it looked like being another one of those days at the Emirates... it took Arsenal 80 minutes to finally beat Manchester City - we huffed and puffed and RVP missed a penalty but we kept pace with pool and the chavs both who won (as predicted earlier!) Cambridge got the point and the clean sheet Jimmy Quinn demanded and so if they can win on Monday against Ebbsfleet they can go top again - heady stuff!

Tomorrow we are hoping to get out in to the megalithic countryside of Wiltshire to have a look at Stonehenge and (possibly Avebury and Silbury Hill). I hope its not too commercial - I haven't been since the penultimate henge festival (1984?) and naturally my memories of that are somewhat hazy... since then I've been to Brodgar and Stennes on Orkney several times and to the Rollrights a couple of years ago. Stonehenge is amazing but its lost some soul since its been fenced off. Still it should be a good exercise for the new lens which I need to get used to before Skye. I'll try and post soem photos later in the week.

Rat watch: the boys have got a spacious new addition to their pad but still seem intent on sleeping for most of the day

No post yet from Arseblogger... I expect he's been partying hard in Dublin and there will be many bloiks this morning. Big game for the Gunners this afternoon, Man City at home. Normally we'd be looking at an easy 3 points but with City sitting top of the league under sven and Micah Richards talk of the town it could be very close. Hopefully Gilberto and Ade will be back and Jens is out with an 'injury' so we can do the business and keep the distance between ourselves and United. I expect liverpool and chelski to both win. cambridge have a real test away at woking - lets hope the lads have fully recovered from the mystery virus and and at least get a point.

All the papers are full of headlines about youth gangs following the murder of Ryan Jones in Liverpool. IT almost feels like everywhere gangs are going 'hey we're not in the news, if Manchester London and Liverpool can kill each other shouldn't we be at it?'. Stupid I know. Clearing up my office yesterday I found a copy of the Sun I had kept from August 2005 with screaming headlines about Britian being out of control - gangs and anti-social youth running amok. This week Philip Lawrence's killer won his appeal against being deported and the papers reminded us that such headlines were about ten years ago. It is still a minority of youngsters that are involved but the age of some, below their teens, is very worrying. You can't lock up ten and eleven year olds and you can't even send 15 year olds into national service. Had a good chat with FM this morning about it - we both noted that along with deprivation, poverty, lack of prospects and testosterone much of this violence and gang behaviour seems to be fuelled by gangsta rap. You can't ban music - that only makes it more popular - but surely some of these rappers (who are rich and influential) needs to start preaching a different message. Not sure what though, study hard and get a good job hardly makes a great lyric does it?