crowdsurfing is strictly prohibited

I had a dream the other night that I went to a zoo. Instead of being kept in cages and enclosures, each animal was contained within a wicker effigy of itself; and the animals could all speak, but only in the manner of their keepers. So all of the goats were trapped inside wicker goats, and had Polish accents.

I've checked this out with the Pixie; it definitely means I'm gay, apparently.

Meanwhile, in real life, manly stuff has been happening. A couple of weekends ago, we went to watch a game of live action subbuteo; AFC Wimbledon vs Bristol Rovers.

Despite this kind of being our home town, we were there to cheer (very quietly, as we managed to end up at the home end surrounded by Rovers fans) for AFC. And here's why.

Ten years ago, first division Wimbledon FC decided to up sticks and move 56 miles north to Milton Keynes - home to grid road systems and concrete cows. This was (quite understandably) unpopular with their fans; supporting Wimbledon was already a lot like being trapped in an abusive relationship, and having to make a round trip of over a hundred miles to watch a home game was taking the piss. So they decided to start their own club, holding open trials on Wimbledon Common for anyone that fancied trying out. A team of players was selected, and AFC Wimbledon went on to get spanked 4-0 in their first game.

AFC Wimbledon eventually finished third in their opening season in the lowest division of English football, and had a higher average attendance at their home games than Wimbledon FC (by this time referred to by fans as "The Franchise") who were still playing games 7 leagues above AFC.

Since then AFC have been promoted five times in the last nine years, hold the record for the longest unbeaten run in all senior English football, and are presently just one league below the old Wimbledon team (now the Milton Keynes Dons). They also lost 1-0 in the cold and rain-soaked match we went to see; but it was still a fun day, and we're looking forward to doing it again next year.

We had more fun a few days later, when we took the track slag out for a day of trying-not-to-crash around Castle Combe. We soon discovered that it was just a couple of weeks before the start of the racing season, and that the vast majority of track days up and down the country had been booked out by "proper" racers trying to get their machines fine-tuned; which meant that a) there were a lot of very cool modern and classic race-spec cars in attendance, and b) we spent most of our time trying to avoid them on the track.

We're continuing to tweak the slag after each run; since I drove it last the brakes have been modestly uprated, and the old steering wheel with its boring airbag has been replaced with a spiffy little steering wheel with a neat yellow stripe.

So now the car stops a bit better, and has more yellow stripes on it. Next on the list is tweaked suspension, to stop the car from wallowing about in the corners like a fifteen year old Bavarian executive coupe; and a few cosmetic issues, to stop us from looking like a bunch of chumps that don't really know what we're doing.

We made a start on this at the weekend; the now superfluous studs and brackets that the rear seats connected to were angle-grindered to oblivion, and made a start on removing the big black patches of tar-like sound deadening material with the aid of a Dan Dare style heat gun and a scrapey thing.

The heat ray was merciless.