There Is No Debate

The beautiful game.

People, usually those blinded by their unquestioning Pavlovian devotion, still refer to football by this moniker. Perhaps 80 odd years ago when players still had full time jobs and played solely for the love of the contest the nametag was possibly true. I doubt it can be said to be so anymore.

I’ll admit I’m biased. I loathe football. Well, that’s what I say but it’s a kind of a misleading shorthand. The game itself is fine. No better or worse than tennis or cricket or hockey. What I loathe in reality is the culture of football. When I’ve dared to voice this opinion on various social networking platforms I am invariably shotdown by football stalwarts who take considerable time and energy to tell me, via lots of swearing and insults, of the marvellous community aspect of football, of how it makes people feel they belong, looks after and nurtures local talent, gives people a leg up and does a shedload of great charity work to boot. Oh and some footballers even have degrees thus disproving my cliched theory that all footballers are thickos who were only ever good at sport at school.

But all this changes nothing. I loathe the culture of football. The disproportionately large wages. The fast cars and the drivers who feel they have a right to drive them at 120mph and go hang the safety of other drivers. The attitude that they are God’s gift and their football stardom entitles them to behave like some rockstar behemoth – buying what and who they want, acquiring trophy girlfriends and trophy houses and extolling the chauvenistic ideals of sleeping around with whoever the hell they like. Nightclubs the country over are full of cocky young men who are earning far too much money for their own good and whose chat-up lines revolve solely around the fact that they are a “famous footballer”. All those around them are put there solely for their own entertainment and pleasure. Far too many of them see themselves as old world kings who own all that their eyes happen to fall upon.

Out of this culture we inevitably get people like Ched Evans.

I find it hard to countenance that there is even a debate about whether he should be allowed to return to a football career after he has been convicted of raping a 19 year old woman who was far too intoxicated to ever consciously consent to what was happening to her. The fact he has shown no remorse and refuses to apologize – indeed he refuses to accept that he did anything wrong – is testament to all that is wrong with footballing culture. The facts behind the case highlight the tawdriness and dehuminazing aspects of football social culture. Another player, Clayton McDonald, apparently sent Ched a text to say he had a “bird” lined up. Ched went round to McDonald’s hotel room and watched him bed the poor girl. Ched then decided he’d like a go too. CCTV footage reportedly shows not only how drunk the girl was but also various team mates of Ched watching from the sidelines as if they were at a spectator sport. No doubt braying and shouting slogans as if they were on the terraces; egging Ched on.

Let’s make it clear; there is no debate about the facts. Sleeping with someone who is too drunk to consent to the act is a crime. It is statuatory rape. End of. The fact that not only Ched and McDonald were a party to this but also others is a disgrace. Not one of them stopped to think how they would feel if this poor woman was their sister or daughter or other family member. So little empathy or respect for another human being – all burnt up in their unailienable rights to sate their own voracious desires. Because plainly their status means they own the world and can do whatever the hell they like.

To make it worse supporters of Ched – how can such a man have any? – have subesquently harrassed the poor woman so much so that she has had  to move house 5 times and go into hiding. She now cannot see her own family in case it blows her cover.

Again, this highlights all that is wrong with footballing culture. That a mere game is placed above not only the law but also all human decency. Defenders of Ched say he was punished with imprisonment not unemployment so should be allowed to return to professional football. It sounds a logical argument until you consider that the culture that has grown up around football and footballers created the circumstances that led to the rape in the first place. Acknowledge that and Ched’s return to football is impossible. Acknowledge that and you have to accept that it is not only Ched that needs to be punished, corrected and reeducated but a huge proportion of the profession itself. Plus those fans that still can see nothing wrong with Ched’s behaviour on that night.

Football – the players, the managers, the club owners and even the fans – need to take a long hard look at themselves. I’m sure there is plenty to celebrate about football but there is too much that needs to change. I’m sure many of the fans and players are decent people with good morals but as Ched and his team mates clearly show, there are too many with a highly inflated sense of entitlement that leads them to treat others as nothing more than pieces of meat, there to be used and then forgotten about. They and those fans that condone this kind of behaviour need to be educated to the contrary. A strong message needs to be sent out that this kind of behaviour is morally wrong and repugnant. It is a blight and a cancer and those on Twitter and elsewhere that think it Ok to harrass a victim of rape are as guilty as Ched. They all need to be eradicated from football completely. Expunged and exiled.

Maybe then, when footballers are proper role models that showcase respect and decency and even, dare I say it, chivalry for all, both on and off the pitch, then maybe, just maybe, football will truly be the beautiful game that so many of its fans desperately want it to be.

Encyclopaedic Knowledge

Lord knows I like to think of myself as relatively intelligent though, of course, defining relative to whom or to what makes all the difference, relatively speaking. Relative to an egg box? Relative to an amoeba?

Relative to your average footballer I must be the brain of Britain though a friend I had a Facebook argument with on Saturday assures me that some footballers these days actually have degrees.

I’m assuming he didn’t mean as in third degree murder. Which is a pity given how I feel about football.

But.

The wife and I have been struggling of late to answer the cornucopia of questions that our youngest son has begun to throw at us.

The “reality science” ones are bad enough:

• How big in metres is the world?
• How far away is the furthest star?
• How old is the universe?

But the ones that are really frying my brain are these:

• How many yesterdays were there before tomorrow?
• What do you get if you add a frog and water to an explosion?
• What does [and I quote] lightning add house make?

Home life at the moment is akin to being a permanent contestant on University Challenge with a very impatient Jeremy Paxman demanding constant and immediate satisfaction. Incidentally, I muse on the pros and cons of Jeremy’s bedroom manner in my new Kindle book *cough cough* “Sex With…” which you can currently buy from Amazon. Please do.

In the end, when our young brainiac came up with the worst question of all: “Well, why don’t you know everything, daddy?” I finally admitted defeat and went out and bought a children’s encyclopaedia from WHSmiths.  On the whole it’s been a good buy and has put a stop to about 50% of the questions.

For the remaining 50%, it seems that even the best minds in the world stumble to a halt when trying to work out how many yesterdays there were before tomorrow.

My answer of “all of them” failed to impress.

One thing I do know though is how to make Professor Brian Cox have a nervous breakdown.

Lock him in a room for an hour with my son.

(And a copy of my “Sex With…” book which, funnily enough, for those of you who are interested, also features an enlightening piece about what Professor Brian might be like in the sack.)

Dousing The Flame

Plainly I am a miserable bastard.

I am one of those wretched people who take no joy whatsoever in life’s special events but hide away, griping and sneering, and looking down my nose at the hoi polloi.

The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter back in March? I preferred to sleep in.

The Euro football thing? Past me by. Couldn’t care, didn’t care.

Wimbledon? If I wanted to watch women in short skirts grunting at each other I’d... hold on a minute, I might programme my set-top box to record that one.

Yesterday the Olympic Torch (or rather a facsimile of one of many Olympic Torches) passed through my home town of Leamington Spa. The route took it right passed my place of employment. The torch was on my very doorstep. Crowds and thronging masses lining the streets. Local celebs. Local dignitaries. The press. The police. The St John’s Ambulance brigade. The world and his dog all lined up to watch the world’s biggest Cornetto walked along streets which in a year’s time will not recall its passing. Or even care.

Was I there?

Nah. I couldn’t be bothered.

The wife had made cup cakes and they were fresh out of the oven and generously iced. I was on the sofa with a good book. The kids were playing happily together and not requiring adult involvement. The kittens had disappeared to their mysterious bolt-hole the exact location of which is still unknown to us.

This was quite possibly a once in a lifetime event happening in my own home town and I just felt nothing. Not a spark of interest. Not even a snifter of a fart. In years to come when people ask me if I was there and if I saw it I shall say no but my backside was grateful for the good scratching I gave it.

The most I have done is to check out some photos on Facebook posted by a friend who did motivate himself to go.

They are good photos but the spectacle of the event looks underwhelming. When you have seen one crowd you have seen them all. Unless they are armed, of course; crowds like that tend to impinge on the viewer far more personally. And as for the torch... well, I’ve seen it on the telly. I’ve seen it on the telly nearly every night for the last God knows how many weeks. I’m sick of it. It is of no more interest to me than one of those huge phallic pepper mills that Italian waiter’s grind over your lasagne in Bella Italia.

I’d like to put this indifference down to Olympic fatigue but the truth is I just don’t care enough about big “social” “all inclusive” events of any kind. They make me want to down tools and run off in the opposite direction. I even get some kind of secret thrill from spurning them and not being part of them. I don’t even see myself as a lone wolf or one-man-alone or anything cool like that.

I just don’t want everybody else’s bag to be my bag.

I don’t want to be part or included or one of the many.

And for some strange reason I feel bloody proud to have discovered that about myself.

Where was I when they shot Kennedy?

I was doing my own thing, Mac, doing my own thing.

24 Hour Non-Party Person

Up to the age of 14 I was well reconciled with my nerdiness. I was the last to be picked for football teams, the cool kids ignored me and the bullies also ignored me by dint of me not being worth the effort to rough up (doing me over would hardly improve their social standing among their peers).

But when I turned 15 life at school irrevocably changed.

I found myself weighed down by the advent of “the party”.

Not the parties I had been used to... jelly, ice cream, someone who would fail a CRB check stuffed into a purple dinosaur costume... but the full-on, adolescent party with no grown-ups present, real alcohol, and the slight possibility of a snog and copping a feel of someone's tits in the cupboard under the stairs. If you were really lucky they’d belong to a girl.

Great. Something else to be miserable about. Another social situation to fail.

Even back then part of me felt that it would actually be more of a blessed relief to not be invited. Sure it would sting. It would smart. But I could indulge myself in a little self-righteous dudgeon at being left out in the cold. And yet, despite myself, part of me was still unreasonably pleased when I was invited.

I think people felt sorry for me. People felt that out of the nerdy no-hopers I was actually pretty alright. And I had a few friends who were on the fringes of the cool group. So I got included by proxy.

I won’t lie. I’d fool myself every time. Lie to myself.

I’d allow myself to fill with a silly wild hope that (a) I would actually relax enough to enjoy myself, that (b) someone would actually talk to me and include me in what was going on and (c) the miracle might occur whereby a girl revealed that despite my geeky exterior she had seen through to the vibrant, molten, burgeoning bard at my core and wanted to kiss me. A proper kiss with tongues and everything. Gaining access to the inner sanctum of a girl’s bra was beyond my wildest imaginings at that point. It was hallowed ground not meant for trespass by an unworthy like me.

What would actually happen is that I would find myself hopelessly outmatched by my peers. I would not dress cool enough. Would not have the confidence to speak properly. Would not be brave enough to give dancing or the slightly risqué party games a go. And I would hang around the edges of the room – or more notably the kitchen – nibbling at the party food and watching the clock for the official finish time of the party when I could at last slink off home and then be assailed with misery and depression for the following week whilst also fantasizing about all the cool things I could have done if I just happened, by some miracle, to be somebody else entirely.

This routine was so established by the third party I attended it could almost be termed a system. Even a coping strategy.

And since those days I have never particularly liked parties or social occasions. Even though now, more often than not, I do actually have a good time every now and then and, God forbid, actually sometimes acquit myself rather well.

The only difference now is that I have learned not to care one way or the other. I get less worried about it beforehand. Give it less thought afterwards. And during... well, during I refuse to pander to whatever is going on. I am me. Take me or leave me. Either way I don’t mind.

I don’t seek out parties... in fact if I never attend another party that’s fine by me... but neither do I live in fear of them either.

I do sometimes wonder though how different my attitude might have been if I’d been one of the cool kids. If I’d got to play spin the bottle with Debbie Rush or Joanne Clemons (the two sirens of my school years).

Or if, just once, I’d dragged myself out of the kitchen and into the wonderfully humid realm of a girl’s bra.

There’s Nothing Gray About This – It’s Plainly Black & White

Unless you’ve been living under a duvet all week (congratulations if you have) you can’t failed to have missed the current sexism row over at the Sky Corporation that has claimed the liver-spotted scalps of Andy Gray and Richard Keys. I’m sure they’ll make nice shower caps for somebody.

What can one say about their behaviour? Childish? Ill advised? Thoughtless? Stupid? We’ve all heard the “it was only banter” excuse wheeled out by various pundits in the aftermath of this politically incorrect implosion. They were just having a laugh, etc, appealing to the most common denominator of their traditional viewing demographics, they was talkin’ football after all weren’t they and we all know what footballers and football fans are like, don’t we?

Yeah. Thick. Tasteless. Atonal. Neanderthal. Synaptically challenged. Their knowledge of Archimedean geometry limited to the Off-Side rule.

Am I being sexist? No, I’m being deliberately offensive.

Mr Gray and Mr Keys however were deliberately sexist. Let’s be honest, there isn’t a linesman or a referee in the world that hasn’t been slagged off by some football fan either in a pub or on the radio or on the TV.

But the complaints will have centred around a piece of bad decision making or a bad call. It won’t have revolved around or centred around the gender of the official.

Andy Gray was quite within his right to take the female lineswoman to task if he felt her call was a bad one. What he didn’t have a right to do was to cast aspersions upon her qualifications for the role – these qualifications quite plainly in Gray’s view being compromised simply because she was a woman. Out of order. Then of course we had the old, tired, lazy verbal exchange about what do women know about the Off-Side rule anyway?

Oh ho ho. Because obviously the Off-Side rule is so difficult to grasp and beyond the capacity of a woman to comprehend that it explains why there are no female scientists, astronomers, quantum physicists, astronauts, surgeons and, oh yeah, professional footballers.

It wasn’t banter. Banter (in my book) is clever and entertaining. There was nothing clever or entertaining about the guff that Gray and Keys came out with. It was like listening to a couple of male 6th formers giggling in the back of a bus about all the girls they fancy but are too scared to actually talk to. You just wanted to slap them both across the back of the head and tell them to grow some pubic hair.

As for the moans that this whole debacle has turned into a witch-hunt I can do no better than direct you to Misssy M whose post on this issue will open up a whole other side of thought and debate.

For the record:

Gray was right to be sacked.
Keys should have leapt onto his own sword sooner.
And yes I despise football utterly utterly.

Because it seems to me that it nurtures and throws billions of pounds at oafish stereotyping behaviour.

Dare to say I’m wrong? Just read the newspapers. Every. Sodding. Week.

BloggiLeaks

In a Data Protection foul-up that can only be compared to an IT version of that fight you had outside the chip shop with your best mate when you were 17 I can now reveal some of the world’s most high profile secrets. Be aware that I am putting my life at risk by publishing these revelations but I feel that the truth should be known and my blogging stats should be the ones to benefit from the revelations. Just remember that for all I might make a few fast bucks selling advertising space on this blog as a consequence of the increased traffic I am the one who will have to wear a scarf over my face every time I want to buys a Mars bar from the local newsagent lest I be identified and summarily lynched.

1) Despite my sunny demeanour I secretly hate all of you and bad mouth the lot of you as soon as your backs are turned. Had someone trolling on your blog? That was me. Had someone bombard your comments box with spam selling cheap Viagra and Russian sex web sites? That was me too. Yeah, and I’m glad I did it ‘cos I know it really wound you up.

2) The above is just a cover story for the fact I love you all and secretly fantasize about sleeping with all of you – yes, you included, Rol. I have already composed a sexual shopping list individually tailored to each of you and designed to bring you all to the height of ecstatic abandon and I am going to publish it in your local newspapers next week. Oh. And email it to your mother / father / children / employer. With photos. And hair clippings.

3) All the world leaders see me as an agony uncle and regularly write to me for advice on how to deal with world matters and issues of national security. The current state of the world is all down to me. But before you start slagging me off just bear in mind that I have prevented a nuclear war from occurring on numerous occasions and single-handedly stopped a custard bomb from exploding in the heart of London last month. Yeah. You didn’t know that, did you? After encouraging Arab Leaders to get into Bugsy Malone the new weapons of choice are batter guns and custard bombs. I can also reveal that the Yanks are developing a full-fat mayonnaise grenade. Take my advice when travelling to America: arm yourself with a good salad.

4) The Yanks do not see our politicians as light weights and non-runners but rather hero worship them in an abandon that can only be described as orgiastic. In my role as diplomatic major domo I have frequently had to shoe-horn American politicians into and out of some choice English politico’s butt. It’s a dirty job but I get well paid for it. So yes. If you want to view it in those terms, I pimp out our MPs to the likes of Barack Obama and Sarah [im]Palin. I have photos on my mobile phone to prove it including one of Nick Clegg being happy-slapped by American Vice President, Joe Biden. Boy, does that man take his job title seriously.

5) The BP oil disaster was down to me. I honestly thought building a well cap out of Lego would be a great idea. Possibly the castle motif on top with a working drawbridge weakened the structure but hey, what was I to know? I’m not a friggin’ engineer!

6) The World Cup. The Russians paid me handsomely. That’s all I’m saying. Frankly I hate football and think it a shite game. Overpaid, oversexed and now over there in the frigging ice fields. Serves ‘em right. All you footie fans travelling to Moscow...? I’m planting counter-intelligence evidence on the lot of you. Don’t waste your money on plane tickets home ‘cos you won’t be leaving. The rest of you can write to the Queen – there’s still time before the honour’s list is published.

7) I’ve wasted enough time / energy / brain cells composing this for your entertainment and to be honest I’m not sure any of you are worth it.

8) Please see no. 2. I shall be doing you all in alphabetical order. Please ensure you all shower first (and, yes, that includes you, Rol).

Eye-Eye

So after a few collisions with the exuberant head of the 2 and a half year old my faithful spectacles had finally lost their innate ability to grip my face the way they were designed to do. The slightest head movement from yours truly and people were wandering it I was doing a bad Eric Morecambe impression.

It was time to venture back through the myopic portals of my family’s favourite optician, Charnley’s.

Me and Charnley’s go way back, right to when I was first diagnosed with astigmatism and was given my first pair of glasses (NHS style – long before Jarvis Cocker ever made them moderately cool) when I was 5 years old. At one time in my pre-teen years I held the town record for the sheer number of spectacle breakages. I was averaging about 7 times a year at one point and though my mum never believed me none of them were ever my fault. During one memorable incident one of the Dugglin boys went for a high ball during the lunchtime footie match and managed a kick worthy of the Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately his Clarkes managed to hoof my spectacles off my face and dislodge the lens which was later found (thanks to the direction of the headmaster) by the entire school being made to form a police line and march the full length of the playing field until we found it. Ah, those were the days.

But those times are long behind me now. It had been 7 years since I’d last graced Charnley’s with my presence and not only new glasses but an eye test was also long overdue.

I was fearing the worst. My dad developed glaucoma a few years back so there’s now a family history (though on the bright side I’m now eligible for free eye tests); I’ve been getting migraine “drop outs” in my eyes when I’m very tired. And removing my glasses in the opticians made me do something I rarely do at home: actually try and look at stuff with the naked eye alone. I was appalled. If I’d been around before glasses were invented I’d have stuck no chance in life at all. I’d’ve been a crap servant and frankly a liability as a farmhand – I can guarantee nobody would have wanted to stand next to me when it came to harvest time. A scythe is a nasty weapon in the wrong hands. Or with the wrong eyes.

So I underwent all the tests. It’s all very high tech now. Computerized. They test eye pressure and depth of field – not just “what’s the smallest row of letters you can read”? Some of the gizmos they use give you the feeling of being plugged into a virtual reality machine or a game station. I was tempted to ask my optician if I’d made it through to the boss level.

She – the optician – was very professional. Opticians are always very quiet and have soothing voices in my experience. It’s probably the result of the enforced intimacy. There’s nothing like having someone’s face so close to your own you can feel their breath on your eyelashes to make you whisper softly. Mind you, the ruddy great super-trooper she was bouncing of my retina spoiled the atmosphere somewhat. Any stronger and she would have scorched a hole through the back of my cranium.

Still, I can’t fault her thoroughness. My sight was put through an army assault course of tests.

At the end of it I was genuinely blinded with exhaustion. And fear.

I felt sure my eyes had deteriorated. I was turning into Mr Magoo. I’d need lenses thicker than Corona bottles. I’m going blind, aren’t I, doc, tell me straight?

*sob*

How wrong could I have been?

My eyes have actually improved! I didn’t know that was even possible. I’m less short sighted than I was. Because – and here’s the clincher – I’m becoming more long sighted. Apparently that’s very common once you hit your 40’s. I’ll have a few years of improvement before the long sightedness fouls up my ability to read a book close-up and then my eyes will be buggered every which way but loose and I’ll need completely different lenses.

Ah well. In the meantime at least I can still try for the work’s darts team.

A new pair of glasses are now on order with – for the time being – weaker lenses to suit my vision. The frames I chose are as close to the ones I have now as I could find – I hate changing my facial furniture. I was tempted by the Dame Edna pink side wings but, frankly, I don’t have the cheek bones to pull it off.

Besides, when did you ever see Eric Morecambe wearing pink glasses?

We Can Do This The Easy Way Or I Can Waterboard The Lot Of You

It’s been a while since someone has hit me with a meme. And a lot longer since I’ve opened the sash window on my ivory tower, looked out and deigned to reply. Today then is a special day.

For this meme, I have Tim to thank over at Bringing Up Charlie. I’ve been set 10 questions which I have to answer or a stern school mistress will spank my bottom to within an inch of snapping the elasticated waistband of my Y-fronts. I must then set my own questions and pass them on to some other poor unsuspecting blogger who will have to take a break from composing their current blogging manifesto to answer them.

Here then are Tim’s questions and my answers:

1. If Hitler had won, Goebbels had none and Franz Joseph was blessed with three, what was the score after extra time after the match had gone to penalties?

A. 4-1 to Germany and the English football team sent home in disgrace to be pilloried on the streets of every major UK city before having their legs broken, sawn off and used as golf clubs by fat, retired London Palladium comedians.

2. How is it that a calendar - which had no moving parts - can, unlike a stopped clock, still record the passage of time?

A. It doesn’t. It merely represents graphically a set number of days which require a human agency to interpret as the passing of time. Also, may I remind you, that a stopped clock is correct twice a day? More pertinently why won’t my knackered old VCR record the dodgy German channels on Cable?

3. Is the King of France bald?

A. Possibly not as research seems to suggest that human hair is one of the last things to decompose. It is unknown whether he sported a Brazilian.

4. Seaside or countryside?

A. Countryside – green lushness, shimmering grasses, rolling mountains, cool valleys, birdsong, foxes and deer; no penny arcades, amusement parks or misogynist comedians. Enough said.

5. Why is the sky blue?

A. Oxygen. Pure and simple. Oxygen filters or reflects blue light or something. Google it.

6. Does God exist?

A. In the minds of the faithful, yes. The question should be: does God exist as an independent, omniscient entity? To answer that question I may have to die. How badly do you want me to complete this meme?

7. What is the meaning of life?

A. To evolve both physically, mentally and spiritually both as a race and as individuals.

8. Why do flies always find a way through the smallest of gaps even though they've got the entire WORLD to fly around, yet find it impossible to find their way out once they're in your house?

A. They are lonely and just want a quick kiss and a cuddle before they leave. No tongues please.

9. Do bees have ears?

Not as we know them but they can sense vibrations. Stick a dildo into a bee’s nest and they’ll think it’s a rave.

10. Are blogs the future?

A. No, blogs are now. Only tomorrow is the future.

Well, I consider that exam well and truly passed. Now for my ten questions – and I am going to tag the following: Gappy @ Single Parenthood, Fran @ Being Me, Heather @ Notes From Lapland and Kelloggsville.

1. God gives you a free ticket to spend the night with absolutely anybody in the world and the entirety of history – whom do you choose?

2. Frankie Howard or Frankie Boyle? (This is a separate question and is not related to no. 1 above.)

3. What life skill or ability do you wish you possessed?

4. If it takes Johnny three hours to fill a bath with water using a colander and a train travelling at 90mph takes 2 hours to reach its destination why does Britain no longer have the right to call itself Great?

5. Have you ever genuinely wished to be a member of the opposite sex (or are you that already)?

6. Do you have any embarrassingly weird interests or hobbies – and if so please explain in detail?

7. Dance, Punk, Goth, Metal, Grunge, Pop, Country, Folk or Classical? The choice is yours.

8. If you could change anything about your current lifestyle / life situation, what would it be? And what would you keep?

9. If you were a packet of crisps what flavour would you be?

10. Describe the sandwich of the gods.

And just to prove that I never ask people to do something I wouldn’t do myself here are my own answers to the above:

1. Cheryl Ladd circa 1980 (see picture above).

2. Tough one this. I like both (ooh! Nay, nay and thrice nay!). Mr Howard definitely in my coy youth but Boyle takes the biscuit now that I am cynical and politicised.

3. I wish I could sword fight. I’m talking claymore’s here, not girly fencing foils.

4. (A) We were ruined by Thatcher. (B) The dismantling of the NHS. (C) The growing cult of celebrity for celebrity’s sake and (D) No proper discipline in our schools.

5. Only when I was 15 and desperate to know what a pair of breasts felt like.

6. Y’all probably know this already. I am a dedicated fan / collector of Lego and have a collection worth over £10k.

7. A bit of Pop, a bit of Metal, quite a lot of Goth, never ever Dance.

8. More income, less outcome. I’d keep the wife and kids. And the Lego.

9. Barbecued Beef.

10. Chips (proper chip shop chips), curry sauce, roast chicken, mushy peas, red onion and garlic. On white.

Right, over to you! If anyone else fancies having a go... go ahead and fill yer boots!

Go And Flush Your Head Down The Loo, Yahoo!

So I’m checking my Yahoo email account and there it is staring me in the face. Right next to the “What are you doing right now?” text box is a flag. The English flag.

Yahoo, using its clever technological know-how, has taken it upon itself to assign me a team to support in the World Cup.

Now, some of you – if you’d read between the lines of my previous post – will have picked up on the fact that essentially I am a non-participant in the great national sport of watching the World Cup. Over the next few weeks it is my sole ambition to not watch a single match of the WC (oh how I love acronyms). I am supporting nobody. I don’t give a fig who wins and, more to the point, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse who loses.

Sod the lot of them (great overpaid, over pampered, over merchandized jessies, etc, etc).

So I am incandescent with transient irritation to have found myself forcibly allocated an England flag in my own sodding email box!

Oi, Yahoo – NO! Ask my permission please!

But it gets worse. You click an arrow next to the flag and you get a large drop-down pane that features all the flags of the teams currently running themselves ragged in the WC. I could choose Cameroon if I wanted. Or Uruguay. Or even Germany.

What I don’t have though is the option to opt out. For a flag that states “none of the above”. For a flag that says “I don’t have to play and I won’t play”.

Everybody – and I mean everybody – who has a Yahoo email account will either have to live with their default flag setting or give-in and deliberately choose a team; to throw their twopenneth-worth [virtually] into the WC.

Am I the only person who is offended by this massive assumption that everybody is happy to participate? That we are all willing to be WC fodder?

All I want is to keep my head out of the WC but the more I try to do that the more it is forced down there, my nose pressed right up close to the ball action.

And I don’t want it, people!

I want a WC free existence! I don’t want to be confronted with the WC every time I turn my head or open my mouth.

It stinks!

Yahoo, this is your mess; either mop it up or piss off.

Ingland Expects

I hereby announce that this blog is going to be a World Cup free zone. The World Cup is not going to be written about or discussed.

Except when I feel the need the moan about the World Cup.

See, what annoys me about the World Cup (apart from those stupid flags that everyone is prittsticking to the side windows of their cars - do read Rol's excellent It's Coming Home post to discover what to do about them) is this tacit expectation that everyone - especially if you're male - is going to be "into" the World Cup.

Suddenly it is the topic of conversation. And you're expected to have an opinion. You're expected to support a team. You're expected to care. You're even expected to face the "so are you watching the World Cup or are you going to be a World Cup free household?" question.

It has to be yes or no. Black or white. One or the other. The absence of the World Cup defined by its very existence.

But I don't care about the World Cup. I really don't. I don't even know the score of last night's match. I'm not bothered about knowing. I know it would be the easiest thing in the world to look it up online but I just can't be bothered. I'd rather be here writing about not caring to know. And please don't tell me the score. It's useless information. What am I going to do with it? Go outside and talk to someone about the match? I didn't watch it. Who won and who lost are so far outside my sphere of worries and concerns the match may as well have been played on Alpha Centauri. [If only.]

My world does not revolve around the World Cup. It is unimportant. It is a money-making, media blitzing, marketeer's wet-dream that benefits only the very few.

But that's fine. If you're into it, if you enjoy it, I'm pleased for you.

Just don't foist it onto me.

And, worse still, don't look at me like I'm a criminal / insane / deliberately perverse just because I'm not into it. There is nothing deliberate about my disinterest.

I have just never liked football. Not watching it or playing it. It doesn't make me unpatriotic just because I am not supporting England in the World Cup. I am supporting nobody in the World Cup. Nobody at all.

I don't care about any of them. Really.

Which is why this blog is going to be a World Cup free zone.

OK?

Engerland?

So it was St George’s Day yesterday and the whole occasion hit me as a bit of a paradox.

Firstly – unless I went around in a zombiefied state yesterday (perfectly possible) – I seem to have totally missed any notification that it was St George’s day from the news media. This seems to me to be entirely wrong. I think a little bit of national pride can be a good thing and we should justly celebrate our Englishness one day a year just as the Irish quite rightly enjoy a good rave up on St Patrick’s Day. It’s about time the English stopped mooching around in their hoodies and behaving like the cross of St George is some kind of criminal brand.

OK. Soapbox dispensed with.

And then on the way home from work last night I came across a huge bunch of people obviously doing the above with unrestrained gusto outside a town centre pub. And I promptly went back to wishing my fellow countrymen would spend the entire day mooching around in their hoodies and trying not to be picked up on the local CCTV cameras.

It was ugly. It was bullish. And it made me feel ashamed.

Can we English not exhibit national pride without making it look xenophobic, aggressive and something akin to football thuggery?

And what or where is this “Eng-er-land” of which they so raucously chant?

I don’t want to live in Eng-er-land!

It sounds, well to be honest, unappetizingly Neanderthal. A bit backwards and inbred. A land of beer gutted, ruddy faced pie eating brutes who discordantly sing “God Save The Queen” while at the same time giving anyone with a home counties accent a good kicking for being “a bit of a sneering toff”.

I know, I know. I’m being a snob.

Why shouldn’t the common people (of which I am one) celebrate St George’s Day the common way (10 pints of ale and a gristle pie)? After all England isn’t just about Ascot, the Boat Race and Vaughan Williams, is it? It’s also about football and darts and fish & chips. And chavs. And underage pregnancy. And Big Brother. And men who walk around shirtless at the first sign of sunshine in April in a desperate attempt to get a fast-track tan only to succeed in making themselves look like pigeon-toed irradiated sides of beef.

But for Lord’s sake, where is the sense of pride in our pride? Where is the sense of self respect? Where is the noble aspect, the aspiration? The inspiration?

Surely celebrating our national identity should be a chance to hold our heads up high – not merely to lift our beer bellies up out of the gutter while we spew several cans of Special Brew and a hastily masticated kebab down the drain?

When on earth did St George become synonymous with Bacchus? Or worse still, the BNP?

Feline Fine

A “shock” ending to The F Word last night (though not that shocking really given the nature of the industry that Gordon Ramsay works in): one of Gordon’s young lambs was killed and half eaten.

So just an ordinary day at Chez Ramsay then...

Actually to be fair – and because I do actually like Mr Ramsay – poor Gordy was quite cut up about the ad hoc butchery that had befallen his beloved Charlotte (the Welsh bred lambs were named rather fittingly after Charlotte Church and Gavin Whatever-his-name-is-who-got-her-up-the-duff).

And to make matters worse Gordy’s sheep had been paddocked in the extensive and expensive grounds of Beckhingham Palace, the nouveau riche pseudo ancestral home of David Beckham and his clothes-hanger wifelet, Posh (formerly known as Spice).

Geez. If you can’t be safe in the grounds of Posh Towers where can you be?

The carcass (like Posh) was not a pretty sight – everything below the exposed ribcage (like Posh) seemed to have been stripped clean. It was odd to see someone who must be so used to chopping up cuts of meat turn almost green at the spectacle of a freshly eviscerated lamb. I guess context played a big part in it. Maybe if Charlotte had been shoved onto a sparkly white plate and garnished with a bit of parsley and mint Gordon would have been waxing lyrical about the "juicy freshness" and the "moist bloodiness" of the meat.

But maybe not so happy about the teeth marks that were plastered all over it...

Anyway, veterinary investigation didn’t rule out the possibility that Charlotte had been mauled by a “big cat”. Indeed this view was backed up by a big cat expert who just happened to be lying around Hertfordshire waiting for Gordon to call him.

Further investigation (i.e. talking to local people at the nearest watering hole) garnered loads of anecdotal evidence regarding Panther-like beasts slinking over the neighbouring fields and carrying off young bullocks and occupied people carriers in their slavering jaws... never to be seen again.

Ooh! Spooky!

Personally, given the location of Gordy’s lambs, I can think of only one big cat malnourished enough to gobble up half a live sheep and then leave its carcass totally fleeced in the middle of a Hertfordshire field...

And that’s Posh herself.

Miaow!

Care For A Dickie Biscuit?

No Life On Mars lat night! No Life On Mars! Instead the Beeb slung on some boring football match! How dare they!

I have never liked football. I find the whole ethos of the game overblown, pompous and ineffably down-at-heel (ho ho). But I guess it gives those poor kids at school who are only good at woodwork and smoking behind the bike sheds some sort of career opportunity when they leave. God I’m such a snob.

My distaste actually has its source in a childhood where Saturdays were forever locked into a good morning / bad afternoon dichotomy. Basically Saturday mornings were a joyous occasion for me and my sisters: Tiswas and Swap Shop kept us happily occupied for hours and took us right up to lunchtime. And then at 12.30 the televisual circus closed up its big top and was replaced with the dreaded World Of Sport.

Oh how I hated Dickie Davies and his weird badger striped quiff. And I can remember Dickie before his hair even developed that white streak. Ah the horror of advancing old age!

Anyway, my dad would just lock the TV solidly onto World Of Sport for the entire afternoon. Football, rugby, swimming, golf, more football, boxing, wrestling, more football, tobogganing, skiing, motor cross and even more football. And then we’d have to suffer that interminable half hour of the football results being read out at the very end by a bloke who sounded like he had a red hot poker shoved up his backside.

"Wimbledon nil. Queens Park Rangers one. Plymouth Argyll 3. Accrington Stanley 2. West Bromwich Albion and Tottenham Hotspur late result."

On and on forever. And even after World Of Sport had finished there was worse to come. The Grumbleweeds. Russ Abbot’s Madhouse. And then the spawn of Beelzebub: 3-2-1 with Ted bleedin’ Rogers. Aaaargh! God TV was crap in the late seventies and early eighties.

Anyway the whole point of this blog is to ask the salient question: what the hell happened to Dickie Davies? It’s a question that’s been preying on my mind for oooh at least 2 minutes.

The last Dickie Davies media reference that I can recall was by Half Man Half Biscuit in the mid eighties with their glorious musical paean to the sporting maestro - Dickie Davies Eyes (she’s got).

Is he dead? Is he chained up in a madhouse somewhere (with or without Russ Abbot)? Or is he lurking in the wings waiting for the first opportunity to eff up all my Saturday afternoons once more?