The Democratic Way

Two days after the battle of wounded leg, I was dragging my frame up Highgate Hill and I thought why am I dragging my wounded frame up the hill when in fact I should be guiding it down the hill?

Simple really. I came over all zen after the morning yoga stretch and I decided not to race into Oxford Street to buy a portable CD player rather I would buy one in Paris with the money from the all the voice over work which tired me out which probably made me susceptible to injury.

There is an interconnectivity. I have seen the light too late.

There is a vote underway within the football team as to whether we should go up to the first division.
However if we keep on only turning up with nine or ten players then we're staying where we are.

I have said that I am up for going up. However there is a body of opinion which says that they're not up for going up and being beaten up as we were two years ago.

This is logical. Back to the Star Trek DVDs.

The Trains

The front page of Liberation says there’s a debate about SNCF deciding to devote whole carriages to families during the summer rush.

Sharing a carriage this morning with about 30-odd adolescent girls on their way to England, I say why stop there?

Why not special carriages for school trips? Why no special carriages for frequent travellers? Why not carriages so special that no one can go in them?

Some families told the paper they’d had snotty comments from people and that’s why they wanted them.

Anyone who is narked about children during a train journey should, in my view, be thankful they don’t have them when the journey is over.

I have to admit that before I had children I never noticed them on a journey. Now that I have three of the darlings, I notice the noise.

If there’s a tot screaming, I’d never go up and rail at the parent. Equally if someone came up to me to moan about one of my children, I’d listen to their complaint and then probably ask them to go and arrange their upgrade with the train manager.

Most people, I would imagine, would look for another “less noisy” space.

But it does seem strange that the perception of public domain doesn’t take in other members of the public.

Most people anyway do seem to be locked into their private worlds. It is rare to see anyone these days without their Ipod or earphones tapped into their computers.

Do they really hear that much of the outside world at the best of times?

As I turn up the music on my earphones, I might ask the Guardian if they fancy a travel piece on it.

The Shift

The end, when it comes, is as rapid as a demise in Star Trek. Unable to go back to sleep after the boy woke up coughing. So what to do? Come and update a neglected blog and tuck into the newly acquired box set of Star Trek.

There's a new film out which tells how Capt Kirk, Spock and the gang got together. Well there are must sees and absolutely vital sees.

This could be in the latter category.

I might be able to drag myself to a cinema on Sunday night. Recompense for an odd turn of days. We got back from London and I headed off to the radio station.


I had big plans but they were waylaid when I had to go and do a voiceover. Well there's money in it. Plans for a triumphant surge to promotion were waylaid when the team's star goalscorer injured himself at work.

That meant that for the second match in a row, we started with 10. And unlike the team of a few weeks ago, the one on Saturday night was much better.

When muggins here managed to get crocked, the team went down to 9 and the opponents then scored four goals to win 5-1.

I have veered from exhausted to peeved. But as I said to the missus when I got home, if we can't get a dozen or so people together three games from a possible promotion, then either I'm taking it too seriously or I'm taking it too seriously.

So as I watch Star Trek and nurse my injured left leg, I will channel the competitive edge into solitary exploits like my tennis and rather take each football game as it comes.

Besides, the last time we were in the top flight I missed a load of games as I went to Ghana for the Africa Cup of Nations. In fact it was a good half a dozen games and it took me a few matches after that to get back in the swing.

Have to be fair, can't take it to heart when it suits me.

Logical captain.

The Big Games

While the rest of the footballing world is waiting for the UEFA Champions league semi finals, I am thinking of three games with a little more relevance to my little football life.

It is, as Sir Alex Ferguson describes this part of the season, squeaky bum time. The football team is four points ahead of our nearest rivals inthe old shufflers league with three games remaining.

The third placed team played their game in hand over the weekend and won it 1-0.

We've now all played 19 games. We have 49 points and the next two have 45.

More importantly we meet the team in third in two weeks. And worst part of that importantly is that quite a few of the side's best players are going to be away.

Essentially if we draw the last three games we're up as we have a better goal difference than them in third. However the ramifications of it all are enough to give you a squeaky bum.

So it is best to go out and win the right to go up. No ifs, no squeaky buts.

The Fan II

Any regular readers of the blog will know that I’m a man of limited passions. The family, football, Star Wars being the ones oft cited.

Before all those arose there was Star Trek. I didn’t realise it was in colour until the early 80s when I saw it in the common room at university. Before then we only had a black and white TV at home.

In the mid 80s when the BBC said it was going to re run the series, I went out and bought a video recorder so I wouldn’t miss it.

Often I’d come back from my job as a local reporter at the Wimbledon News to watch episodes of yore.

I remember a childhood friend Derek who loved it as much as me. We always liked the fact that it seemed as if you’d never seen the episode before, inevitably you had.

A few weeks ago I had a dream that there was an episode I’d never seen before. I didn’t know if I was suffering from anxiety or something much worse.

I have got the original episodes on DVD now. They arrived in London and as I sit and watch one of the episodes from Season 2, I think surely it would have been cheaper to get the mangled video recorder repaired.

The boy stuck something in it a few months back. And I have not been able to relieve the stress of life by watching old familiars.

My logic is that if I get a new video recorder too soon, the boy will simply mash that one up as well.

So I have decided to lose to gain. There are scores of other programmes that lie unwatched in the video library. I have to wait. But in the interim, having the Star Treks accessible again has made me beam.

The Fan

It is said that followers of football are in the main not very bright. And with seat prices at some of the London stadia approaching astronomical, you'd have to be mad to pay for it.

But there's no logic in fanaticism. I think that's the definition of it really.

I remember one tearful day long ago when my mum upbraided me for being obsessed with football.

And many years later as I go swimming and do yoga so that I can shuffle around a pitch, she may have had a point. But then since I'd probably do the same if I were playing for a team at tennis, maybe it's all just about competing.

Maybe I'm obsessed with competition - but in a corinthian manner. That might explain my career as a journalist.

But this isn't about where it all went wrong, this is about how trying to eschew plangent maternal criticism.

I got off the Eurostar this morning and felt the burning need to go to a gallery. Well somewhere other than the Guardian office too early.

As I got on the 63 bus, an Everton fan followed me on. I suspected he was an Everton fan as he had a blue scarf on and his team are playing at Wembley on Sunday against Manchester United in the FA Cup semi final.

After he'd paid up, he was on his mobile telling a mate that he'd placed a bet on the result.

"230-1....Everton to win 1-0 and Phil Neville to score the first goal.."

Now the fan in me knew full well that Phil Neville was once a Manchester United player. The journalist in me knew full well that the irony of that would not be lost in any of the news reports of the match.

The pedant in me wondered about the first goal in a 1-0 scoreline.

If the odds are 230-1 for the first goal, what would be the odds in the only goal of a 1-0 result?

Maybe the Rodchenko/Popova exhibition will take my mind off the conundrum.

The Light Sabre

I was on the way back from the radio station and noticed an advert for Harry Potter 6 or HP6. It had the eponymous hero doing his magic thing with his wand.

I looked at the picture and thought the wand is not as hard as a light sabre. You can only look so tough wielding a wand. The boy is going round the flat brandishing a plastic light sabre which was harvested from a Corn Flakes packet.

We're due to be heading to Burgundy for a break - illnesses pending - and it might be the time to start on the Star Wars films. The first three as in the chronological trilogy are pretty ropey but there's lots of brandishing.

And if the boy feels suitably inspired to go on and become Jedi like in his ways, I, for one, will not turn him.