Wool

My uncle sold mittens and was defensive about it.

“What do you need the individual fingers for?” He asked, often. He was always taking shots at traditional gloves.

On day, I felt like I might as well respond to this question, even though I didn’t really care. I half-heartedly suggested “Chopsticks?”

He did a little confused laugh, as though he’d never heard of anything so stupid.

“If you’re eating food with chopsticks, the temperature of the dish would keep your hands warm anyway. Why would you need the mittens?”

“What about sushi?” I asked, getting a bit more into it.

He wasn’t so quick with his comeback this time. Eventually, he said: “On the rare occasion where you happen to be in a situation where your hands are cold enough to justify mittens, and you happen to be eating sushi, then you can just use a fork.”

“Tell that to the Japanese,” I said. I’d clearly won.

It wasn’t just mittens, though. He’d started to expand his range into scarves. But with a twist. Literally.

Möbius scarves, they were called. He was really proud of the idea, and he could barely wait to tell me, even though I’d never previously shown any enthusiasm for his business, and mostly just shot down his mitten theories.

They were scarves in the style of Möbius strips. I think he’s only just found out about Möbius strips and was getting carried away. 

“So it’s not really a scarf?” I said.

“Yes, it’s a scarf,” he said. “It’s just one continuous loop of scarf.”

“One continuous loop,” I repeated (fully aware of how annoyed he was getting). “So it’s essentially a baggy snood? It’s essentially a baggy snood.”

He made a face and started winding wool. His assistant, Vida, was standing nearby. “Have you heard about these Möbius scarves?” I asked her. “It’s essentially just a baggy snood.” She shrugged.

I turned back to my uncle. “It’s essentially just a baggy snood.”

“Shut up!” He snapped. “Stop saying it’s essentially just a baggy snood.”

“But it is essentially…”

He slammed his hand down on the table. “What are you even talking about?!”

We were all quiet for a couple of minutes. Vida pretended she had to go to the toilet just to get away from us both.

After a while, things had thawed, and he was back on track with his sales pitch. “I’m thinking of something very specific for the Möbius scarf. Specific, but lucrative.”

“What’s that?” I felt bad for shutting him down before, so I thought I’d hear him out.

“You know those half and half football scarves they have now? It’s like one end is in the colours of one team, and the other is their opponents’? Like, if it’s Arsenal-Tottenham, it’s half red and half white? You know those scarves?”

“You mean, those universally derided scarves that everyone hates?”

“Someone’s buying ‘em,” he said, with a smile. He’d won that one.

“Anyway,” he continued, “ the genius of the Möbius scarf is that instead of one team at each end of the scarf, you can have one team on each side of the scarf!”

I’d tried my best to be encouraging, but this was the last straw.

“Geoff,” I said (his name was Geoff), “in your exhaustive research – which I assume you always undertake before a major product launch – surely you must have learned that a defining, if not the defining, feature of a Möbius strip is it only has ONE SIDE.”

He looked blank. Vida walked back in, read the atmosphere of the room, and went straight back out to the toilet again.

“What do you mean?” Said Geoff.

“If you put Arsenal on one side of the scarf, it’ll go all the way around,” I said.

He looked blank again.

“Where are you going to put Tottenham?”

He stood there for a few seconds, and then mimed holding what looked like a baggy snood. 

“On the other side,” he said.

Remember around 2012, snoods were in, like, the top five things people talked about that year? It’s crazy to think that now. With all the horrors of 2017, snoods wouldn’t crack the top hundred. We didn’t know how lucky we were.

Full/Empty

I think I might struggle now that the football season is over.

For months, I've been using football to mark the passage of time. Midweek games, previews of the weekend's action on Thursday and Friday, the glorious ball-glut of Saturday and Sunday, the post-weekend analysis and match reports on the Monday and Tuesday. And throughout, there's a healthy sprinkling of opinion pieces, meaningless statistics and hilarious jokes about the managers' faces.

The last Saints game was only on Sunday (I was there! The crazy pitch design! Rickie Lambert! The emotional lap of appreciation!), but I'm already feeling withdrawal symptoms.

I burned through the hundreds of 'season in review' articles, and now I'm frantically searching for football journalism. The content is drying up. I feel like a polar bear desperately struggling to maintain my footing on the rapidly melting sea ice.

Soon, I'll be reading about the Tunisian second division, or proposals to make the goal posts more matte.

And what will I do on my weekends now? The ball-glut is over.

This weekend, I'll have to make do with the FA Cup Final, the dramatic deciding game in La Liga, the German Cup Final and probably loads of other stuff. Slim, slim pickings.

I'll have to start doing things and making plans. It will be an ordeal. A vast desert of no football, stretching as far as the eye can see.

Or until the World Cup starts in less than a month. The eye can probably see that.

The World Cup may fill up my time, especially when there's three fixtures per day.

I'll be brave and will make do.

***

I came up with something hilarious in my sleep the other day. I do that a lot, as you might remember. As usual, the thing I came up with was only hilarious when I was in my sleep-state.

Half-awake, I thought: make sure to remember this. It's funny.

I did remember it.

It was this:

Good new band name: Sorbonne Monoxide.

See? That's terrible.

What does it mean? It's not close enough to 'carbon monoxide' and - even if it was - it makes no sense.

A band would have to be pretty low on ideas to agree to that.

A blogger would have to be pretty low on ideas to write about that.

***

The submarine was getting full.

"No more breeding," said the captain, in the mess one day.

"Yes, captain," said the men.

"Yes, captain," said the women.

But nothing changed. Three more babies were born that afternoon. When a senior officer questioned the triple influx, the mother claimed that two of them were "experimental torpedoes" and the other was the chaperone.

The captain, who had risen to that rank despite a strong aversion to confrontation, had notices printed and posted in every section. They read: "SERIOUSLY, NO MORE BREEDING. THE SUBMARINE IS GETTING FULL."

The message took a while to sink in. But eventually, the culture of constant breeding began to change, just as the submarine itself, slowly, gradually, altered its course.

Soon the submarine became less full. No more babies were produced, and a large number of corpses were jettisoned. 

Things were now pretty ruddy roomy. The badminton court was expanded to regulation size.

By the time the submarine surfaced, the crew were so used to wide-open spaces that they struggled with the confinement of life on dry land. Even the ones from Wyoming - which is technically even bigger than the submarine.

And that's how we won the war.

***

I had a muffin just now, baked by the fair hand of Lucy. She always bakes with the fair one. Her unfair hand is muffled in a dozen oven-gloves.

This blog post has been quite formless, unlike the muffin. I should have written it in a paper case.

Oases

The internet is down. I can’t work and I can’t not work.

So I’m writing this, which falls somewhere in between the two.

Today has been disgustingly Monday.

None of the cash machines near work were giving out money, so Lucy and I will have to have a lunch of half a rice cake each. Or we could use our debit cards.

I think the cash machine problem is the same as the internet problem. We’re going to be cut off from the world.

I watched the film Dredd last night. It’s pretty good (and very violent), but it’s making me think in terms of a dystopian nightmare state. Art imitates life. A pseudo-fascist police force administer brutal justice in the one, and cash machines stop working in the other.

I’m going to buy myself a helmet.

In between connectivity problems, I was able to open the Guardian’s Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend's action column. I’ve read it twice. Sadly, the comments didn’t load. If they had done, I would be perfectly content right now. They can keep me going for the whole morning.

I like reading that column. I always scan to see if there’s a Saints-related talking point. There usually isn’t. It’s often about our opponents. I don’t think many journalists know much about Southampton, and they don’t want to rehash the same two talking points every week:

1.  We have a lot of young, English players who have come through our academy
2. Our team hasn’t been officially canonised, so when’s the Pope going to pull his holy finger out?

Sometimes, there are two talking points about the same match, and other matches are ignored completely. I can’t begin to tell you how angry that makes me.

But I haven’t got anything else to do, so I’m going to try.

It makes me SO ANGRY that

Hang on!

The internet is working again!

AAHAHAHA! I feel like a dehydrated desert nomad splashing through a fountain!

Hehehehe! *splash* Look! Coins! Ahahahaha!

I’ll never take this for granted again.

***

Oh. It’s stopped working again.

I feel like a dehydrated desert nomad whose fountain has just run dry. I was too busy skipping around and laughing that I forgot to drink anything. I really wish I hadn’t eaten all those coins.

I suppose this has taught me a lesson about desire and reward.

You don’t have to be careful what you wish for, because you’re never going to get it, whatever happens.

You’ll just die like everyone else: thirsty, alone, spread-eagled on the hollow hump of a desiccated camel.

I don’t know if “desiccated” is the right word to use there. I can’t look it up.

Hang on – I can use Outlook’s thesaurus.

Yes! I was right!

The human brain is a marvellous thing. And mine is, also.

***

Time has passed. Things are still not working properly. I did manage to get to the AV Club’s classic Simpsons review (Bart Sells His Soul – a good late-golden era episode) together with the comments. I also got the first page of the Guardian football comments too. So it hasn’t been too bad.

But now I’ve run out of comments to read. I’m stuck with my own thoughts, rather than the thoughts of assorted nerds and football fans. I’m a nerd and a football fan, but it’s not fun to read my thoughts.

As you’re aware.

***

This is getting silly now.

No internet makes life a disgrace.

My productivity has grinded (ground?) to a halt.

I mean, it’s usually at a halt. But it’s a halt of my own choosing. I dictate when my halts begin and end. I don’t want my halts to be determined by some outside agent.

It’s like being soaking wet. If you choose to be soaking wet - in a swimming pool or a bath, for example - then it’s fine. But if you’re made involuntarily soaking, by a sudden rain storm or a water balloon bombardment, you are inevitably going to be quite put out.

If I’m doing nothing, I want to be doing it on my own terms. I don’t like being at the beck and call of Monsieur Technologie.

We were better off in the old days. We didn’t have to worry about broadband speed or spyware. We were totally free to succumb to disease at twenty-five and stone blondes to death.

If I was a caveman, I wouldn’t even notice that the internet wasn’t working. I’d be writing this on a cave wall, and then going for a jog. Did cavemen jog? Probably not voluntarily.

Jogging is OK if you choose to do it, but if you’re forced (by a sabretooth tiger, for example), it’s less fun.

It’s just like the rain and the internet.

I suppose things aren’t really so different after all.

I’d like to do a chart that traces the quality of this blog post. There are peaks and troughs. The longer I go, the worse it gets.

I bet the chart will be too long to fit on the page properly.

***

It’s after lunch now. Things are slightly improving. I may be able to do some actual work. I may be able to post this online.

It’s strange to think about it. If I was just writing this to myself, in a place where nobody would ever see it, I would be thought of as an idiot, a psychopath and a loser.

But if I post it on my blog – even though nobody will read it there either – I’m part of a thriving online community, and will be lauded for my creative multimedia acumen.

I will.

I will be lauded.

I suppose I should tie up this sprawling mess with a clever conclusion, knitting together the various conceptual strands into a glove or a small blanket.

Today’s theme has been connection.

Not just technological connection, but interpersonal connection, temporal connection and woollen connection. The nomad, the caveman, and the internet commenter exist in a world of interconnectivity. No man is an island. No nomad is an island. Wherever and whenever we are, we strive to find a way to reach beyond ourselves. This may entail painting a buffalo on a cave wall or criticising David Moyes’s substitutions. It may be attempting to draw a literal line, tracing the flow of time.

Life is made up of an infinite number of individual moments. But through thought and graft and language and technology, we can bring these individual elements to create a whole.

We can unite the things into an everything. A beautiful, complex, exasperating, difficult, messy, exciting, liberating everything.

We can all conclude our blog posts in a way that makes us sound thoughtful.

We all have the power to produce a profound final sentence, and this power is what unites us.

I had a pie for lunch. We paid by card.

Stakes

It's a struggle.

I want to do things, but not enough, my friends. Not enough.

I want to write a long essay defending artistic cowardice.

I want to document my difficult year in excruciating detail.

I want to learn how to ride a bike.

But not enough.

You know how summertime is when the living is easy?

Well it's January. The living isn't.

Peter Pan was an idiot. To live may be an awfully big adventure, but some adventures aren't worth the effort. We've all been to Chessington.

And now, to top it off, it looks like the Southampton FC chairman might be resigning, and possibly taking the manager with him.

Don't they know that I'm basing my entire mental well-being on the fortunes of Southampton Football Club?! How could they be so selfish?

It's grey and drizzly outside. I miss the days when it was night, and the nights when daylight was broad. I miss the blinding, golden, three pee ems.

It's a struggle, it really is.

On the other hand, maybe something.

***

I need to get writing again.

INT. BREAD SHOP - DAY

BREAD SHOP?

THAT'S NOT RIGHT, IS IT?

WHAT IS IT?

BUTCHERS IS MEAT.

IT'S NOT...? NO.

MAYBE BREAD SHOP *IS* RIGHT...

NO.

NO, IT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT.

"I'M JUST OFF DOWN THE BREAD SHOP!"

IT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT.

I MEAN, MOST PEOPLE BUY THEIR BREAD FROM SUPERMARKETS NOW. BUT THERE ARE STILL BREAD SHOPS. I'VE SEEN THEM.

IS BUTCHERS FOR BOTH? MEAT BUTCHER AND BREAD BUTCHER?

"BREAD BUTCHER"... NAH.

WHAT ABOUT THAT RHYME?

"THE BUTCHER, THE BREAD SHOP WORKER, THE CANDLESTICK MAKER."

AH, SO IT IS BREAD SHOP AFTER ALL!

YOU CAN OVER THINK THESE THINGS.

A customer comes through the door, and the door bell rings. Not the doorbell. The door bell. It's not, like, one of those push-a-button ding-dong bells that people have in houses. It's a bell that's on a door - a shop door - a bread shop door - to let the shop workers know that someone has come in to the shop.

The customer is HILLARY, a middle-aged woman.

She goes up to the counter. Behind the counter is NICK, the bread shop worker.

NICK

Yes, madam. 

How can I help?

HILLARY

I'm looking for 

a very specific 

loaf of bread.

NICK

Ah, well! We'll 

see what we can do!

HILLARY

It's brown, and it's 

not one of those ones 

that are all... segmented.

NICK

Segmented?

HILLARY

Yes, you know. With 

lots of flat segments. 

I don't want that.

NICK

So... unsliced?

HILLARY

That's it. Yes. And brown.

NICK

What about this one?

NICK takes a brown loaf from a shelf behind the counter. But as he moves it to the counter, something falls out of a hole in the side of the loaf. It is a gun.

The gun lands on the counter with a metallic thud.

For a moment, NICK and HILLARY stare at each other, and then at the gun, and sometimes a mixture of the two.

NICK

(cautious) Was this the specific 

loaf you were 

interested in, madam?

HILLARY

(cautious) Yes. I think 

that will do nicely.

NICK wraps up the loaf in paper, and also the gun in paper, and puts both of them into a plain white carrier bag.

No money is exchanged.

NICK

So. Tonight's the night?

HILLARY

It is.

NICK

Anything I should be 

aware of?

HILLARY

Let's just say: I wouldn't 

be taking any trains today, 

if I were you.

NICK nods. HILLARY leaves.

Then another woman comes in, and exactly the same thing happens. But this time, with an iced bun.

***

It's a struggle.

But that's the beauty of life, isn't it? If there was no struggle, there would be no stakes. Everything would be sterile, and there would be no screenplay extracts about a bread shop and some kind of clandestine plot that affects trains.

It's a bit brighter now. The sun's not out, but the rain has stopped. It's still grey, but it's a brighter grey.

It's funny how things can be improved with a little hard work.

Thomas Pinchin'

I went to a football match on Saturday. Southampton beat Burnley 4-3. It's the first time I've seen Saints win live for years. I didn't know how to react.

I went on my own. I mean, there were 15,000 other people there. But none of them were in my party. I was the only member of my party. There was too much cake.

I didn't mind being on my own. I didn't feel the urge to make small talk. I did make one remark to the person next to me. He misheard me, but realised what I'd said and began answering after I'd already begun repeating myself.  You know how that goes.

I'd intended to use my solitude in a writerly way. I was planning to eavesdrop on various strangers, so I could pick up on some charming conversational idiosyncrasies. But I didn't really hear too much.

The only good thing that happened was a middle-class mother and young daughter reacting with the same wide-eyed awe at Jay Rodriguez with his shirt off. I might have been wearing the same excited expression too, but I couldn't see what I looked like, and I didn't want to ask the guy next to me. Not after the first fiasco.

I bought a scarf before the game. I wanted to display the team colours. I don't own any red and/or white clothing, so I was dressed all in drab blues and greys. The scarf really brightened me up. Also, it was cold. Scarves don't just demonstrate your footballing affiliation; they also keep your neck warm. That's why they're better than tattoos.

Also before the game, I wandered around Southampton to kill time. I grew up there, so it was like walking around a memory. I felt like I was in a dream. I don't have any specific fond memories of the city centre, so I was mostly looking at shops that I used to visit. One of the shopping centres I remember from my youth was boarded up. Another was literally being demolished as I looked at it. I don't know if it was a professional demolition crew. Their main tactic seemed to be spraying rubble with a hose.

As I looked at it, I couldn't help but think that - in a way - I was looking at myself. I was boarded up. I was crumbling to pieces. I wasn't the way I remembered. I was being hit by the hose.

Actually, I was being hit by the hose. I should have stood further back, really...

To tell you the truth, I didn't think that at the time. I only just thought it, because it seemed like the kind of thing someone might write about.

What I actually thought was: "AHUHUHUHU! HOAS IS WET! AHAHUUU!"

I also had some time on the train to look at the tendons in my hand. Are they tendons? The bits that move the fingers? They were pretty good.

I don't think I'll ever make it as a travelogue presenter. If you're telling people about a journey, you need to make your tale a journey itself. A narrative should give a sense of distance, progress and continuity. My account so far has flitted backwards and forwards with no rhyme or reason. That's no way to travel.

Though, to be fair, I did get the train, walk into town, walk to the stadium, buy my scarf, walk back into town, see a hose, walk back to the stadium, watch the game, walk back into town and then walk back to the station.

So perhaps my fractured account is accurate.

Fracturate.

I'll take notes next time.

***

Our path to work is flooded, so we have to get the bus. On the surface, I'm annoyed at the inconvenience, but the lower, lazier part of my brain is enjoying the comfort and convenience. I can shake my warm, dry head and claim that the weather has ruined my usual morning walk.

I get to seem active, without actually being active. That's the dream. I want people to think I do things without ever having to do them.

I mean, I could lie, I suppose. I could lie all the time. But I'm a man of principle (or so I'd like you to believe).

That's why the flooding is ideal. It's not my fault. I have no alternative but to get the bus. And I don't have to lie.

I'm getting fatter and poorer by the day, but I'm winning.

***

Lucy and I came up with the saucy phrase "joie de beavre" recently.

We were very pleased with it, but thought we'd better google check it.

We could invent it! We could!

Thomas Pynchon's not the original thinker you think he is, Slate.com!

I mean, he did come up with it first, so technically that makes him original. But we came up with it also. Linear time shouldn't have any bearing on plagiarism.

I'm never going to click on that review. It might weaken my legal claim. Good strip club names don't grow on trees. This is my livelihood we're talking about.

What about... uh...?

Melon Degenerates?

That sounds like Ellen DeGeneres, who's a famous comedian. It's a pun.

(I don't think I'll google that one.)

Who rules the smut-roost in Queens now, Pynchon?!

Better The Drivel You Know

I'm a vain man, so I've been going over old reviews of my stand-up. It's not just because I want to pat myself on the trumpet; this is a marketing exercise. Now, when I do future gigs, I can point to this page.

I won't link to this page. I'll point to it.

I think this is the best I can come up with.

"gruffly brilliant" - The Londonist

"cuttingly comic observations" - Oxford Theatre Review

"confident and polished material" - Oxford Theatre Review

"confident and cool, he's the type of comic you want to befriend, whilst simultaneously making you hate yourself" - Cherwell.org

I think I'll get rid of the third one. You don't want two reviews from the same source, unless they're both from the Guardian or Terry Jones. Also, they both begin with "confident" which is repetitive and inaccurate.

The last one is clearly the best, even if it might not be totally grammatically accurate.

***

I'm wearing slippers. Slippers are the future, my friends. They're warmer than socks, but not as constrictive. You can answer the door in slippers. Admittedly, you'll lose a lot of respect from the postman.

"What are you doing here?" he'll say. "And how did you open my front door? It was locked!"

"I made a key!" you'll say, in your slippers. "How about a taste of your own medicine?"

Then you'll give him his mail.

***

In an attempt to keep my momentum going, I'm not going to dwell in any one area for too long.

Here are some words that you see a lot on message boards and comment sections. They tell you a lot about the person writing them.

Dross

If someone describes something as "dross", they invariably have terrible taste.

Drivel

Ditto.

Asinine

People use this term to make themselves sound intelligent, but the only people who use it are desperately insecure about their ability to understand things.

Naff

Using the word 'naff'' is naff, and it was so even back in the early nineties.

Puerile

Nobody with even an ounce of imagination or joy has ever criticised something by saying it is "puerile". It's a term that ten-year-olds use to show their superiority to nine-year-olds.

There are probably more that I'm forgetting. This is important work.

***

FOOTBALL'S ON TONIGHT!

COME ON YOU REDS!

SOUTHAMPTON FOOTBALL CLUB!

COME ON THE GOAL KICKERS!

LET'S BE UP IN DEM DROP-BALLS, YO!

One of Southampton's (many) bright young stars is James Ward-Prowse. He's good at taking free-kicks.

His name is good for chanting. I'd particularly like to hear his name sung to Our House by Madness ("in the middle of our team" perhaps?). This tune was previously used for defender Claus Lundekvam back in the day, so it's a definite possibility.

An outside choice would be the Mighty Mouse theme song (immortalised by Andy Kaufman). It would be a bit complicated. But if he ever won us a game, he genuinely would have saved the day.

But the one I always get stuck in my head is the Simon & Garfunkel song So Long Frank Lloyd Wright.

"So long, James Ward-Prowse..."

It's not ideally suited to a football chant. Chants aren't normally so... wistful. If the Northam stand started singing that, I think the whole team would just feel a bit melancholy. It's not a good motivator.

Also, there's a flute in it. You'd need to have a section of the crowd with flutes, which could be hazards if thrown on to the pitch.

Even if the words were changed to "come on, James Ward-Prowse", I can't see it catching on anywhere beyond my flat.

***

My legs are cold. The slippers can only do so much. I'm going to have to take off some of these ice packs.

It's difficult to know when to finish a blog post. If I force myself to keep writing, I might come up with something amazing. On the other hand, it is my day off. I should be winding down. Genius is exhausting. If I come up with something amazing, I'll be feeling it tomorrow.

It's best to go now. Keep your powder dry, as the coke dealer said to the captain of The Titanic.

Though we all know how that turned out...

Rind

Bus metaphors are like buses: you wait for ages, and then everyone in the world does the same one at once and there's graffiti on the seats.

Southampton are fourth in the Premier League! I thought I'd better squeeze that celebration in before it ceases to be true. Liverpool are playing Sunderland at the moment. If they win, we'll crash all the way down to fifth, like a common Pete Best.

But for now, the sun is shining. And I'm making a shitload of hay.

Come on, Sunderland!

I had a bacon sandwich for lunch. I don't eat bacon very often. When I have it, I'm reminded of my childhood, shilling for Danepak.

Ooh. Disallowed goal for Škrtel. The linesman flagged him for having too few vowels in his name.

Have I written about bacon before? I wouldn't like to go off on a pork tangent and find that I'm retracing my own greasy footsteps.

I wrote something about bringing home the bacon. I swore a lot more in 2008

There's also this old tweet (all old tweets are blue and bold and italicised):

I just googled "The Full English Patient", expecting to find a Ralph Fiennes made of sausage, beans and egg, with a bacon Binoche. NOTHING.

Pretty good. Not great. But OK.

And this one, which is just a bit weird:

There's nothing more comforting than a bacon sandwich stroking your hair and going "Shhhh. I'm here, I'm here".

I also did a bit of stand-up about formed bacon.

But that's not much. Eight hundred and twenty blog posts and only a few bacon references.

I think it goes to show how little importance bacon has in my life.

I've heard people say that bacon is always the thing the vegetarians miss the most. But I could easily do without bacon. For me, venison is the major meat-magnet. No matter how nice Quorn can be, it's doesn't have the deliciousness of deer.

I could go for some deer right now...

***

INTERLUDE

New character idea: Major Meat-Magnet

Initial Notes:

He's in the army. Double-barrelled surname, so posh?

Just a name, or can he attract meat? Strategic benefit?

Dead humans = meat? If so, meat attraction detrimental on battlefield: buried in corpses.

Costume design crucial factor in character's success.

Further work needed.

INTERLUDE ENDS

***

I don't really eat venison. I do like sausages though. Have I written about sausages more often than I have bacon?

Sunderland free kick in dangerous area.

Sausage history is written by the Wieners.

Ooh! Hits the crossbar! 

The wiener joke isn't great. And you're supposed to capitalise 'wieners'? I'll trust that my past self did the proper research.

I've wasted thousands of pounds on sausages and parasols.

At first I thought this was just a weird profound joke, but it relates to some kind of hilarious bit of barbecue business.

Oh man, Liverpool have scored. I didn't see the goal. I was too busy italicising and emboldening tweets.

Debate it all you want: they're called COCKTAIL sausages. So you just sit there, smug as you like, whilst I enjoy my Brown Russian.

Funny.

I think that's it. There were a few other things, but they were meaningless. I don't want to waste your time with meaningless information. Focus on what's important: old meat-related blog content and insignificant football results.

Sigh.

Two-nil Liverpool. Suarez. Fifth it is.

I should probably go. Not physically - I'll stay on the sofa - but I should end this blog post.

This is mainly just to bring September's blog post total up to six. Six seems to be the usual amount these days. It used to be sixteen or seventeen when I was younger. But it's 2013. Insight is scarce.

Six posts is fine. I won't abide five.

Throw-in.

I'm off to raid the fridge for hooves.

Scratch the Wall

The sound of hot coffee is still ringing in my mouth, so I might as well write a sentence.

I've just been faxing a vampire.

I know faxing is old hat, but he's been alive for hundred of years. Give him a break. He's invisible on Skype, so that's a no-go. But I keep telling him he should go digital. It's not good for the environment to be working on paper all the time. His castle is chock-full of ring binders.

"Paul," he always says, "my real weakness isn't sunlight or garlic. It's paperwork!"

And then he grins that grin of his, and I can't help but chuckle. "That's why you should get on email," I say. "It's so much easier."

But he always just waves his hand dismissively and wanders off to put the kettle on.

He'll cave in one of these days.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Not until you've earned that certificate.

The sound of lukewarm coffee is thundering up my tongue. It's nearly the end of the working week. I'm easing myself out of the corporate mindset and into a slipper.

I'm so glad Premier League football is back this weekend. Last weekend, I was climbing the walls. My whole weekend schedule is based around football. I don't know how to live without Mark Lawrenson making me wish I didn't.

I had to use clocks. Honest-to-goodness clocks.

A football-less weekend is like being adrift in a massive salty lake with no compass, no eyes, and no GPS.

Hey, has anyone done a joke about GPS and GPs? As in general practitioners? I don't know how the joke would work. That's not my business. I write the piano. You make it sing.

This weekend, I'll know where I am.

Football Focus? Oh, it's time for lunch.

Final Score? Oh, it's time to put the laundry on.

Match of the Day nearly over? Oh, it's time to prepare for Eric Lichaj.

That's how I live. Time is just numbers on a disc.

Everyone has their own way of marking out their life.

Christians have a Sunday service they can rely on. It doesn't matter who exists or how uncomfortable the pews are. It's a way to stick a flag in a big throbbing mass of insignificance. For Catholics, attending a big throbbing mass is a part of their weekly routine.

Jews love a different day or something. In the Sikh faith, half past eleven is considered sacred.

Football performs the same function. It orients and orientates us.

That's why solitary confinement in prison is so terrible. You have no flags, no football, no clocks. You have to scratch the days on the wall of your cell. It's true. I've seen films about it.

...

I'm getting off-track here. Where was I?

I'm lost in my own post about being lost. I'll just check my GPS.

Hmm.

They've all lost their stethoscopes...

...

Can Create Something Out Of Nothing

Too long between posts. Much too long.

What have I been up to? What haven't I been up to!

To what have I not been up?

I have not been up to:

a) mischief
b) no good
c) my neck in something
d) the minute
e) scratch
f) Scotland
g) get lucky

I've come up with several ideas for this entry, but they all seem a bit facetious. The facetiousness may not be noticeable if you're reading this, but it's very evident to me. My teeth are gritted, and everything that's even remotely positive is sarcastic. Sarcasm can power through gritted teeth if it's concentrated enough. It's like radiation. You can measure it with one of those Ghostbusters clickysticks.

I have a small ball.

Let's deal with that.

It's a football, but a small one. A miniature version of a big football. I won it in a prize draw for the 2010 World Cup. That was three years ago.

That was three years ago.

I've been kicking it around our flat for the past few days, with some breaks. It has improved my close control and my mental state. I'm the best in the world at what I do, and what I do is dribble a small ball around a pillar.

I can do complicated flicks and step-overs; I can ricochet passes at a variety of angles, from a variety of cupboards; I can curl the ball around the curve of our sofa, avoiding the coffee table. I can annoy our downstairs neighbour.

Who needs grass when you have badly-cut laminate flooring?

Sometimes I'll miscue and shatter a portrait of a Ming vase, but it's a small price to pay.

I couldn't do any of it with a full-sized ball. A full-sized ball would make the kitchen a death trap. But a small ball is fine. It's good to kick a small ball into the kitchen when Lucy is cooking a hot meal. Scalding is good. Ambulances are good. Skin grafts are good.

The new Premier League season is starting soon, so I'm going to buy a cricket bat.

***

I came up with a new character the other day. It's not one of those ones that's nothing more than a stupid play on words. It's a fully-fledged character, with his own internal life, complex morality and compelling back story. In fact, his name isn't important. The character could thrive even if it had no name, like that cowboy one.

Names are nominal. That's literally what nominal means.

Look past the label, and see what's in the jar. Don't judge a book by its Wikipedia entry.

My new character is something new, and something exciting.

"Fab" Rick Softener

His full name (not that it's important) is Fabulous Richard Softener, but he prefers "Fab" Rick Softener.

It's not important why he's called that, other than illustrating his character. He's the kind of person who would have a name like he does have.

He's complicated, because part of his name is in inverted commas. Also, he lives in America.

I'm trying not to give away too many details.

(He's not Chinese, if that's what you're thinking.)

Two Weeks

Two weeks since I've gone and I feel like the tramp, picking dustbins in the alley.

"I want... uh... I want... that one! The shiny one, with the lid."

"Excellent choice, sir."

Two weeks is too long a gap between blog posts. But I've been getting my affairs in order. I've tried to be serious for the whole time, but have slipped occasionally. I did a funny dance a few days ago. I felt bad about it. It was really funny.

Since my last post, Lucy and I have painted a door and a ceiling, seen a heron, stopped watching two films because they were rubbish, and purchased three packets of gnocchi on a buy-two-get-the-third-bag-of-gnocchi-free deal at a popular orange supermarket.

I've also finished Catch-22, which I somehow managed to avoid reading until now. I don't really know what I think about it. It was initially quite funny, then quite wearying for a few hundred pages, but eventually worked its way back into my brain. I liked the serious bits best, because horrific war injuries are better than a relentless barrage of Abbot and Costello-style banter. All in all, it was pretty good. But maybe too long or something.

Speaking of maybe too long or something, I also finished watching season four of Arrested Development. I loved it. In the end.

It was a lot like Catch-22, structurewise, with a lot of repetition and revisiting events from various perspectives. It started off slow, but became really impressive. It's unusual for a programme's "reboot" to be so different and ambitious. It is to be commended, even if it's not always 100% successful. I'm going to watch it again to see all the stuff I missed.

But you're not interested in that. You want to know my opinion on the issue of the day.

And the issue of the day is Tomato & Basil.

It's a complicated debate. Both sides have their merits and... oh. "Soup." "Of the day."

I get it. Very funny.

Not as funny as the dance, but dot dot dot fullstop line break

***

Next season's Southampton Football Club kit was announced this morning. There has been a lot of talk on social networking and building sites about the new shirt.

In a break from tradition, we are no longer wearing stripes. Just like the many times in the past we have also broken with tradition. Breaking with tradition is something of a tradition at Southampton Football Club. Can we afford to forego our heritage by failing to break with tradition next season?

And what about the shorts?

I'm fairly indifferent about the kit. But I can see why it has caused some controversy:

As you can see, in addition to the stripe issue, the shirt (left) has abandoned the customary "sleeves and trunk" element, and has instead adopted some kind of new "holster" design. Sports scientists have claimed that this will increase mobility and will allow the children of the players to breathe.

The shorts (right), have been tweaked slightly, so that the previous - and quite popular - double leg-hole has been amalgamated into a single sealed sheath.

The club's crest has also been altered.

I think making a fuss about these changes is both futile and misguided. A football club's kit goes through many changes. We used to wear blue shorts, after all. Just because something is seen as "traditional", it doesn't mean that it can't be changed. New traditions are created every day. And broken with twice as often.

If we are to move forward as a successful club, to attract top players and pursue a European place in the next few years, we need to modernise. Also, green is a much more marketable colour in the lucrative Leprechaun community.

Deep Cross

At the end of the Brazil-England match yesterday, the referee crossed himself Catholic-style, and Lucy disapproved.

I asked her what the problem was. I wondered if it had something to do with him compromising his neutrality. A referee should show no signs of bias. But what is an overt, public, religious gesture if not a statement of affiliation? Referees should be on the fence. Catholics aren't on the fence.

He's being partisan in a couple of ways. Firstly, in the case of yesterday's game, he was suggesting a preference for the more Catholic of the two countries. That's Brazil. They've even got a massive Jesus. The English, on the other hand, are heathens. Or - at best - mixed. Any Catholic worth his salt would be rooting for his fellow believers. He might have given Brazil a key penalty, as a way to placate their mutual God. He didn't, but he might have.

The second way that the referee was partisan was in favouring Catholicism over all of the other religions. Neutrality doesn't just apply to the teams playing on the day. It also applies to everything else. If he wanted to make a Catholic gesture, he should also have made the gestures of the other major religions: Islam (praying towards Mecca), Judaism (shrugging), Sikhism (thumbs up), Scientology (sofa-jumping), Paganism (blood sacrifice), and Hinduism (venerating cows).

If he can't do all of those things, he should be an atheist. All referees should be atheists. Rationality and objectivity are valuable attributes in an official. You don't want a referee ruling on a tricky handball decision based on superstition. You don't want a linesman refusing to adjudicate a borderline offside because it's the sabbath.

Of course, the requirements to make only evidence-based decisions would require the introduction of video replay technology. And some might argue that the scientific assessment of truth would make the game sterile, halting and lacking in unpredictability. Much like the ruthless logic of atheism makes human existence become lacking in nuance, passion, and female circumcision.

It's an interesting parallel. I suppose there's a middle ground. Goal line technology is going to be introduced, but not - or at least not yet - video replays for everything.

Similarly, atheism can play some role in regulating the idiocy of religion, but that doesn't mean we have to burn down all synagogues to make room for supercolliders.

Yes, it's an interesting parallel. Luckily, my argument has been well thought-through, and not at all meandering and contradictory. I could adapt this for the New Humanist, or FourFourTwo magazine. For money.

Also, referees should be impartial on non-religious matters, like the Coke-Pepsi debate, or whether people should tuck in their shirts. (They are allowed to have an opinion on whether Family Guy is better than The Simpsons however - we don't want them to be IDIOTS.)

This all stems from the referee's simple gesture.

But Lucy said no, it's not that. Maybe you should have let me finish before launching into that whole thing.

And I said sorry.

And she said should we be using quotation marks?

And I said no.

And she said it's not an issue of neutrality. It's one of authority.

By making the sign of the cross, the referee has tacitly implied that there is a higher power. In this case, it's some form of Christian deity. That is something a referee should never do.

If you want to officiate a football match, the buck stops with you. If a player senses that you're not entirely in control, they'll show dissent, they won't retreat the full ten yards at free kicks, and the game will descend into anarchy.

The referee - Wilmar Roldán is his name - has, by that one single gesture, abdicated responsibility. Why should we listen to him? Why should the players obey his commands? He's simply a middle man. If God is so powerful, why doesn't he referee the game? God's been around for ages. He must have refereed before. I bet he's got all the badges.

He's omnipresent too, which would mean that goal line technology would be unnecessary. You wouldn't need linesmen either. Though if you wanted to maintain the pleasant symmetry of the flags, you could enlist the Son and the Holy Ghost (the team of officials are usually all from the same country).

Roldán isn't even a priest, as far as I know.

The reasons discussed are probably why he saved his gesture for the end of the game. If he'd done it at the start - and he might have; I didn't check - all hell would have broken lose.

You'd never see an English referee doing anything so stupid. English referees are aware that, even after the final whistle, their conduct is under the microscope. To be fair, Graham Poll did once do the pretending-to-pull-off-your-own-thumb illusion. But on that occasion, both teams were composed of wizards.

Hand gestures may seem insignificant, but look how long this blog post has been.

I hope Wilmar Roldán never referees another professional football match.

After this rant, Lucy paused and took a drink of water. She was quite worked up.

Or it might have been me. It's difficult to remember these little details. In fact, it might not have been the sign of the cross that the referee did; he might have been signalling for someone to collect the corner flags.

But the point remains

Holiday 2013 – Days Six, Seven and Eight

We continued our pattern of two days doing nothing, followed by one day of doing too much. Today (day eight), we went on another trip. This one was really nice – we went to good places that were warm and interesting. I didn’t spot any “funny” billboards though, so I’m LIVID. What does a guy gots to do to get blog fuel around heres, huh? (That’s how I talk for the duration of that sentence.)

Luckily, I’ve finished the Stewart Lee book, so my writing style will no longer be so derivative. Or if it is, it will be derivative of something completely different. I’ve just finished Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, which is an unsettling horror story. I don’t think I can write like him though.

The other thing I’ve been reading is a volume of Jamie Hernandez’s Love and Rockets comic. (His brother Gilbert also does them, but I haven’t got anything by him yet.)

Man, it is a classy comic book. It’s full of strong, complex, predominantly female, characters, beautiful artwork, wrestling, punk rock, Latino slang, sex, dinosaurs, gang violence - all combined to make incredibly funny and often moving stories. Love and Rockets began in the early eighties, and is still going (or at least was until recently). Classy, classy stuff.

I’ve started to use ‘classy’ as a compliment more and more recently. I think the word fell out of fashion when it became associated with monocles and hot tub chandeliers. But it’s time it was reclaimed for things refined, sophisticated, and of high quality. They don’t have to be posh or stuffy.

Love and Rockets is classy.

The three things I’ve recently been describing as classy are:

1)      Love and Rockets

2)      Former AWA wrestling champion Nick Bockwinkel. To be fair, he probably fits the original definition too. He was a star in the seventies and eighties. In character, he was a superior heel. Out of character, he seems like a real gentleman. Classy.

3)      Rickie Lambert, striker for Southampton FC. He's a classy footballer. People who don’t watch him regularly may think he’s just a big, strong lower-league brute. But he has a vision and touch that’s a joy to behold. He can knock the ball down, or hold it up and bring others into play. His passing is incredible. He’s a bit like Dimitar “the Scimitar” Berbatov in that he moves slowly, but everything he does is crafted beautifully. He may not have pace, but he has vision. And he scores goals. And he’s good in the air. And he’s excellent with set-pieces. And he’s never missed a penalty. And Andy Carroll is in the England squad ahead of him.

That was weird. My three things there relate to comics, wrestling and football. These are three of my main interests, but I don’t talk about them much. I suppose I worry that people won’t be interested. But how would that explain the rest of my content? I can’t be writing my usual meaningless waffle because I think people are actually reading.

My other main interest is comedy.

Hey here’s a joke that I sort-of thought about, but gave up before finishing!

My cousin wrote to the police repeatedly, claiming she was being “storked”. They didn’t seem to take her seriously. Which just goes to show – spelling matters. Ironically, she ended up pregnant.

The good thing about the storked/stalked confusion is that it’s a joke which doesn’t work either out loud or written down. The mistake might make sense in some third medium – i.e. telepathy.

Also, why would she write to the police? Also, why wouldn’t she offer any further details? Also, is this a "rape joke"?

As I said, I never finished it. There are a few kinks to work out.

4)      Comedy. Classy.

***

Isn’t it weird that “worship” and “warship” are only one letter different, but are completely different things? And, to a lesser extent, “workshop”.

I think the Turkish air is doing wonders for my ponders. When I’m back in Blighty (which is what I call my kilt), I’m going to grind to a halt. That’s why this blog is such a valuable resource. It’s like a humour reservoir. A reservoir-ha-ha, you might say. In the barren months ahead, I can revisit these blog posts and think “Storked. Yes. There’s something in that.”

The Nobility of Sloth

It's been nearly two weeks since my last proper blog post. I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me. Rest assured, I haven't just been sitting on my laurels. I have a smorgasbord of two exciting things to talk about. This will be like when your co-worker has been on holiday for two weeks, and they have so many things to tell you about that you have to move desks. "I hate the Maldives," you can shout from your new vantage point.

The first exciting thing is a small observation. Sometimes the smallest observations are the most exciting. The big ones are dull. Say you observed the horizon, for example? No-one would care.

My small observation is about the Paralympics. I've hardly watched any of the Paralympics, not because of a deep-held prejudice against the disabled (no matter what my parole officer says), but just because the football season has started. Football takes precedence against all other sport. It's my bread and butter. Anything else is... something I have less often than bread and butter.

Actually, I don't really have bread and butter that often. So maybe all other sport is my bread and butter, and football is my... something I do eat often. Sweetcorn, for example.

Football is my delicious regular sweetcorn.

The Paralympics (and Olympics and rugby and darts) is the nice, but unnecessary, bread and butter.

And I'll be damned if I'm going to eat bread and butter when there's sweetcorn on the plate. Unless I have a sweetcorn sandwich, but that's taking the analogy in an unproductive direction.

However, I did see a bit of the wheelchair basketball, which is always hugely impressive.

(Is it OK to say that? Is that patronising? I worry for the Paralympics broadcasters who have to walk a tightrope of being politically correct, admiring and yet not condescending. It's a necessary tightrope of course - all those considerations are important - but if I was in the commentary booth, I'd be terrified that I'd accidentally let slip a hate crime.)

I noticed one thing about the wheelchair basketball that amused me. In able-bodied basketball, whenever a player is fouled and has a free throw, there's weird little bit of etiquette that's always observed. After the first free throw is taken, whether the player scores or misses, his colleagues standing to the side of the key ALWAYS step towards him or her, and give a little supportive fist bump or hand slap. It's a way of saying "well done" or "never mind". Or, more accurately, it's saying "it doesn't matter how well you do - we're all behind you".

You can see an example of what I'm talking about here (you won't need to watch the whole thing):



I wonder where this ritual came from. Probably, it was an organic show of support that just happened one day. But now, everyone has to do it every time. What was originally a nice show of support has become routine. There can't be any thought behind it. It's just an obligation.

It's like saying "bless you" after someone sneezes. Originally thoughtful, but now a chore. The only reason to say "bless you" or give your team-mate a fist bump is because it would be rude not to do it.

What I noticed when watching the wheelchair basketball was that they do exactly the same thing. Of course they do - it's a convention of the sport. It's just that when you're in a wheelchair, it seems more like hard work to go over and touch hands. This pointless ritual requires valuable arm-strength. But they do it anyway, because that's just what happens.

Of course, me thinking this probably is patronising. Them rolling a few feet is as easy and natural as an able-bodied player walking. It's just part of the game.

I don't really think the convention is pointless. I mean, sport in itself is a pointless ritual. It would be weird to be annoyed at a pointless subset of it. It just shows (instinctive, meaningless) thoughtfulness and camaraderie. I think we can all admire that.

***

The second exciting thing I've thought about is how Matt Le Tissier has ruined my life.

I might sue him.

I'm a Southampton F.C. fan, and so Le Tiss was my hero growing up. He had an effortless talent that made everything he did look easy and beautiful. Here's a short illustration of his genius:



Le Tissier was notable for being:
a) fantastic, and
b) lazy

He didn't train hard, he wasn't in a amazing shape, he didn't run all over the pitch, he wasn't a bone-crunching tackler. He just wandered around like a pensioner kicking seashells until it was time to get the ball, skip past eight opponents and then rifle a shot into the corner of the net.

I think it was because of him that I valued the nobility of lazy genius.

It wasn't just him, in fact. I always preferred the louche, skillful enigma to the hard-grafting model pro. I'll always choose Cantona and Bergkamp over Keane and Viera.

The trouble was that this isn't a great lesson for a child to learn. The idea that, not only is laziness OK, but that it's preferable, to hard work isn't a good basis for future success.

That philosophy says: working hard is cheating; succeeding with minimal effort is ART.

If you work hard and achieve nothing, you've failed. If you don't work hard and achieve nothing... big deal - wake me for lunch.

I think this harmful idea must have grabbed me at some point. All of my school reports said the same thing: "Paul is bright, but needs to try harder", or... [I was going to write another example, but couldn't be bothered]

I don't really work hard at anything. I just hope that my natural talent will lead me down the path of glory. The trouble is, my natural talent is far from evident.

If you're a footballer, the nature of your talent is clear. You can be lazy if you do what's required of a footballer. If you don't work hard, but score goals and win matches, there's no problem.

But if your life is lived on those terms, it's not the same. You can't just be lazy in life, with no specific talent in any area. That's not lazy genius. That's just lazy.

I've been so caught up in with venerating the nobility of slothful brilliance that I've forgotten all about the brilliance.

In my head, sloth is worthy on its own terms. Genius would be nice, sure. But the sloth is key. One day, a talent may emerge to make this whole position justified.

"You see!" I'll say. "I was right to not try hard."

If it doesn't emerge, I can still say "Well, at least I had more sleep than you did. One-nil me!" and then die with a smile on my face (only because it's apparently less hard work than a frown).

It's Le Tissier's fault! I wanted to be like him! If I'd have grown up idolising Phil Neville, I'd probably have a lot more money, a lot more dress shoes and one hell of a well-tended garden.

This seems to suggest that I'm unhappy with my life. I'm not. I was just playing Neville's advocate. I totally believe the Le Tissier philosophy is worthy. With my potential locked away, there could be oceans of the stuff. If I release it, I might realise that I only have a pipette's worth of inspiration.

Trying hard is for chumps. Dedicated, respectable chumps.

It's better to burn out than fade away.

And even better than burning out is the idea that people will say: "I bet he's the kind of guy who could, hypothetically, burn out spectacularly".

***

Here's a bonus, related, exciting thing.

Ironically, the only thing that I actually have worked really hard at is football.

I have no natural talent at football whatsoever. As a child I struggled with this. Playing football is such a big part of developing into a well-adjusted WKD-drinking, deafening-car-stereo-hard-house playing, deadbeat 19-year-old dad. If you have no skill in that area, you're cut off from a whole social circle.

So I worked hard. I played it a lot. I practised on my own. I enjoyed it! I put in the hours and eventually, I turned myself from a footballer with no talent into a footballer with the bare minimum of talent. Whatever the smallest unit of football talent is called (I believe it might be "the Downing"), I had one of them.

I was still terrible. But I had just enough ability to play in a kick-about, complete a sloppy Cruyff turn, and not have to run away if an errant ball came my way in a park. All through hard work and dedication.

In the end, Phil Neville had the right idea.

"If you have an evident talent dearth // graft is a must, to show your worth."

He is a very wise man.