Will it ever stop fucking raining? For the second consecutive 'summer' much of lowland Britain is underwater and undergoing monsoon-like weather. For example, today it was reported that Worcestershire CC's New Road ground is once again under several feet of floodwater.
Simon Jones opened the bowling from the Shallow End.
Its not just the cricket-watching public of Worcester that are suffering – all this rain means no cricket for me either. This is probably just as well; this season has seen a sudden, alarming and near-total collapse in form. If I'm honest I've been desperate for the season to end so I can retire gracefully since about early May. Anyway, another rain-sodden abandonment this weekend meant I had a free saturday to do stuff; for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to take a trip to the poor-man's MFI, Ikea. In his Divine Comedy, Dante famously detailed his journey through the nine circles of Hell. Well, I have now seen the tenth; its Ikea (Lakeside) on a saturday afternoon in early September.
To cut a long story short, I had to take something back that I'd picked up on a previous visit – that favourite of the urban middle classes, a Billy bookcase. It was clear there was trouble brewing when I couldn't actually get into Ikea's vast car park, with traffic backing up for some distance. I ended up parking in B&Q's car park, miles away. I'm rather ashamed to admit that I was then forced to liberate a B&Q trolley and use that to wheel Billy back to Ikea, dodging around both the stationary vehicles of people fighting to get in and the deep puddles produced by the ceasless rain. It was mayhem.
I somehow made it in one piece to "Ikea: Customer Returns", and now the fun really began. I'd harboured hopes that I'd be greeted by a smiling sales assistant and invited to part with Billy before being offered a complementary cup of tea and some meatballs, but no. There were, frankly, dozens of other lost souls taking broken, defective and otherwise knackered tat back. You have to collect a number from a machine before you can join the amorphous 'queue', then when its your turn you get called up to explain yourself. After an hour my number came in - 'House' I cried merrily. Thirty-six or so angry, agitated shoppers scowled in response. A tough crowd. Things were already fraught, and they got worse when the spotty, monosyllabic teenager behind the desk refused to give me a refund without my address, which I declined to give on the grounds of it being an outrageous violation of my civil liberties. There was a stand-off; my new-found enemies in the queue began to tut loudly, but much to my surprise young snotty eventually gave way. Maybe he could see the desperation in my eyes, who knows. One-nil to Spim vs The Man, anyway.
I now had to dodge back into the main 'store' bit, find myself a new Billy, queue for half an hour to pay, then pinch an Ikea trolley and wend my way back to the relative calm of B&Q, my own personal Mount Purgatory. As a result, B&Q now have a nice Ikea trolley to add vibrancy and colour to their fleet, and vice versa. Karma was restored; the yin and yang of the Lakeside trolley fleet was back in balance.
But this was a rare positive from an afternoon of unparallelled gloom. The people who run Ikea really are a bunch of jokers; from their Swedish-themed cafe to enhance the 'experience' to the stupid, often vaguely sexual names they give their products (Jerker the desk, anyone? Or perhaps Lessebo the sofa's more your cup of tea). However, they're nothing if not shrewd; by making shopping in their soulless store such a breathtakingly unpleasant process, they've ensured that nobody will ever take anything back unless they have literally nothing else to do. This allows Ikea to maintain rock-bottom prices, with these low prices tempting in customers looking for cheap, tatty furniture, novelty ice cube trays, or packs of 24 tea lights.
And with this the circle is complete.
This week's celebrity spots
Last Friday I was walking to the tube when who should cross my path outside Hare Krishna HQ but Lenny Henry. Our eyes met; a glimmer of recognition from me, a shiver of irritation from him. I briefly considered hailing him with a hearty 'Katanga, my friend' before common sense prevailed. So like ships in the night we passed. Henry looks really rather spry considering he must be pushing 50; it must be all that energetic sex with Dawn French. Talking of porky funsters, my personal celebrity highlight of the week was Gavin and Stacy star James Corden, arguing loudly with his agent on his mobile outside my office. Corden was wearing ill-fitting green shorts.
Corden: chunky.
Admittedly these are only so-so sightings, and when it comes to celebrity action I know when I'm beaten. 'Matt' from Canary Wharf supplied a detailed dossier listing numerous sightings of Kenny Everett's sidekick Cleo Rocos at various points around Docklands - presumably Rocos has a pad there. Either that or she's got a job at HSBC. However, this week's plaudits go to seasoned celebrity-watcher Julie from Leighton Buzzard, who watched aghast as weedy lothario Russell Brand pawed his latest squeeze in Mildred's Cafe on Lexington Street, Soho.
Paul Ince insult of the week
West Ham vs Blackburn last saturday, and a new twist on an old favourite:
"Fat Eddie Murphy - you're just a fat Eddie Murphy"
Ince had the last laugh though, saying "'It's always like a circus when I come back here. Today I thought it was pretty tepid". A robust response.
Recommendations
So there we go, another transfer window slams shut. Rarely have I felt so unsettled, with Manchester City throwing money around like confetti, Chelsea-style, buying Brazilians and - hilariously - publicly announcing a £142 million bid for Ronaldo in January. Another English club falls into the hands of super-rich foreign owners, pledging instant accession to the 'Big Four'. The problem is, there's now about 10 clubs on a two-year plan for forcing their way into the 'Big Four' and the promised land of the Champions League. Soon there isn't going to be room in the 'Big Four' for the big four.
I greatly enjoyed the Robinhio deal, in particular - a gentleman of untrammelled dignity and probity. As the midnight transfer deadline approached, this malignant mercenary said that he was refusing to play for Real Madrid again, since "all I think about is Chelsea. Chelsea, Chelsea". Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to find out that actually, when he said Chelsea, he meant Manchester City, who presumably offered more money. Meanwhile, crappy old West Ham has stuck with what it knows best, picking up 32-year old journeyman striker David di Mechele on the cheap, plus a couple of unknowns on loan to plug the groaning chasms in our leaky defence. No Tevez/Mascherano this year.
Robinhio: King of the Kippax.
I'm seriously falling out of love with the once-beautiful game. English football is consuming itself with greed. A personal nadir was reached the other day when I received an email from West Ham, telling me that match tickets for the forthcoming Blackburn game "started at just £35". Yes, £35, for the shittiest seats in the ground. My first ever game at Upton Park cost £1.80 to get in, and for that I got entry to the North Bank, a free orange box to stand on and a firm pre-match handshake with Alan Devonshire.
Anyway, I am tipping Manchester City to fall flat on their arses and finish in the bottom half (3/1, BlueSquare), though I will admit there's an air of wishful thinking here. To show there's more to me than just football, I'm also pleased to recommend a punt on our old friend Serena Williams in the US Open (2/1, Betfair), while in the Ryder Cup a European win looks a formality, so I'm nominating Jim Furyk to be top US points scorer (11/2, various) as my pick of the week's action.
I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I first stumbled on beatbox maestra Butterscotch in the final of America's got Talent. Despite this, she's truly incredible. Have a look.
Simon Jones opened the bowling from the Shallow End.
Its not just the cricket-watching public of Worcester that are suffering – all this rain means no cricket for me either. This is probably just as well; this season has seen a sudden, alarming and near-total collapse in form. If I'm honest I've been desperate for the season to end so I can retire gracefully since about early May. Anyway, another rain-sodden abandonment this weekend meant I had a free saturday to do stuff; for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to take a trip to the poor-man's MFI, Ikea. In his Divine Comedy, Dante famously detailed his journey through the nine circles of Hell. Well, I have now seen the tenth; its Ikea (Lakeside) on a saturday afternoon in early September.
To cut a long story short, I had to take something back that I'd picked up on a previous visit – that favourite of the urban middle classes, a Billy bookcase. It was clear there was trouble brewing when I couldn't actually get into Ikea's vast car park, with traffic backing up for some distance. I ended up parking in B&Q's car park, miles away. I'm rather ashamed to admit that I was then forced to liberate a B&Q trolley and use that to wheel Billy back to Ikea, dodging around both the stationary vehicles of people fighting to get in and the deep puddles produced by the ceasless rain. It was mayhem.
I somehow made it in one piece to "Ikea: Customer Returns", and now the fun really began. I'd harboured hopes that I'd be greeted by a smiling sales assistant and invited to part with Billy before being offered a complementary cup of tea and some meatballs, but no. There were, frankly, dozens of other lost souls taking broken, defective and otherwise knackered tat back. You have to collect a number from a machine before you can join the amorphous 'queue', then when its your turn you get called up to explain yourself. After an hour my number came in - 'House' I cried merrily. Thirty-six or so angry, agitated shoppers scowled in response. A tough crowd. Things were already fraught, and they got worse when the spotty, monosyllabic teenager behind the desk refused to give me a refund without my address, which I declined to give on the grounds of it being an outrageous violation of my civil liberties. There was a stand-off; my new-found enemies in the queue began to tut loudly, but much to my surprise young snotty eventually gave way. Maybe he could see the desperation in my eyes, who knows. One-nil to Spim vs The Man, anyway.
I now had to dodge back into the main 'store' bit, find myself a new Billy, queue for half an hour to pay, then pinch an Ikea trolley and wend my way back to the relative calm of B&Q, my own personal Mount Purgatory. As a result, B&Q now have a nice Ikea trolley to add vibrancy and colour to their fleet, and vice versa. Karma was restored; the yin and yang of the Lakeside trolley fleet was back in balance.
But this was a rare positive from an afternoon of unparallelled gloom. The people who run Ikea really are a bunch of jokers; from their Swedish-themed cafe to enhance the 'experience' to the stupid, often vaguely sexual names they give their products (Jerker the desk, anyone? Or perhaps Lessebo the sofa's more your cup of tea). However, they're nothing if not shrewd; by making shopping in their soulless store such a breathtakingly unpleasant process, they've ensured that nobody will ever take anything back unless they have literally nothing else to do. This allows Ikea to maintain rock-bottom prices, with these low prices tempting in customers looking for cheap, tatty furniture, novelty ice cube trays, or packs of 24 tea lights.
And with this the circle is complete.
This week's celebrity spots
Last Friday I was walking to the tube when who should cross my path outside Hare Krishna HQ but Lenny Henry. Our eyes met; a glimmer of recognition from me, a shiver of irritation from him. I briefly considered hailing him with a hearty 'Katanga, my friend' before common sense prevailed. So like ships in the night we passed. Henry looks really rather spry considering he must be pushing 50; it must be all that energetic sex with Dawn French. Talking of porky funsters, my personal celebrity highlight of the week was Gavin and Stacy star James Corden, arguing loudly with his agent on his mobile outside my office. Corden was wearing ill-fitting green shorts.
Corden: chunky.
Admittedly these are only so-so sightings, and when it comes to celebrity action I know when I'm beaten. 'Matt' from Canary Wharf supplied a detailed dossier listing numerous sightings of Kenny Everett's sidekick Cleo Rocos at various points around Docklands - presumably Rocos has a pad there. Either that or she's got a job at HSBC. However, this week's plaudits go to seasoned celebrity-watcher Julie from Leighton Buzzard, who watched aghast as weedy lothario Russell Brand pawed his latest squeeze in Mildred's Cafe on Lexington Street, Soho.
Paul Ince insult of the week
West Ham vs Blackburn last saturday, and a new twist on an old favourite:
"Fat Eddie Murphy - you're just a fat Eddie Murphy"
Ince had the last laugh though, saying "'It's always like a circus when I come back here. Today I thought it was pretty tepid". A robust response.
Recommendations
So there we go, another transfer window slams shut. Rarely have I felt so unsettled, with Manchester City throwing money around like confetti, Chelsea-style, buying Brazilians and - hilariously - publicly announcing a £142 million bid for Ronaldo in January. Another English club falls into the hands of super-rich foreign owners, pledging instant accession to the 'Big Four'. The problem is, there's now about 10 clubs on a two-year plan for forcing their way into the 'Big Four' and the promised land of the Champions League. Soon there isn't going to be room in the 'Big Four' for the big four.
I greatly enjoyed the Robinhio deal, in particular - a gentleman of untrammelled dignity and probity. As the midnight transfer deadline approached, this malignant mercenary said that he was refusing to play for Real Madrid again, since "all I think about is Chelsea. Chelsea, Chelsea". Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to find out that actually, when he said Chelsea, he meant Manchester City, who presumably offered more money. Meanwhile, crappy old West Ham has stuck with what it knows best, picking up 32-year old journeyman striker David di Mechele on the cheap, plus a couple of unknowns on loan to plug the groaning chasms in our leaky defence. No Tevez/Mascherano this year.
Robinhio: King of the Kippax.
I'm seriously falling out of love with the once-beautiful game. English football is consuming itself with greed. A personal nadir was reached the other day when I received an email from West Ham, telling me that match tickets for the forthcoming Blackburn game "started at just £35". Yes, £35, for the shittiest seats in the ground. My first ever game at Upton Park cost £1.80 to get in, and for that I got entry to the North Bank, a free orange box to stand on and a firm pre-match handshake with Alan Devonshire.
Anyway, I am tipping Manchester City to fall flat on their arses and finish in the bottom half (3/1, BlueSquare), though I will admit there's an air of wishful thinking here. To show there's more to me than just football, I'm also pleased to recommend a punt on our old friend Serena Williams in the US Open (2/1, Betfair), while in the Ryder Cup a European win looks a formality, so I'm nominating Jim Furyk to be top US points scorer (11/2, various) as my pick of the week's action.
I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I first stumbled on beatbox maestra Butterscotch in the final of America's got Talent. Despite this, she's truly incredible. Have a look.
2 comments:
Glorious, cutting and incisive as always. First class.
However, I must question the timing and wisdom in tipping Serena Williams to win the US Open. The blog is dated 8 September. Serena Williams won the US Open on, erm, 8 September. Unless you are advising us to take a punt on the US Open womens singles winner of 2009, in which case, probably a good bet.
If not, and with a nod of the head towards "Back to the Future, Part II", can I make some suggestions of my own: I reckon that Boris Johnson might well become Mayor of London, Amir Khan will get floored after 60 seconds or so of his bout against Breidis Prescott, and that England will beat West Germany 4-2 after extra time. You can have those ones on me.
Hmmm yes. The perils of writing something and not posting it for a few days. The fast-moving world of sport never sleeps.
Fair enough - I am banged to rights.
Let's back Williams - a regular 'friend of the blog' - for 2009 anyway.
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