anaesthetic of the West.
I went to the Arsenal game with lifelong Gooner Matt Lucas. I don’t often attend away games and even as we approached the magnificent arena the angst of unfamiliarity was all about me. The people drinking outside the pubs on the Blackstock Road were not of my fraternity; lacking there was the bonhomie of the frequently defeated, replaced instead by a peculiar sense of assurance; men louchely swilled backbooze safe in the knowledge that they were not about to witness a bout of lazy humiliation.
It was a world away from the gallows goodwill of Green Street where a lunatic pervasion of detached joy prevails; revellers indifferently jig and swirl, regardless of the likelihood of 90 minutes of torture, like a grinning gin-bleached hag merrily giving suck to a stiff blue tot.
When Arsenal scored twice, so quickly that the whistle’s echo could still be detected, Matt apologised as if Arsenal’s dominance were bad manners and he’d failed in his duty as a host. I assured him that he couldn’t be held responsible for his team’s superiority and spent the rest of the game admiring the architecture and listening to the away support’s relentlessly amusing chants with fellow Hammer and companion that day James Corden.
My favourite was ‘sit down if you love Tottenham’ – there is little standing at the Emirates so by the song’s clever logic the home fans were tacitly supporting their hated foes. Their riposte was quite good – ‘You need more foreigners’ – but all were united in the minute’s silence that preceded the match to mark the sad death of Motherwell’s captain, Phil O’Donnell, a reminder that, whilst pithy, Shankly’s maxim was ever an empty witticism.
22
Don’t let Harry head north for shooting practice
I’m on the Isle of Wight caught up in the seductive nostalgia of umpteen childhood jaunts, avoiding paparazzi (two of them, the same two – I can see how Britney Spears has got entangled with one, the proximity begins to feel like intimacy; I almost invited one of them into my bath this morning out of a combination of curiosity and pity) and to tell you the truth nobody reminded me to write this article until moments before the deadline when I was off shooting clays with my chums.
Ah, the power of the establishment. Whilst you may deride it and attack it from the foothills prior to ascent, on arrival at the summit it is very difficult to eschew the baubles and the Barbour. That is why the revolution will be tricky – it takes great discipline not to check your principles at the door of the Groucho and allow your ideals to be neutered by piña coladas and fellatio.
Big Sam Allardyce became the eighth casualty of a particularly bloodthirsty season. I don’t recall so many managers having fallen so early on before and Sam was remarkably philosophical, saying there’s little point in bitterness or regret in these situations and that’s true, but it must be challenging to stifle those instincts regardless of the pay-off.
‘Allardyce was vulnerable as soon as Ashley took over but they do seem a bit trigger-happy on Tyneside’
He was ever Freddy Shepherd’s appointment so I suppose he was vulnerable as soon as Mike Ashley took over but they do seem a bit trigger-happy up on Tyneside; if I’d behaved with such profligate abandon whilst cracking off clay pigeons I’d’ve felled two photographers and perhaps an instructor to boot as opposed to the breathtaking displays of marksmanship that have led to me becoming something of a local hero and, possibly, if the legislation can get through before the ferry departs,mayor. All power ought to be wielded in a considered and responsible manner.
Allardyce surely deserved a season, but I suppose if you own a football club that you’ve loved since childhood and are not happy with the fashion in which it’s being run you must act. Like in a marriage, though that’s not an analogy that I can personally validate so perhaps,
I went to the Arsenal game with lifelong Gooner Matt Lucas. I don’t often attend away games and even as we approached the magnificent arena the angst of unfamiliarity was all about me. The people drinking outside the pubs on the Blackstock Road were not of my fraternity; lacking there was the bonhomie of the frequently defeated, replaced instead by a peculiar sense of assurance; men louchely swilled backbooze safe in the knowledge that they were not about to witness a bout of lazy humiliation.
It was a world away from the gallows goodwill of Green Street where a lunatic pervasion of detached joy prevails; revellers indifferently jig and swirl, regardless of the likelihood of 90 minutes of torture, like a grinning gin-bleached hag merrily giving suck to a stiff blue tot.
When Arsenal scored twice, so quickly that the whistle’s echo could still be detected, Matt apologised as if Arsenal’s dominance were bad manners and he’d failed in his duty as a host. I assured him that he couldn’t be held responsible for his team’s superiority and spent the rest of the game admiring the architecture and listening to the away support’s relentlessly amusing chants with fellow Hammer and companion that day James Corden.
My favourite was ‘sit down if you love Tottenham’ – there is little standing at the Emirates so by the song’s clever logic the home fans were tacitly supporting their hated foes. Their riposte was quite good – ‘You need more foreigners’ – but all were united in the minute’s silence that preceded the match to mark the sad death of Motherwell’s captain, Phil O’Donnell, a reminder that, whilst pithy, Shankly’s maxim was ever an empty witticism.
22
Don’t let Harry head north for shooting practice
I’m on the Isle of Wight caught up in the seductive nostalgia of umpteen childhood jaunts, avoiding paparazzi (two of them, the same two – I can see how Britney Spears has got entangled with one, the proximity begins to feel like intimacy; I almost invited one of them into my bath this morning out of a combination of curiosity and pity) and to tell you the truth nobody reminded me to write this article until moments before the deadline when I was off shooting clays with my chums.
Ah, the power of the establishment. Whilst you may deride it and attack it from the foothills prior to ascent, on arrival at the summit it is very difficult to eschew the baubles and the Barbour. That is why the revolution will be tricky – it takes great discipline not to check your principles at the door of the Groucho and allow your ideals to be neutered by piña coladas and fellatio.
Big Sam Allardyce became the eighth casualty of a particularly bloodthirsty season. I don’t recall so many managers having fallen so early on before and Sam was remarkably philosophical, saying there’s little point in bitterness or regret in these situations and that’s true, but it must be challenging to stifle those instincts regardless of the pay-off.
‘Allardyce was vulnerable as soon as Ashley took over but they do seem a bit trigger-happy on Tyneside’
He was ever Freddy Shepherd’s appointment so I suppose he was vulnerable as soon as Mike Ashley took over but they do seem a bit trigger-happy up on Tyneside; if I’d behaved with such profligate abandon whilst cracking off clay pigeons I’d’ve felled two photographers and perhaps an instructor to boot as opposed to the breathtaking displays of marksmanship that have led to me becoming something of a local hero and, possibly, if the legislation can get through before the ferry departs,mayor. All power ought to be wielded in a considered and responsible manner.
Allardyce surely deserved a season, but I suppose if you own a football club that you’ve loved since childhood and are not happy with the fashion in which it’s being run you must act. Like in a marriage, though that’s not an analogy that I can personally validate so perhaps,
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