Here goes

Trouble Man

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xmDBOwZT7Q

Could make this better. In any way.

Betty Wright Clean Up Woman

Led by a charismatic coach who has tournament winning experience and tactical insight. A man able to formulate a plan yet allow for situational adaptation and intuitive action.

A team that has growing maturity and confidence with unity at its core allied to an indomitable mindset.

A group of coaches and players who avoid cliched responses and platitudinous commentary.

Seemingly at ease with themselves and their fans who support them passionately but without aggression.

On the other hand, there is England’s football team.

Roy Greenslade in The Guardian lauds the Current Bun and its lampooning of the Police and the inconsistent, not to say perplexing, no to say asinine, approach it is taking to high profile cases currently.

The piece is quoted in full below.

Thoughts? —————————————————————— The Sun has registered its outrage and incredulity at the decision by the Metropolitan police not to charge the peer it pictured and filmed appearing to take drugs.

In July, the Sun on Sunday ran photographs, plus footage on its website, that seemingly showed Lord Sewel using a rolled-up banknote to snort white powder, which the newspaper maintained was cocaine.

“Lord Coke”, as the paper termed him in a headline, was shown partying with two women who were said to be prostitutes and, following the exposure, Sewel resigned from the House of Lords, where he was deputy speaker and chair of its privileges and conduct committee.

Two days after the initial story was published, Metropolitan police officers raided Sewel’s flat in London’s Dolphin Square and launched an investigation into the matter.

But the Met issued a statement on Tuesday saying: “Following a review of all the material, including a forensic examination of an address in » Continue Reading.

Google spies on us. The government spies on Google. Other governments spy on ours. Spy drones. Spy clones. That bowtie is really a camera. Snowden and Assange The news is full of stuff about who knows what and how they came to know it.

Songs please about this kind of thing.

Jamo Thomas I Spy For The FBI

Who starts these things? Think it’s fascinating how certain memes take hold. I work with clients who are desperate for their marketing messages to “go viral” They very rarely do. Dollar Shave, Old Spice and the John Lewis ads are rare exceptions. And the more they become “a thing”, they less they become something meaningful. As people can smell a shill a mile off.

Anyway, right here, on The Afterword blog where did acronyms like GLW, TMFTL and HJH orginate? And what about phrases like “As usual the answer is ..(David Bowie?) or “Afterword T-Shirt. I’ll take that in a black, XL” and variants, how did they emerge?

Answers on a postcard. There’s another one from long ago.

This is the most naked, the most honest thing I’ve heard in years. Perhaps ever. It ain’t pretty but curiously beautiful. Heartrending and somehow uplifting.

Jason Isbell – Elephant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHJhyrrUTgc

In the Blatter thread, Vulpes suggests that since we invented the game, we make some changes to the rules, sorry Laws, of the sport.

I think this is an excellent suggestion. I propose the following to stamp the inherently English origin of football back on the game.

This is what I propose:

1. Insist that all players wear woolen shirts and plus two trousers. 2. Rename positions such as Midfielder to Yeoman Half-Eighths and Striker to Advanced Bowman Major. 3. Insist that all transfers are calculated in Guineas and paid as their Farthing amount. 4.The pitch be the same size and dimensions as the graveyard of Winchester Cathedral. Graves and headstones an optional extra that the Home team may impose. 5. The goals should be unfeasibly small at one end and unfeasibly large at the other. 6. Only one “half” known as a “half” should be played. Thereby, giving the team winning the toss and choosing to kick towards the unfeasibly large goal an unfair advantage.

Addendum to law: Needless to say, that any English team winning the toss will always choose to kick towards the unfeasibly small goal, handing an outrageous advantage to their opponents.

Gentlemen and Ladies » Continue Reading.

And as I run, a song runs through my head. Over and over.

I’m running down to the fields. We said we’d meet in the fields. Near the stream. We’ve been told not to go in the woods.

We scare each other with stories about Archie. He lives in the woods, they say. He killed someone, some people say.

“He’s harmless. But stay away from him” shouts my mum as I run out. “And, anyway, don’t go in the woods”.

Run into the sunshine. To the fields. To the stream. To the woods

I am not sure who’s coming. Tim’s coming. He makes me laugh so that’s good. Paul’s going to be there. And his sister, Caroline.

Why am I excited to be seeing her? Girls are silly. She cried when Paul scared her with his Archie story. I told him off. He told me off for telling him off. He had a point I suppose. She is his sister, after all. What’s it got to do with me?

I keep singing this song. We all like it. We sing along every time it comes on the radio.

We sing it in the fields. We » Continue Reading.

During his time, Football has become truly embedded as *the* global game. With an audience of billions and the active participation of tens of millions.

The same sponsors who now mimsy around like delicate ladies at a tea dance flooded money into the game because of its global reach and the ability to capitalise on its associated virtues of individual endeavour and team spirit.

The idea that Coca Cola and McDonalds and Visa should now wield some kind of moral arbitrage in the matter is vaguely nauseating.

The upside of the money that did flood in was the development of the game in some of the most deprived and underprivileged parts of the world. Blatter himself overseeing the creation of pitches and facilities in far flung parts of Asia and Africa.

The principle that a country like Russia or a region like the Middle East should not be entitled to host a World Cup is ludicrous. Football has been a force for good in many parts of the world and has played a part in social change. It should be allowed to continue this work.

And by the way, why shouldn’t Monserrat have the same voting power as, say, » Continue Reading.

Gook splat. Gook gunk. Ankle deep. Blood seeping through his shoes. Try it on she said. Try it on she laughed. That gook kid. Gook dead. Blood seeping. Ankle deep.

American Tabloid is great. The Black Dahlia is very good. But all his novels are pretty much the same aren’t they? Stacccato. Sentences. Tight. Claustrophobic. No fluidity. Little grace.

Characters like his sentences don’t really evolve. Don’t grow. Have shade or nuance or subtlety. The men are all venal and corrupt and weak in ways various. All the women are tarts with hearts. Or good girls gone bad. They like their men tough and their sex rough. Then they die. At the hands of weak, venal, corrupt men. The cast of thousands becomes impossible to follow. Especially as they are all so similarly drawn. The hundreds of pages difficult to read. As it’s not writing. It’s typing. Page after page. Same shit. Over and over. I bought Perfidia, started to read it. Gave up. Page 162. I’m gonna try again. Some time. I know I will.

So is Ellroy any good? I sort of want to think he is. But is it boy music? Do we like Ellroy, the » Continue Reading.

Saw an article about the Mac in Mojo. With a picture of Stevie. I remember being in physical pain if I saw her on telly when I was a lad. Somewhere down the crazy river of teenage longing.

Probably explains my lifelong predilection for women of a boho bent. A slight hippy vibe. My ex-wife Anna had a touch of that. Foxy, feisty and a doctor too. Man, I was gone. Solid gone.

May explain too my fondness for girls with boy names. There’s been an Alex, a Robyn, a Billie, and, oh yes, a Stevie. A Californian called Stevie! Dark hair, mind.

Some things pass. And some things remain. The things you love. The names of girls.

View post on imgur.com

Aunty Christina died yesterday. She was 84. Twenty five years older than her sister my mother was when she died.

I was in the hospital as her breathing faded and her life ebbed away. And a life it most defitely was.

My mother was girl next door pretty. Big boobs and great legs. Fun, lively and popular.

Aunty Christina was beautiful. Model beautiful. Ghost beautiful. Distant beautiful. A shoreline in winter.

And she broke hearts. Wrecked marriages. Ended lives. One of her lovers throwing himself under a train the night she left him.

She married three times. To an artist, a theatre director, and finally, a banker who loved her devotedly for nigh on three decades. I once commented on the longevity of their relationship, saying Tony, her husband, was a good man. “Yes” she agreed. “A good one, and a gay one too. That’s why it works, darling”.

She and my mother were not close. Unalike in temperament or in looks. Hardly surprising as Aunty Christina was, it transpired, adopted. The truth emerging one tumultuous Christmas.

Aunty Christina died yesterday. I rarely cry. Yesterday, I did.

One weekend long ago, when I was » Continue Reading.

I’m going out in a bit. With my current stepping out with person. She is 35. She wants me to meet her friends, God help me. What on earth will I talk about to them?

I mean, I find Massive Attack, thrillingly modern and bleeding edge hip. She and her chums were barely germ free adolescents – if that – when Blue Lines appeared.

Germ Free Adolescence! Bloody hell! They won’t get that reference. The Clash? They’ll say “oh yeah, I’ve heard of them. Think my parents might have one of their records. Wait, isn’t it a pub in Shoreditch? Not sure..who’s for another Dirty Martini?”

Dirty Martini? Didn’t I see them at the Roxy? I’m confused. If I start talking about Thatcher and Lewisham 77 and The Who at The Valley, I’ll sound like a boy soldier who joined up to serve with Kitchener.

I think she’s told them I’m “older” but not the Ancient fucking Mariner for God’s sake! They won’t believe me if I said I’d pull all dayers in the office followed by all nighters in Soho, or the other way around, off my tree on gak and vodka.

Bloody Oasis ruled » Continue Reading.