Birthday celebrations

It was all go last night - it was my 60th birthday matches at the Beach and DATA, and we were able to finally award Nigel Meany with his 50th shirt, not to mention celebrating Steve Paterson's 54th birthday - and it was Red Nose Day - whew! Jeb entered in to the spirit of the latter:


Jeb was merely a spectator at the Beach as he had, as he himself put it, "pulled a mussel" when taking part in a charity sprint at lunchtime - cue lots of fishy puns.

Before presenting me with my 60 shirt, Jeb had arranged a bit of a surprise when he asked us all to leave the pitch and walk next door to where the young girls were preparing for their usual Friday night gymnastics. Frankly, I had never before seen the Thistle shirt I was presented with - yes, that's right, it's a beautiful pink number with light grey hoops:

The girls had to sing happy birthday to me - of course, they didn't know my name, but, having seen the shirt, it had to be "happy birthday, dear Stewart"!

From the Beach, it was straight to DATA for the second match of the evening. Different line-up this time, although Malcolm, Andy M, Ian McR, John M and I all took part in both matches - and Jeb appeared in goals. Geordie had just acquired a brand new set of shiny red boots - Ronaldo-esque:

The team photo didn't work out too well - a bit dark and grainy in the floodlights:

At the end of the match, Colin presented Nigel with his Huddersfield 50 shirt:

Before we went for our curry, we had a refuelling pit stop at the Douglas, where I collected a real rarity - a cheque from Nigel - and a blank one at that!:

Of course, the older members of BVFG will recall that Nigel was always latchy with paying his quarterly subs - this record from the archives almost a decade ago was me finally collecting his payment - exactly a year after I gave up organising the Friday night football:

Note spelling of "Vetrens" - Nigel obviously went to the same school as Jeb!

Curry consumed, then back to the Douglas again for large drams to celebrate the various birthdays:

One of the beers on was Macbeth from the new Deeside Brewery, for which I am officially CAMRA's local BLO (Brewery Liaison Officer, would you believe!), so I had to pose behind the bar to round off a great evening.

Thanks a lot for a great evening, guys - especially Jeb, Colin and the absent Dave, who made all the arrangements. I'll treasure the shirt - although I'm not sure how often I'll actually wear it!

The last photo of the evening had to be Jeb's retro shell suit - it was a cracker: