...ruffles...

We were comparing liars last night, there seems to be three kinds. Firstly, those who lie deceitfully, these are mean and nasty people and, obviously, nobody you know (who are all kind and truthful).

Then there those who lie, or at least stretch the truth, in such a way that ensures they participate in major events (therefore becoming more interesting). For example, I know someone who once went to India and became email friends with someone who worked with someone whose husband was killed in the recent bombings in Mumbai. This meant they apparently had to spend hours on the phone in some kind of undefined relief effort (the trauma she claimed to have suffered was terrible). These people have come out of the woodwork a little more recently with the revelation that one of the July 7th bombers lived in Aylesbury and that the alleged airline plotters were from High Wycombe. Now everyone knows someone who has walked past a shop owned by someone who lives just round the corner from where the investigations are happening.

The best, of course, are those people who start on a story, then, when they don't get the reaction they want embellish and embellish, until, oops, they've gone into the world of obvious fantasy. Our favourites was the woman who claimed a nearby gas explosion blew her tights off, this was the same women who claimed she was feeding some exotic birds for a friend that were so big, when you went in they would put their enormous wings around you in some kind of thankful hug. There was also my dad's friend from school who used to excuse himself from going out because he was competing in the national moped championships at Wembley, or because Bob Dylan was coming round for tea.

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Labels: General me

I hated The F Word, which finished slightly too long ago for me to write about it with any credibility.

[pauses, thinks, shrugs, carries on]

The basic problem with any cookery programme is that you can't taste the food. No matter how closely a show's guest exudes simple orgasmic pleasure from tasting the partridge and banana fricassee you will never know what it will taste like.

So, the next best thing is to be equipped with the information to make the dish in order to taste it. A recipe supported with some instructions on what goes where, Deliah Smith style. Ramsay dispenses with such triviality; he cooks, sure, but he doesn't tell you what he's cooking or how. So, stripped of any value, the programme is little more than self-conciously over-styled claptrap fronted by a man who says fuck. A lot. This is the essence of the programme. Oh, and killing the pigs he's raised as pets in front of his kids, which may actually be child abuse.

Pig killing and swearing aside, he also instigated his own campaign; clearly smarting from Jamie Oliver's ascendance to deity status with his school dinners thing. The best that Ramsay came up with was an amnesty on cookery books. So not only does the programme fail to enrich us with any cooking knowledge; it tries to take away some that we have.

Personally, I would like to see Ramsay campaigning on something useful; like Casseroles or human cheese. The casserole, we're told, is a good wholesome dinner; warming and tasty. This defies all modern logic; a food can't be good when you put all the ingredients in the same pot and cook it for days. And then there's human cheese. A baby can't drink cow's milk but a baby can only drink milk whereas humans drink almost exclusively cow's milk. This doesn't make any sense. Why do we drink cow's milk? Would you find it odd to watch a cow suckling a human? Of course, shouldn't we, as humans, be drinking human milk? And therefore human cheese? I did start to Google this, but what you find quickly becomes unpleasant.

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Labels: TV and radio

We had an evening meeting in Newcastle to put out a small work related forest fire. After an unexpectedly swift and positive conclusion we retired for a celebratory drink.

Our fifty-something, perhaps sixty-something, Geordie host and guide walked us down to a pub by the river, but not before admiring the 'winking eye' bridge and more specifically, it's hydraulic action.

Eventually we entered a pub with thundering pop-dance being played over the PA. The four of us had a combined age of around 190, the average reduced significantly by the presence of me and a colleague, not that this seemed to matter to the man who could have been the father to those around him. We were surrounded by immaculately dressed twenty-somethings, like an explosion at the cleavage factory. And this was a Thursday. The art of dressing up to go out was briefly lamented before leaving.

Having had only a sandwich, and it approaching 9pm, most of us were in that funny place between needing food and being OK for the time being. We decided to get a quick snack. We were lead over the winking eye bridge to Gateshead an old flour mill which was now a swish restaurant. It was closed.

The need for food was then apparently forgotten because we decided we needed to see the Sage Gateshead. Our host, an engineer obsessed with engineering (and not apparently food), took us through the minutiae of its construction before persuading a sleepy night porter to show us around one of the empty auditoriums.

We crossed back over to Newcastle and headed, finally, for something to eat. It was getting on for 10pm and we only wanted a snack, so we were met with a plethora of brilliant excuses for not serving us; my personal favourite being 'sorry we can't serve an espresso with a starter after 9.30, I have to go on a course for that'.

After several false starts and another stopover for a drink, we were accepted at Big Mussel for a half kilo bowl. We then strolled back towards our hotel, but not before quickly going to see the the nearby station, which just happened to have a bar in it.

Eventually we got back to the hotel for a final drink. That was a night out in Newcastle as defined by a semi-retired engineer. In structure, it was rather alien to me; we'd had about 4 drinks in about 8 pubs and one meal from 6 attempts. All of which was less unusual than returning home with an unhealthy understanding of the engineering merits of the city's finest landmarks.

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Labels: Work

'Would you want to be on Big Brother?' said Jo as Big Brother ground to its inevitable conclusion. 'Nah' said Lucy resignedly 'the public would hate me, I'm an acquired taste.'

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Labels: General me

A Big Brother contestant is like a pot of Yoghurt. Whilst kept inside its sealed container it's at its best. Once released, and exposed to the open air, it needs to be consumed quickly before it goes off and tastes like crap.

Which is why Nikki's reintroduction to the Big Brother house is such a disaster. Contaminated by the outside world she's spoiling all those still inside.

What is the point of re-introducing housemates? The final week should be like the last stage of the Tour de France, which is always a celebratory cruise through the streets of Paris. The competition should effectively be over, no more shocks or twists. And there is nothing better than having three emotionally drained people self conciously trying to have the time of their lives in an empty TV studio on the penultimate night.

Meanwhile, Glyn has turned into a proper turd in recent weeks. He hasn't been exposed to the outside world, although in a sense he has. He now realises that people are divided into more categories than just 'Welsh' and 'Others'.

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Labels: TV and radio

Odd being an evening-only invite to a wedding. The official history will not record your appearance unless the bride and groom have paid a little extra for a bit of reportage evening photography. Your existence is largely inconsequential; the important people are the ones who have been there all day. This is not a bad thing; not everyone can be special, and anyone who expects an all-day pass really has too high an opinion of themselves, unless you're the parents who've paid for the thing, of course. 



An evening-only guest has their own issues to deal with. What to wear? A suit may suggest that you expected an invite to the real deal, jeans are too casual. Maybe the more experienced fifty-something men at the bar (wives on the dancefloor, barefooted, swaying out of time in a sequin dress) have got it right by playing it down the middle in a pair of comfy slacks and a nice polo shirt (St Christopher chain optional).



Ingratiating yourself into the party is hard. Drink-wise, you're miles behind everyone else; meaning ascendance to the dance floor for a bit of Dexy's is somewhat slower than the more oiled all-dayers. What's more, a well-oiled all-dayer is more likely to sling a friendly, but wholly offensive; "you fucking boring bastard" at you for not sidling dancefloor-wise with appropriate gusto. When the wedding DJ says "let's take a walk down to Itchycoo Park with the Small Faces and a song they call [pause] Itchycoo Park" you want to heckle, or at least laugh until snot comes out of your nose, but you instead find yourself agreeing with some random uncle that the DJ is really good. You then pray he doesn't put his arm around you to encourage you to join in with a bit of "It's all too beautiful" whilst Uncles pint sloshes over your head. The DJ on Saturday announced that the buffet was open and then cut into the next record to tell us that he was enjoying his bacon sandwich from it. He also air guitar-ed to McFly.



Being more sober than pretty much everyone; your graces remain largely intact, social mores suggest you should pick out the happy couple to congratulate them, but by this point they're not together (in parallel with the aforementioned slacks-and-polo-shirt couple; bride, on dancefloor beaming, groom, resting pint on his belly near the bar or avoiding eye-contact with Mum's Best Friend who wants to slow dance with him to Careless Whisper). Anyway, you know they have more important things to do, so keeping your distance is probably more appropriate. Even if you do talk to them the conversation is flighty, superficial and half finished; of course it is, they've got hundreds of people to get through. If the bride beams at you and wraps her arms around you in a wave of unbridled euphoria; you can't then start saying that you've got a bit of a cold and are feeling under the weather. Tell her she looks beautiful and ask her whether she's had a great day, and then leave it at that.



Still, you don't have any lines to remember and you're don't contribute to the plot (unless your way of congratulating the bride is by squeezing her bum and trying to stick your tongue down her throat). And at least you're not the Philippino second wife/twenty something toy-boy of octogenarian great aunt/drunk in a trilby at the reception who nobody knows.

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Labels: General me

It was the Ruffles' first family holiday this week. We stayed at the stunningly beautiful Pennard Hill Farm in Somerset. Resisting the temptation to call it a baby farm, which is something entirely different, it is designed to be baby friendly. This doesn't mean that it's all primary colours, face painting and teenage X-Factor rejects enthusiastically singing the theme tune to the Tweenies; it's just designed for people like us. Well, sort of, the other people staying there, who you would assume to be like us, had children called Florence and Sicily (aka 'Sistles').

The farm's whole approach is to avoid damaging children; its remoteness makes it completely safe, they have a 'eat at home' service; which is basically restaurant food delivered to your door. Even the pool is chlorine-free, it's cleaned by ultra violet lay lines or something. This meant that Millie had her first swim, which after a wobbly start she seemed to enjoy; until her daddy got a little over enthusiastic and bobbed her a too close to the surface of the water causing her to swallow half the pool and do the saddest little face ever.

Pennard Hill Farm is just round the corner (and up the hill) from Worthy Farm. Owned by Michael Eavis. Who organises the festival. The Glastonbury Festival. The farm overlooks the site though you wouldn't know it. Its not far from Burnham-on-Sea which is a classic crumbling English seaside town, which I truly wanted to enjoy. If you're a black and white photographer working for the Guardian it's probably a dream, if you're a visitor, it's pretty shit. Pound shops nestle amongst places selling fried things, fat people waddle around in England shirts and nasty gold jewellery. Part of me wants to love its English charm, but I just don't.

Having been to the festival but not the town, inevitably we also went into Glastonbury, which was much more my thing. It was full of women dressed in the fashion that fashion forgot; floaty skirts, black vest tops, leather flip flops. The men wore long wispy beards and t-shirts with purple unicorns on them. The shops are, as you'd expect, are all new agey, selling witchcraft and miscellaneous healing.

The common thing about both towns was their predicability and that they appear economically unsustainable (how can a whole town function on selling chipped porcelain dogs or healing algae?) You do start to wonder whether you're in the Truman Show that they're sophisticatedly branded theme parks, like Disney World with grit. In fact, when the fortieth numpty family blocks the pushchair whilst admiring tan leather sandals for 7.99 (for two pairs) you start to wonder whether you're being delayed whilst they set up the latest scene.

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Labels: Holiday

It's been Russel Brand's summer, some of his best bits:

On Jonathan Ross:

JR "You've been in trouble with the police haven't you. Tell me about that."
RB: "Well Jonathan, the thing about this story is that although you may admire my rehabilitation from my addiction to drugs I fear that by quoting the first line of this story your opinions of me will change for the negative."
JR: "Go on"
RB: "Well, I was stealing pornographic magazines from a garage..."

On Big Brother's Big Mouth:

RB: "What do you think?"
Audience member: "About [Big Brother contestant] Richard?"
RB "Yes about Richard, not about people having sex with animals we'll talk about that when we're older" [turns to stare wide eyed at the camera]

In his Guardian World Cup column:

Rooney is at least keen, even were he not so sublimely blessed. His touchingly apparent frustration mirrors the fans' and he has a crackling authenticity no amount of media training can emolliate. If he carried Max Clifford around in a knapsack relentlessly muttering into his constantly incarnadine lughole he'd still eff and blind and lash out at dug-outs.

How many pairs of boots did he remove on Tuesday? Every time the camera cut back to him he was petulantly tossing aside another boot. Was Sammy Lee acting as an obsessive-compulsive blacksmith re-shoeing him to prolong the outburst. It went on interminably. "There's Rooney throwing down his boots in disgust." It was like a tantrum from a centipede.

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Labels: TV and radio

Emma’s family are obsessed with Premium Bonds. When they all meet up they chat about who’s won what (inevitably nobody has won anything). Even dewy eyed musings about future prosperity is described in the context of Premium Bonds; ‘I’ll go and live on a paradise island when I’ve won the Premium Bonds’.

Inevitably, Millie was bought some as a present when she was born. Being just 12 weeks old, her first draw was last week… she won £50.

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Labels: General me

Work is full of charlatans. They're pretty easy to spot. Charlatan salesmen always use too many words in their sentences. This is to prevent you from butting in and telling them to go away. When you pick up the phone and hear "How are you on this very fine day today?" you know you've got someone who is either crap at selling, or selling crap.

Then there are people who have jobs which have made up words to validate their existence. Made up words distances the user from those who might question their purpose. This week I was working with a knowledge management specialist who continuously patronised me when I offered some possible alternative approaches to get her failing project back on track. The problem was that I knew nothing about knowledge management, apparently. She pulled out a 'brilliant book on the subject I should read' (for this read: I've read it, well I've bought it, please don't read it you might find me out). As I always do in situations like this, I opened the book and read the contents to show polite interest. The opening chapter was titled The massification of knowledge.

Then there are problem orientated people. These are people unable to offer any solutions, but are good at offering problems. One senior manager I work with complains about our culture and communications (always a good one for senior managers to complain about). In recent time he's successfully identified that we have an email culture (which is too impersonal), a meeting culture (too unproductive), a water cooler culture (too gossipy), a bottom up culture (not strategic enough) and a top down culture (no engagement or buy-in). Next week we will be communicating only in semaphore.

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Labels: Work

Wiggaz is an old old friend but we don't meet up as much as we should. Last night we managed to find a suitable date. We wanted a beer in the evening, so we went to beerintheeveing.com to find a suitable venue.

We settled on The Cricketers at Littlewick Green. Not least because of this review from one John Bonser...

"Splendid country pub a couple of miles west of Maidenhead just off the A4, situated in a pretty village overlooking the cricket green. No real fire on our visit yesterday - we were sitting outside in the warm summer sunshine, enjoying a fine lunch. No scumbags or lager louts in sight, just friendly locals and visitors like ourselves. Note the exceptionally large factory clock in the main bar. This pub is highly recommended - well worth seeking out."

He was right, there were no scumbags or lager louts, one or two people from Honda Maidenhead, but they kept themselves to themselves.

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Labels: General me

Moggiopoli, the corruption case, has ruptured Italian football. The verdict of relegation and points deductions for some of the country's biggest clubs, is as startling as the level of corruption that lead to it.

However, I must reveal a level of corruption that beats even this. Emma's mum has a friend that she knows "only through email". From the friend she managed to purloin a recipe for a chocolate trifle. An innocent exchange of remote friends, you may think.

Furnished with this information, Emma's mum then heard on Radio Oxford, that they were running a competition. People were invited to send in their recipes; the best would be made up and tasted and the best would win a prize. Emma's mum chose to send in her chocolate trifle recipe. It reached the final, and she won.

Her defence, she says, is that everyone pinches other peoples' recipes. Which may be true; but not everyone wins prizes with them. It was a prize worth winning; an all expenses meal on a train which is (according to Emma's mum) "like the Orient Express but it runs to Didcot".

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Labels: General me

It seems that pop success nowadays is only valid if you've built up a following through the Internet, or more specifically through MySpace. No number one is valid without a story of a starving muso in a basement flat using more than adequate recording equipment and broadband to get their sounds out to the world. It's an edgy, DIY approach screaming 'fuck you' to the music industry. It also hides the fact that most of the music is actually inoffensive MOR-lite acoustic pop. Mmm, underground.

The Arctic Monkeys, widely fabled to have built their fanbase through the Internet, have dismissed the idea as 'a load of bollocks'. Gnarls Barkley, who were the first to achieve number one status through downloads alone, were hardly unknowns. The musical mastermind of the duo, Dangermouse, produced the last Gorrillaz album. Now, Lilly Allen, described as "the queen of MySpace" sits at number one because of the fan base she's built up through her 'ickle space on the web. Of course, her success has nothing to do with the fact that Allen is the daughter of well connected media whore Keith.

Or, in fact, that MySpace is owned by Rupert Murdoch.

Sandi Thom, another one, perhaps gives it away with her debut number 1. She wishes she "was a punk rocker with flowers in her hair". She yearns for "69 and 77 when revolution was in the air". She then, laments, however, that she "was born too late to a world that doesn't care".

Didn't punk and the hippy movement happen because the world didn't care? It wasn't sanctioned by the establishment, created through focus groups and market research. If she's in a world that doesn't care then she was born at the perfect time to be a punk rocker with flowers in her hair. What does she want the world to do? Give her a favourable mortgage rate and secure job before she starts wearing stuff her mum might frown at. Of course, it would make her a deluded retro-phile, but it shouldn't discourage her from fulfilling her dream.

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Labels: TV and radio

Millie is 10 weeks old, so here are 10 things I've learnt about parenting.


1. Parenting gurus give their advice like they're stating scientific fact. If it were scientific fact then it would have the same effect on every baby in the same way. You can't know that blowing in the baby's face means they're more likely to be a concert pianist without years of evidence. If the book was written in 2004, it's all guesswork.
2. If you're concerned about something, ask yourself whether they'll be like it when they're sixteen. For example, if they're not lifting their heads up by six weeks, question whether its likely to be a factor in sixteen years time. On the other hand, if their leg falls off, worry.
3. Birthing plans are a nonsense. You have no choice about how the baby is coming out.
4. Your life doesn't change as a result of having a baby. This is your life, a continuation of what you had before, with new influences and factors to consider. If you're life is so heavily locked into a particular routine, so hardened that you can't move away from it, you're either very sad, or you're OCD.
5. People who know the mother best, think the baby looks like the mum, those who know the dad best thinks the baby looks like the dad. Agree, whatever the view.
6. Baby poo smells great, at least your baby's poo smells great. A baby has a minimal vocabulary, so they communicate their well-being through poo. A big smelly one is great to see.
7. It is easier to agree with people that you're not getting any sleep and nappies are a nightmare than to explain that it's all going really well, you're sleeping fine and you're enjoying it.
8. Doctors are always right. If your philosophy is that if a doctor gives you bad news then they're right, but if it's good then they're telling you a bunch of lies, you'll quickly end up in a puddle of your own paranoia. You have to make a simplifying assumption that what you're hearing is the truth and that a vast-majority of doctors have the same values and objectives as you.
9. Phases don't last long. If you can remember a time when she went through a phase of finding it difficult to settle after a bottle; it was probably last night.
10. Don't think about the future. The future may hold Neo-Nazi boyfriends, piercings and heroin. Today they don't, tomorrow they may do. As the great Gaulish chief says, Vitalstatistix says, 'Tomorrow never comes'.

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Labels: Babies

A good World Cup, not a great World Cup. Beautifully staged, fantastic stadia full to the brim, omnipresent sun, a pleasant way of spending a summer's evening after work. But then, so is Big Brother.



So why wasn't it great? In part, it's circumstance of the the modern era that even the most ardent fan has enough football on TV to satisfy their needs. Wall-to-wall-to-wall live football means that it's no longer a treat to see the games. Once upon a time live football was a novelty, from overseas was a positive curiosity. Now it's all a bit too familiar. All but a handful of the squads had players who play or have played in the Premiership and the even those who don't have players familiar from the Champions League, Spanish and Italian football. Very few players emerge at a World Cup. Once upon a time a Brazilian would arrive at a World Cup having played in his domestic league, he may be picked up by a bigger European club, but the gateway was the tournament. Now players outside Europe barely play in their home country, picked up before they get a chance by the hugely efficient scouting systems of the top European clubs. 



Overall, however, there's been no narrative. Every great World Cup has a narrative. The emerging nations failed to compete like they did in 2002, the hosts didn't fulfil their destiny like France in 1998, England failed predictably unlike 1990, Ronaldihno didn't turn up to complete the Holy Trinity of footballing greats joining Maradona's beatification in 1986 and Pele's in 1970. There have been great goals and moments of great skill, but no truly great games, like the 1982 France vs Germany semi-final. 



The rebirth of Zidane flickered briefly against Brazil with a thrilling performance of panache, but then age got the better of him and he was subdued against Portugal before going completely mad in the final. Italy's corruption backdrop, a mirror image of 1982, is a story, but, ironically, it's like the remake of The Italian Job - it may be well made and visually spectacular, but in the end it still stars the lead singer of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Perhaps above all, this was the World Cup England were supposed to win, the nation was no longer enthralled by its betters, or charmed by those lower down the order. The country had a purpose, to efficiently dispose of all that came their way and win the cup. Perhaps next time we need to set our sights a little lower, and allow ourselves to be surprised about what's given to us.

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Labels: Football

When seeing The Mode at the Wireless Festival a couple of weeks ago, we came across the UK Garrison, a small outposting of Stormtroopers redundant from the occupation of the whole damn galaxy (c'mon Mr Bush, get in the game, you nobody unless you own the whole galaxy).

Stormtroopers, sinister anonymous androids with the ice cold glare of a mechanised man-fly. Devoid of emotion and cold and calculated whether patrolling the wretched hive of scum and villainy at Mos Eisley Spaceport or buggering womp rats out of sexual boredom whilst marshalling the supply line down the Kessel run. It's some fall from grace to have been stationed in the UK with a PR/peacekeeping brief, how they must lament, whilst manning little recruitment booths at six form colleges in Essex, that it's not like the old days of the Empire when they indulged in an endless orgy of violence all on expenses.

We resisted the temptation to wave two fingers in front of them saying 'these aren't the droids you're looking for'. Whilst they may not have been the actual 'Troopers to have been duped by the simple Jedi mind trick, the shame that it has brought on the good name of the Empire's finest must still smart today. That, and they'd probably heard it every hour on the hour for the five days of the festival.

We looked on, watching people having their pictures taken on their knees with the hands behind their back in a kind of Guantanamo Bay chic. The Stormtroopers posed for photos pointing their blasters at the craniums of the bowed, giggly, mildly inebriated festival habitue. How the temptation to engage in a little 'weapons malfunction' must have eaten away at them. These guys were running the galaxy, now they were turning tricks for buttons in some obscure outpost.

At least the Stormtroopers' fall from grace is shielded by their anonymity (read the FAQ's on their website, it's an enclosed netherworld, you can't join them, you get invited - presumably only if you can prove you are a clone of Jango Fett and pay your subs on time). Whilst it is easy to mock, you do know that there are millions more where they came from. Unlike Darth Vader, who is so iconic and whose story is so well known, that he is a mere parody of his original being. He was the Dark Lord of the Empire, a shadow across the galaxy, distanced from every individual yet capable of ordering their destruction with a nod. Now, there he was, stripped of his dignity, wandering around trying to get the attention of portly men in Nine Inch Nails t-shirts. There was a time when he would have ordered the destruction of whole planets for wearing aged industrial rock merchandise. It was like seeing David Beckham driving a taxi.

I may be wrong but I'm sure I heard him slurring to one disinterested punter that he'd 'had that Skywalker in the detention centre of his imperial cruiser last week'.

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Labels: Music

The bunion, the scar of women's battle for equality, the Blahnik and Choo, the spoils. Womenfolk place a lot of importance in their shoes. They're a celebration of sexuality, choice and independent wealth. A pair of women's shoes is an episode of Sex And The City distilled into footwear. Eclecticism, achievement, vivaciousness, cocktails and lunch.

Whilst the battle for gender equality has been a fierce one, women's shoes are also a place for the genders to meet. The passionate fixation of a woman on her shoe collection remains baffling, yet above all they openly recognise men as a component that is both required and sometimes desired. It is the terms and conditions that have changed.

Psychologists say that one of the reasons a pair of heals is deemed sexually attractive is because the shape of the shoe, and the angle of elevation offered by the heal make the toe look like a furry front bum. Shoes say, look at my fanny, but you're not actually going to get to look at my fanny unless I say so. Oh, and stop looking at my tits and keep your eyes on the floor, damn you.

The sexual subtext of the shoe is a deep and layered. You know, therefore, you're in the wrong party when one of the first things you hear is "Ooh Margaret those sandals look comfortable".

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Labels: General me

OK, I can't let it pass without comment.

The familiar pattern of England's exit from the World Cup on Saturday left me rather cold. There was a time when I would have got excited by the tournament. The squad recognised that the Quarter Finals no longer represent success, their interest was the final. For me also, only achieving something beyond the quarter finals would have raised the excitement levels.

And so to the aftermath. Was Eriksson overpaid? His agent, as agents always do, stresses that he was paid market rate. So if the buyer is willing to pay £4million a year for something, then it's not unreasonable to accept it. It would be unfair to blame Svennis for taking the money, but the FA ought to take a look at themselves for offering it. Argentina's coach was paid £100,000 a year. This recognised the facilitator role of a national coach; they can only work, for very short periods, with the product they are given. The national coach should be paid a premium for the pressure, but that's it. Seb Coe cited Jack Charlton's philosophy with the Republic of Ireland; choose the system, pick the team, practice set pieces, rest a lot, then let the players get on with it. The national coach's role is not to improve players, but to simply choose the best 11.

The billion pound Premiership machine has produced a slew of quality players coached to the highest possible standard. Sven needed to marshal this glut of choice, and resist the rampant media. The first choice eleven was self selecting. Take the Beckham versus Lennon debate. Lennon has just begun to emerge as a talent, Beckham, though not having the pace, has years of success behind him and contributed to 50% of England's goals. Using Lennon as a replacement for Beckham to chase a game, or stretch the opponents is a good one. But Beckham, though not as influential as he used to be, remained the obvious starter. That said, I hope he will retire from international football now, it would be a shame to watch him be dropped and remembered as a has-been.

Eriksson had precious few decisions to make, but the one key one, was wrong. To take only four strikers; two injured, one teenager and an acquired taste was a key error. Owen's injury against Sweden meant that Rooney had to play on his own. This was frustrating and exhausting, leading in part to his sending off against Portugal. Had he taken Defoe in place of the unused Jenas then there was a ready made replacement for Owen, the system didn't need have changed, the players could have got on with playing rather than trying to re-learn the pattern of the team. I'm not saying that England would have won the World Cup, but the over-complication certainly contributed to failure.

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Labels: Football

It's a bloggers bind; you have to have a life in order to blog but if you have a life there's no time to blog. Routine does not a good blog make, but routine is what I currently have. I've spent three years at work developing a department that functions so well we literally get to the end of the day having no idea what else to do... we're a bit like that now, Big Brother and the World Cup are a ubiquitous presence on the TV, even Millie has settled into a routine. I went to the O2 Wireless Festival to see Depeche Mode last week, and the week before we went to see Gifford's Circus. Great though both were, we knew what to expect, because we've been to both before.

It's not that I feel in any way restricted by the routine, on a meta-level there are many non-routine things happening, but you don't want to know that Millie has developed a phase 2 sleeping pattern at night that's different to the phase 1. As perfect as she is, I know you're not going to be as interested as I am.

The most routine of all is the gym. For a year now I've been going regularly in the morning. Up at 6.30, on the bike at 6.45, forty-five minutes and I'm out again, in the winter I'm sixth in, in the summer I'm 12th. I started going five times a week, but that's dropped to three. I'm a stone and a half lighter and people are starting to notice. Women in gyms are made up of two types; those who pull their trousers up after they get off a machine, and those who pull them down. The former are there to work out, tone up and burn calories, the latter feel the gym is an extension of their Heat inspired image, they buy the latest sexy skimpy gym-wear, including the low slung trackies that reveal their 'just above bum crack' tattoo and then use each machine on the lowest level for about 45 seconds each abandoning them when they feel an minor ache. When they've finished they leave swigging on bottled water dabbing the sweat off their forehead.

The 6.30am crowd is made up wholly of the former. Serious gym-bunnies. We're all acquainted in an eye-brow raising, half smile kind of way. Those who do the Spin class on Wednesday and Friday seem to talk to each other, everyone else just gets on with what they're their to do. I, being I, now know everyone only by what I've observed. So, in an occasional series, for this read, will get bored and/or forget about it before long, let me introduce you to some of the people from the gym:

Miriam T - can be quite abrupt and rude, especially when people leave the doors open rendering the air conditioning useless. She once commented that I'd really started looking good since coming down the gym. I said I'd lost over a stone, to which she replied 'Wish I could': I wasn't sure whether to give her a hollow reciprocal compliment or to laugh weakly. I did the latter. Actually, I don't think her name is Miriam T at all, it's a name on the signing in list, but I think that might be another women who gets in early. Miriam T will always be Miriam T to me.

The Kid From Fame - The Kid from Fame has a dizzying array of elaborate 80's-chic gym-wear. Cropped lycra tops under a t-shirt made of netting, three quarter length leggings and matching trainers is not unusual. The trainers change with the outfit. Serious about working out, serious about what she looks like when working out.

Tumble Turns - You can tell which of Tumble Turns' many routines she's going to do the moment she walks in the gym. Cycling shorts and she'll be on the bike for ages; running shorts and you know she'll be running. One morning I saw her head for the pool, which the gym overlooks. I couldn't see her in the pool until I worked out that the women powering up and down in a Speedo swimming hat, googles and doing tumble turns was, indeed, Tumble Turns.

The Robot - The robot is a woman who has been put together by a computer calculating the perfect female form. She's 5ft 6", slim, with pert breasts and a round, though not fatty bottom. She has long silky hair, white teeth and a symmetrical face. Her gym kit is subtly colour co-ordinated and fits perfectly without creases. There are no bulges anywhere. However like Laura Croft in Tomb Raider, she doesn't seem real enough to be attractive. She's being gently wooed by the Sales Rep, a man who looks like a sales rep. His tactics so far include writing 'nice bum' on the signing in sheet next to her name, and turning her running machine up whilst she's on it. It's horrible to watch.

Moby - Short and bald, probably not a sexually ambiguous Christian, vegan, techno rock behemoth. Not that it stops me thinking he is.

There are more, lots more...

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Labels: General me

At work we've got a World Cup prediction league going on. After a good first week, I've had a pretty poor run of form and I'm now lying second behind our work placement student who takes whole days off to get ready for England games. I had England v Sweden down as a 1-1 draw. Which is a good thing given that everyone else seems to have England down as winning every game 5-0. So, with nothing in the real world to really play for in the game, my interest was more in gaining some prediction league points...

England score, 1-0 - YES
Sweden equalise, 1-1 - YES
England score again, 2-1 - BOO
Sweden equalise - YES

I'm so confused.

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Labels: Football