The Honor System

I became aware of the "Honor System" thanks to an episode of Seinfeld entitled The Contest.

This involved the four characters betting on who could last the longest without masturbating.

As they could not monitor each other’s movements, they had to rely on the "Honor System".

The beauty of the writing was such that the M word was never mentioned.

I came across the honor system in a field in Jamestown last Friday. Hodgkiss Farm was selling some of its wares and we swung in to survey the goodies.

My mother picked the corn and I looked around for someone to take the cash. No one.

Then I saw a box with a little sign saying pay here and that the honor system was in operation.

My grand father, who’s visiting from Jamaica, could not believe what he’d just witnessed. An unmonitored box with money in a field.

I paid the $6 for the 12 corn on the cob and at supper out that night everyone agreed that the corn was very sweet.

My theory is that if we hadn’t paid then we’d have been ill. Call it corn karma.

On the subject of eating, I descended from the trans Atlantic flight from Paris absolutely stuffed.

Air France excelled itself to the point that I forgot about my hatred of flying because I was just savouring the cuisine.

Air Food gave us a complimentary glass of champagne, which was such an elegant touch as was the meal especially for the children. It was an altogether better experience than the American Airlines atrocity.

And such urbanity went part way to appeasing my chagrin over the lack of individual TV screens which is why I opted for Air France to travel to Boston with three children.

As it was, the 19-month-old slept for the first hour and a half and was on good form for the rest of the flight apart from the descent when he just wailed because he had to be belted in with me.

A few people cooed afterwards about how wonderfully well behaved he was. Maybe it was the shot of Dolipran an hour before boarding.

Maybe I just looked as if I wasn’t going to brook any kind of disapproval.

Being in Rhode Island in October has been unusual. Both visits before have been during the blazing summer months. The eldest is having great difficulty understanding that October sunshine doesn’t necessarily mean short sleeves. Maybe she misses the routine of school.

She hasn’t been given any homework to do. Her teacher says she should do a project about her time in the States visiting her grand mother and great grand father.

The middle child has been given maths and reading exercises.

I’m getting into Gafi le fantome and all his antics. I met the class teacher before we left and she outlined what the girl had to do on holiday.

As I decipher the instructions with the five-year-old and help her to keep track with her schoolmates back in Paris, I realise i'm living a derivation of the honor system.

From yoga to yohji

High hopes for the 9.10 to London were dashed as soon as I got into the frequent traveller lounge. No Sunday papers from Britain. I really thought that was just an 8.07 thing. Clearly not. I bore this latest setback with fortitude and picked up Le Journal du Dimanche which was obviously so delighted with France's 20-18 quarter-final victory over the All Blacks on Saturday night that it could only bellow: Enorme.

Since Saturday morning's front page of L'Equipe had said: Ce serait immense ..... I got the feeling that these papers were run by men with psychosexual projection issues.

But indeed it was big. France beat New Zealand to reach the semi-finals of the rugby world cup where they'll play England who did gigantic things themselves on Saturday afternoon by beating Australia 12-10.

These two results have left southern hemisphere rugby in a state of massive shock and certainly France must be fancying their chances of defeating England.

If France reaches the final and then wins the whole thing, it seems to go without saying that I’ll probably be learning some new words for throbbingly mega.

I wanted to go to Tate Britain to see the Millais exhibition. But Monday has been taken up with car problems. The Peugeot cracked up and the man from the Automobile Association came to fix it.

It was a broken fan belt. Alan from the AA diligently went about his work, my contribution to the repairs was simply to stand on the pavement near the car and to look on purposefully.

My mechanical dexterity extended to putting my hand through the fan belt and spinning it round my wrist like a hula-hoop.

But this wasn’t Waikiki Beach. This was grey and gritty SW16 London where the cars race down the street and the house prices rise before your very eyes.

The Millais exhibition will be around for a few more weeks yet.

Why Millais? I first heard about him when I was a student in Paris.

I remember it quite clearly. I was in my room in the Collège Franco-Britannique at the Cité Universitaire in the 14th. It was hot and for some reason I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep so I turned on the radio.

The BBC World Service was airing some dramatisation about the life of John Ruskin and it necessarily took in his doomed marriage. As far as I remembered it wasn’t consecrated because his lady wife, Effie Gray, was menstruating on their wedding night. This so appalled the brain of the Britain that he could never bring himself to go anywhere near her.

The lady bore her frustration up to a point but finally spoke fully and frankly to Millais. As Effie was something of hottie, he thought that Ruskin was committing a crime against femininity and got her to divorce.

What followed was a ginormous scandal. Nevertheless the Pre Raphaelite painter married the girl himself. Effie bore the opprobrium and bore Millais 750 children.

As all this was unfolding during the early hours of the morning, I thought I’d heard wrong but I eventually found a library — this was in the days before Google — and the story — give or take a few disagreements over details among biographers — checked out. The couple actually had eight children.

Ooh la. As my friend Sebastian would say.

Education, education, education. As Tony Blair once said.

So Millais will have to wait until after the trip to America.

By the time I get back I fully expect fashion trends to be moving towards a model I have inadvertently outlined.

Yoga on Thursday was a non-starter because I arrived at 7.25pm. This was on time but too late.

People who hadn’t reserved had got there earlier. But as I had reserved I got there later but yet I was not allowed in.

There is an illogic at work here but I was unable to kick up a stink about this because it wouldn’t have been very om to be emitting fury outside a yoga class where I should have been calming down.

So I had to remain at one with my internal anger. Another reject was on the pavement outside.

She said: “Tonight is the first time I’d reserved and there was no place. Usually I don’t reserve…..”

I suggested going for a drink to drown our sorrows but once I’d unchained my bike I realised I didn’t have any money.

Laura said she had cash. So I followed. She also had an invitation for the opening of the Y3 shop in Rue Etienne Marcel.

She bumped into a few people from Bread and Butter on our way and we had pre-opening drinks in one of the bars near the shop. Once we were all sat down at a table I was asked if I was involved in the fashion business.

No. I was actually just out for a yoga session hence the reason for my appearance. “Don’t worry,” said one of the B&B men. “You’re wearing the right track suit.”

It was only when I got in that I realised that Y3 was a link up between Yohji Yamamoto and Adidas.

Hanging with the black clad brigade of the beau monde was an impromptu treat. I stuck with the orange juice figuring that if I started on the wine, I’d end up tottering and since I was in outré garb of grey sweatshirt, a holey blue track suit bottoms and black plimsoles, that would make more of a spectacle of myself.

And to a certain extent, I was in my natural habitat. I loved what Yamamoto did for the kimonos in Zatoichi a few years back.

More importantly I’ve been an Adidas boy and man. Only a few weeks ago I was buying the Kaiser 5 football boot for the new season not to mention some Adidas shin pads. I have sported in Adidas ever since I can remember.

I think I once toyed with Puma Brasilia but that was because Pele wore Puma and my grand dad adored Pele and Brazilian football.

So I soaked up the spontaneity of the moment. The German PR girl stopped talking to me when Yohji came in and went off to take pictures of him and his gang of exquisitely buffed acolytes.

I’m pretty sure I saw Yohji looking over at me at one point. I’m going to keep a close eye on the boutique. If I see a line of trousers with holes in them I will demand some kind of creative acknowledgement.

If there’s nothing I’ll know exactly how Effie felt.

happy holidays

I was just preparing to plunge my hands into the washing up bowl on Wednesday night when the mobile rang. It was Neil asking if I was up for the second half of a Champions League match.

“I didn’t call because I thought you’d be guarding the children while your missus was at the day –feel- lays,” I said.

No, he retorted, “The défilés were last night.”

“So what’s the look?”

Neil told me that the look from Jean Paul Gaultier — which is where his missus is a designer — is of pirates.

“But wasn’t that 15 years ago?”

“We’re all pirates now,” Neil reminded me.

Well after my fashion update, the brigand in me wanted to just leave the dirty dishes there. But admirable behaviour prevailed. I completed the assignment, got on my bike and met up with Neil at the usual venue.

Quigley’s Point is an Irish bar near one of the side doors of St Eustache, a massive church that somehow seems belittled by the sprawling modern complex of Les Halles.

What I like about the area around the church is that it is well illuminated, animated but yet the building emits a powerful calm.

Chelsea under Jose Mourinho used to pump power and as I went over to greet Neil, I looked up at the giant screen to see Liverpool trailing at home to Marseille.

“Chelsea are two one up at Valencia,” he informed me.

“I’m off Chelsea,” I replied. He laughed.

We were watching Liverpool’s increasingly frantic bid to equalise when one of the immigration officers from the Gare Du Nord came up to say hello.

I’d bumped into her when I was at the bar with Neil sometime last season during a Champions League match.

“The last time I saw you, you were having trouble with that bloke…”

I told her that I saw him in the Frequent Traveller Lounge without his family. She just rolled her eyes.

We got chatting and she told me that her three-year posting to Paris was ending and she was off to work at Calais.

This would lead to no end of domestic difficulties as her partner worked for French immigration at la Gare du Nord but there were secondments she could do in Paris.

Neil suggested that she could get medical leave if I attacked her during one of my next trips through.

She pushed her lip out while pondering the crocked genius of it.

I must admit it was inspired but ultimately flawed but then he is an architect.

An architect hailing from north-east England. So Newcastle United Football Club is the logical team for him.

And in the days when Chelsea were falling short in the Champions League, he used to say: “At least your team is in the Champions League.”
Couldn’t argue with him on that. Now that I am teamless I just looked at the results and thought about the surprises of the night.

The Chelsea win at Valencia was a shock given that Chelsea couldn’t beat their struggling neighbours Fulham last Saturday. So coming from behind against a team that had five straight victories under their belts in the Spanish league was something of a coup.

After the Liverpool match we stayed and watched the highlights from the other games and caught up over a couple of drinks.

His girls are learning to play the flute and guitar. From next week for 10 days I’m going to have to be teacher to mine.

I went to see the teacher of the six year old at 8am this morning to find out what she’d have to do while she’s in America.

I squinted as the exercises were explained to me briefly. I’m glad I’m not going to school every day.

As for the tasks for the eight-year-old, they are much simpler. She has to prepare a review of her trip, taking in things like the people she meets and what she does.
And then she can present it all to the class soon after her return.

Her teacher says that she can catch up on the lessons missed during the half-term holiday in Paris.

We’re obviously entering the realm of hothouse holidays.

Braque to basics

What’s to be done when the bleeding obvious actually happens? Do you stand up, clasp your hands and shout hosanna? Or do you sit down and growl about the lethargic pace of change?

I’m an upbeat kind of person so I’m more in the camp of singing songs of joy. But I have to say that the French education minister’s announcement a few days ago that from September 2008 there’ll no longer be school on Saturday morning is overdue.

When the eldest started to partake in this a few years ago, we viewed it as a quaint convention.

But since I’ve been indulging in the football, it has become quite awkward.

Yesterday was a case in point. My usual rendez-vous with the captain of the team is at 8.45am at Porte de Montreuil over on the eastern fringes of the city. And from there Renon drives me and another player, Walter, to various grounds around the Parisian suburbs.

The meet-up is usually achievable if I drop my girls off on Saturday as soon as the doors open at 8.20. I can then get the metro and be there with minutes to spare.

But now our team is in the top flight — things are going to be more serious. Referees are going to be slimmer and there are going to be prompt starts at 9.30.

So it was 8.30 at the Porte de Montreuil. I felt as if I was deserting a major offensive at home. The darling daughters had barely eaten their breakfast when I was on the brink of departing. As for the boy, the porridge wasn’t even in globules on his bib.

Reform is what Sgt Major Sarkozy said he was going to inject into French life. And I’ve no doubt that he is going to execute his directive but a fat lot of good that is to me in the here and now.

But maybe next year in the there and then I’ll be showering rose petals on the Sgt Major.

Got to Porte de Montreuil on time. We arrived at the pitch on time. On the field on time. Well before 9.30 only to find that the opponents hadn’t marked out the lines on the pitch. Maybe they’re into the expansive game.

So while a couple of their lads went round with some line marking contraption I continued my warm-up.

This routine is now embellished with a few of the stretching movements I’ve managed to retain from yoga.

I didn’t do anything too elaborate figuring that if I adopted the warrior position, it might transmit the wrong kind of signals.

Perhaps I should have as I was hardly combative during my 20-odd minutes on the right in midfield.

I was having difficulty in the coach’s 4-3-3 model. Especially since Nelson, who was supposed to be advancing with me on the outside right had drifted into the centre.

I ceded my place and about five minutes later Nelson came off.

He was remarking on the touchline how the right flank had been substituted when we scored from a move down the left.

Our first goal in the top division. My approach at times like this is never change a winning team and though I was asked if I wanted to go back on I said that I was quite happy on the sidelines.

Especially since the opponents hadn’t scored. But as the second half wore on, they were attacking at will down our left.

The left back had endured enough after 70 minutes, so I was sent back into the fray on the left in midfield and we were back in a 4-4-2 formation.

Nelson was on the inside and when I was able to break up an attack I instinctively knew where to look for him with a simple pass so we could launch the counter.

Reviewing our 1-0 victory, I’d like to think I curbed my natural attacking instincts for the good of the collective.

I was told I’d made une bonne rentrée and that certainly didn’t need much translation or even explanation.

I set off for work at the radio station happy with my contribution. I thought I was walking to the train station when I suddenly noticed that I was in fact striding.

I slowed down, looked at my legs and took some rather deliberate footsteps to make sure that it wasn’t some victory-fuelled euphoria that had numbed the pain.

No. I could walk. Hosanna I can walk after a football match. There were no grimaces, no self-recriminations for trying to stop the icy claws of decrepitude. Praise be I can walk.

Perhaps it’s the yoga. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’d avoided the tackles of their No 12.

Even this morning I could walk. No delayed effects. But there was déjà vu.

For the second week running there were no Sunday papers in the Frequent Travellers Lounge for the benighted passengers on the 0807 from the Gare du Nord.

This time it didn’t matter because I had the laptop back after a 10 absence with a faulty CD/DVD eject button and I caught up with the film Kinky Boots, a heart-warming tale of fortitude in adversity.

Duly inspired I got on the bus at Waterloo and went over to the Tate Modern. I think I shall do an onslaught on the Tate Modern because it won’t be just around the corner when the Eurostar goes steaming into St Pancras International from November 14.

I was looking at Clarinet and Bottle of Rum, Braque’s painting from 1911. He created it when he was in Céret in southern France. Picasso was working alongside him and they swapped ideas to such an extent that they had problems distinguishing their own work.

Two ladies in their mid to late 50s were cooing over the piece, admiring the layers and the musical motifs.

“Would you put it on your wall?” I asked one of them. She said she most definitely would. “Would you?” she queried.

“I’m not so sure yet.”

“Give it a few years,” she encouraged. “And you’ll come round.”

They wandered off and I had a look at a few of the other pictures before returning to review the Braque.

“I must create a new sort of beauty,” the artist claimed in 1910. “And through that beauty interpret my subjective impression.”

That’s a pretty stringent mission statement. I’ve nothing near as bold as that to proclaim.

It would be pompous to attempt to throw out something like that too. But I have to say that I’m doing my best to live a new sort of beauty.

But can it be done without the Sunday papers?

Thanks for the memory

Eurostar has got to do something at la Gare du Nord. The configuration of the ticket machines, the French and British immigration checks means that logical queues are nigh impossible.

I don’t want to veer into the standard rubbish about Latin and British temperaments but the laissez-faire approach of staff doesn’t help.

It’s rare to see Eurostar footsoldiers intervene, marshal a queue and deter the “join anywhere” brigade.

I was shuffling my way to the British immigration desks this morning behind quite a tall young man, three women and a family.

From out of nowhere came a well-dressed chap in his early 50s, well-groomed and expensive of smell. He stopped, squinted to the left and then the right and went off in that direction. Seconds later he was back and he was hovering. The tall young man looked at him, the ladies didn’t seem to notice as he stood to the side of them, slightly ahead of me.

The young bloke and the women went to the desk on the left and the family advanced to the desk in front of me. Mr Well–groomed just stood his ground. When the family was finished he simply moved in ahead of me.

I said to him that I thought I was next and he told me that he was looking for his family and that he had children waiting. He did back away. However he must have got in behind me because by the time I was in the Frequent Travellers Lounge he was breezing past me heading towards the magazine rack.

I went up to him and said: “You didn’t have to push in front of me like that.” He replied: “As I explained I have children waiting for me.”

“I’m sure you do,” I said, even though no sign of his family was to be found in the lounge. “But you could have asked me to allow you in rather than pushing in like that.”

He harrumphed and there wasn’t much to say after that. Must admit he didn’t look too keen to find his offspring as he tucked into an array of goodies in the lounge.

As I stood in the buffet car, looking out at the onset of the countryside, I wondered to myself whether I appeared the type to brook such rudeness.

I focused my gaze on my image in the window and thought I don’t look psychopathic nor do I look a puny diminished being. I look quite ordinary. And I guess that was at the heart of the clash.

Maybe his values system had broken down because he was desperately seeking his family. I should have followed him to see if he was telling the truth.

I tried to visualise his reaction as I started raging: “Where’s your family? Where’s your family queue barger?”

That would have freaked him out.

Clearly this avenue of thinking stems from utter disgust that the lounge did not have any British newspapers for the benefit of passengers on the 0807.

Of the thousand Sundays I’ve travelled between Paris and London, this was the one when I wanted to read the papers. Namely on the deconstruction of José Mourinho’s exit from Chelsea on Thursday.

I even asked the lounge’s receptionist. Nothing.

Despite the barbarity of the situation I remained zenic.

“I think I’m turning Japanese, I think I’m turning Japanese, I really think so….”

Oh yes, the marvellous refrain from the Vapors song from 1980. And indeed I am. For though I’m south London born, I’m going to adopt the Japanese stance in terms of my sporting affiliations.

In the days when Channel 4 showed Italian football, there was a feature on how the Japanese fans followed a particular player rather than a team.

So in 1998 when the Japanese midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata joined Perugia – a lowly team in Serie A – the minnows suddenly saw their gates rise by 400 million Armani-clad Japanese tourists. The additions all loved Nakata and had opted to see him in Italy now that he had left Bellmare Hiratsuka

Perugia gained mid table respectability with the two-time Asian player of the year in their ranks.

Lo and behold he was snapped up by Roma who were accused of succumbing to the marketing department.

The iron fist motivator Fabio Capello, who was in charge of the team, said that wasn’t the case and I doubt many journalists would argue with Fabio if he says so.

Capello was vindicated when Nakata hit two late goals to secure a draw with title rivals Juventus.

Nakata’s reaction on scoring the equaliser from 30 yards would have graced an Akira Kurosawa movie.

It was as if Nakata was at one with the air as he breathed out his delight in a slow, grimace transcending not only the savagery of the strike but the significance of the blow.

Roma went on to win the title that year.

Since Mourinho strolled into Chelsea, it’s been nothing short of sensational and I speak as an old supporter.

I can date my Blueness to about the mid 1960s. The couple who used to look after me while my mum was at work — let’s call them nanny and granddad — since that’s what I called them — came from west London, from just around the Fulham Road near Chelsea’s ground at Stamford Bridge. He was a Chelsea fan and since nanny’s favourite colour was royal blue. Well the rest is schoolboy fanaticism.

At primary school supporting Chelsea was also the smart life choice. Clifford Rashbrook, who was in my class, was a Chelsea fan. No one messed with Clifford. Firstly because he was pretty tough. Secondly he had an elder brother, Glenn and the clincher was the eldest Larry, who — so the playground word went — had form.

As an old Chelsea fan. There was the joy of the 1970 FA Cup win against Leeds. The European Cup winners Cup victory in 1971 against Real Madrid.

And then the desert following the League Cup loss to Stoke in 1972.

The flourish after the 1997 FA Cup win under Ruud Gullit and more trophies under Gianluca Vialli was all about knockout tournaments. Pundits said: “They can beat anyone on their day.”

But the sad truth was they could just as easily lose to anyone.

Seeing a team succeed on the basis of consistency has been marvellous. Crushing pragmatism with the intermittent flourish.

But after two league titles, two League cups and an FA Cup in three years, the fabulously wealthy owner Roman Abromovich has dispensed with the services of the self-styled ‘Special One’. And since Roman is paying……

At the press conference on Friday, the new man, Avram Grant looked petrified in front of the assembled media.

At a similar unveiling for Mourinho three years before, the Portuguese was affability incarnate. After his side had vanquished yet another side, Mourinho could babble Euro foot. Spanish, English, I even saw him do it in French.

Roman and his generals Peter Kenyon and Bruce Buck say they want the club to move forward and that Grant shares the same vision as them.

What on earth could that be given the success of the past three years?

Apparantly it’s to play sexy, entertaining soccer. But that’s just what Chelsea used to do and they won very little while Manchester United and Arsenal and especially United cleaned up the trophies.

So the glory with gruel has gone and hedonism will be restored.

The schism between the two big men was probably inevitable . I think Abromovich will find that extravagance on the field won’t bring success unless it’s tempered with patience. Arsenal are the English model for that elusive alloy.

Do fans want pretty football or trophies? If the owner has billions in his bank account he can opt for whatever he likes. Roman has clearly feasted on success now he appears to want aesthetics.

Nanny and grandad didn’t live to see the Blues win a title. I’ve seen two. And I’ll never forget the joy when Frank Lampard scored the second goal at Bolton in 2005 to clinch the first title in 50 years

But I’m off my club of 40 odd years. I’ve turned Japanese.

Night follows night

I leave Paris for a few days to go to Britain and I return on the Eurostar from suburban Waterloo to ....... Britain.

What's going on? Has the tunnel become a gash in the time space continuum?

Well, yes.

Sgt Major Sarko, tanned and revitalised after his summer jaunt to his American friends, has announced how he's going to revamp France's pension system.

The problem is the unions don't like what's in store and have threatened to take to the streets in protest.

And who could blame them. Some of the boulevards are particularly fine at this time of the year. Yellowing leaves falling wistfully to the ground. Crisp air, cafes amid well-appointed buildings. What impassioned protector of anachronisms wouldn't want to be out fulminating of a late autumn morn?

Sadly only a happy few - roughly half a million of the workforce - benefit from the deals that were hatched in the Ice Age. OK, not quite that recently.

In One Million Years BC when scantily-clad cave dwellers with an uncanny resemblance to Raquel Welch roamed the plains, an understanding was struck in which certain state workers got special early retirement privileges.

The idea was to show gratitude for sterling service in the face of various dangers.

So the likes of train drivers would naturally be included in the package. But since the understandings were reached, times have changed and steering a train is no longer a labour of sweaty toil beside a raging furnace for an engine.

France has invested spectacularly in its railways to create a fast, efficient and accessible service that makes British travellers drool in envy.

Sgt Major Sarko says this modus operandi is financially unsustainable. But the moderate unions - such as the CFDT - say hang on a minute, why?

I'm personally happy with my lot and if my taxes help a former Comédie Française worker or a train driver ease into retirement at 50, then I say cool. But the politicians say non, non, non.

They claim it is an antique bubble which is costing the taxpayer nearly 4.5 billion euros a year.

François Chereque, head of the CFDT, says there'll be conflict in the style of Britain's 1979 Winter of Discontent if the right attempts to pierce it.

I'm no towering political historian but I just happen to remember that winter. Didn't it kill off what we used to know as socialism in Britain and bring in Margaret Thatcher for the start of 18 years of unadulterated Tory rule?

It's certainly been argued that the Labour party, which has been in power since 1997, is in fact just a slightly more diluted version of that Blue rinse.

Hello Ségolène. Hello Mr Hollande. It seems to me that the French socialist leaders ought to be geting the trade unon bigwigs round for beer and sandwiches to tell them to lay off the tough talk and reform with dignity because the good run, whether they like it or not, is up.

The same socialist leaders have seen to that through their spectacular incomptence in the presidential and parliamentary elections.

Even since those losses there's been little coherence. They've chosen instead to parade their political paralysis with internecine battles for the leadership.

All they need now is unions playing into the Sgt Major's dream scenario in which he's able to perpetuate his portrayal of the dynamic mechanic changing a sclerotic machine.

I was living in France in 1995 when the then prime minister Alain Juppé had to abandon such reforms after three weeks of strikes.

La galère - the struggle of travelling to work - was the motor for many a conversation. Back in 1995 Jacques Chirac's best intentions as a new president foundered and Juppé was sacrificed. The protégé was later exposed as something of a crook but he might have been humane. They might have got a better deal.

There's been nothing so far in the Sgt Major's manoeuvres to suggest that he grasps compassion.

Any fractionally decent thinker on the centre left would have known 12 years ago that it was a Pyrrhic victory. That trouble was brewing for later.

And here we are at later. September 2007.

France on the verge of feeding on the socially divisive scraps of early eighties Britain.

Left, right and centre here should shed their ideologies and have an out of body politic experience.

They ought to have a forensic review of what happened in Britain because it was brutal, bloody and unpleasant.

And the irony is none of the players appear to have won.

Green Flashbacks

My nephew has got a job. Just a few months after emerging from university with a degree in modern history, he's doing some events management thing in which he can work from home on his laptop. He wanted to start at 10am this morning, which was fine as I had to be at the dentist in south London at 10.30. As I was preparing to leave....Woman's Hour came up on Radio 4 which he was listening to via his laptop.

There were a few bars of Blondie's Hanging on the Telephone ....... Heart of Glass ....... Atomic ... Call Me ...... As they were playing I said to him: "You know you're getting old when the things that were edgy, punky and dangerous are being played 30 years later on Radio 4."

Before he could say anything the Woman's Hour presenter said, as she introduced Debbie Harry: "I shed decades listening to that..."

At 63, Ms Harry recounted that she was still flattered that people remembered those tracks. I couldn't listen to the rest as I had an appointment.

The trip to the dentist has been one of my life's constants. No matter how disastrous a relationship, no matter how awful the conditions at work, Mr Le Sage's surgery hasn't changed location, neither has the 109 bus stop near it. Neither it seemed to me today has the colour of the paint on the shop on the corner of the street a bit further on.

As I walked through the front garden of the surgery towards the side door entrance, I noticed an arrow on a piece of paper pointing me to the front door. I ignored it because for 40 odd years the entrance has been at the side. I arrived at the side door and a piece of paper, of course, told me what I had just disregarded.

Silently upbraided I went towards the front door and I remembered the trips to the surgery with my mum when I was a child and how I thought it was a bit weird that the entrance wasn't at the front.

Well now it is. Because I'm now so fluid and flexible I can't say I'm overly put out by this radical departure but I did say to Jazz, the dentist, that it felt a bit strange altering the habit of a lifetime.

Since taking over from Mr Le Sage, Jazz has certainly changed the look of the place but the quality remains.

The same is true of Green Flash. These gym shoes have of late had to cope with the onslaught of Nike, Puma, Skeechers, Bleachers, Movers and Shakers shoes.

Dunlop has responded to the phalanx of competitors by giving Green Flash velcro flaps or big, thick green laces.

This has imbued it at times with the sheen of retro cool and at other times it has made them look tired and desperate.

I, because I have narrow feet as well as slender and shapely ankles, have kept the faith with the product whatever the weather.

But Green Flash have, apparantly, been at times profoundly out and then deeply in. My nephew, from his fashion-driven time at secondary school right through three years at university, has been a barometer.

He took great delight in telling me before I left home this morning that Green Flash are only available at trendy shops. "Don't look so pained," was his rejoinder as I headed down the stairs chirping inside: "I'm in the phone booth, it's the one across the hall...if you don't answer I'll just rip it off the wall..."

The joy of teen screams.

I went to Covent Garden to purchase my Green Flash. Gone are the days when you could buy them in the local shoe menders. I probably could have found them somewhere nearer Streatham but since I have to be in central London for work, I might as well go into town.

Now the quandary is how am I going to get them to look as if I've had them for a while? When I was younger having a lily-white pair was, well, a red rag to a full-scale playground bullying.

I'm not going to wear them around the office.

It took a while but I came up with the answer. A walk on Tuesday morning around Tooting Bec Common and I can get to kick some conkers too. I haven't done that since last autumn.

The joy of life's constants.