Matchday VII Post Mortem

The match actually started at 9.30am. And not 11am as some of the emails suggested. I had planned the morning for 11am.

I had breakfast and toast and set off for Aubervilliers. Fortunately all the connections came and I got to the pitch in enough time.

I didn't have enough time to do my warm up routines fully and I had just finished my second lap of the track when there was screaming about whether I wanted to go on. One of the players who was just back from injury injured himself and limped off with a gammy groin.

I thought it was too soon to be in the fray and took over being linesman.

I think I should have taken my chances on the pitch as trying to be an official is not my idea of football. Especially when one of the opposition liked standing in an off-side position and then running back onside.

Left me baffled and I allowed play to go on once when it should have been off-side. Oh well err on the side of the opposition is my motto. Not likely to endear you to your team mates.

The opponents scored through some flukey goal and though I observed from the sidelines quite a few chances for us, they didn't go in.

Of course my introduction at the start of the second half changed the course of the game. And it ended up with a 2-1 win to us. I didn't set up any goals, I'm not sure what I contributed but I was on the pitch and we won.

The kindest thing to say is that I gave the defence something else to think about. A different kind of movement.

A win and no muscles pulled. A result.

Matchday VII Preview

First match of the new year and I'm primed. It gets better and better. It's going to start at 11am which at least means a decent night's snooze rather than waking up at some unearthly hour to go far into the banlieue.

There's trouble at the radio station with the management wanting to sack more or less one in five of the staff.

I've resorted to quoting bits out of Hamlet. It seemed apt and tied in with the Galgenhumor needed at times like this.

I said to the missus that someone ought to go round the building dressed as the Grim Reaper.

Now that's what I'd call funny.

Probably not a good idea. Best to get the fear and trepidation out of the system by running around on a football field.

Must remember no aimless kicking out: that's for management at the radio station.

The Fast Lane

Being a sober sort of driver, I rarely dabble with the fast lane. I consider myself a sober sort of person but there's the occasional flirtation with the fast lane lifestyle.

I took an early morning train from St Pancras International on Wednesday and it propelled me to Paris.

Just as we neared the capital I phoned to summon the family to meet me at the cafe over the road from home. However I was informed the girls had stayed out overnight with their chums.

The boy was brought to me in the cafe where he proceeded to gnaw and drool his way through bits of tartine. Ah sharing.

Wednesday is a high octane day even when I start the day in Paris. The girls have their activities and the boy usually has his swimming lesson.

I traipsed off with the eldest to her capoeira class and headed straight to the radio station.

There is no end of fun at the moment in the world of sport. The papers are full of the meltdown at Chelsea and then there's also the prospect of Andy Murray becoming the first male British tennis player to win a grand slam.

From what I've seen on the TV at the start of the season, he does have a good chance. He has beaten Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer - the world number one and two this season and from those matches, I'd say he's got the game to win the big prize in Melbourne.

Against Federer he rallies him à la Nadal and lures the increasingly error prone Swiss into a state of impatient frustration. Against Nadal he trades punch for punch. It's very impressive.

Fast lane Wednesday has now eased into mundane Thursday. A simple case of taking the boy to creche, the radio station and some yoga afterwards.

Altogether more zen.

The Reader

My affair with Germany started round about 1970 when my family went there to visit my mum's friend Sigi. My sister and I were sent down the lane to a farm to buy 'Zwei Liter Milch und zehn Eier.'

Nearly 40 years and a degree in German later, I went to see the Reader starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes. Without giving away the twists - 16 year old takes up with older woman one lust swollen summer. He reads to her and she repays him in sexual kind.

But she clears out when a guilty secret might be revealed. Many years later and she's in prison where he sends tapes to her of the books they went through during that long lost summer. Classic tomes such as The Odyssey and Emilia Galotti. After listening to a tale from Schiller, she writes back to the Reader and tells him: "Schiller needs a woman."

My chuckle did slightly pierce through the silence of the cinema but it was a good take on the man. Actually I was slightly irked that I hadn't used that line while at university. Obviously too callow.

The Reader was frustrating because it hinted at issues of guilt and responsibility but the protagonists weren't expansively drawn and I couldn't really plunge into their dilemmas. The film was about two hours long but it could have done with another 20 minutes to have more visceral impact. It's supposed to be an Oscar contender. Es war gut... aber.....

I might buy the book to see what that's like.

On that subject I've bought over to London Primo Levi's Moments of Reprieve. I have yet to open it. Levi managed to elude the slaughter at Auschwitz - probably just as well I've not started.

The Fatigue

Wooed by the price I booked up for the 0713 from Paris to London. If I’d taken the train an hour later the cost would have effectively doubled. If I’d tried to take a train that arrived shortly before I’m due to start work, then I would in essence be giving all the day’s earnings to Eurostar.

I was useless at science and not that gifted at maths at school, but even I realised that was not a good deal. So the 0713 it was.

I set the alarm for 6.10 – figuring I could be up, up and away by 6.30.

I woke convinced that I’d not heard the alarm. In a surge of commendable agility, I was out of bed without disturbing the missus and into the sitting room to check the alarm.

It was 4.10. Sadly the concoction of chemicals that had just allowed me such speed and silence didn’t subside and 20 minutes later I was still awake.

Rather than the BBC World Service fail-safe, I thought I’d put on the TV and lull myself back into sleep with one of the children’s cartoons.

Obviously the boy got wind of what was going on. I heard his footsteps and switched off the box. In he came and promptly planted himself on the sofa.

What a treat - a hot water bottle all for me. So I lay there waiting for him to go back to sleep before returning him to his bed.

I tried the TV trick again and he was back.

I gave up the struggle and took the headphones out of the TV and stuck them into the radio to listen to World Service perched on the edge of the sofa with my snoring hot water bottle.

After the updates on the bombs in Gaza and gas pipeline disputes between Russia and Ukraine, there was a piece on International Year of Astronomy. They had men from places with big telescopes and they were talking about going into schools and getting pupils to buy little telescopes that could be easily constructed so that a sense of awe and wonder would be fired about the universe.

That’s a good idea I thought as I drifted off into space.

The Visit II

Another day and another visit to the doctor's surgery. This time it was the boy. He had to go and see the ear specialist. She was charged with checking whether all those ear infections of his youth had impaired his hearing.

The infections had certainly impaired my health. Countless nights over the past two years spent lying on cushions on the floor while he had to be cajoled to sleep with a combination of stories on the sofa or cartoons.

The doctor showed him an array of gadgets and stuck things in his ears. The bet bit was when she said he should only press a red button when he heard a sound.

He kept hearing sounds.

The thrill of the room catapulted him into a frenzy of excitement. And it's difficult to discern whether the doctor said he was fine just to get him out.

We paid and left and went for a coffee at a cafe which looked out onto the majesty of St Lazare church. The wobbly tables seemed to perpetuate his merriment.

I called it a day after that taking the train westwards towards the radio station as the boy and his mother headed back home.

I am relieved he is fine. I can now concentrate on the aching limbs from my yoga class.

The Cold

What I particularly liked this evening was the way it felt tropical as I prepared to get onto the bike.

There's a big electronic clock near the radio station which beams out the time and the temperature. As I arrived at 1209 it told me it was minus four.

As I left at 1851, it had rocketed to minus two.

A time for rejoicing then? No, not really as the cycle paths seemed to have been omitted from the gritting programme.

"Danger and I are old friends," said the Romulan captain in one episode of Star Trek.

And I negotiated the paths gingerly. There was a bit of sliding but nothing I couldn't handle at a snail's pace.

The big disappointment of the trip to London was that Zavvi - the benighted DVD and CD store - wasn't giving away the DVDs I wanted.

In fact it didn't even have the DVDs I craved. I thought here's a business that's called in the administrators, it will be a dream time to buy.

Forget that. I looked for the DVD sets of Star Trek - the original series - and found a few films featuring the old crusties from that era. Not even discounted.

I asked the cashier if they had the DVD sets hidden away somewhere. She looked at her computer and said nothing seemed to be around and said a few were due in but would be at an astronomical price.

She advised me to go to amazon which is why I guess Zavvi was in trouble because people were doing that kind of thing anyway

I did find the Star Wars DVDs at something of a discount though and bought the first three episodes.

Now I have 1-6, the complete collection.

And even though I found the first three tedious I shall sit through them again so that I can have the chronological thrill.

Just need to find the appropriate moment to binge on them all.

Perhaps a day recovering from a cold.