. So we need Leeds to drop points before we do if we want to keep this heady feeling at the top of the division.

4 games 12 points

The perfect start to the new football season. Charlton, not at their best, beat Walsall 2-0. They still managed most of the possession and were ahead in all the stats except for fouls which Walsall won by a long way. The only other team with a perfect record in Division Three is Leeds. As they say in boxing, one of them has to lose the O. Let's hope it's Leeds, who still in my mind carry all the darkness of the Revie years. OK, I watched "The Damned United" last week.

Three games - nine points

Last season was one to forget, ending in demotion to the old Division 3 for the first time since I was a boy, which was a long time ago. Well at least we get to play with neighbours Millwall again.

This season has started with a bang. Three wins with two of those on the road. There was our usual loss and early exit from the league cup, but it was a ManU style second team playing. The first game was a 3-2 win at home against Wycombe Wanderers with an encouraging sixteen and half thousand crowd. Next came a 2-0 win in Hartlepool and round off our first three wins (four if the last match of last season is included) three thousand supporters took the short trip over the river to see Charlton beat Leighton Orient 2-1.

Can this keep up. After the last few years it makes a pleasant change.

Two Sundays east of the airport

If you follow the small road, Lat Krabang Soi 54, from Onnut Road it becomes a much larger new dual carriageway and you will find Wat Hua Khoo on the right side at a junction of two canals. Outside the temple is a good place to park and skirting the temple walls to the south will allow you to access a walkway along one of the canals. Along this canal, and sorry as I have no names for the klongs in this area, you will find a number of other paths on side canals.

Although very close to the new Bangkok airport, because we were walking parallel with the runways there was hardly any aircraft noise. This are is still very rural with ponds for raising fish and a vegetable grown in water that usually ends up in soups. The klongs are used for transport but it is fairly thinly populated out here. The walks shown on the Google Earth graphic below add up to about 16 kilometres.

Back to football and walking

Over the last year I haven't posted either about my football team or walking along the Bangkok klongs. The football was because it was such a horrible season from the beginning and the walking because I did fewer and spent too much time on UK politics.

Well I have still kept up walking new klongs although far from regularly but the next post will cover the last two Sundays east of the new Bangkok airport. With football Charlton are having a great start to the season so I will start posting results again.

Whatever happened to...?

There was a time not that long ago when you knew it was a Labour MP speaking on TV because he wore a red tie. Tories sometimes wore a blue one and Liberals any colour they liked, but for Labour a red tie was mandatory.

This changed with New Labour. They no longer wanted to be reminded of the past, the history of the party. Red stood something. It was the colour of the worker's flag. It was the colour of the blood shed by generations of activists going back to the Chartist and before.

As the various Blairites and Brownites start to creep away from their previous positions I wonder if the red tie will make a comeback. We are now seeing them dump the 'New' and just calling themselves Labour and even the banned word socialism cropped up today, so maybe we will. (And yes Ken Livingstone, I noticed the yellow tie you have been wearing. A little bit of tradition please!)