Bye Bye Bobby

The first home game of the season against Leicester was the first occasion many Ipswich fans had to properly pay their respects to Sir Bobby Robson. He was the man who made it possible that wherever you go in the footballing world, if you say you're an Ipswich fan the person you're talking to will smile in recognition of a team that punched well above its weight for many years.
His death from cancer was hardly a surprise but the outpouring of emotion from fans of Ipswich and other clubs still took me by surprise.
Thomas & I went to the Leicester game, partly because he'd got a new kit for his birthday and partly because I thought that as Town supporters we just had to. I dug out an old scarf I had that roughly dated from the Robson years and we put it among the hundreds of scarves, shirts, banners, photos and other items that were arranged round his statue and attached to the railings all along Portman Road.



Everyone inside the ground enthusiastically joined in the minute's applause before the kick off and Bobby Robson's name was repeatedly sung throughout the game.



Sadly the team on the pitch couldn't rise to the occasion, Thomas' second 0-0 out of three visits to Portman Road was a bit of a let down. We'll be going as a family to the Newcastle game in September. Hopefully both teams will produce something a bit more fitting to his memory then.

Canvassing opinion

Having had a tent as a 40th birthday gift we thought that it was high time we gave it an outing. So in the last week of June we packed up the car with what seemed like a vast amount of stuff and headed to Carlton Park in Saxmundham.
Thankfully it's a pretty easy tent to pitch which left us just enough time on the Friday evening to head to nearby Aldeburgh for some fish and chips



Saxmundham is very handy for the coast so we went to Thorpeness, where we spent a pleasant 30 minutes rowing round the boating lake, although having a set of oars of different lengths didn't help. We also went back to Aldeburgh for a bit of shopping. The campsite itself has an excellent playground where the zip line proved very popular.



Everyone slept pretty well, the campsite's showers were good and Thomas and Martha made some new friends. We'll give it a go later in the summer at Waxham and who knows maybe further afield for a proper holiday at some point.