Semi-Final Tickets 30 Years Apart

My Wembley ticket today is 20 times more expensive than City's last FA Cup semi at Villa Park 30 years ago. Mancini's team probably cost a 100 times more than John Bond's...

Ich Bin Ein Wembley Berliner

Tomorrow's massive FA Cup showdown with United will be my first Wembley semi-final since England v Germany at Euro 96.

Fifteen years ago I was a reporter at BBC Radio 5 Live. The England tickets had sold out instantly and were going for a fortune on the black market. But I found out the day before the match that there were still some available in the Germany end.

The problem was, you needed a German passport to buy them at the Wembley box office.

So I called the World Service radio boys and asked them if any Germans fancied coming along with me and buying two tickets - one for them and one for me. Sure enough, one of them did.

Job done and ticket price claimed back on expenses.

It made a decent report on the Peter Allen and Jane Garvey breakfast show - the glamorous TV news boys even phoned up and asked me to do a version for them, which helped me get a stint on the Six O'Clock News.

I remember more about the experience of being with the German fans than the match itself. My new pal from the World Service translated their most colourful chants, which consisted of putting index fingers to each side of their heads in a devil-horn style and taunting the English about having mad cow disease.

I also remember the explosive moment when that Kuntz equalised. The German turned to me and shouted cruelly but accurately: "Dat's Football!"

Aside from not being with the English knuckleheads, there were two other bonuses about being with the Germans: the famous Gazza golden goal miss in extra time was at our end (one less pint and we'd have won it), and the penalty shoot-out was, too - even though the goal was still about half a mile away in the horrible old Wembley.

So that was odd: England lost but I was an honorary German for the day and everyone was delighted.

Tomorrow I'll be with 30,000 other City fans at the new Wembley. Only one result will make us happy, no matter where we're sat.

Man in City shirt lifts FA Cup

Me and Joe at TV Centre in 2002: Is this the closest a City shirt has been to the Cup since that final in 1981? Could all change if we beat United tomorrow...

Terns Return: World Still Working

The Sandwich Terns are back in Norfolk.

A lot's happened since they bailed out to Africa for the winter: major earthquakes, tsunamis, a nuclear catastrophe and City reaching an FA Cup semi-final.

But to paraphrase Ted Hughes on Swifts, if the terns have made it back again, the globe's still working.

The birds were making life a lot noisier for the mostly grey seals on Blakeney Point during our boat trip on Saturday morning. More pictures here.

The first returning Swallows of the year were also brightening up street wires in Salthouse and Gunthorpe.

And we got some great views of Marsh Harriers: at Gunthorpe (a first), Cley and this one at Lakenheath RSPB reserve on the way home.

Mancini's City: Shot-Shy, Tough-Tackling, Deadly

Away

Very interesting stats on Sky Sports News confirm what's obvious to most of us: we don't shoot very often compared to the rest of the top four but when we do they tend to be on target and go in.

The research was prompted by a Spurs fan after it was pointed out that City have scored nine more Premier League goals than Tottenham despite Harry's reputation for all-out attacking flair.

Away, we've got the fewest shots but the highest percentage of goals to shots. At home, we're second only to United in the goals/shots ratio.

Both stats confirm what we already knew: our strikers, and Tevez in particular, are ruthless in front of goal.

It's also striking that Chelsea have had more than twice as many shots as City away from home but more of City's have been on target.

What is surprising is the high amount of tackles we put in: testament to the tirelessness of De Jong, Barry and the rest.

Let's hope Mancini keeps them off the leash against Liverpool on Monday. They were a treat to watch against Sunderland at home last weekend.

Home

London Garden Blight: Parakeets v Trampolines

There were seven Rose-ringed Parakeets in my Shepherd's Bush back garden when I opened the curtains at 6.30am today.

Three were fighting for space on one of the two sunflower-seed feeders. The others were perched in the still-leafless fig tree that overlooks them.

At this time of year we usually see them before we hear them: sunrise is around 6.35am and it's still chilly enough to have the windows closed all night.

But give it a month and their unmistakeable, ear-piercing kyik! kyik! squawking will be waking up everyone with a half-open bedroom window by first light at 5.30 in the morning.

It's around then that I stop filling up the bird feeders. I actually quite like the noise myself - it's part of the west London soundscape and I'd much rather be woken early by a Himalayan parrot than Farming Today on Radio Four.

But the elderly next-door-neighbour isn't as keen. He's too neighbourly to make an issue of it but the tinfoil things he hangs from the branches of his fig tree and the way he shoos-off the birds whenever he sees them are a bit of a giveaway.

He's not the only one who'd rather they weren't there. Fifteen months ago Natural England made it legal to shoot parakeets and destroy their nests and eggs without a licence if the landowner has a good reason, such as crop or habitat destruction.

That was in response to the huge surge in the population in London and the Home Counties - there are nearly 5,000 breeding pairs these days and each bird can live up to 18 years. Not a bad effort by the few pioneering film-set escapees of 60 years ago.

Supporters of the permission-to-cull legislation say the incomers are also a threat to our native garden birds, especially House Sparrows which have all but vanished from parts of north and east London.

But in my bit of W12, we've got a thriving population of chattering sparrows in the inaccessible Dog Rose bushes at the back of the garden and they regularly scrap with their more glamorous rivals for a perch on the feeders.

Great Spotted Woodpeckers are also said to be under threat because the parakeets use the same sort of tree holes they favour for their nests.

But in the last three years, woodpeckers have been regular visitors to the hanging peanut feeder on the other side of our garden. They come more often, not less.

All anecdotal, of course, but I'm very fond of the parakeets. Visitors are amazed the first time they see them in the garden and they certainly liven up summer evenings when squawking, fast-flying flocks of 30 or more sweep over the rooftops before settling down to roost at Wormwood Scrubs.

And given the choice between their noisiness and the sound of excited toddlers bouncing on and falling off trampolines all weekend - boing, boing, waahh! -  it's a no-brainer.

My First Chiffchaff Photo

A Chiffchaff today

Regular readers will remember that I had to use a picture of a Dunnock to go with my annual Chiffchaff sighting stats in a previous post.

Never again.

Because today I snapped an actual Chiffchaff on Horsenden Hill near Perivale.

Other images of the day included a Slow Worm covered in ants, a Green Woodpecker and two of the Terrapins which live in the Grand Union Canal.