End of Summer

You know it's the end of the holidays when football is on the tele again. I watch the highly paid professionals and wonder about the coming season at the lower end of the food chain. Will I have the stamina? Will I score a different type of goal? Will I score? Can I pass the ball?

With the emphasis of late on purely personal games such as tennis, the question really is will I cope with a team game?

As the world athletics championships unfold in South Korea with shock, awe and drama, it seems odd to be in Europe rather than in the ring for the radio station reporting from the arena.

I would have seen disqualifications galore. Who would have thought that Usain Bolt would be disqualified from the 100 metres sprint. But then who would have thought that Arsenal would lose 8-2 at Old Trafford.

I have seen it all now. Destruction. I am warming to Arsenal and Arsene Wenger's philosophy of open misery. It's compelling theatre.

And the great thing is that it is bound to continue. There's no one else that can bring them the kind of football they're used to now. And no-one else can cope with the players that they've got. Catch-22 if ever I saw one.

Football, bloody hell as Sir Alex Ferguson once said. It's supposed to be a game. But three matches in I feel worn out by the Premier League and we're not even out of August.

Maybe my intensity will drop once I get up and playing again.

Then it really will be the end of summer.

The Riots

Where was the blog during the riots? Well out of it. Yet implicated. We are all in it together as our political leaders told us at the start of the austerity drive.

When it comes to meting out the post riot justice, some are more in it than others.

Some people want the ones caught locked up for ages and others are saying hang on or was that hang them?

Either way the genie of vindictiveness is out and about. Short termism is upon us. Britain needs politicians with a social vision.

But hey ho the football season is back. Chelsea need a midfielder with vision.

And I'm wondering about my own skills come the new season. Riots?

The National Theatre

The last time I was at the theatre was ...

Bad sign. I cannot remember. So it is just as well to record Saturday July 23 2011 as the last time I went to the theatre. Went to experience Emperor and Galilean as written by Henrik Ibsen and updated by Ben Power.

Ooh was it big and stagey.

It featured a host of people I don't know - because I don't go to the theatre etc etc - but it had Ian McDiarmid. I do know him because he is Mr Bad in the Star Wars things.

An unmistakeable voice - well it is if you've watched the films as many times as I have - it was excellentt to hear it live.

Though I did get a bit freaked when he was urging the anti-hero to "abandon himself". I was waiting for "Give in to your anger."

But this was the Olivier Theatre and not the Death Star.

Utterly brilliant stuff and it made me wonder why i don't go to the theatre more often.

But I think I said that the last time I went.

The Buses

Perhaps Alfred Hitchcock should have made a film called The Buses. If today's journey was anything to go by it could have been a chiller.

During the voyage from Streatham to Kings Cross, I had enough flashbacks to make Salvador Dali's moustache go green.

This is perhaps why people move away. Too many memories. I think I might have touched on this in the blog before. But with old age starting to kick in I am not exactly sure when I did this.

Perhaps it is all so obvious. I sat on the bus from Streatham heading towards Brixton and reflected on times past. Incident along the road there, memory of a rendez vous there.

Tube journies are not like that. I tend to read on the tube. But If I try to do that on a bus I feel ill. So I look out the window and end up feeling melancholy.

I might well be that way inclined when I travel in Paris in 20 years.

By which time I might have had to sell my homes to pay for my long term care. They are debating this kind of thing in the British parliament. The radio programme talking about it was too much to bear so off I set for work.

Then there was a problem with The Trains.

Which forced me into the vortex of The Buses.

The Forfeit

During a particularly bleak moment in my glorious career, I was on the phone to my mother wailing about the atrocities being enacted upon me.

Even with the benefit of distance, they were indeed atrocities.

However at one point mother came over all US inspirational rather than her usual biblical. She said: 'Winners never quit and quitters never win."

It must have been running on the TV at the time over in America The phrase came to mind on Saturday morning after round 4 of the tennis club tournament.

On Thursday late in the morning still recovering from a quick snap of bad belly, I phoned up to ask if the Thursday night match could be rearranged. Too late the organiser said. We'll phone your opponent to tell him not to come. I looked out the window at the dark clouds looming and figured natural forces might intervene. "I'll phone back at 6pm," I said.

As I emerged from my slumbers later that afternoon, the sun had decided to do the same and there was no way the heavens were going to open.

And since I needed some fresh air, what better way to obtain it than by running after a tennis ball. So off I trotted expecting a rapid annihilation.

After the first few games I thought to myself this is winnable - if only I had my usual pep. Should have won the first set. Didn't. Got the second set. And could not hold serve in the final set. The opponent served for the match at 5-4 but I levelled and so - with night enveloping the clay court, we moved to the floodlit hard court.

6-5 to me. 6-6. Tie break and this is where it got a bit heady. I squandered three match points from 6-3 then it went on from saving match points to losing them. And at 14-13 to me he hit a poor forehand and it limped into the net.

Match. More than three hours later.

Matchday four - to get all UEFA Champions League about it - was on Saturday morning. And after losing my opening service game I broke back and then gritted on to win 6-1 6-0.

Not as easy as the score line looks. "We have the same kind of defensive game," the opponent concluded. "Only you were more solid than me."


Once back in the club house I was told that matchday five was on Sunday morning. But I was on a train to London. Not good enough as an excuse. I asked if my beaten opponent could play instead of me. Not allowed. For that to happen I would have had to abandon at 5-0 up in the second set. And I didn't do that.


And I wasn't about to cancel work to play a very amateur tennis match.

So my unseen adversary marches on - the beneficiary of my Paris London lifestyle rather than my quitter mentality. The organiser at the club had offered to bring the match forward to late Saturday afternoon.

But given what had happened earlier in the week and the fact that I had an evening out with the family lined up, it wouldn't have been the most clever of moves.

Or as the missus put it - "You don't want to injure yourself."

That's game, set and match on every level.

Simply Eurostar

'"Are you Mick Hucknall?" - "Not at this time in the morning...." Simply deadpan really. I said to the rock megastar know what you mean and paid a compliment to the stuff he'd belched out over the years. He graciously accepted the compliment and asked if I knew which bit of the coffee machine to prod. I suggested asking one of the lounge assistants.

Woudn't call it rubbing shoulders but he was cool. Ronnie Corbett and his wife were just ace and Eric Cantona had presence.

Wow travelling between London and Paris can be pure showbiz.

Mr Hucknall and his companion probably went on to savour the delights of überclass while I dug into the more modest second sphere of travel.

And simply read.

The High Life

I don't think I've got the mentality to make it big as a sportsman. Shame. After seeing how the real honchos do the business last Sunday, I had my own tilt for glory in the first round of the tournament at my tennis club.

Having spent the week getting into the zone - avoiding too much alcohol - walking up the steps at the radio station and anything else that could pass for sacrifice, I went off on Saturday to play the match.

But of course did too much in the morning by taking the boy out with one of his chums. It meant that my lunch was rushed and the course to calmness was under threat.

Fortunately Ligne 9 didn't let me down and I was at the club at 1.10pm ready for the combat.

Down in the locker room - OK , I won't get too sporty. Down in the changing room, it was rather unanimated. So I did some warm-up stretches and when I went up my adversary was there.

While knocking up I started to gauge his game and I did not like his habit of twisting his racket before he hit the ball. It wasn't annoying, it just meant that I was watching the twirling rather than the ball shooting back towards me.

He had this forehand in which he got under the ball and it went flying into the air and when it bounced, it went galloping up into the skies.

Fortunately he ditched this once we started playing.

I now realise that games are like recovering alcoholics: one point at a time. While playing it suddenly stuck me that I could go all gospel and instead of One Day At A Time Sweet Jesus, I could just hum: One Point At A Time...

But entering into the realms of sacrilege isn't good for focus.

The adversary had his son with him and I thought is this a ploy to get me to be less ruthless. How can you destroy the image of the boy? But the first round of the tournament is no country for young men.

I ploughed on. One point at a time. 6-0. I knew the crunch was the first game of the second set. Don't lose this I said to myself. Maintain the grip. Hold your serve. Idiot boy lost the first game. And then at 5-1. Serve it out. Idiot boy missed a match point and dropped serve.

Well it was 6-2 in the second. Hardly Federesque or Nadalien. But it was never going to be anything approaching those lofty warriors.

I knew that. As God is my judge.