Here come the footyballs!

Apparently, there’s some big, global, football tournament thing starting next week.

They should really have tried publicising it so people had a chance to find out in advance.

Starting next Thursday, for a whole month, the footballerists will be in control. This is, of course, the best thing in the world ever. If you like footsieballs.

If you don’t, then there is no state of ambivalence you can adopt. Oh no. If you don’t love football then, in the eyes of those who do, you’re some kind of entirely weird, footy-hating, idiot with no sense of humour, no appreciation of the skill involved, and probably not properly English enough.

Or, to use the over-syllabified word usually employed by fans of the ‘beautiful’ game: “Eng-er-land!” Yup, you’re just not Engerlandish enough.

The normal balance of society will once again enter its four-yearly cycle of group mentality, where large-bellied armchair athletes explain loudly how they would have done it to some massively over-paid stars who can’t hear them anyway, and wouldn’t give a damn even if they could.

Whilst the congregations of fans worship at the altar of gigantic TV sets up and down the length of the land, the remaining population will attempt to continue with their lives, whilst hoping not to catch the eye, or invoke the wrath, of the hyper-sensitive, emotional wrecks that walk amongst them. Assuming they can stand after 6 cans of lager.

Before it’s even started, every other advert seems to have some thin, tenuously-related, reference in an attempt to flog you anything from dental floss to an even bigger TV than the one you’ve already purchased.

Cars will be adorned with cheap, plastic and nylon, ‘flags’ of only marginally poorer quality than the £3.99 shirts being flogged by supermarkets.

Due to the time-difference, games will take place in the evening, meaning it will be compulsory to discuss last night’s match in the office for ages the next morning, whilst lamenting how we was robbed. As if there isn’t already enough bitterness, disappointment, and failure in the average workplace.

On the bright side, there will be moments of joy. Go for a meal out, enjoy the food, and with any luck you’ll spot someone who wanted to watch the footy, but wasn’t allowed to stay at home (or forgot when it started and couldn’t get out of it), having a massive sulk at a nearby table.

Most supermarkets and DIY stores will become vast near-empty playgrounds, populated solely by other, like-minded, souls who skip gleefully along the aisles, unshackled from the need to pretend to be interested in who scored.

Then there is that wonderful feeling that can only be achieved when ‘we’, inevitably, get knocked out on penalties, where you get to witness the unadulterated thrill of seeing grown-up men near to tears over something as silly as 22 blokes kicking a ball about a bit.

Come to think of it, I’m quite looking forward to it now.

This post first appeared as my "Thank grumpy it's Friday" column in the North West Evening Mail on the 6th of June 2014. You can view the edited version published by the paper on their website here where it was retitled 'Life continues despite football'.

It was the heftiest edit for a long time, too, with 49 words removed. If that doesn't sound much, then look at it like this: 10% of what I submitted didn't survive. You've got the whole lot here. Lucky old you, eh?

(More compilation CDs, with this evening's being "The Essential Bands - Festival Edition" from 2007. Skinny tie alert, people!)

Making an exhibition of yourself

Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

"It's all gone quiet..." said Roobarb

If, like me, you grew up (and I’m aware of the irony in that) in the ‘70s, February was a tough month, with the sad news that Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey had died. Briers had a distinguished acting career and is, quite rightly, fondly remembered most for his character in ‘The Good Life’. Amongst his many roles, both serious and comedic, he also lent his voice to a startling bit of animation that burst it’s wobbly way on to our wooden-box-surrounded screens in 1974. The 1970s seemed to be largely hued in varying shades of beige, with hints of mustard yellow and burnt orange, and colour TV was a relatively new experience still, so the animated adventures of a daft dog and caustic cat who were the shades of dayglo green and pink normally reserved for highlighter pens, must have been a bit of a shock to the eyes at the time. It caused mine to open very wide indeed. Roobarb was written by Grange Calveley, and brought vividly into life by Godfrey, whose strange, shaky-looking sty...

Suffering from natural obsolescence

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...

grumpyf1

Search This Blog