The Pogues

I've always been a Christmas person, even now, when at 26 some of the enchantment and excitement has understandably faded. This year though, I'd been struggling to get in the Christmas mood. I'm not sure why, maybe too much work, maybe the magic really was starting to fade or maybe because for the first time ever, the Chambers family won't be together for the festive period.

Happily though, for the past 7 years there's been one thing which always serves to turn on my Christmas switch almost instantly and that's Fairytale of New York by The Pogues.

It started when we held our first Christmas meal at Uni, back in 2003. It was a cracking night, 15-odd people squeezed around a collection of tables, beer crates, stools and chairs in a living room blatantly not big enough to fit even half that number in.

We ate turkey, we drank wine, we sang songs and we pissed off the neighbours. But what I remember most about that night is singing along to the end of Fairytale over and over again.

Happily, it's a tradition that's lasted ever since, and this Saturday I'll be off back to Bristol for the seventh running of our little meal tradition. And whilst this one might be taking place in a busy restaurant rather than the cosy surroundings of a student living room, it will still be very very special for exactly the same reasons that the past 6 have been - fantastic company, great food, and one very familiar Christmas song.

Football

I've been playing a lot of football after work recently. After a period of only playing once a week or so over the summer, I've got back to playing two or three nights a week, and lately twice a night on some occasions.

It aches like hell after a couple of days straight playing five a side - never the softest of games, and it's also costing me quite a bit of money to play so much. But I think I've figured out why I've had this sudden urge and surge of playing - I'm scared.

I've recognised that actually, I've probably only got another ten years or so when I can still play football before I'm past it. And that scares the hell out of me to be honest. I love playing sport, especially competitively, and the thought that someday in the not too distant future I won't be able to do it anymore petrifies me.

Sure, there will be other, less physical, less strenuous sports that I'll be able to play for longer, but eventually they'll pass too. And then what? How do you find a replacement for something that you love doing that much and spend time that often doing?

Looks like I've got around 10 years to figure that one out

Losing

I hate losing, absolutely hate it. Probably more so now than a few years ago actually, although the difference is when I lose now I'm at least able to look my opponent in the eye, shake his hand and walk off. I lost tonight playing footie - in a manner which I'll call the Bayern Munich method - that is, conceding two late sucker-punches in a footie game you've dominated most of.

Someone else who clearly hates losing, and indeed has admitted as much, is Arsene Wenger, the manager of Arsenal. After their game against Chelsea yesterday, Wenger unloaded a rant which some have taken as a sign of a man finally losing it after having spent the past five years being outspent by his rivals.

You have to have some sympathy with the man, though perhaps it is about time he dropped his immense, stubborn obsession with perfect football and gave in at least a little to the current obsession in football with pace and power (though, on a seperate note, I believe that obsession is slowly killing football).

Judging by some of the fan reaction to the Chelsea defeat, quite a few are clearly beginning to lose the faith as well, and have increased the calls for a change, not only in footballing philosophy, but even potentially in their manager. This despite Wenger having given them ten years of Champions League football, several trophies and one glorious season where they were unbeaten - humans really do have a short capacity for memory and an apparent lack of appreciation for, or recognition of, the good times.

So what should Wenger do? Either he carries on with his beliefs, nails his colours even further to his mast and refuses to change. Or he puts up the white flag, gives in, sacrifices his reputation and succumbs to the modern obsession.

I'm fairly sure I know which one he'll choose, and I'm probably not alone in hoping he does choose that way - the Premier League needs Arsenal to keep doing what they're doing. Get the ball down, play it around and demonstrate what football should be about.

Handy

Thierry Henry's little 'hand gesture' has certainly created a bit of a stir this week, resulting in debate on everything from video technology to the very ethics of the game and french people as a whole.

Of course, like everything with a faint whiff of scandal that's picked up by the media, it's been blown out of all proportion - witness the Daily Mail's front page story this week about oil tankers sitting in the English Channel waiting for petrol prices to rise before selling their cargo.

The whole point on both these fronts is that whilst what has been done was wrong, it was done by people, and people as a race are ultimately fallible, both in their desire to prosper and from the pressures they themselves are under.

The backlash on Henry has come from both sides of the Channel, but ask yourself this - what would the French have done to him if he'd admitted the handball and they'd gone on to lose? He'd have been equally lynched, or maybe even worse for not using sporting 'gamesmanship'.

I'm not saying for one minute that what he did was right. Just asking for a little wider perspective on why he did it and what has happened since.

Clarkson, Hammond, May

The new series of Top Gear started last night - a joyous event as always for me, and several million others. Whilst it's true that they probably try a little too hard these days with some of the comedy, it's still a genuine pleasure to watch for an hour each week and this week's episode was no exception.

I'm not a car fanatic, although I do enjoy driving and (like most 20-something blokes) have a list of cars that I would love to own/drive one day. But the secret to the success of the show is that they've realised that this is how most of the population generally thinks as well, outside of the relatively small band of absolute car-lovers.

That's why there's more in the way of comedy, camaraderie, and "oh cock" than there is of actual, serious motoring journalism. Last night was no exception - a trip to Romania, some gags about local customs, every boy's dream of driving a supercar in a very long, very straight, very dark tunnel, and then, right at the end, some glorious aerial views of a stunning piece of landscape in the mountains of Eastern Europe and a completely empty road just waiting to be driven.

As I said, they overdo the slapstick a little these days, but when they combine the funny with the cinematography on show last night, it really is fantastic to watch.

There are doubters of course, just as with any successful show (I myself am one when it comes to things like Strictly, and especially X Factor), but for me this clip really proves that when they put their minds to it, they can still make quite breathtaking television.

Time over distance

I had a great night out on Friday with a couple of friends who, it turns out, I hadn't seen for at least 3 months. This despite living no more than 3/4 miles away from either of them and working within half a mile of each.

That's the slightly strange thing about London, and still something I've not really come to terms with despite having lived here for 2 years now. This place moves at such a fast pace, and the dynamics of working life and travel are so different that it can be weeks before you realise it's been weeks since you last saw someone.

Diary schedules also seem to get filled a lot quicker here than elsewhere - or maybe it's just a case of getting older and having more on, I'm not sure.

Happily though, the months-long famine was no barrier to a damn good night - especially if the Jagerbombs were anything to go by. Fantastic place actually, though all I could tell you was it was somewhere near Waterloo, had an outdoor area with disturbingly spiky plants, and sold 5 bottles of Corona, in a bucket, for £14. What a brilliant idea!

Midweek Lounge

As I might have mentioned before, Bristol is quite a lovely place to live, or indeed visit. Or in my case, to have lived and then keep on visiting. And so it was again this week when I had the chance to head down and welcome another close friend to the pensioner's club that is being 26.

But there was something a little bit different about this birthday - the owner of the event had gone all impetuous and youthful and decided that a midweek, Wednesday night party event was the way forward.

This meant two things - an excuse to take the rest of the week off work, and a chance to revisit the glory days of studenthood and take in some good, hard midweek drinking.

The night was a classic in most ways really - quiet, respectable start with good food, then the obligatory dirty birthday shot (and this one really was bad), then a bar or two before ending up in the most likely destination - the Lounge.

To anyone who's been in Bristol for a period of time, Lounge is like that comfy pair of old jeans that you slip on at the end of a long, hard working day. It's not particularly outstanding, but it tends to do the job pretty damn well nine times out of ten.

And so it was this week as well - still the same, still a good night out, and still the same fuzzy-lipped feeling from drinking £2.50 vodbulls the morning after.

One day I'll grow out of it, but happily, even though the numbers in the 26 club continue to swell, that day doesn't appear to have arrived just yet

Easy Tonight

Is the title of a song by a band called Five for Fighting. They're essentially a one-man band, led by an American bloke with a pretty good voice and a talent for writing vocals.

A friend first introduced them during a particularly tough time for me in 2003 when I was agonosing over a girl who in several ways was perfect. Happily now, I know she wasn't the one, though you couldn't have persuaded me at the time. In a word, I was bersotted.

But back to Five for Fighting. The funny thing is, I'd always thought they sounded decent when I'd listened to their songs downloaded (illegally) from Kazaa. I quite enjoyed some of their tunes if I'm honest, but without ever becoming a confirmed, idolising fan. But then along came Spotify, which as far as I can work out, still won't allow you to download most of the Oasis catalogue. And yet, it gives you access to Five for Fighting as they should have been heard.

Look them up, especially their song 'Easy Tonight', because you might just agree.

Squash

Squash, a stupid game really, but damn fun if you stick at it, and also pretty handy for keeping your fitness levels somewhere near the benchmark known as 'acceptable' rather than 'diabolical'.

I've just joined a squash ladder in Bristol, which essentially is an ongoing competition to see who's the best, who's the worst, and who's the generally indifferent. I've never actually come across the term 'ladder' in any other sport except squash, even though it essentially is a league table with a couple of tweaks in the rules.

But that's not my real problem with the ladder. My issue is the fact that I'm the only player who lives more than 1 mile away from the squash court we play on - in fact, I live approximately 200 times further away than any other player and probably something like 100 times further away than all of them combined.

Now that's a bit of an issue, especially if I'm not as good as they are at squash - if I lose lots, and find myself at the bottom, then I'm going to have far less opportunities to climb back up. I could be forever marooned on the bottom rung, the bloke who everyone steps on to begin their journey to squash stardom (it's a bit like those poor bastard boxers who get the crap beaten out of them each fight - only difference is, they still get a pay cheque out of it).

There is a flip side though. If I play it right, select only a couple of key matches, and manage to fluke a win in them, then I could be sitting pretty on top of the ladder and be sufficiently far away never to have to play again.

And with that in mind, I'm off to find a squash court that's not 200 miles away to get some practice in...

Fatigue

The feeling of ‘being tired’ has to be one of the strangest experiences ever encountered by humans. Solving it is easy of course – find a flat surface, preferably with some sort of comfy headrest, close your eyes and switch off for eight hours.

But it’s what happens before you get the chance to do this that really interests me. Tiredness plays with your physical ability to get things done, it affects your mental ability to think and act on those thoughts, and most of all it affects your emotions, magnifying many and subduing several all at once. In short, at its worst it can transform you from your normal self into some sort of hollow, unrecognisable shell.

I experienced all three of these effects yesterday evening. It wasn’t the most tired I’ve ever been – that was after a brutal week of 18 hour days in Slough, by the end of which all senses, thoughts and actions had just sort of merged into a blurry mess (bizarrely though, it’s one of the highlights of my working life to date). But I was definitely on the verge of putting up the white flag at one stage last night, emotions everywhere and nowhere, mind scrambled by the weight of personal and professional tasks that I had to accomplish and body screaming out to just give up and ditch everything.

And it’s amazing that when you are that tired, everything just seems so much harder to do. Every little target or task like climbing a mountain, every piece of bad news no matter how trivial a brutal blow, and every emotion balancing on tip toes waiting to be triggered.

Television programmes that profile extreme physical, mental and endurance feats often provide an insight into this tiredness – the sight of grown men weeping as they arrive at the South Pole after a mammoth trek, contestants locked in a reality TV house emotionally cracking in front of millions of people, marathon runners somehow dragging something primeval out of their bodies to complete those last, agonising few miles.

And yet the amazing thing about tiredness, and its effects on you, is that they can be so easily treated and cured. And that’s why, less than 15 hours after feeling utterly broken and staring down a long, dark tunnel, I’m sat on a train to Bristol for a friend’s wedding and feeling reinvigorated. The list of problems is still exactly the same as last night, the solutions to them still not entirely clear, and the finishing line still as distant as before.

And yet all it took to lift the mood, banish the demons, and come storming out the other side was eight hours of sleep. Simply brilliant.

Treasure

Ever since I was about 13, when I took over my brother's (much larger) bedroom as he departed for the world of work, I've had a tendency to display a bizarre range of what I affectionately label 'treasured crap' on my mantelpiece, bookcase or whatever other flat surface I have handy in my bedroom.

Everyone has stuff they like to look at now and then - as humans we have a natural desire to cherish certain things which appeal for a variety of reasons, be they positive or indeed negative.

My collection has changed over the years, partly because the display area is only so big and you have to get selective, and also because a lot of the things tend to have a certain edible quality to them - small bottles of whisky tend to be a particularly favourite treasure.

But certain things in the picture above have been pretty much constant throughout the years. The Stan (from South Park) doll is one of those, although the hat on top has changed a couple of times - the current one is a gift from Peru, which (like just about all hats on this glorious little Earth) looks infinitely better on his head than mine. The Chicago Cubs ticket from a glorious afternoon at Wrigley Park in 2002 is another keeper, as is the Apollo space pen from my brother, and also the karabiner from Yoseite, which acts as a reminder of just what an amazing place it really is.

Others will come and go I suspect, though perhaps alarmingly the peeball has outlasted several far more worthy mementos (one day I swear I will finally use it, but it seems such a shame to do it solo - I want someone else to race against!) and at some point I'm really going to have to give my mate Deej his 007 shot glass back (it's only been 6 years!).

But the constant editing of the treasure shelf isn't the point that matters. It's the fantastic memories that this little collection of bizarre artifacts gives me each time I look at them - how else would you explain the fact that even now, 7 years later, I still have a security bracelet from a first year university ball, despite the fact it's now a bit mouldy, very much broken, and completely unrecognisable.

That night was actually a pretty low point in uni for me, but what it gave me going forwards, what it reminds me of still today and the strength I draw from it are exactly the reasons I have, and will always have, a shelf full of this bizarre crap within eyesight until the day I die.

Leaving

Today's an immensely sad day in my office, because two really bright, young, promising stalwarts of our company are leaving.

I'm absolutely gutted about both to be honest - between them they've not only given me a hell of a lot of laughs, but also taught me a staggering amount about the job that I do. In a nutshell, that's why you have work colleagues and friends - to accomplish those two goals. They make your life enjoyable, and they help you to advance day by day, month by month and year by year.

But now, they're leaving, which means I'll have to look elsewhere for that same inspiration. Happily my company isn't short of just such people, but that doesn't mean the loss of these two will be any easier to take.

Life moves on. Some people deal with it very well, some with it incredibly poorly. I now know which camp I'm in

Rain

Bristol, as anyone who's ever spent more two minutes in the city will know, has a bit of a problem with rain.

For five months of the year between May and September, the city is one gorgeous, sunny parade, with open stretches of grass, plentiful beer gardens and barbecues in every home. Or at least something relatively near that description anyway.

But something rather alarming tends to happen once you move outside of that corridor - it rains. And I mean it really rains. Big rain, fat rain, horizontal rain and especially that really annoying drizzly rain that soaks you slowly but surely over a period of fifteen minutes or so.

And so it was this weekend, when, after a brilliant night out celebrating birthdays, engagements and movings-in, I decided to brave the hangover and go round various houses to visit other sufferers of the night before.

Everything was going fine as we made it to house number one. The clouds were a little dark, the air a little damp, but fortune was generally favouring hungover men for the day.

I should have known better.

Leaving house number one was probably what I would pinpoint as the fatal mistake. There was no real reason to leave - it was warm, dry, it had a comfy sofa, a good friend, and best of all a series of hilarious (though surely fake) videos on YouTube of 'ping pong mastery'.

But leave we did, just as the lightest of light drizzle began. Then we began to walk and the hangover gods deserted us – light became heavy, drizzle became full-on rain, and we ploughed straight on, never looking back (ok, so we may have half looked back, but everybody would have, I mean it was really crappy rain!)

And why do this and not turn back? Simple. Because I have an insatiable appetite for making the most of my rare visits to Bristol, and with barely ninety minutes left I still had another house, as well as a walk to the train station to fit in. So on we ploughed to house number two.

Fifteen minutes later, with wet jeans, soggy underwear, and walking alongside a bloke who now more closely resembled a highland cow (at least from the forehead upwards), we arrived at house number two where there was general laughter at our predicament. This laughter was then replaced with general laughter at the predicament of the occupants of the house, who had endured a less than enjoyable morning meeting the vicar who is due to marry them one year this week – suffice to say hangovers and spiritual guidance just don’t mix.

But even with soggy boxers, a painful hangover, a run to the station and (yes, naturally) some more rain on the way, it was absolutely worth it, every second of it.

It does rain a lot, and that might well put some people off visiting or (more likely) staying for good. But I wouldn’t change it for anything or anywhere.

Verve

Damn good band The Verve, one of the best in fact. Every time I listen to Urban Hymns (and yes that’s what I’m doing now sat here on a train to Bristol) I’m reminded of just what a special record they put together, and how many instantly recognisable, longingly memorable songs are contained within it. To call two or three of those songs anything but ‘classic’ would be wrong.

Lucky Man isn’t one of those classics, even though it is a very good song. It is however the first song I ever learnt to play on a guitar. It’s brilliantly simple in fact – just three chords for the majority of the song with a bridge at the end of each verse.

I always fancied being in a band when I was younger (I suspect most teenagers and young 20-somethings do – X-Factor anyone?) as it just seemed to be quite possibly the best form of employment anyone could ever wish for. Go into a studio, thrash out a tune, play it to the world and then do it all over again.

As time advanced and my career of mega-stardom didn’t appear blissfully over the horizon (which I suspect is the sad delusion that so many of the contestants on X-Factor actually hold) I adapted to a less ambitious target. My future house was to contain a soundproofed room with four speakers, a drum kit and a very large amp. Suffice to say I’m yet to find that house, or the drum kit for that matter. Or even the speakers.

But I still think I retain enough of that youthful belief, desire and romanticism to cling to that thought. At least for a couple more years.

After that dream dies I don’t really know what the next step down will be for my musical dreams. Maybe I’ll revert back to the earlier goal of joining a band, only this time it’ll be aiming to make the grade with the local village band. But then again, the whole village life dream is another matter entirely – why is it the older you get the more the idea of a small place with one shop, one pub and one hundred houses appeals more and more?

Whatever happens though I can at least be sure of one thing – Urban Hymns will always be in my CD rack (and yes I will always have a CD rack despite what anyone says).

And now it’s Word Gets Around by the Stereophonics. The 90’s were bloody brilliant weren’t they.

Stag

Someone asked me a damn good question this weekend whilst I was up in Manchester - why are stag do's called stag do's exactly?

Sadly I failed to answer the question for two very good reasons. One, I don't actually know the answer, which proved a bit of a problem (though as certain friends of mine will know, I can generally bullshit an answer with the best of them - PR career anyone?).

And two, I was a little (for which read exceedingly, utterly and completely) drunk at the time and had more important things to focus on - like where the next round was coming from, which hideous-tasting shot it was going to consist of, and whether it was time to whip out trusty 'Mr Maestro' to pay for it again.

Even after extensive research (well, Google and Wikipedia at least) I still don't know the answer, but rest assured the quest will continue.

On the plus side, the event was brilliant, fantastic and utterly worth the trip. It might be immature (and frankly a bit strange) to say, but there really are few better feelings than waking up the morning after a huge night out with good friends, with a shocking headache, an overbearing thirst for any kind of liquid and the prayer that you avoid natural light of any kind for at least another hour.

I've always been a great believer in the hangover, because it effectively forces you indoors and onto the sofa with fellow sufferers for several hours at a time. And in that time, you tend, though feeling overwhelmingly crap, to have a genuinely brilliant time chatting, laughing, watching crap TV and eating plastic food.

So it's with a fantastic sense of anticipation that I look forward to this Saturday which will feature two birthdays, a housewarming and an engagement party all rolled into one night with my closest friends in my favourite city.

All I can say is, bring on Sunday!

Birthdays

At every stage of my life, and everywhere I've lived, there always seem to be lots of birthdays in September and October. Way more than any other time of the year.

At this point I could point to the rather obvious mathematical calculation of deducting nine(ish) months from September/October and ending up at the festive season. In that golden period between Christmas and New Year, alcohol flows and romance fleetingly returns. It's also the coldest time of year, when warmth and entertainment are at a premium. This may or may or not have something to do with it and I'll leave it at that.

But back to the birthdays thing. I've just had mine, next weekend I'm celebrating two more, and there are a stack of them in and around the office. Everyone celebrates them differently of course - ranging from what one soon to be 26 year old described as a 'classic night' (house, nibbles, wine/beer, pub, beer, bar, spirit, club, shot, shot, shot...) to those who choose to try to prove that the passing of time hasn't affected their physical abilities too much by climbing Britain's highest peak.

But the great thing is, despite the sheer number of birthdays out there, you really never get bored of going to them nor celebrating them. I mean think about it. If you have say thirty friends and attend each of their birthdays every year for thirty years that's ninety birthdays. That's being conservative to be honest, and yet still each and every one is different and entertaining in its own special way.

I suspect they get better the older you get too. Whilst it's true that the magic goes out of the whole 'turning a year older' bit fairly easily, the excuse for a good piss-up or event out of the ordinary more than makes up for that. Birthdays also become milestones in the calendar as you get older - a chance to see people that you don't see half as much as you used to or want to.

And maybe that's the most important aspect of them - the chance to see the people that matter most to you. The older you get, the harder you work, the more stuff simply gets in the way of that seemingly easy objective of spending time with those people.

So happy birthday to all fellow SeptemberOctoberites for this year and all future ones.

The Finger Rule

Brilliant things fingers. Without them there would be no music, precious few sports and almost certainly a total lack of ability to drink from a wine glass without ending up licking most of the pinot grigio from the tabletop. Come to think of it there'd probably be no tabletop either.

God certainly should be congraulated on the design of fingers because of all these joys they provide us, though of course they're also highly useful for a number of less brilliant activities - let's face it, swearing just wouldn't be the same without fingers.

But there is one use that I've always been fascinated by and that is when those fantastic fingers belong to a hairdresser.

On average, I have my hair cut roughly every six weeks. That's about nine times a year, or to put it another way, 180-odd times since my once golden brown locks were first exposed to the bloke with the spray bottle, designer stubble and personalised scissors.

I've had my fair share of hair cut types, though by and large nothing outrageous. But what's always amazed me is the same familiar pattern I go through with the barber.

I'll sit down, he/she will ask me what I want doing, we'll agree (or not in some isolated cases of teenage rebllion) and then they will proceed to run their hand over my hair, grasp a bit of it with two fingers and ask the question to which I'm yet to fathom any answer other than yes - "about this much off?".

About how 'much' off? From what I can see it's always the same two fingers, at roughly the same point on my head and usually broadly the same outcome.

So I ask again. How, with someone's hand in the middle of your head, looking in a mirror (left is right, right is left, yada yada yada) and with absolutely no ability as a pre-cogniscent being who can look into the future are you supposed to say anything other than a somewhat limp and utterly defenceless 'yes'?

Of course it all usually ends up broadly alright - bizarrely I've always thought the worst you look after a haircut is the second day, not the first day after you've had the snip. But by and large, by the end of the first week, everything is back to normal and you get on with things.

But I remain determined to solve this little conondrum and hence I've come to the conclusion that it's time for me to do the only thing possible - penetrate the inner hairdressing circle and decipher the genuis behind the finger rule.

I can see it already; the day in the lecture schedule where the doors to the auditorium are bolted shut, the global hairdressing deity (GHD for short) steps forward from the golden plinth, and a hush falls across the next generation of convertible car owners.

And then he utters the immortal, longed-for words:

"My pupils, today we learn the most important rule of them all, the rule that will guide your careers and ensure cash in your pockets. Today we learn, the finger rule"

OK, maybe not, but I freely admit here and now that I simply haven't got the balls to challenge the finger rule any other way

HIMYM

Acronyms. They're everywhere. I suspect there was a time when they didn't exist but as long as I've been alive (or at least as long as I can remember, so discount those first three years of joyful unaware bliss) they seem to have been around. The world of business is of course particularly susceptible for them. I remember spending nine months in a pensions office being confronted everyday with 'GMP', 'RPI' and 'AVCs', and the world of PR is just as bad (look at it, it's a bloody acronym itself!).

But it's the acronym above which has mostly been occupying my thoughts and indeed my evenings recently. It stands for How I Met Your Mother, a delightful little American sitcom that airs on one of the lesser channels (i.e. not Fox, ABC or NBC) in the US. It briefly ran on BBC Two here in the UK for the first couple of series, but then the Beeb has never been that good at maintaining American sitcoms on its channels (with the glorious exception of Seinfeld of course).

The central premise is simple but effective - Ted, the main character, sets up each episode by explaining to his kids the stories that led to the eventual meeting and marrying of their mother. The episodes then proceed by way of flashbacks to those events.

And of course, like every successful sitcom, HIMYM has a central comedy character at its heart. In this case it's the ultimate alpha male, Barney Stinson. Attractive, rich, a firm believer in the one night stand and yet curiously loveable - think Joey Tribbiani with intelligence and dress sense. Oh, and some wonderful catchphrases.

But the reason it really works, and is now entering its fifth season, isn't because it's devasatingly funny or indeed sharp, like say Frasier (still the greatest ever sitcom) or Mash. Rather, like Friends, Cheers, Will & Grace and all the rest, it works because it offers us some comfort, some security and some reassurance that good things can happen in our lives.

And that's all that people really want, and indeed need - human society wasn't forged from despair, it was forged out of hope and triumph. There's been plenty of the former and not nearly enough of the latter over the past 18 months so every little bit helps.

Go on, watch it. You might just be pleasantly surprised......

Football in August

It's August, the mercury finally cracked 30C for the first time this year on Sunday, and England have won the Ashes against a limited but bloody stubborn Australia. Oh, and the football season started fifteen days ago.

Fifteen days ago - the second weekend in August. Now I love football a hell of a lot, definitely up there with my other top sports both to watch and to play, but surely, surely, the second week of August is far too early? Britain's footballers only had nine weeks off between the FA Cup Final and the start of the season. For professional athletes, exhausted after a fifty game season, that's simply ridiculous.

We're told that the reason the season started too early is because it's a World Cup year, so everything has to be finished nice and early to give our boys the best chance possible. But just think about that for a moment - we're forcing the cream of our crop to take less of a summer break, cram even more matches into a shorter season and then play for up to another five weeks to hopefully lift the Jules Rimme at the end of it all.

Simply put, there is too much football to fit into a season anymore. It's not even as if the August football provides particular value for money either - players look tired, unfit and overweight whilst the Premier League is disrupted by all manner of internationals and European qualifying games. Meanwhile the FA Cup and League Cup have already started in earnest for the lower teams. And all this despite the aforementioned mercury hitting 30C.

I'd love to say at this point that there's a simple solution - which would surely be to reduce the number of teams in each league. But the problem is that football won't do it because no other sport will either.

Cricket is about to embark on a mammoth series of one day internationals following eight intense weeks of test action, the rugby union season continues to stretch as European competitions grow, formula one now has seventeen or eighteen rounds compared to twelve only a few years back and rugby league got so fed up with it all that they switched to a summer league (which seems to extend far beyond the actual summer). And to cap it all, tennis now seems to be played every single month of the year, forcing the world's best to slog it out across twelve continuous rolling months to protect their rankings.

It's got to stop - too much of a good thing very quickly becomes boring and repetitive. As a prime example, witness the continued overhyping of 'Super Sunday' by Sky Sports (the fact that the fixtures seem to keep coming together so fortuitously is another matter entirely) or the fact that a game labelled Liverpool vs Barcelona or Chelsea vs AC Milan just doesn't seem to appeal quite so much anymore. We've seen their players lots of times before, they're no longer shrouded in mystery and intrigue, and we'll probably see them again next year even if we miss it this time.

Competitive sport is a marvellous, wonderful invention, but the continued year round thirst for exposure by individual sports is drastically overcrowding the calendar and reducing the magic of it all.

Satellite television hasn't helped, but if we want the majesty of sporting competition restored then we have to resist the urge and remember the old adage - less (truly) is more.

Freddie, Steady, Go?

In 1998 Brazil were the best football team in the world. Then their star player and talisman suffered some form of seizure just hours before the world cup final, was shunted onto the pitch anyway and Brazil got their arses kicked.

In 2003 England were the best rugby union team in the world. Then their arguably most important player, Richard Hill, got injured and England were pretty mediocre in their first few games of the world cup. But they waited, rested him properly and brought him back when the time was right which paved the way for Wilkinson’s right boot and all that.

In 2009, England aren’t the best cricket team in the world but they do have a damn good chance of beating Australia in The Ashes for the second time in four years. Their star player is injured, but has so far played through the pain and is fighting to make the start line for tomorrow’s fourth test.

A half-fit Freddie is still a pretty good player and more importantly, any kind of Freddie still scares the crap out of the Australians. But a Freddie who breaks down on the first morning of the test could rule himself out of the rest of this one, and the decider at the Oval as well.

So what do England do?

The sensible option would surely be rest him, supercharge his batteries one last time and unleash a demi-god at the Oval in two weeks time. But the sensible option ignores the fact that England could wrap up the series in the next five days and not even have to worry about the fifth test. And the sensible option ignores the most obvious question – how do you drop the man?

Seriously?

He wants to play, the whole of England wants him to play and even his own teammates are struggling to make a rational decision. Despite the fact that he’s not England’s best bowler, or batsman, or arguably even their best player anymore, he still has an incredible aura. And when that’s combined with his sheer colossal willpower and uncanny ability to make something happen when it’s most needed, he simply becomes undroppable. Especially against the Australians.

So goes the argument, and it’s a pretty good one. Unless you remember what happened in 1998 and 2003 that is.

Carp(e) Diem

Britain’s most famous fish is dead. Benson, the apparently ‘iconic’ celebrity fish has been found floating on the surface of Bluebell Lakes. Terrible news for Benson, and indeed for the angling community who are said to be devastated and in mourning.

And yet the timing of Benson’s death is, all things considered, good news for the now deceased. If he’d passed away in November, April or pretty much any other month except August, then it’s likely the champion fish wouldn’t have received more than a quick mention on page 42 of the local paper. As it was, he (I presume, though it could be a she I suppose) got front page coverage in The Times and has had continual airtime on BBC News all day.

The reason for this is the oft-discussed phenomenon of ‘silly season’, the time of the year when hard-hitting news is thin on the ground, most of the FTSE 100’s top brass are floating on the Med, and those left behind are desperately searching for anything even half-worth reading or writing.

As someone who spends his days concocting ways to get clients into the papers and onto the TV screens, silly-season presents something of a double edged sword. On the one hand, political and economic news is much reduced, which means there’s more space to fill and hence more opportunities to fill it. But on the other, as dear old Benson demonstrates, it takes something genuinely different to make the grade.

The lack of political or economic news is also something of a barrier – there’s much less to hook onto than usual. And even if you do succeed, chances are that a large proportion of those people you’re trying to reach and influence are either not paying attention as much as they would usually or are too busy enjoying the delights of a 99p with a flake and some raspberry sauce. All in all then, silly season is just as challenging as any other time of the year, only for very different reasons.

And with that in mind, I’m off to research Britain’s other animal superstars with a view to potentially offering them and their owners life insurance policies in the unfortunate event of another one of them 'doing a Benson’.

A Dark Victory

I haven’t played a proper game of cricket for over two years, which for someone who professes to quite like the sport is rather a long time. Happily though, that scar on my sporting life came to an end on Tuesday when I donned the whites, picked up the bat and trotted out to play for a friend’s team against a local council.

And amazingly, despite our lack of practice, or indeed ability, we won! I still don’t know how, but I suspect the fading light which camouflaged the ball as I attempted to slog us to victory may have had quite a lot to do with it. That and the fact that everyone contributed in some way, and we were bizarrely more up for it than the other team, who play most weeks and have done for years.

That’s the beauty of cricket – it’s a proper team game where everyone can give something to the cause, be it runs, wickets or some valiant fielding. It’s also a brilliant feeling when you win and are able to share that success with ten other people. I’ve often wondered though, which glory would be greater on the professional stage – a team or individual sporting triumph?

The benefits of the individual win are obvious. The victory is yours and yours alone, all the work to get there was yours, and you truly know that you’re the best at that particular moment. But I can’t escape the feeling that the shine wears off more quickly than that of a team victory, largely because there’s no-one else who can relate exactly to that victory with you. A team win on the other hand is something that can always be discussed, remembered and enhanced because of the sharing of that story.

Maybe (probably) people who excel at individual sports will argue differently. But all I know is, when those winning runs came off the bat in the twilight on Tuesday, the first thing I wanted to do was drop the bat, run to my teammates and celebrate the win with all of them.

Nuptials

‘One in three marriages in the UK fail’, ‘marriage as an institution is outdated’, ‘long-term marriages are simply not a workable proposition anymore’. And so the list goes on.

And I don’t buy any of it.

To me, marriage remains a brilliant idea. The ultimate commitment two people can make and the ultimate statement of just how much you love someone. Yes, more marriages are failing than ever before, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing – it may just be that we as a society are more tolerant than fifty or a hundred years previous with regards the prospect of failure. We’re more tolerant and accepting of making a mistake, and we’re also more socially and economically able to cope with that mistake than previously.

The key for me as to why marriage is still such an integral part of life is the numbers who are still doing it. Only when that figure starts to fall alarmingly will I accept that the idea is no longer suitable. For now though, it is, and two people close to me announced their intention to tie the knot on Saturday following a week away on holiday together.

To be honest, I already knew it was going to happen but that still didn't hide the feeling of joy I felt when I found out. It's a brilliant, fantastic, wonderful announcement and I can't wait to see them in person to say congratulations properly.

And the reason I knew was because I'd spent a slightly awkward, yet admittedly interesting (and frankly a potentially life-enhancing) sixty minutes helping to shop for the ring. Without a doubt, the biggest eye-opener during that hour of shuffled feet, hesitant conversation with shop assistants and awkward stares towards nothing in particular, was that there's a hell of a lot to learn about the science of diamonds and the art of buying one.

Apparently it's all about the four C's - cut, carat, clarity and colour. And the keywords are clean, big and clear for these words. Really though, it's a small degree subject all in itself - and you usually have only a handful of days or even hours to learn it all.

Happily though, the shop assistant's were of great help to the man in question (and his two awkward, shuffling friends) and it was generally agreed that after an hour of ring-shopping we'd done all that could be done to prepare him for the final buying session. So then we did the only thing sensible - we sought refuge back in the home of man.

One pub, three pints, and a chat about all things sporting.

'A Good Innings'

There are lots of words and phrases used to describe death, many of them unsuprinsingly falling on the negative side of the spectrum - grief, remorse, sadness, longing, sudden, unexpected, expected, overdue even. But the one that always struck me is the one above, as in 'they had a good innings'.

It probably doesn't take much to figure out that I've been dealing with the less than joyful experience of death today - my cat in fact, who pretty much qualifies for that phrase exactly. 15 years old, several narrow escapes, two house moves, a large garden to play in, and bizarrely finding it comfortable to lie on a grumpy teenager's bed for many an hour a few years back.

Happily, she had a great life. Even more happily I haven't really experienced that many deaths close to me in my lifetime yet - just a couple of characterful and dearly loved great aunts and uncles really. But I know that's going to change eventually and I'm pretty sure I'm in the majority when I say I'm not really looking forward to that side of life, especially not the part where you explain to your kids the concept of it, or worse have to use a real life example to back it up.

Back to that phrase though - my family seem to have a bit of a passion for using it in most walks of life. It was how my cat's life was summed up today, it was what my parents used to say when it was time to put away the paddling pool for the day, or when it was the end of the fireworks box for another year. It was even used in its true context when the time came for someone else to have a go with the cricket bat in the back garden (given my less than saintly behaviour as a child I suspect I was secretly defending myself from seeing that bat again all too soon when I refused to hand it over).

The question is I suppose, why do we use that phrase and others like it when talking about death? The logical answer (and I'd guess the most commonly cited) is that we want to remember the life now gone, to put it into perspective with others less fortunate, and to see that beings life as a successful story that has now reached the bit marked 'The End'.

I think it's more than that though. What if it has something to do with our ability and desire to alliterate further on our feelings about the concept of death? Metaphors are one of the greatest inventions of all time because they allow us to quantify, clarify and enunciate on an event or a theory that is of concern to us. Without them, life would be a whole lot whole lot more difficult to navigate I suspect - imagine any emotional event and then try and conjure up what you'd say without using a metaphor or similar tool to clarify what you actually need to say.

So, what's the metaphor I'd like to use to describe my cat's life and what I'm feeling right now? To be honest, I think this is one of those occasions when it might be best to shun the comparisons and just come out with a plain statement of fact. She was bloody marvellous and I'm gutted that she's gone.

But she did have a great innings though.

HJNTIY

Six letters.

Six letters which I had never seen before and fully confess I didn't know what they meant, or indeed gave a monkey's about.

But then someone explained them to me today - apparently this little code is the shorthand for a growing belief amongst women as to how they should conduct their lives. And it stands for?

'He's Just Not That Into You' - the title of a popular book and now a film as well.

The central premise (apparently) is that women should stop blaming themselves for mens faults, learn to recognise some golden rules to discern if someone is 'into them' and if not, simply move on. It also apparently states that men are neither complicated, nor do they send mixed messages - in other words, we're simply, primeval creatures who will indicate exactly what we do or don't want and that's that.

Now I'm not one who is particularly fond of diving headfirst into debates about either the male or female psychy - I'm just about aware enough to recognise that my own take on life is as bizarrely different to that of others as theirs is to me. But this one did get to me a bit.

I accept the argument that women should stop waiting on something that just isn't going to make them happy, and to some extent I suppose I get the idea that men retain something of a simpleness about their character in this regard.

But reducing life and love down to one simple equation whereby if a man fails to act first, foremost and always with complete, unswerving devotion to that singular goal I cannot accept. If the world was a simple, uncomplex, A to B place where nothing got in the way, where a hundred different pressures didn't gnaw away at you, and where time was an ally not an enemy. Then perhaps I could agree with the premise and indeed be happy to do so.

But it isn't. And I don't.

And yet weirdly, I believe that this argument is flawed because of one of its own premises - that if women hint the slightest whiff of doubt, then they should haul in their line and set sail for pastures new. Because it's doubt that cripples what once might have been our solid assertion that actually We Are Into You.

Primeval creatures we might be, but even primeval creatures face doubts when it comes to jumping over a gap in the rock or choosing where to rest for the night.

Doubt is the constant, and in my view healthy, companion for the majority of people. And that includes the majority of men. It's what makes a relationship, or even better, the bit before a relationship so exciting. If this whole, often tortuous, often painful, sometimes heart-breaking process was predictable or easy, then we wouldn't do it.

HIIYHJDABYIHAHFJAMEPAYD - He IS Into You, He Just Doesn't Always Believe You're Into Him And He Feels Just As Many External Pressures As You Do.

Not as catchy I admit, but closer to the truth I'd reckon, and in a way the perfect summary of why HJNTIY doesn't work - because if they really mean it and care about it, then men can never manage to say what should take six words in less than sixty.