AN `INTERESTING` DAY

The plaque above - and the words shown on the plaque - seem nicely to sum up my day yesterday. I made my usual pilgrimage to Southampton to watch Saints take on Preston North End - one of the founder members of the Football League and a club with a proud tradition but one which has not seen too much success in recent years. (Where have I heard that before?)

It was a decent game and seemed to be heading towards a 0-0 draw until the 90th minute when, for the fourth time this season, Saints conceded a late goal to snatch defeat from the jaws of stalemate. No complaints - just one of those things - so again I shrugged my shoulders, took it on the chin, drew a line in the sand and moved on at the end of the day....it`s what Saints fans are used to doing.

Earlier in the day, the traffic allowing, I paid another visit to Hythe - the village on the shores of Southampton Water where I spent much of my boyhood. I had had a Christmas card earlier in the week from a friend of mine who lives in the nearby village of Dibden and he told me that Hythe and Dibden Parish Council had now produced the second in a series of four or five blue plaques to commemorate well-known people who had had connections with the area.

(Myrtle Cottage - click on photo to enlarge)

The first plaque had been put up a couple of years ago in recognition of my old school friend, William Scammell, the poet, who was born in Hythe. The second plaque has now been erected on the front wall of Myrtle Cottage in Shore Road , pictured above, which is where TE Lawrence (of Arabia) lived whilst he was working on the development of high speed torpedo boats at the nearby yard owned and managed by the British Power Boat Company.

Lawrence kind of flicked across my memory, not just for who he was or that Myrtle Cottage was about 50 yards from the cottage where we lived in Hythe but also because I have a photograph of Lawrence`s funeral in Dorset, with my father prominently shown in the group of mourners paying their final respects.

Lawrence looks just a tad grumpy in this photograph of him - maybe Myrtle Cottage didn`t quite come up to his expectations or - more likely - he was just as fed up with Saints conceding last minute goals in the 1930s as I was yesterday. C`est la vie.