It's a new month  and a while since I gave you all the last update on my list, so as I'm sat here I thought I'd put my free time to some use and enthral you all with my tales of excitement in my mission to complete my list.

I'm pleased to report that I've actually managed to cross a few things off as well, which shocks me as much as it probably shocks you. The first thing I have to tell you about is number 12 – Watch Liverpool play from the Kop. Now you'd think this wouldn't be too hard to achieve, but just how hard is it to get tickets for a Liverpool match!! My first attempt to go watch Liverpool play was last year when they had Chelsea in the FA Cup Semi final. I'd popped in the Meg for my normal Cheese & Salad baguette lunch and got chatting to Mick who happened to drop into conversation he could get hold of some tickets for us. Fucking Brilliant I thought!!! How good would it be to go and see Liverpool kick Chelsea's ass. The first hurdle though, was that the tickets were £125 each. £125!!! – that's quite a lot of money to stump up for a footy match. It's like a year's supply of Chicken burgers, or 10 minutes of dances for Spence in ST1! Could I really justify spending that sort of cash for 90 minutes of football. Then I thought, Fuck It. I'll eat dust for the next 6 months, watching an FA cup semi final would be worth it. So after a bit of convincing, Gav, Rob and Rowan also signed on board and we spent the next few weeks looking forward to the match. That's when the next problem arose.. there I was dreaming about fulfilling my ambition of watching the match from the Kop, when it suddenly dawned on me that as it was a semi final, and being a semi final it would obviously be played on neutral ground. Doh!!! Not too bad though, I'd still be seeing the match live even if it was at Old Trafford.  

About a week before the match Mick popped over to me to tell me the tickets had arrived,  although there had been a slight hitch. He'd got us 4 tickets for the match. He'd managed to get us brilliant seats. The only problem was that they were in the wrong stand. That's right we'd paid £500 for 4 tickets and when they arrived they were in the Chelsea end!!! You can imagine our horror. Instead of singing You'll Never Walk Alone in high spirits dressed in red, we'd be spending the 90 minutes of the match wearing normal clothes, sat on our hands unable to cheer when a goal was scored cos we'd be completely surrounded by hard nut cockneys!!  We still wanted to see the game though so we decided to go. The atmosphere outside the ground was electric; we were stood on Matt Busby Way with hundreds of Scousers singing away...

"Louis Garcia, he drinks Sangria, he came from Barca to Liverpool. He's 5ft 7, he's football heaven, please don't take our Louis away"... we must have sung this about 30 times in an hour.

When it was time to go in we had to quickly sneak into the line of Cockneys that we'd be stood singing abuse at all afternoon. We were then on the receiving end of it all. It wasn't pleasant.  Anyway, we took our seats and the match started. Before we knew it, bam, GOAL!!! Liverpool had scored! I went to jump up & cheer and then realised that if I did, it would probably be the last thing I ever did. Suddenly I heard someone behind me shout "Fucking Scouse cants!!!" I turned to see who it was and was shocked to see the words had come from the mouth of a 10 year old boy who continued to scream obscenities at the pitch. This continued for the next 80 minutes, and more and more of the Chelsea fans started joining in. I've never heard the "C" word used so much in my life. One comment in particular made me and Gav laugh though, some 18 stone giant sat behind us shouted out "Louis Garcia you facking scouse cant!!" I don't know whether he realised it but he may play for Liverpool but he's about as close to scouser as an albino boy is to a black man. How many scousers do you know who are called Louis and have a Spanish accent! We were laughing about this all the way home.

The match finished, and Liverpool had won 2-1 and were through to the final, and even though sitting in the Chelsea end wasn't ideal we still had a great day out.

Roll forward to January this year.  I'd received a phone call of Mike asking if I fancied his 2 tickets to see Liverpool play Arsenal in the Carling Cup at Anfield. I jumped at the chance and quickly phoned Rowan to see if he fancied joining me. The original match had been called off due to the fog and had been rescheduled for the Tuesday night. The kickoff was at 7.45, so the plan was for me to finish work at 4, get a train to Macc station , go and pick Rowan up from work and then dash up the motorway to be there in plenty of time to have a wander round and something to eat. As with all good plans, it didn't go quite that smoothly. I think we must have beat the Guinness world record for the number of roadwork's and jams you can hit on what should be a straightforward journey.  It also didn't help that this was the first proper test of my new GPS system in the car. I was following everything it said but the route it was taking us on seemed very strange. We got on the motorway and then it told us to turn off. We thought we must be pretty close to the stadium and we followed the road straight through a housing estate, and as soon as we hit a road with speed bumps we knew something was wrong. It turned out that the GPS had 'Traffic Divert' turned on. Basically if it detects there are jams ahead it will find alternative routes for you. In this case it must have decided it would be quicker to go via Scotland than stay on the motorway. A journey which should have taken about 2 minutes ended up taking about 40. I've since turned this wonderful "time saving" feature off. Anyway we arrived in the vicinity of Anfield with about 15 minutes to spare. Everywhere was heaving and fans were streaming into the stadium. Shit, where the fuck do you park!! Every street seemed to be resident only, and we hadn't got a clue where we were. Finally we found a spot in a little cul-de-sac outside what seemed to be either a brothel or drug store. I'm still not sure which. It seemed the ideal location to be leaving my brand new 18 grand car. I was sure it would still be there when I got back, just stripped of its wheels and all of its trimmings. The clock was ticking and so we had to take the risk, and hell - What's insurance for anyway!!

We dashed to the match and luckily got into our seats with one minute to spare. We then sat waiting for a fantastic 90 minutes watching our beloved team thrash Arsenal to bits . We'd be in for a long wait! Normally I'd write a full detailed report on the match but in this case it's something I'd rather forget. Let's forget talking about the 90 minutes of the game and concentrate on the final score.  6-3 to Arsenal. Yep you read that right... 6 bloody 3!!! We got dicked! You've never seen anything like it. In fact according to the papers the next day, in which they described it as the night of horror Liverpool fans will never forget, it was Liverpool's worst home defeat in 72 years. My first time and Anfield, and I do I get a win, NO!! I get the worst bloody defeat any living fan has ever witnessed. The papers were right; it will be a night that will remain charred in my memory until the day I die.  To completely honest though, it was an interesting match to watch and there were times when we thought we could pull ourselves back into it, it was just disappointed that we never did.

"The Kop"

Now Number 12 on the list was actually "Watch Liverpool from the Kop". We weren't actually in the Kop, but our seats were meters away from it in the other stand, so that's good enough for me. Luckily I have tickets for a match in April and hopefully that one will be a lot better. The score could never be any worse! I think I need to now add to my list "Watch Liverpool win from the Kop!", lol!!

Good ole Stevie G, and Robbie Fowler!!

So that's my story of getting to see Liverpool play in Anfield for the first time. Definitely an experience I'll never forget!