Church Life

Going to church is becoming such an emotional experience. End up in tears virtually each time. Must be something to do with the stained glass windows, the pews, I don’t know what.

I could be tired.

I nearly made a horrific mistake on Saturday. With the eldest out shopping with her mother for Grecian style sandals and the boy at a party, I said to the second child let’s go to the Gare du Nord to collect my tickets for Sunday.

I checked in my bag to make sure I hadn’t already got the tickets – I’m in that frame of mind at the moment – and sure enough I had the tickets and they were for Saturday night rather than Sunday morning – sounds like a film title that.

So a flurry of calls ensue to cancel the babysitter, the restaurant and the missus.
The big Saturday night out on the terrace is off.

But the upside of that is the chance to go along to Sunday morning service.

And what a joy it was. As it was the ‘all-age service’ it meant there were loads of children flying around and making it all like an Italian wedding – or in fact my only experience of an Italian wedding.

I quite liked collection time. A little boy sidles along the aisles egged on by his mother and proffers the receptacle. I plonked in some change and others added envelopes.

Each time there’s a collection I remember one when I was with my schoolmate Danny at Norwich Cathedral. His dad was the bishop of the edifice so it was kind of logical that we’d go to the service there.

The dean took some service or other and caused no amount of consternation in the congregation by exhorting them into a “paper collection”.

I guess me and Danny might have torn up the service sheets since that was the only paper we could muster.

I used to do collections when I was a youngster at church. Trip down memory lane and all that. Perhaps that’s the reason for the emotion.

But the final hymn was the Lord of the Dance. We used to sing that at primary school in assembly as well. If I’m like this two weeks before Easter, then I’ll be a quivering wreck on Easter Day come Thine be the Glory.

The Wellcome Hysteria

Sundays aren't really ever going to be the same. For what seems my entire life, I've been watching Andy Gray and Ricahrd Keys spout on about football on Sky TV. But they've been sacked because of their sexist comments and there's going to be a new tranche of presenters. I didn't really consider whether they were any good. They were simply there. But then I'm not a Sky subscriber, I've merely watched incidentally while at work os have never been in a position to wonder whether I'm getting value for money from my subscription.

Quite a few people didn't like the duo. Keys complained that 'dark forces' had been responsible for the leaking of their 'banter' to the newspapers. Sad.

As I wait for the Chelsea Liverpool showdown, it seems apt that I trundled off to the Wellcome Institute this morning. It was an exhibition called High Society and related how drugs and narcotics had got a grip on society.

In some places, tribes chew on roots to surge into collective hysteria. I breathed in the exhaust fumes of the Euston Road to get to the institute and the pollution obviously contrived a potent mix with the incense which was wofted around at St Pancras Old Church.

They sang some great old hymns at church. Perhaps I should have laid off the coffee at the Wellcome cafe.

Going Courtauld

There's something wonderful when art and exercise unite. The Courtauld Gallery provides such an opportunity. The rooms are at the top of a grand staircase. Of course there's a lift but I don't take lifts.

The pictures range from the Impressionists to Fauvism and quite a bit of 18th century. I was particularly taken by a portrait of two brothers 'in the gracefully relaxed attitude recommended by the contemporary manuals of deportment'.

I might adopt the phrase. No, I will adopt the phrase.

Despite the relentlessly grey skies in London today, it's mild. And I feel unusually exhilarated. It might have something to do with being shown how to use the self checkout facility at Sainsburys in Balham. It might have something to do with the double machiatto at Caffe Nero a few minutes later.

I used to go to the cafe to take a break while I was sorting out my dad's things after he died. That was the summer of 2009 and 18 months on the sorting out still hasn't finished.

Certainly isn't helped by heading off to art galleries. But I feel I have to get a helping of art into the system before voyaging to Sudan.

The radio station has decided to save a few pennies by sending me to the tournament to cover the knockout stages. So while my French colleagues get to peruse the group stages, I fly in for the adrenalin rush.

This means I am only there for 10 days and I stay in Khartoum rather than having to flirt with Wad Medani.

Fine by me. It also gives me a few more weeks of football. The team was taken apart on Saturday. It was not pleasant. We were missing the star defender and star midfielder and there were a couple of walking wounded. The skipper says that was no excuse.

Obviously have to put it right on Saturday. My preparation for that?

Lots of tennis.





I

Suddenly Sudan

Prospect rising of travelling to Sudan to cover the Cup of Nations for players based in Africa. It takes a month for the visa to come through and costs 80 euros. You would have thought they could get a visa together more quickly than that. But that's the way they do things.

Have to wait and see if the radio station bosses are up for sending me there. Get those sunglasses ready.

Lost Horizons

I finished reading The Good Soldier and had put Utopia in the bag. But I seem to have travelled to England without it. Lost Utopia seems a fitting symbol for the place.

The prices have gone up on transport. Tax on goods have also risen. It will be a more expensive place to be. Not that it was cheap before. Oh well. That's how it goes in austerity Britain.

I was impressed by the Sunday papers who told us that some of the leading politicians were wintering at £8,000 a week chalets in exclusive Swiss resorts.

But it seems right that if you have the money you must spend it. That stimulates growth. Stimulates resentment more like it. But since the people voted for these rich people to make us poor, you cannot get too irate.

Utopia will truly be lost if there was a revolution. Perhaps utopia will be gained with the revelations that suffering is going to be for a swathe of the population. And perhaps the people who didn't expect to be hit will reassess their choices.

New Year 2011

All of a sudden I had a birthday and was older. Well not so much of a sudden. It was 364 days in the offing. So it cam. People came to my home, ate and drank. We went to the home of some friends and then we ate and drank. My head was a bit furry on New Year's Day. I guess that is a good sign.

L'Equipe had a DVD of the Barcelona Real Madrid match from a few weeks ago. I got a mate to buy it for me while I was in London. I watched it on the train this afternoon on the way to London.

Very good stuff. The fare on TV in England by contrast was awful. I think I shall just insert a Thunderbirds DVD next time there's a match on tele.

How awful then it must be to watch the stuff I play on Saturday mornings. But it's not the watching, it's the playing.

Euro Efficiency

What a difference a few days make. That's not a very catchy way to start a song so I guess that's why it hasn't been used. Only six days ago the queues were forming around St Pancras International.

I went along this afternoon and got my tickets for the next couple of trips. No worries said the lady for Tuesday. But today is Sunday and anything could happen in the next 48 hours.

That's an adulterated line from Stingray and I am in a state of supermarionation after being given the DVD collection of Thunderbirds. It was always a superior product in my view.

The boy wrecked my video cassette recorder a while back and I haven't replaced it so I have not seen things like the Monty Python episodes I recorded. Nor the host of Thunderbirds I recorded long ago in the distant mists of my youth.

Now I have them all nearby. I shall put them near the Rockford Files.