Dear Mr Field....

After a pleasant enough evening on t'SouthStand I ventured into t'Taps for a post-match g&t.....

however shortly after getting me first drink me and me mates found ourselves being courted by a couple of forty-something 'Ull fans.....proved difficult to shake off but we did eventually get rid of 'em....

thing is we are planning a trip o'er to t'fair city of 'Ull next Sunday and would like to avoid a similar encounter...

just wondering if could you offer any advise as to how to travel to said soccer ground and surrounding public houses wi'out attracting t'unwelcome attention of middle age cod-heads....

Mr Field,

I'm getting married in little over two weeks. Is this the right move?

There will be lots of cake...

Can she bake?

She can but doesn't bake often. I do live just 100 yards from Costello's though.

You should employ what we used to call "Our mothers seagull test".

You see when I wor nobbut a lad and still living at home with parents (as you do when you're nobbut a lad) our mother used to bake stuff in profuse quantities too numerous to count, particularly jam tarts and those jam tarts that have some sort of coconut lid on them, and sponge cake.

Sound an idyllic childhood other than the fact the our mother just was not a very good baker, if you could get to the jam tarts straight after they came out of the oven and risk removing the top of your mouth on the molten jam then you could just about force seven or eight of them down your throat, but leave them to cool and they became, how can I say this, well, a local building supplies company used to call regularly to collect the old jam tarts for paving use.

Her jam sponge cakes were of a similar ilk and virtually inedible and more often than not all of the products of her baking would end up being thrown on the back garden for the birds to eat.

Which is where the seagull test comes in.

The seagull test was simply a way of scientifically assessing just how heavy her baking products were by the length of time it took for a seagull to eat, digest and then expel the produce of its stomach labours in order for it to fly away again.

We regularly had seagulls marhing up and down our garden for one, sometimes two days trying to walk off the effects of over indulging on our mothers cakes, simply unable to take off and fly away until they had managed a big shiit and rid themselves of the superweight baking, it was quite sad to watch but very good for our air gun practice, rather like a live fairground shooting gallery.

I recommend you try the technique.

There comes a time in every lads life when he must simply face up to the realisation that life will, from this point forward, no longer be one long merry-go-round of lads, beer, and gaping at random womens s and/or busoooms.

Put simply, its not fair on the rest of us if you insist on remaining single.

I speak here as someone in their 4th year of married bliss, we've been married 30 years, but this is the 4th year etc etc.

Shortly after I married my dear wife she turned to me and said "When you proposed to me you said you were well off" to which I replied "I was, but I just didn't realise it..."

Yes folks I've been in my old dads gag book again under the chapter headed "weddings", I was married in Whitley Bay and for the last thirty years I've been consulting legal tomes in order to assess whether or not that is actually legal or not in the same way that if you get married in some strange foreign countries its not always legal in the UK, so far to no avail, its even been confirmed from the European Court of Human Rights that my wedding ceremony was "Probably OK" (their exact words).

So yes, this is the right move, you can't be happy for all of your life its just not fair, get thee wed and start your penury then come back when you've done thirty years like this old lag has and we'll compare notes.

PS - First thing to change, the TV remote control is no longer yours for controlling.