This is my 100th post!!!!!

I have been writing now for 130 days so my average rate is not so bad but I do feel bad for not leaving a post since last Monday; my worst run of form yet. Maybe being beaten three-nil by Everton just left me speechless, this is the first moment I've actually been able to admit to that score-line.

Hello to the new visitors I'm receiving from Liverpool, it is good to have you here. Most of you will have come courtesy of the Liverpool Echo and I am very grateful to them for running the story of the quest so far. I'll point out for those of you with eagle eyes that the signed photograph is of Peter Beardsley and not Philip Beardsley. If you want to catch up with the story so far then you can do that here.

Since this is the first news story about the 'Money For Old Rope' campaign I have published the story below. I have only read the web version which does not have pictures on it and so I have not seen the large picture of me and Paul Willgoss from GUCH although I have been told by my Mum that it looks like I could lose a couple of stone. They say the camera adds 10 pounds, and I did have 3 photos taken so that could explain it.

I have never been very photogenic and the fact that I'm looking in the wrong direction probably doesn't help but if anyone has a scanner and wants to send me a copy then please feel free. I should receive mine around Tuesday in the post as I missed the papers last night.

I was hoping that the coverage on the Liverpool Echo might get me onto Google News but that doesn't seem to have happened.


Here is the Liverpool Echo story in full:

Swop shop for heart charity

Sep 15 2006

Liverpool Echo


A NUCLEAR consultant is hoping to get money for old rope - and send it to a heart charity.

Paul Youngson, 24, was born with congenital heart problems and had to have a series of operations when he was three months old.

Now the safety consultant is hoping to raise thousands of pounds by trading an old piece of rope for prizes.

Mr Youngson, from Hale Village, got the idea from a news story about a man who started with a paper clip and continuously swopped it until he ended up with a house.

He is just four months into his trading and Mr Youngson has got his hand on a Xabi Alonso shirt from Liverpool Football Club.

The former Alder Hey patient said: "I started with a piece of old rope and swopped it for some scissors.

"Then I got an email from an Australian man whose son had been born with congenital heart disease and he traded a shirt he had worn to the Olympics where he was a steward.

"I swopped this for as signed photo of Philip Beardsley and Liverpool FC traded this for Alonso's shirt."

Mr Youngson plans to continue trading for 18 months, and then auction whatever he is left with for heart charity Guch, which works with people who have congenital heart disease.

To follow his progress see money-for-old-rope.blogspot.com and to learn more about congenital heart disease see www.guch.org.uk

That day five years ago when the world changed is the only topic on the minds of the media and most of the general public today. Everyone remembers where they were that day; as much as we would like the terrorists to have failed, at the moment they are doing what they set out to. But look at the Nazi party, they had a massive impact on the world but ultimately they lost in the end.

I remember where I was, I was in Spain on a holiday with two friends. It was the middle of the afternoon on our second to last day and I decided to watch the news. I hadn't watched the news the whole two weeks I had been out there but at this particular moment I decided that I wanted to see the news. I switched CNN on and at that precise moment they went live to the rooftop where the reporters had just heard about an explosion at the world trade center.

Sure enough there were flames coming from one of the towers as they speculated on the ground about what could of happened. Minutes later, captivated by the scenes on the television screen I watched as a small dot went across the screen and into the second tower. The reporters were oblivious to it, I was sure it was a plane, I turned to the others and said so but the reporters kept talking about this explosion that had happened and speculated about what it could have been.

What seemed like a couple of minutes went by until the reporters got word of the sight that the viewers had seen directly behind them. It was unthinkable, yet still possible.

You know the rest of the story, I don't need to carry on beyond my viewpoint.

I carried on watching the news all day, I didn't really know what to think. After a while one name started to be banded around, Osama Bin Laden, even that day, before the causes were known and the papers had put their spin on the events, everyone knew who was to blame.

You even knew who he was, you were sure you had heard of him before, everyone was. Was it one of those tricks of the mind, like when a song is an instant classic and you swear you've been singing it for months before you first heard it. Events did start to dawn on me: a bomb at Malaga Airport, a plane bought down over the Mediteranean, the bombing of USS Cole.

Osama Bin Laden was the culprit. It doesn't matter about polictics, economics, history. You can argue until you are blue in the face about how many bombs have been dropped on who in the name of so-called democracy or freedom. There is one man who admitted to and reveled in the deaths of over 3000 people in the biggest single planned atrocity of recent times.

No-one should support him or say that it was the fault of foreign policy. There are many ways to deal with countries that you feel are pushing you around and there are great examples of people who have succeeded in doing this without resorting to violence.

The thing I wish for today is for Bin Laden to be caught and pay for his crimes. is this laughable? I'm not sure. But it is what I wish for nonetheless.

These are the things that I feel on September 11th, they may not be the things that you feel and I can understand that but at least the events are not forgotten.