New Season

This could be construed as having something to do with the fashion shows. But the truth is sporting. Football sporting. Or rather my pallid attempt to be on a football field and playing something like the rudiments of the game.

It was a friendly against the team that won the division last season. They have been promoted and quite frankly I'm glad to see the back of them.

They were just too good. I hope they prosper in the first division.

For my pains I got a bruised cheekbone and somehow a bruised bicep. It was all so frightening when compared to the tennisfest I've been having of late.

Clearly I will have to toughen up if I am to survive the midfield engine room.

The good thing is there won't be as many teams as fast and furious as Saturday's opponents.

Season's End

It feels as if it's all over before it begins. First run-out of the football season on Saturday and I can't say it bodes well for the coming months.

Felt a twinge in the left leg and retired to defence and into the goal. to prevent any further damage since I was due to play tennis later that afternoon.

With the Roland Garros journalists' event coming up, this is no way to go into a major championship.

That's what I tell myself. But this is what six weeks without yoga class does to me.

Altogether now. Om.

High Stuff

What a whirl it's been. it feels positively pedestrian to be in the Wellcome Centre overlooking the Euston Road traffic bonanza. But time has come to take a rest.

I resisted the temptation on Friday night to bid for any of the lots at an auction at the Royal Monceau Hotel. The sale was in aid of the New Zealand Earthquake Relief Fund and some tasty gifts had been donated. There was champagne, some sculptures from the legendary French captain Jean Pierre Rives - now an established artist and a watch from Bulgari.

I shoved the radio station's microphone in front of a few people including the New Zealand ambassador and they responded.

The Bulgari watch went for around 20,000 euros, more than 10,000 euros above the list price. The champagnes by contrast wre more reasonable.

And after hearing figures in the thousands, hearing hundreds seemed ludicrously low. Still I wasn't tempted.

However I did succumb to the champagne. Some Pommery numbers before and more Pommery after the sale. There was a chef stirring up a risotto and all manner of lovely things.

I surveyed the firmament and thought if I stay here I can feast, so I decamped back to the radio station's more modest canteen well out of harm's way.

If the stairs and the atrium are anything to go by, I won't be hanging out anytime soon at the Royal Monceau. Way out of my league.

Hanging in high end hotels shouldn't naturally lead on to high church. But the early train from Paris brought me into London in time to catch the service at St Panras Old Church.

The priest's sermon was on the essence of forgiveness, punishment and the like. He preached on the back of going to a meeting on Friday involving community groups and the police on how to react to the riots in London and elsewhere.

A police superintendent attended the pow-wow to give it the enforcement perspective. And presumably the priest was there to inject a spiritual nuance to the proceedings.

If it costs £100,000 to keep somebody in prison, the priest wondered whether that kind of money would be better spent on re-educating some of the wrongdoers.

I guess that the post riot lust is for drooling vengeance rather than pragmatic perspective.

I was reading the Sunday Times on the train over and one of the columnists mentioned the British prime minister's gambit of 'tough love'.

And why not - as the film critic Barry Norman was wont to say.

As long as it's dispensed on miscreants throughout the social strata. But I just don't see that happening.

Shock And Awe

Went off to see some former colleagues on Sunday night. The rendez vous was in Highbury and strangely enough the streets were deserted. WAs it the Bank Holiday or was it the 8-2?

Who knows. I have got a pile of papers to see what the pundits say. The Daily Telegraph's front page splash: Call to legalise assisted suicide could equally be applied to the Arsenal performance.

But we must not mingle the genres. That would be crass.

To domestic things. I have discovered a little slice of mediterranean chic just near Waterloo. Lots of pot plants, shrubs and strong coffee. Curious name of Ev. But it is just behind Southwark station.

Went there with the missus. Rather a shame that the climate in London is hardly mediterranean at the moment. But if you want that kind of sun, then you go to the mediterranean. Really rather logical that.

Just as logical as giving the three darlings to my mother for the day, so that I can go to work.

Hang on I think I've missed a trick somewhere.

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.