09.10.10

It's a shame about Hatem Ben Arfa, the Newcastle player who had his leg broken the other day. He's one of those footballers you know mainly from computer games, who hold a space in your imagination as a result of some glorious, title-winning deeds they performed on Champ Manager. But at the beginning of the season there he was, all real and fleshy, twatting the ball into the net from 25 yards on his debut. He's got skill, which makes it even more of a surprise that he signed for Newcastle. But anyway, they beat Everton 1-0 and fantasy football managers up and down the country signed the crafty Frenchman.

Fast forward a month and it's all gone tits up. Ben Arfa became the latest Premier League footballer to have his leg broken, by a 'full-blooded' tackle from Nigel de Jong. Here's a clip. And here's another one, where he broke the leg of USA and Bolton's Stuart Holden in March this year. Neither look particularly violent, and certainly don't look as vicious as the flying kick to the ribs he dished out to Xabi Alonso, in the world cup final. The referee didn't even give a free kick for the Ben Arfa tackle. I can see why, because Nigel did win the ball, with one leg at least. It's just that the other smashed into the Newcastle player's left leg below the knee, and broke it in two places. In both incidences the tackles are completely reckless, idiotic even, but not malicious.

The speed and intensity of the Premier League is, we're told, far above that of any other in Europe. Opta stats show that players run further and faster, and play in a style far more physical than their limp-wristed, olive-munching continental counterparts. Teenagers are pitted against gnarled veterans in a game whose sense of mutual responsibility seems to have diminished, and they usually come off worst. The point is, when two players' legs collide at a flat-out sprint, one of them is likely to break. Bone is stronger than steel, but only from certain angles. And the key to avoiding these grim fractures is to know the difference between a tackle and a lunge, and for the latter to be properly punished. If a player hurls himself into a tackle with no control over his own body, taking away his ability to pull out or divert the force away from his opponent's leg, he should be sent off.

Already in 2010, Aaron Ramsey, Cesc Fabregas, Bobby Zamora, Antonio Valencia, Wolves' Adlene Guedioura and Bolton's Holden have all suffered leg breaks in one form or another, and I'm sure it never used to be this frequent. Growing up watching football in the nineties there were several high profile ones like Dave Busst, Henrik Larsson, and Luc Nilis. Were there lots of other leg fractures in the early days of the Premier League? Perhaps there were, but the lack of cameras and coverage meant they're now forgotten a decade later. The three I mentioned, though, can still be found in 2 seconds of youtube searching. The Ben Arfa incident happened in the 4th minute of the game; before half time a video ripped from Sky Sports had already appeared on the internet.

A broken leg used to seem like much more of a big deal than it does now. Now, players are put on stretchers, given oxygen, and not seen again for six months. Then, repaired by the wizardry of orthopaedic surgeons, they're chucked once again into the fray, a little bit more circumspect.

It could just be rose-tinted spectacles, and this kind of thing could always have gone on. I've been trying to find some statistics on the incidence of these gory incidents, but have so far come up short. Maybe when someone collects the evidence, the game's decision makers will spot a worrying pattern and will be moved to make a few changes. Until then, with a lunge and a snap more players will have their careers put back half a year, and anyone not built like a tank will be hounded off the pitch, sent crashing into advertising boards and back onto operating tables.  

Sunday 26.09.10

Ahhhhhhh Sunday, good old Sunday. Sunday doesn't let you down, except when you have to work the next day. You get that tight feeling in your chest whenever the responsibility of employment crushes down on you. But, woop! I don't have any of that at the moment, so my Sundays are fairly relaxed affairs at the moment.

I spent the day sticking it to The Man by illegally streaming lots of juicy sport. Hahaa! Take that you fuckers! Thanks to the internet, you can find live video of all the sport that's going on. Mostly, though, it's football, and football's what I was after. Stoke City, The Potters, that lot, were playing Newcastle United.

I've always loved football, despite always being completely shit at it. In possession of a powerful right foot and quite remarkable bulk, I had a short and fairly fruitless football career, peaking between the ages of 7 and 10. After that I rather went to seed. I had no natural ability, the touch of a corpse, and no competitive instinct whatsoever. I once scored 4 goals for the B Team, and that was about it. But I didn't mind, it wasn't the end of the world. There were stickers to collect and stupid plastic figures with gigantic heads to collect. It's weird, the aura that surrounds all the tiny sporting children, how they seemed somehow special and glamorous. They had Adidas Predator boots and Kickers shoes, and the could do a bloody Cruyff turn. I wasn't very good, and soon lost interest. But Stoke were playing, and I'm still bothered how they do, so why not.

There's a couple of good websites that host streams of sports matches, and I tottered off to them looking shifty and wearing a cloak, trying not to draw attention to myself in case the feds were watching. The mighty Potters trounced those thieving Magpies 2-1.

This felt good. A worrying proportion of my friends are from the North East.

Saturday 25.09.10

The weekends tend to blend into the rest of the week when you're ass is unemployed. You don't get the rush of euphoria that 5 o'clock on Friday brings, so when all your mates are well up for going out on Sheffield's piss-glossed tiles, there doesn't seem to be anything to celebrate. But that's a ridiculous state of mind to get yourself into. One of the biggest problems I have with unemployment is the tendency to immediately start moping. I retreat into the protective cocoon of my room, where I mooch the day away, never seeing the sun. The minute you get out and actually do something, anything, the world's a brighter place straight away.

But today I had a purpose to my thoughts, and that purpose was fantasy football. I've been doing it since I was about 8, one way or another, and it's a bit of an addiction. If you've got no real passion for football or its players, and just watch it for the love of sport, fantasy football is a good way of making it a bit more interesting. Until I have children, I can't see anything getting as much consideration and attention. Days can be ruined by the whims of a manager's interminable squad rotation system, your carefully researched transfers rendered useless because Danny Wilson's decided that Wim Jonk needs a rest. Affections for obscure, points-bringing players are developed that last for years. Rubber-legged wonder Paulo Wanchope earned a special place in my heart during one prolific season in the late '90s, bagging me the much-coveted WWB Minerals Fantasy Football league winner's trophy. It's only a thing my dad organised at his work, but I won cash, real cash! My team carefully pruned and adjusted, I sat and watched Jeff Stelling shout the key incidents of the day's games. The occasional off-camera shout of 'GOAL!!' from one of Jeff's idiotic cohorts made my heart flutter. Could it mean precious points? Will I be propelled from mid table obscurity to the dizzy heights of the top 5? As it turned out, no, but there's always next week.

That night, before heading out to the Washington for a few swifties, Anna, Amy, Davy, Martin and I sat and watched Alex Reid: Fight of My Life. It was on Bravo, a channel I only usually watch for 5 minutes when I spot tits and I'm flicking between channels. Like a siren on the rocks, the tits lure me in. But I never usually linger. This time Alex 'The Reidernator' Reid was the tit in question, and I tuned in in the hope of seeing him get his face punched off. Alex Reid is a strange case. Set against Jordan, he seems really pleasant and reasonable, but on his own he comes out with so many reeeeaaally reeeeeeaaally stupid statements I find it hard not to dislike him, the big muscular fool. The programme was about his first time back in the cage, taking part in his first MMA fight in a while. There was a hell of a lot of build up, more than was really necessary. The Reidernator entered the ring to a chorus of boos, under the watchful, expressionless gaze of his good lady wife. The crowd clearly didn't think much of him, and were looking forward to seeing him lose on the telly. Bravo counts as telly. But, much to everyone's surprise, Reid started on top and nearly had his opponent Tom Watson (not the golfer, another Tom Watson) in a choke hold within a minute of the start. 

I don't really like all this cage fighting business. It hasn't got the skill or discipline of boxing, and seems mainly to consist of grappling, either up against the edge of the cage or on the floor. It's all very homoerotic. Also, you're allowed to use your elbows and knees, which just seems a bit harsh really. I don't mind seeing a boxer getting knocked clean out, but when a cagefighter elbows his opponent in the face it makes me grimace. And that's what happened to The Reidernator. A lot. By the end of it his face was a puffy mess. His left eye wouldn't open because of the swelling, and both fighters had blood all over the place. It was horrible. Reid lost on points, which I reckon was fair enough. But, hello, what's this? After it finished, the boos were gone, and as Watson held his opponent's hand in the air the crowd gave a massive cheer. Over the course of 20 gruelling minutes he'd won them round, and I ended up finding the whole thing quite uplifting. 

So hear this, celebrities: If you want to rehabilitate your public image, all you've got to do is get beaten to a pulp in front of a paying audience and hey presto! They'll love you again. My only hope now is that, after his hilariously childish on-air rant about his pay, Chris Moyles is disliked enough to consider it. There'd be a pretty healthy queue of opponents. 

Friday 25.09.10

Friday began noisily, with bin lorries, pneumatic drills, and a howling wind jolting me awake. I'd left the window open overnight. I have to do this really, because if I don't I wake up in what feels like a sauna, my duvet a comfy murderer pressing me into death's sweet embrace. So out of bed I scrambled, and into my dressing gown I hopped, so as not to expose my hideous form to anyone spying through the blinds. Once the window was open, everything was just generally much better. Maybe I've got a very mild form of claustrophobia where I'm just very very keen on fresh air.


Anna was completely moved in by now and it was fun having her around again. She'd just got her student loan through, so was spending it hand over fist on the internet. One of the first things she'd shown me after arriving was an green and blue plastic egg cup set, which cost £10. To be fair, you do get a spoon and tiny mallet, which you use to crack the egg like a tiny Thor. At the moment I'm skint, very skint indeed, so to see this kind of mental spending was quite liberating. Me and my housemate have a kind of shuffling, nodding, small-talky relationship. We talk and stuff, getting friendlier, but we're not bezzies. And I quite like that. Living with a load of your mates can get pretty unbearable sometimes, if they're the only people you ever see and hear, so it's good to separate things out a bit.


The rest of the day proceeded fairly boringly. I applied for a few more jobs, and spoke to The State regarding the various ways I hope to scrounge from them in the near future. There were a couple of snags none of which, for once, were my fault. I'll talk about them later.


Quite a dull one today I'm afraid my dears, but stay tuned won't you.

Thursday 23.09.10

I got my first rejection email today, from Wendy Wilson of the Shef Uni department of oncology. Apparently, I didn't have enough experience in the relevant role compared with the other applicants. I knew that already though, so it didn't come as much of a surprise. In a way, it was just nice to at least get an email from someone - more often than not it just says 'If you haven't heard back from us within four weeks, please take it to mean you have not been successful', or something along those lines. Four weeks! When you're really skint you can't really hang around that long, especially if the job you've applied for isn't even that good. But anyway, not to worry. Wendy Wilson has earned a place in my heart for that simple act of consideration; I imagine she makes a bloody good roast dinner, for some reason. Maybe it's the name Wendy, I think it implies a certain homeliness that you just don't get with a Claire or a Georgina. No offence to any Claires or Georginas who read this blog, which I suspect is none, it's just that your name doesn't cut the mustard, sorry.

After that, keen not to become immediately despondent, I did the last of the tidying I needed to do before Anna's arrival in the afternoon. She's a friend set to move into a our spare room, which has stood empty and lifeless for over a month. I went up to check if it was habitable, and it pretty much was. Except, oh, what's this? There was a plastic bag on the floor containing what I think used to be a banana. I couldn't really tell any more, as the mystery fruit - I'm pretty sure it was fruit - had completely liquified, and the bag now sloshed with a kind of green, primordial mush. There was paper in there as well, some old evelopes and I think a couple of used tea bags. It was fucking grim, to say the least, and would probably look out of place as a welcome gift. So, off to the bin it went, to wreak its foul havoc elsewhere. Other than that the room was ok. I did a bit of hoovering, dusted the bookshelf and it was all set.

She arrived at about 4 o'clock, with her mum, in a VW Golf absolutely rammed full of possessions. There was a plant perched in the passenger seat foot-well and a duvet pressed up against the rear window. I was really happy to have Anna around again - she's one of my best mates and I've only seen her once in the last 3 months. She talks unbelievably quickly, and provides an atmosphere where it feels like something interesting is constantly about to happen. She keeps talking about going out and having a big night on Saturday, but I think I'm too poor at the moment. I need a job so badly, just an interview would be handy. I'm naturally inclined to expect the worst and hope for the best, so can become despondent very quickly when trying to get a job. The world seems like a darker place, and my face sets into an expression of grim, trudging vacancy. Josie, off of Big Brother, said that whenever she finds herself feeling down, she just imagines she's the woman who got her face ripped off by a chimpanzee. So I'll try that. It's bounds to put a smile back on my fleshy, intact face.

Wednesday 22.09.10

And so, to Wednesday. Wedders, weddo...weddington. The big W. I got up feeling better than the day before, less clogged of head and altogether more shiny. I was due to play squash with my mate Nick in the afternoon. I like squash, it provides the happy medium between stress relief and exercise. You get to hammer a tiny rubber ball against a big, consenting wall, and it makes a really satisfying thwack each time. But also, if that wasn't enough, it's really really tiring, because the ruddy opponent always insists on smacking it to parts of the court that I'm not in, the git. So off I thunder, round and round the court, bashing into walls with merry abandon, getting quite alarmingly sweaty. Sometimes, people stand in the little viewing gallery at the top if they're waiting to get on a court. When this happens everybody tries harder. I put a much more earnest face on and wryly shake my head when a crucial point is lost. Cos that obviously makes it look like I'm usually brilliant, but today it's going badly, perhaps because of some painful mental turmoil.

Never liked tennis, I served like a girl. Cricket I'm ok at, but sometimes hilarious, and don't even get me started on football. But squash, I think I can sort of do squash.

Problem is, gang, I'm ever so unfit. I smoke too much, laze too much, and eat far too many carbs. I have the necessary 'squash guile', can usually hit the ball where I want to, and when I hit it try really hard it looks quite impressive. In my head. Jamie Redknapp, doing a spot of punditry, would probably say something incoherent about the sheer quality of my play, in which he woefully misinterprets the the word 'literally'. Trouble is, when it's not going well, when I keep spazzing it into the floor, occasionally missing the ball entirely, I get quite angry  with myself. This bizarre spectacle takes many forms, all of which only serve to make me look like a right bell-end. Kicking the wall, punching myself in the leg, shouting 'ARRRRRGGGHHH!' and booting the ball away, none of these are below me. It's quite an embarrassing spectacle, and it needs to stop. Plus, there can't be many sights more pathetic than a large, sweaty man flailing his foot at a tiny rubber ball, barely connecting and having it then bounce, pathetically away to the other side of the court. It doesn't dissipate the rage at all. The only thing that can do that really is to win the next point, when all of a sudden everything's hunky dory. Sadly this time I lost 4-2. But mark my words, I'll do better. It feels good to do well.

Tuesday 21.09.10

Tuesday wasn't a very exciting day by anyone's imagination. I'd caught a cold off a couple of my so-called friends, and the heavy weekend just gone caught up with me. I'd had about 5 hours sleep per night, as a result of drunkenness and roadworks outside the front of my house, and I think by Tuesday by body had had enough of this shit. So I slept, curled in a ball, for ages.

When I finally woke up, I applied for a few more jobs online and had the rest of some awesome chorizo and courgette pasta I'd made the day before. The trouble is, at the moment the newspaper/journalism industry is a bit fucked. Advertisers are paying less now they can get the same reach online, for less dosh, and the shortfall in revenue is beginning to bite when it comes to jobs. So I'm applying for all sorts of jobs, ones for which I have even the slightest hint of experience. I've applied to a reporter, a press officer, a marketing dude, an administrator, a coordinator in the Sheffield University Department of Oncology, and many more. I haven't got one yet, and it makes me instantly regret the shitty 2:2 I graduated with 3 years ago.

The evening was spent mooching around and tidying the attic room, in preparation for my friend Anna moving in on thursday. I've seen her once in the last 3 months, and it feels like ages.

Mon 20.09.10

Monday was a relatively productive day by my recent, shitty standards. I needed to get my landlord Glenn to sign a 'Landlord Declaration Form' that I'd been given, to pass on to those kind folks at the housing benefit office. For those lucky and, well, organised enough not to have had to scrounge a meagre existence from the state from time to time, let me tell you: it's all about housing benefit. Job Seekers allowance pails into puny insignificance when compared to the big HB. But, in order to get my grubby hands on some of that sweet cash, my landlord had to sign his name and confirm the rent I pay to him, as well as the names of the people on the tenancy agreement. 

I asked if I could meet him, and he told me to come to the Hilton hotel out near Victoria Quays. I'm not quite sure why he said there, he doesn't live anywhere near the place. Maybe he wanted to look important. So off I went, into the breezy outdoors, eyes blinking at the sudden rush of light. The longer I spend unemployed, the greater the desire to curl up into a ball of my own degeneracy and wait patiently to die. But not today, no sir. I put on my smartest coat, which is kind of brown and leathery with a warm furry inside, and set off on my mission. The coat was a bad idea. I began to sweat before I'd even got into town, and my insistence on leaving EVERYTHING to the last minute had meant I had to walk much quicker than my usual, day-dreamy amble. I unzipped the jacket - a small patch of sweat had formed on my chest and my back was clammier than a vicar's handshake. I began to surreptitiously waft my t-shirt to try and get some cool air going, all the while attempting to plot a course which took me quickly to the hotel but also avoided long stretches of open blazing sunshine. All in all, it's a walk of just over a mile and a half, according to google maps, and I got there precisely 1 minute before the agreed 11.30 meeting.

I saw Glenn's shiny black mercedes parked a few spaces away from the Hilton's entrance, wiped one final swathe of sweat from my forehead and went inside. He was sat at a table in reception, and I went and said hello. We made awkward small talk, he signed the form, we shook hands and I left, to walk back into town.

And so, off I went to the First Point, your one stop shop for all things council. It's basically just a big room with a load of staff sat at desks - you get a stub with a number on it, like in Argos. You then pick a sit in a bank of chairs and await your number, like in Argos. In the mean time you sit and studiously avoid contact with all the haunted eyes of skinny mothers and tattooed, unemployed steel workers, in case they spot your soft middle-class underbelly.  Like in Argos.

When my number was called I went to desk 28 and sat down, across from a kindly-looking man of about 50 called Andrew. We went through my paper work and as he waited for his system to whirr into life, Andrew sat in silence twirling, chewing and tapping his pencil. I quite like small talk with total strangers - what's the worst that can happen, ey?! - but I didn't bother today. This man had the power to give or deprive me of cash held within his busy hands, so I thought it best to leave it.

All sorted, I went home to resume my slothful existence of listening to podcasts and roaming the internet for distractions. Pissed off, and all set to spend the rest of the night punching myself in the face, I decided to begin writing a daily blog. The idea's completely ripped off Richard Herring, who's done one every day for seven or eight years, but I think it might be beneficial for me. Left to my own devices, I'll gladly spend an entire day procrastinating, getting nothing at all done whatsoever. So I'm hoping that if there's even just a blog-based witness to my life, I'll make myself busy once in a while. You'll see how it goes I guess.

Newness

So yeah, here I am all shiny and new, like a pin. A new pin, to boot. But forget about pins for a second, which I know is difficult, and think instead about this new blog of mine.

It dawned on me a while ago that the title of my old blog - Eat The Pith - was an incredibly shit title, and that it had to go. It sounded quite smug, and promised scoops of pith that frankly I didn't have it in me to provide.

But hey! Let's not dwell in the past, for it is another world. Earlier on today, which I suppose is still in the past but at least relatively recent, I played my first game of cricket for 12 months. And my word did I enjoy it. A cloudless, testicle-meltingly hot day spent listening to the earthy thwack of leather on willow is my favourite thing to do in the world, apart from maybe that feeling when you make a cheese and bean toastie and it comes away from the sides without spilling its molten contents everywhere. I have quite a pink face, and can't stop scratching my peeling nose, but it's definitely worth it.