Day 444: Undercover Liver birds

12/10/2022

At the start of the week, it hit us, all this Lachnadoing about, where have we seen this before? Turns out he is just like Jack-Jack. It all makes sense now. Super Mum had a quick chat with Lachlan-Lachlan to try and teach him to harness his powers for good and not evil. Lachlan-Lachlan made no promises. We have actually had a bit of an issue with Lachlan pulling Eloise’s hair this week. Eloise picks him up, puts him in the corner and forcefully tells him he is in time out. It is not working though as Lachlan-Lachlan loves this and giggles his head off. We’ll have to work on this.

The grandparents were having a nice peaceful time in Florence with a cheeky afternoon Tuscan wine tour.

Throughout Tuscany wine bottles and many a restaurant feature a black rooster, the famed ‘Gallo nero’, a marketing logo with a history that stretches back to the Middle Ages. Legend has it that the black rooster, initially signifying the whole of the Chianti and now indicating the Chianti Classico region, was chosen for the following reason: In the Middle Ages when Siena and Florence were fierce rivals and wished to locate the boundary between them, it was decided that two knights would set out on horseback from their respective hometowns at cockcrow and where they met would be the boundary.

Concerningly, “Italy’s Stromboli volcano erupts, lava stretches to the sea”, luckily not near the grandparents.

Meanwhile, Eloise was focused on building the Glaswegian Burj Khalifa. A tricky task, not because of the wind, but because Lachlan-Lachlan had resumed playing his character of choice, Godzilla.

With Grandma Nicholls out and about, Eloise requested a Dr. Seuss marathon. Both the kids have been sleeping reasonably well this week, touch wood…

Monday afternoon, Nicola Sturgeon told the SNP “It took the Tories three years to realise Boris Johnson was a disaster. With Liz Truss, it took them just three weeks”. The Scottish independence movement is worryingly growing momentum due to the incompetence coming out of Westminster.

Tuesday, the grandparents were on the move again, after some tricky trains they arrived in Venice. With all these bridges it was lovely to have an extra couple set of hands to help with the Batmobile.

Lachlan was out and about zooming around, trying to find the grandparents.

Back in the news, well it is always in the news at the moment, “the UK’s highest court has been urged to resolve the “festering” issue of whether Holyrood can set up a Scottish independence referendum without the agreement of Westminster”.

Wednesday morning, the kids had a great idea for breakfast, grabbing the shoe racks so they had a good breakfast setup. Whatever makes them eat, works for us.

In the afternoon the grandparents enjoyed some lovely Island hopping on a Venice day

Built in the seventeenth century, the leaning tower has a square shape and Renaissance and neoclassical architectural features. He has undergone several restorations over the centuries, especially in the upper part of the belfry. Among these maintenance works the most note is the one carried out by the Tirali, which occurred between 1703 and 1714. Burano’s leaning tower Burano island leaning tower Burano Italy leaning tower. The height of the Burano’s tower is 53 meters and it stands on a base with a side of 6.20 meters. Because of land subsidence it is inclined of 1.83 meters respect to its axis. The top of the leaning tower has always been crowned by an angel, fell in 1867 during a storm; now in its place there is a cross of iron.

Last week, Liverpool beat Rangers 2-0 at Anfield in the Champions League. Today, Rangers had the home ground advantage with Liverpool making their first trip to Ibrox Stadium. It is common for European clubs to have more members than seats in their stadium, so it was near impossible to get a ticket. After pulling a few strings, I thought I was dead out of luck, until I got a call four hours before kick off. I could not believe it, I almost fell off my chair. We were in!

I quickly dashed home to say an early goodnight to the kids. I have quite a large invested interest in not dying so there would not be any Liverpool tops tonight. Even the Liverpool socks were too risky. On the way out the door, Super Mum made some ridiculous comment about how “this is great, we don’t need to go to Anfield again”. What she actually meant was that ‘you should buy a Liverpool vs Rangers scalf’, so that was exactly what I did.

Ibrox has a reputation of being one of the best and harshest atmospheres in world football. It was time to see how it compared to Adelaide United’s Cooper Hindmarsh Stadium.

Ibrox Stadium is a football stadium on the south side of the River Clyde in the Ibrox area of Glasgow, Scotland. The home of Rangers F.C., Ibrox is the third largest football stadium in Scotland, with an all-seated capacity of 50,817 Opened as Ibrox Park in 1899, it suffered a disaster in 1902 when a wooden terrace collapsed. Vast earthen terraces were built in its place, and a main stand, now a listed building, in 1928. A British record crowd of 118,567 gathered in January 1939 for a league match with Celtic.

From a mile out the streets were swamped in blue all descending in on Ibrox. Half a dozen police vans with sirens blazing sprinted past to rendezvous with the police helicopter. This was all just to escort the Liverpool fans into the stadium, well almost all the Liverpool fans 😉 Liverpool largely come in peace too, I could not imagine what an Old Firm match would be like.

Liverpool have been off the pace this season, but Klopp was fired up and ready to go.

I met up with my football friend, who was also a Liverpool supporter. He made it clear before we went in, we would not be celebrating Liverpool goals tonight, because you know, the whole wanting to stay alive thing. It was, let’s say, a cultural experience, making our way through the chanting crowds and up to the pitch.

This was a special night, if you were to ask the die hard Rangers fans, I am sure they would say it has been too long since the Champions League Anthem was blaring at Ibrox.

Even after watching Messi dump Chelsea out of the Champions League in 2018 with 99,354 mad supporters at Camp Nou. Ibrox was at another level. I have never been in such an electric and hostile environment. The place erupted whenever Liverpool’s and ex Celtic player Big Virgil van Dijk were on the ball, certainly cannot repeat in a family friendly blog. This was certainly not one for another Daughter-Daddy date. If you find the Scottish accent challenging to understand, I can assure you fifty odd thousand of them screaming together does not help.

Funnily enough, we sat right next to Michael Owen and Rio Ferdinand.

The match could not have gone any better. Rangers went one goal up and it felt like the stadium was going to collapse. However, Liverpool were just too strong, putting any remaining doubt of the English and Scottish football debate to bed. After Bobby slotted a couple to dampen the mood, Eloise’s mate, Mo Salah came off the bench to score the fastest ever Champions League hattrick in just 6 minutes and 12 seconds. The two of them were incredible, Rangers could not live with them, it was if they were playing a different match out there.

It was a brilliant night, plus as a bonus, we had done so well with the whole not dying thing. Now, the tricky bit, the undercover Liver birds just had to get out past a few tens of thousands of angry Rangers supporters. Fortunately, this was actually my second Liverpool match and second Champions League match.

The liver bird is a mythical creature which is the symbol of the English city of Liverpool. It is normally represented as a cormorant, and appears as such on the city’s arms, in which it bears a branch of laver seaweed in its beak as a further pun on the name “Liverpool”. King John founded the borough of Liverpool by royal charter in 1207.

Supposedly, outside Ibrox, the world kept spinning with the “UK government lawyers have told the Supreme Court it is “obvious” that the Scottish Parliament does not have the power to stage an independence vote without Westminster’s consent”.