Chris Wickham

@Jonathan77777 I think Mickey Adams played in a Football League Trophy game at Luton in January 1998.

Very sad to read this. I listened to him on Capital every morning for years and had a lovely lunch with him, for this feature - richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/news/662550.li… - when I was a young reporter almost 20 years ago. A very nice man.

Have some tickets for this on the middle weekend! Looking good.

The ‘linesman’ for this game in 1967 was Bernard Wickham, my grandfather’s brother. Really cool to see his name in print. I’m not sure there are too many mementoes that still exist in our family of his time as a football official.

So why are parents so upset and angry about the @educationgovuk attendance campaign? It’s because it reveals how the DfE thinks about parents of children who are struggling to attend school, and shows how very little they understand of the causes of school attendance difficulties. The posters all have same format. A child complains about something in the morning - worries, a stomach ache, or a runny nose but ‘look at her/him now!’, with a picture of a happy child in school uniform. The message to parents is clear. The DfE thinks they are ‘too soft’ and just need to push a bit past their children’s resistance to get into a place where they will be happy - school. Children might complain but it’s not serious. They’ll ’be fine’. This is a message which parents are used to hearing. ‘They’re fine once they’re here’ is so common as to be a cliche amongst parents with children who beg them every evening not to send them to school the next day or who protest every morning. Schools don’t see the problems and so they assume that they aren’t happening. For parents who are struggling every morning to get their children into school - and then dealing with highly distressed children after school - these posters confirm their suspicions that everyone thinks this is their fault. They are just not ‘good parents’. It confirms that no one believes them when they say that their child is deeply distressed by school and that the problem isn’t home. These parents already feel blamed, and these posters add more shame. They do nothing to address or even mention the reasons why so many children are struggling to attend. The DfE thinks they know why there’s a problem - it’s parents who believe their kids and who don’t push them into school hard enough. To the parents who have been asking for support but who are met with long waiting lists and high thresholds for CAMHS, along with fixed penalty fines for poor attendance, this confirms what they already felt. There’s no help coming. It’s just ‘try harder’.

He was at our wedding, helped us move house and was at just about every birthday, party, event and gathering, buying a beer, having fun and being good company. I hope he felt part of the family. I’ll miss him. RIP.

There was a period where every week he would tell us of a new band, or someone he had heard of. Young musicians he was helping to support or drive around. Quite a few of them went on to have decent careers and I can say that my mate John told me about them.

John had been unwell for a while and we thought this was coming but it is still very sad news, especially for his family. John was Godfather to our eldest and I had the pleasure of travelling the country with him and those closest to me watching Brentford in my formative years.

Feels like it has been non-stop since Christmas. Think today was the first day of summer ⁦@HomeOfCricket⁩ ⁦@englandcricket⁩ #lovelords #engvire

Came home from a few days away to find a very nice gift delivered by @AmazonUK with no name. No idea who to thank!

My son just failed to find me in today’s game of Where’s Wally.

@Jonathan77777 Didn’t Ivar Ingimarsson do it in 2000/01. Northampton away on the first day and Bury at home on the last if I remember rightly.

@StainesArts @eastlondonbee @emmadesmith @BrentfordFC There are probably 300,000 people that claim they were there 😉.

Work request: England fans who were at the World Cup Final 66' - have vivid memories of the day itself, the atmosphere, the moment the Queen handed Bobby the trophy, the celebrations and so on - whether that's you (appreciate unlikely to be on twitter) or a parent please tweet me

Was in the room when this was recorded with @danroan and @ChrisEriksen8. Definitely worth listening to, watching, reading, consuming in any way you can. A great accompaniment to the @BrentfordFC interview at the start of the week.

@ianwestbrook @parkrunUK @oakhillparkrun Well done Ian. You won’t look back now!

Not the best day weather-wise for my first-ever @parkrunUK but so pleased to have done it after taking up running during lockdown. Delighted to have done it with family helping and cheering me on too at our home course @oakhillparkrun #loveparkrun

The fella in green caught a ball that must have flown 75 metres, although he did spill his bottle of red wine in the process. 😁