Everything to play for and forever to play it in

For some reason I have a huge dislike of football.

With the World Cup coming up, I am constantly reminded of the spectre of the apparently beautiful game with a barrage of media all supported by people who suddenly become football crazy having never previously expressed an interest in the fucking thing.

It all started for me at school. In the UK during the late 70's when I started school, it became apparent that playing football was a compulsory activity. Every games lesson was just football, cricket, rugby or some other god-awful sport and I hated it then as I do now.

Everyone seemed to have an in-depth knowledge of the rules and yet I could not fathom them back then - or indeed now - how they knew (I must have missed that lesson) or why they fucking cared.

Don't get me wrong, I can work happily as part of a team and enjoy physical exertion, but why it had to be as part of football team I'll never know. Watching it seemed to me like smelling somebody else's food while they ate it so even the spectator aspect is lost on me.

It turns my father in law into an utter child and makes people argue the toss over whether Player A who has been slotted into Team B this year will create a combination that will be more preferable than the previous attempt.

I can see how pride must have stemmed from having a team made up of locally acquired players, but now it seems like teams are constituted of players from all over the world and then branded to suit their temporary masters. Liken it to a PC cobbled together out of the highest performing parts the management can afford. Giving the team the name of the city which hosts it's home ground seems to me just a formality borne from habit. You could just as easily give them a number for the relevance to it's geographical proximity. Just how much Manchester is there in Manchester United?

As I understand it, when England play in the World Cup as a team, it is a requirement that the players are all of English nationality. Yet this qualifying specification seems totally disregarded outside of this sporting event. Most teams will sport players from all over, presumably because they are the best that money can buy and will make a difference to the teams performance. At what point does the team cease to actually represent the place to which it was originally associated? Would this have been the case 60 years ago?

I have no problem at all with foreign players playing in a team. It's not that. It's specifically the fact that it seems that Manchester United players should really come from Manchester, surely? Didn't they used to? When did it become okay for this to change?

When more half of the players have names which would make fantastic scores in scrabble (even without a Triple Word Score square) then it's a case of 'I've had the same broom for ten years. It's only had two new heads and one new handle'.

It's probably just accepted by a team due to the benefits it will bring, and related to some 'deep rooted desire to belong' psycho-babble. I don't know or really care to know the answer. I have decided it is as good a reason as any to continue disliking the game.

British comedians Mitchell and Webb have summed it up best for me in these two clips.

1. All the football, all of it mattering to someone, presumably: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF_uOgyBK1c

2. Do you remember when we were Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBgGqsvss0o

The Post Office

The Post Office is a fine example of what I understand was once a great British institution which now never fails to wear down your spirit.












This is prompted in particular by my annual pilgrimage to send off my accounts to Gateshead by recorded delivery. As usual, the queue was like a food drop in Darfur with manners. The assembled populace was being very British by being affronted by the madness of it all while simultaneously doing nothing to improve the situation.

The queues are phenomenal and I wonder how many in the line actually need to be there within what is usually considered The Lunchtime Slot (I would argue anywhere from midday to 2pm). This is when working people have to use their lunch break to sort out their affairs - many of which involve the use of The Post Office.

In my Post Office, there is the usual bank of counters with a snaking line of shuffling inmates and a till-counter for more conventional shopping type transactions.

Almost every facility today was in some way compromised, and for some reason this caused People With Incredibly Complicated And Time-Consuming Transactions to suddenly materialise in front of me.

This gave me plenty of time for me to utilise my increasing anger to notice more things that annoy me even more unsympathetically such as:

• Why are people queuing up to buy Lottery tickets when you can get those fucking things in a million other places in the High Street?
• Could there be a front-of-house person to field questions so I don't have to queue to find out that I can only do that at the other counter?
• Do we really need scratchcards here (and, by extension, the morons packing out the place to buy them) when it takes most of the afternoon to post a fucking package?

In my head, I go to my happy place where suddenly I grow two feet taller, stride past The Grimly Resigned and make a grand gesture on their behalf. I pick up the teller (maybe 120lbs wet) and, holding him like a pencil in my enormous hands, I proceed to write my list of demands on the road outside using his face as the lead.

The police helicopter will be able to read this from the air. Whenever I see this on the news from my cell, I will note that annoyingly the lines appear a little wonky.

When I am left with a pair of shoes and a couple of bloody stumps, I pack them into a padded envelope and post them home to his mother, along with a Post-It note saying 'Try Again'. The queue has gone down quite a bit now, and I don't believe the value of the contents to exceed £40 so no need for any insurance.

Of course I do none of these things because I have stuff to lose and I am doomed to dream up what I believe to be satisfying scenarios which I dare not perform. Instead I do as my fellow inmates do, tutting, rolling my eyes occasionally and sharing looks of stoic reverence whilst getting a little bit more excited each time a counter becomes free.