The Robbing

There couldn't have been a better return to action. A finely weighted pass to a fellow midfielder as the first touch and a few minutes later following up an attack a simple tap in to send the side 2-1 up.

I turned to celebrate as the opponents all shouted offside. I looked over to the linesman who didn't have his flag raised.

But they all started shouting at him (he was one of their team members) and started railing at the referee. He went over to the linesman who was looking a bit scared.

The referee signalled for offside even though it wasn't. What made it worse was that at half time he said to one of our team members that he hadn't actually seen anything wrong with the goal.

From a technical point of view it was simply that none of their defenders had followed me as I ran from an onside position to meet the cut back from the left.

It was a classic case of attacking the space in the anticipation of the ball being there. It was and the defence wasn't. We wuz robbed.

Particularly hard to take when the final result was 3-2 to the opposition. Oh well.

I said to the missus. Having a perfectly good goal ruled out and losing is tough. But at least I wasn't injured.

I'll have to project onto my sporting heroes now.

Roger Federer plays his second round match at the Indian Wells tournmaent in the United States in something of a crisis. We're three months into the season and he hasn't won a title.

Rafael Nadal could replace him as world number one by the end of the next tournament in Florida.

So maybe this is the year he loses the number one spot and triumphs at Roland Garros.

Would be interesting to know how he'd take that kind of loss/win scenario.

I've sent my accreditation form off to the French tennis federation and I should be there to watch the crunching forehands in late May and early June.

By which time this football season will be a memory.

During Saturday's match one defender asked me how old I was. I told him but didn't pursue the conversation as I thought it better to concentrate on my game rather than my ageing frame.

I don't know if I've actually got the French for: "I'd be feeling a lot younger and dynamic if the ref had given the goal."

I bumped into my mate Zigor on the way home last night and among other things recounted the tale of the disallowed goal. He asked why I didn't get angry too.

"The yoga means I remain quite zen," was my reply.

If I'd got angry too the ref might not have been swayed. And I would have had a goal and we might have won.

But if I hadn't been doing the yoga I wouldn't have had the flexibility to convert the chance that was presented as it had needed a certain amount of fluidity.

I'm locked in a zen vortex.

You don't want to rob yourself of that.

The Treasure Hunt II

No video of Monty Python has yet turned up. I'm not resigned to its loss but I'm not just going to tread on it. I haven't gone to a parenting message board for tips quite yet.

I went into the radio station early on Thursday to start working on a feature about a UNICEF scheme called Young Reporters. In the project six young journalists go into schools to retiterate the importance of education to children who aren't exactly convinced that it's relevant.

Before I got down to listening to the hour or so of sounds I collected during a trip to the Street Academy in Accra, I was talking to one of the studio production assistants whose bairn is even months old.

We got chatting about ear infections. I told her that I was well experienced on that issue with the boy. And then I said once they get older they start hiding things from you.

She said a friend had told her that the thing to do is to give the child another video to see if he takes it to the secret hiding place.

A brilliant idea. But it would have to be closely monitored. The last thing you want to do is lose another one. No time as yet to do that kind of thing.

Saturday sees the return to football action after a near two month pause for bagatelles such as the Africa Cup of Nations and school holidays.

It's a home match and 14 have registered their interest to play. I see myself clocking in for the last half hour. I don't want to overdo it now.

I've got to save my strength for the treasure hunt.

The Treasure Hunt

Some people strive to be millionaires. Others want to be company director. Me? I want to find my video cassette which has a couple of episodes of Monty Python on it.

The video was recorded many years ago. I couldn't sleep a couple of nights ago and so I delved into the video library and fished it out. Watched it and dropped off on the sofa. Oh joyous early morning.

I left the cassette in the video machine and went to retrieve it tonight but it has gone. The main culprit is the boy since I don't remember taking it out and putting it somewhere without the sleeve.

So the hunt is on for the cassette. Though the flat is not that big, this could be anywhere. The question is what kind of approach do I take to finding this.

Maybe this is a question for one of those parenting messaging boards.

If it can't be found then I'll have to go out and buy the Python stuff on DVD.

Then again the message boards might have some generic suggestions for where two year olds place stuff out of their parents' video players.

Well at least it wasn't one of my old Star Trek videos. I wouldn't be so phlegmatic about one of those being misplaced.

I'd almost get illogical about finding it.

The Fear

I'm sure there's a line in the film Withnail and I about "the fear". I will have to check it out at some point. Certainly not now.

I have noticed how aches are beginning to multiply about my person. Sadly not those of sexual longing. Merely ones preceding football on Saturday.

Maybe it's psychosomatic. I haven't played for going on two months and I'm starting to anticipate pain. Wow.

I wish I could anticipate a couple of passes.

I signed up this morning for Saturday's encounter. I planned to cycle into the radio station but that scheme went out of the window as I left my keys there on Sunday and then forgot to ask the missus for her key to the bike house.

Oh well since it was blowing up a gale, it was probably the safest thing.

I didn't let that mishap interrupt my high energy day. I went for a swim and was my ever majestic self at the Piscine Pontoise. I felt so regal as I did my breast stroke. Any sign of open water and I went all freestyle.

I have no idea where the team lies in the league. But it's the participation that matters.

In the FA Cup over the weekend all the teams that should have won failed to do so. What marvellous examples Barnsley, Cardiff and Portsmouth set.

Barnsley beating Chelsea was probably the best result of the lot in terms of improbability. I was thinking that the Chelsea owner Roman Abromovich got rid of Jose Mourinho because the self styled 'Special One' was unable to provide his boss with entertaining football despite the millions spent on players.

Jose has gone. Avram Grant has come in. The players have stayed.

The team's entertaining loads of people now.

The Art House

Quite incredible. For the second time in a week I found myself cycling down Boulevard St Germain. This time I was en route for the L'Arlequin cinema in Rue de Rennes.

I had it in my mind that it was a plush venue to see a film. It was not. But at the same time it wasn't a dive. Maybe I as confusing it with somewhere else. Though where that elsewhere is now escapes me.

There was a lovely cinema in London called the Lumiere. It was in St Martin's Lane and I used to go to watch late night art house numbers there when I was a-courting in the city.

But that was London in the late eighties. This is Paris in 2008 where I can now go to the movie house for a reduced price thanks to my Carte Famille Nombreuse.

And you don't even need the children to enjoy these things. I love France.

I saw Peter Greenaway's latest offering: Nightwatching. Usual cinematic feast. It was about the painter Rembrandt fulfilling a commission to paint some soldiers in Amsterdam — The Night Watch
(The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq and Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenhurch).

There was one particular scene which struck me as masterly. The Rembrandt clan were having an alfresco meal in the countryside. They all piled onto a table and formed a tableau. The camera receded to show white sheets swaying in the wind in the trees.

I thought wonderful. Simply wonderful. I was hoping for shots of decaying apples and oranges which seemed to permeate Greenaway films of yore. Didn't see anything of that sort this time. Like the fruit, he has matured.

And the narrative was more comprehensible than earlier films such as the Baby of Macon or the Pillow Book.

I emerged enlightened visually and intellectually.

The Final Tablet

Perhaps I should have had more ceremony. Perhaps it should have been a lavish meal. I took the final malaria tablet. It was a simple repast.

As I was eating I wondered what it must be like to eat alone often. I rarely do this at home. The noise of four others fills out the meal usually. And it's punctuated either by the eldest wolfing down her food, while regaling us with her mind's incidentals or complaining that the middle one is lingering.

Or there's just the horror that the boy has regurgitated some clump of rice and meat. Oh it's animated.

Tonight it was just me and my malaria tablet.

Now that it's down I have to be wary for a few months at the slightest sniffle. It could be the onset of something far worse.

I wrote an email to the captain of the football team to say that I would be again available for selection from March 15.

That will be nearly two months out what with the trip to Ghana and the school holidays. Knowing my fragile frame, I'll probably do myself a mischief and be out for a few weeks as soon as I kick a ball in anger. But we must be brave.

I have resumed my training programme and so I cycled over to the radio station this morning. To embellish this resurgence I planned to stop off at the Piscine Pontoise on the way back home.

It was a mild afternoon and I crossed the river to join Boulevard St Germain just by the Assemblée Nationale. It was a pleasant ride, not too much traffic and I was able to see the posh boutiques and cafes along the route

I even stopped off at the Bang and Olufsen shop as it was advertising a sale on display items. Helas anything vaguely within my price bracket had long gone.

But I do know where I'll get my next TV.

I eventually reached the swimming pool. I read the notice that it was closed for cleaning between February 25-29. I went in and asked for a ticket for a swim.

The man pointed at the notice and of course said it was closed.

I said I'd seen the very same poster and registered the information. Sadly the twirl of foam bouncing between my ears couldn't process the data.

I'd gone through a whole day not knowing the date. What kind of state is that?

Me at the Bang and Olufsen shop thinking I could buy something. Unaware of the date. Perhaps the rambling, delusional symptoms of malaria have already kicked in.

The Church Visit

Since I spent a good amount of time on the roads in Ghana praying for deliverance, it seemed only right and proper that I go to church on my first Sunday back.

At St Michael's the service has the benefit of being in English. And since that's my mother tongue, it does help unravel the mysteries of the almighty. Then again a service in French might be a mystical experience. But I did have enough of those during the road trips in Ghana.

St Michael's is run now by someone who used to be vicar at the church at the end of my road in south London, so there's a certain amount of familiarity with his modus operandi.

What's strange is the area around the church. St Michael's is off the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré which sports some of the top shops. Going along the well scrubbed road just before I went to Ghana, the eldest gasped at a garment that cost 1,500 euros.

"Can you buy me that?" I asked.

Given that I had refused to purchase a Nintendo XXV456LVXYMK4-443 or its upgrade - she naturally refused.

I missed the window shopping with my disinterested girls before the service.

Church has changed in my lifetime. When I was a bairn, there were wooden pews and gritty sermons. Now it's comfy chairs and coffee and biscuits before and after the service. Altogether more humane.

I've never bought into the line that God was all about suffering, distress and having a poor experience of life on earth.

Then again I did notice an inordinate number of churches in Ghana.