​ALTHOUGH the amount of fan mail I receive each week would normally fill a Julian Alsop size shoe box, I was a little disappointed on Monday morning when I received the correspondence that had been addressed to me at the Abbey Business Stadium.

After it had been sorted, prioritised and security checked, the pile placed on my desk would just about fill a John Finnigan sized shoe box.

I take this column seriously, and there are not many occasions when I turn my phone off, but whenever I sit down to pen the words to change people’s lives, I ensure that the red stand-by button on my mobile has been firmly pressed.

By doing this I am able to concentrate on my work by carrying on with my normal routine. This involves me reading my previous week’s work, laughing out loud, and then looking how I can improve on what I wrote.

In last week’s column I had made a reference to John Finnigan – the details of which can still be found on the Gloucestershire Echo website.

For those who did not read what I wrote, I explained how I had received a text message from John congratulating me, in a new form of e-fanmail, on the success of my new column.

It was only by reviewing my previous week’s work that I realised I had still not replied to the text he sent me.

With that lapse in mind, I immediately turned my phone on with the intention of replying to John’s old text. However, before I was able to start typing out my message to him, my phone started to bleep like mad with a whole host of new incoming messages.

I soon realised by reading those messages the reason for my smaller than normal shoe box size pile of fan mail was because some of those who would normally have had chosen to send their appreciation of my new column by post did so in the form of e-fanmail instead. Thank you to you all. You know who you are.

I also noticed over the weekend, somewhat surprisingly, that Big Jules scored for Bishop’s Cleeve.

The reason for my surprise was not the fact Jules had scored but rather the fact he had been playing at all.

A physio friend of mine had told me had been speaking confidentially to the big front man and he had been asked to give his opinion as to whether he was fit to play.

When Wes, sorry my physio friend, asked what the problem was Jules told him it was a bit of a tender and delicate subject but it related to, ahem, a tender and delicate part of his body!

Without going into major detail, it is sufficient to say Jules has reached that stage in his life where he is very happy (and rightly so) with his lovely family but doesn’t want to, shall we say, make any more signings to add to his squad!

Basically, Jules has had an operation on his jewels.

And just when I was going to make a joke about him firing blanks he goes and sticks one in the net for Cleeve and ruins my punchline. Cheers Jules.