The Legend

I will sing psalms of praise, yea, lift up my heart and rejoice.

Obviously been to church this morning.

And boy did I need to after Saturday's debacle with the football team. We need a miracle and if one happens I will, with a gladsome mind, render up joyful sounds.

I didn't even bother to note the goals. Six? Seven?


The opposition scored from the kick off. The bloke kicked it towards our goal. It hung in the air for so long that the goalie could have tied his shoelaces, picked his nose and set up home with at least three women.

He did none of these things and as the ball descended I looked on disbelievingly from the right wing as it dropped over his head into the goal.

1-0 before kicking a ball. Indeed before even needing to move my legs. Incredible. I simply twisted my torso to face the half way line.

The other side were good in that they kept possession well and those who weren't altogether comfortable on the ball passed it quickly to those who were.

I think it was 4-0 at half time and the only thing I can say that they were trying to showboat a bit in the second half. They weren't that good to do that and did lose concentration a bit. We should have scored one.

Well beaten.

Which is what galley slaves undoubtedly were.

And the scenes in the battle ship in the film Ben Hur remain among my favourites. Not necessarily for all the greased up torsos but for the sadistic cox (it's so homo erotic) who pounds fervently onto a drum the beat for "ramming speed".

My sister was on the phone just after Easter telling me that Ben Hur was on TV in England. I said it was on in France too. I thought of watching it to find out exactly what ramming speed was in French.

Not the kind of thing they teach you at university but more useful to my humour.

I woke up this morning to find out that Charlton Heston had died. He of mighty muscle and ubersquare jaw in various epics such as Ben Hur, the Ten Commandments and El Cid.

I like the bit in that film where he and the amassed armies avow to capture the Saracen stronghold of Valencia.

Chunk Heston turns that jaw into the Cinemascope, bares his strong shiny teeth and utters: "Valencia".

I've always watched Valencia's progress in the Spanish league since.

They're not likely to be relegated; we are.

I'm going to wheel out the videos from my video library of Ben Hur and El Cid in honour of a Hollywood legend.

God rest your soul Chuck. They don't make films like that anymore.

The Splash

There really should be some kind of rule book for people using swimming pools. And in it should be rule one: Don't chose the open area for doddery paddlers to do sprint lengths.

It's a bit like Roger Federer going to the public tennis courts and playing normally with someone like me. Sure we'd all look and wonder at the silky movement and fleet feet but you would ask yourself why.

I found myself posing this question while ambling along in the open area at Parmentier this morning. There was a muscular swimmer who commandeered a lane and went up and down it with dazzling rapidity.

None of the other paddlers dared go anywhere near it for fear of upsetting our local Poseidon. I'm quite surprised none of the lifeguards ushered him into the the lanes for those in need of speed.

The showman slightly overshadowed my paddle but it didn't prevent me from eventually reaching my own goal.

I got out as Mr Muscles continued to make waves. As I was getting my stuff out of my locker I wondered if you could complain about aggressive swimmers.

What would be the etiquette and whose right would be supported?

But given that time is so limited during public swimming sessions before the schools go back in would you want to spend it on such a subjective issue?

It's probably best to do the aquatic equivalent of opening out your newspaper to hide behind.

But even if you keep your head down under the water you can often hear the beeping of the watches telling their wearers they've done 200 miles in just under four and half minutes.

The Renewal

There was a crisis of a kind.

On Monday I looked at my Paris Passe Familles and saw that it expired that very day.

The passe has been the conduit to a world of free swimming and other ancillary benefits such as help with the gas bill and the quarterly charges for the upkeep of the apartment block.

We've got this because of the third child.

I went to the district office which dishes out the pass on Tuesday bright and early after dropping off said third child at crèche.

I showed the assistant the two passes that needed renewing and he said that we shouldn't have two passes. Not at all in order. "How did you get two?"

"We asked and the bloke gave us two..."

"He shouldn't have done that," came the reply. "Perhaps he was leaving," I offered jauntily.

I went in on Tuesday expecting to make an appointment for another day when our dossier could be forensically analysed.

But the man said the card could be instantly renewed as long as I had the 2006 tax returns, the last three pay slips and the most recent bill from the managing agents of the block.

The choice was either to get back before 11am or in the afternoon after 2pm.

An afternoon return would be complicated by the presence of the boy.

I thought why impose bureaucracy on a querulous pup even if his very presence on earth had spawned the trip.

I returned before 11am and got sorted. I asked for a second card but was informed by another assistant that no deviation would be tolerated this time.

Shame.

I deviated myself this morning, opting for a splash at Piscine Parmentier rather than the usual lengths at Piscine Pontoise.

Parmentier, which is a lot nearer - about five mintues away on the bike - has been renovated recently. The lockers don't take money, they have codes. A man kindly explained to me how it worked.

What I'm not so keen on is the mixed shower zone. I was there early enough not to encounter anything remotely approaching a mixed changing zone.

I did see cubicles for other self-conscious types.

The pool itself is bright with an air of cleanliness rather unlike Pontoise which seeps faded splendour. At Pontoise you give your ticket to a man and he shows you to a cubicle and there are separate areas for the men and women to do their pre and post swim ablutions.

I quite like that kind of demarcation, smacks of old world values.

Quite why I should stand on such ceremony beats me. Three children in, inhibitions should, by now, have fled the coil.

It's time to unwind and dance to the rhythm of change. Stop swimming against the tide, so to speak.

The Centurion Part II

It wasn't the fairy tale ending. I was banking on a trademark Beckham free kick. But it didn't come. Just goes to show how much I know about the game.

England lost 1-0 to France and it was a good evening with my mate Neil in the Scottish pub watching France outclass our boys.

Lots of work to do before England become world beaters.

It's getting rather precarious. I might go through my entire adult life without seeing England win the world cup...or a major honour.

But at least I saw Chelsea win something big. Ah the glory days of Jose Mourinho. Not so keen on his successor Avram Grant. In fact right off that whole scenario.

But away from running around after a ball which I shall do this Saturday morning. But to more important things like Kultur.

There's an exhibition at the Fondation Cartier all about Patti Smith.

The last time I went to that venue it was to see David Lynch show his artistic prowess. And jolly weird it was too.

I'm slightly intrigued by the Patti Smith thing because really all I know is the song: Because the night belongs to lovers etc etc. I'm sure there's much, much more to her than that.

Likewise England.

The Centurion

It's amazing how quickly one call fall behind. More than a week without anything in the blog. Has all life stopped?

Nothing of the sort. Well all life stopped with the MacBook. The mother board went less than a year after buying the thing. But at least it was under warranty and the Apple Care thing.

My only concern was that there was quite a long queue of Apple Mac customers at the repair shop.

Anyway it's back now and working. Rather like David Beckham. He's playing for England after being so openly discarded by Steve McClaren and recalled by said ex trainer.

Well Fabio Capello - known hard man motivator of Italian football and the present England supremo - has handed him his 100th cap for England.

All I can say is well done Becks. You've deserved some of the brickbats and yet not all of the criticism.

It's a game of two halves. And what price a trade mark free kick to launch us on the way to cap 101?

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.