As worcesterpark mentioned in a recent post there seems to be little of interest to blog about in Worcester Park at the minute so in the lull I've been been indulging in the riches of our glorious National Health Service at a highly esteemed local hospital, but as neither of us were able to put any points on the scoreboard on Thursday they've demanded a replay in a couple of weeks time.

In the meantime a the great whale of Google has spewed a few morsels onto the search-o-sphere:

PlanetRecruit has a job opening in Worcester Park for a Mac user designing brochures and posters

The Local Guardian has a story about a couple of Worcester Park guys in a band called Trail trying to win a competition to record at Abbey Road studios.

And Youtube has been graced with  a snippet from a recent Worcester Park football game here

Lastly Virtual Worcester Park has worked its way up the popularity table from around 9000th to 370th. In one slightly surreal moment I clicked on it one day to discover that it was listed as 666 in the standings

I think I can leave you to make up your own jokes at this point.... but remember to click here - http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com

Isn't it odd how you can live somewhere so long and then find out yet more things you didn't know about it. This week my eye was caught by this picture in the window of Mann Countrywide:

The item for sale is a one bed, one reception trailer mobile home for £75k in Worcester Park's very own Riverhill trailer park estate and if you, like me, didn't know where that was it's here, right behind Surbiton Raceway.

If you've got £220k you could always buy the 2 bed, 2 reception version!!

And click here - http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com/

Wasn't the weather nice yesterday? In spite of my cold I trolled around Nonsuch Park after the Brinkster Clan with Miss Brinkster in the lead, which could account for why Brinkster Minor ended up on his butt in the mud as she'd chosen a less than optimally dry path through the trees..... Bright and sunny though so he dried off quickly, and an ice cream cheered him up.

We had an unusual problem this weekend as Mrs Brinkster went to put the rubbish out in the bin and found it was full.....  of somebody else's rubbish. There were two blue bin bags with "Merton" on the side of them with clothes and boxes in there, but none of the usual day-to-day household rubbish. We've spoken to the Council and we suspect it's one of the houses further up the road where Mrs Brinkster spotted activity over the weekend of people moving in/out. If the Govt ever do introduce a tax on rubbish I would anticipate that this is something we'll see a lot more of.

Lastly, I think I've unearthed another Worcester Park blog in the form of "Mobile Blog" with photos of trains, cats, landmarks and our beloved Worcester Park station. As it is a blog from a mobile there's little text on there but they might be encouraged to venture forth, eh?

P.S. Congratulations to Lee for piercing my veil of anonymity and 'outing' me as The Brinkster at a party on Saturday! Thought you deserved a mention

The phenomenon that is Valentines Day is upon us and the Brinkster fridge is stocked with scallops, oysters and bubbly... though I haven't quite worked what relevance the usual Valentines frippery has to do with commemorating the life/death of an obscure ancient Roman martyr... but then neither have I quite worked out why celebrating the birth of Jesus makes me want to by an iPod.

For me Valentines Day means two things. Firstly that Worcester Park restaurants will be heaving, with the hordes of the disorganised peering longingly through the windows. Secondly it means that there won't be anywhere to park on Brinkley Road as restaurant-goers joust for spaces and probably hold up all the other traffic in the process. All things considered staying in sounds like a good plan. Our record is having to park 25 houses away from our own on a busy night.

Your useless fact for the day is that until 1969 the Roman Catholic church apparently had 11 different St Valentines Days in the calendar.....

And click here - http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com

I've had an anonymous post today which I thought I'd reproduce here in the hope of getting more info:

Instead of bringing you the latest news I thought I'd pass on this Youtube nugget, the description of which reads:
"Worcester Park bridge got flooded and i was on the bus with Sean and Max. We went through the flood and the bus got flooded and our feet got soaked."

You'd have to be a bit more desperate to watch "gangstas in worcester park" though. I hope they're suitably embarrassed.

As Mrs Brinkster has taken the clan away for the night I may brave the Hunstman's Hall around 6 this evening to see what their new menu has to offer. If I do go, and if I survive the experience, I'll post about it tomorrow.

As posted yesterday I headed off to the Huntsmans for dinner, albeit a little later than advertised, to see what they had to offer. Despite it's fearsome reputation the handful of people in there weren't drunk or spoiling for a fight and there were no dogs of any size in sight so I ordered my unadventurous chicken burger and chips and settled down with my beer in a seat near one of the big TVs. I find that having a TV in a pub can be a mixed blessing but it wasn't too loud and, whereas this time yesterday morning I didn't know or care who Lily Allen's top 10 British artists are I can only now say that I don't care.

My food arrived reasonably swiftly and I confess to being surprised when it arrived as I'd had very low expectations as to what would turn up and had a small chuckle about the "Fine dining at it's best" comment on the front of the menu but I was pleased to see a decent looking burger, salad and fries (the thin things, not 'chips') garnished with chopped parsley. It was all hot and tasty and inside the burger I was even more surprised to find pieces of real chicken, not some squashed down, breadcrumbed, 10-for-a-quid frozen food type stuff. The bun was a bit firmer than I might normally go for but I know some of you like your buns firmer than I do [snigger]. The picture doesn't really do it justice and on the whole I'd say it competes favourably with most pub grub I've come across so would urge you to give it a try.

The only slight downsides I could see were a couple of signs of the former clientele etched into one of the seats and a slightly forlorn Christmas decoration on the mantelpiece (see top picture) but gazing out of the windows at the bustle of people and traffic making their way home from work I could easily imagine it as a place to sit down and have a quiet chat or bring a group of friends to. It was a bit busier when I left and there were another couple having dinner, suggesting that I'm not entirely out of my mind for trying the food.

I know that picking one hour on a Wednesday night isn't exactly representative of what it may be like the rest of the time but I wasn't put off by the place so would encourage you to give it a go and support one of Worcester Park's most historic pubs!

And click this - http://worcesterpark.myminicity.com/

Not from Brinkley Road, or Worcester Park obviously, but from now on this blog can be found at:

http://brinkleyroad.blogspot.com 
Please change all your bookmarks, rss feeds, direct debits, as appropriate.

I've been using Blogspot as a backup for a while so it's got most of the posts on it and as 20six hasn't been available for most of the week I think it's not fair on anybody to try and maintain a blog that disappears and reappears at random. Some things about Blogspot are better (like it's there all the time) and some things aren't (no email notifications) but I hope that in general it'll be better.

See you over there soon!!