You know how we all laugh at the stupid ways that stupid footballer's sometimes injure themselves? For example, former Leeds and Blackburn stalwart David Batty suffered achilles tendon damage after he was run over by a toddler on a tricycle; Rio Ferdinand did his hamstring by resting his leg at an unusual angle on a coffee table as he played Championship Manager, while Barnsley's Darren Barnard suffered knee ligament damage when he slipped in a puddle of dog wee on his kitchen floor. The kitchen is a dangerous place for the average footballer, and there are few more average than Darren Bent, who sliced the end of his finger off while chopping an onion, while Dave Beasant dropped a jar of salad cream onto his foot, rupturing ankle ligaments in the process. Well, I am now able to add myself to this list of shame. Earlier this evening I was injured by a chocolate croissant.
Ferdinand: particularly thick, even for a footballer.
The human subconscious is a dark and mysterious place, but it can exert an extraordinarily powerful control over our hapless, weak-minded conscious selves. As you know I am currently undergoing frequent and epic bouts of gym-based exercise. This is no fun, of course, and the physiological cost is catastrophic. Frankly, my body desperately craves carbs, on a more-or-less permanent basis, and it uses underhand tactics to get them. So as I shambled home this evening I found my legs marching me into Somerfield, where I grabbed the first carb-rich foodstuff I could find - the aforementioned chocolate croissant. I picked up a few rather heavier items and set off; leaving the cool of the supermarket for the rancid heat of the high street, I hoisted my heavy bag of shopping onto my shoulder and frenziedly munched into the tasty pastry. Ooh, hang on, that doesn't feel right. Shopping is too heavy - I'd better adjust for superior weight distribution. But my subconscious sparked into action and rammed home the point -
No, no - you need carbs first. Tuck in. Worry about the heavy bag later. Tuck in.
Seconds later I had trapped a nerve in my shoulder, and while contorting in pain I aggravated an old injury in my leg. I may be out of action for several weeks. Curse the chocolate croissant and its exquisite carb-rich flakiness.
This isn't the first time my subconscious has exploited my frailties for its own evil ends. A few years back I was on holiday in southern Spain, and I decided to get up early to visit the Gargana Verde - an amazing cleft in the landscape, featuring a sheer drop of about 500 metres that you clamber down to a soundtrack of singing Black Redstarts, past a nesting colony of Griffon Vultures to a little dry stream bed at the bottom. My kind of place, and breathtaking in more ways than one. But in the first of several key errors, I forgot to take any water with me. Or a hat. This wasn't a problem on the way down at eight in the morning, but on the three-hour scramble back up it reached midday, and I was seriously struggling. You know you are in big trouble when you have to stop for a breather every ten steps, then you look up and see actual vultures circling overhead.
I finally managed to drag myself back to my hire car at the top of the gorge. Must drink immediately. Am dying. But where? Rural Spain isn't like rural Essex - you can't just pop to the nearest Tesco. So I just drove, furiously and at speed, in a desperate search for anywhere that would sell me water. There was no joy for mile after parched, hallucinigenic mile. And then - there, in the distance. A reservoir. At this point my subconscious decided it had seen enough and it was time to take command of the situation.
If you pull over you could go and drink from that big pool. Go on.
So I did. Insane with the thirst, I was in no position to argue. I climbed over a fence and scrambled down a bank to the reservoir but the sides were very steep, and the water level was low - I couldn't actually reach the water, which was, er, a bit on the stinky side. A fallen tree allowed me to edge out a little to where I might be able to reach down ... but no, still just out of reach. I was living the torment of Tantalus - punished by the Olympic gods by a life surrounded by water that he was unable to drink. Then a brainwave; I shall confound mighty Zeus by scooping up the water. But with what? Luckily, my ever-reliable subconscious stepped in.
I ended up drinking putrid water from a reservoir using my own fetid espadrille as a cup, which I had been wearing non-stop in the Spanish heat for nearly three weeks.
Even in my thirst-fogged, confused and utterly befuddled state, I remember thinking that this was a new low, even for me, and that nobody must ever know.
This week's celebrity spots
I was in Seven Dials in Covent Garden on Friday, loafing about as I am wont to do, when noted beauty Sheridan Smith strolled past, en route to one of the nauseatingly trendy shops in that part of town. If you're wondering who she is, well she's on BBC3's Two Pints of Lager. Nobody anywhere has ever knowingly sat down to watch an episode of this execrable 'comedy', but the BBC keeps churning it out to fill up airtime on its licence fee-justifying if virtually unwatchable digital channel. For some unfathomable reason, Smith is romantically linked to TVs unfunniest funnyman, James Corden.
Smith (l): fragrant; Corden (r): wanker of intergalactic standing.
Anyway, without wishing to shred my already tattered PC credentials, I have to report that in real life Sheridan Smith has truly sensational funbags.
Recommendations
I frequently receive abuse from less sagacious readers about my predictive powers, but I felt it was time for a review of some recent successes. You heard it here first that Andy Murray would soon revert to being Scottish again - I just got the round wrong - while Serena Williams remains the Darling of the Blog, and Michael Jackson's sad death prompted a healthy 4/1 windfall over his uncompleted O2 concerts. It's what he would have wanted.
In fact, you would now be £110 up if you'd followed each of my betting recommendations (to a £10 bet) over the last year, despite the fact that most of these are written in the small hours of the morning when I've had a few, and they're largely guesswork anyway. Either way, if you want to coin it in, listen closely to Uncle Spim.
On that basis, and with a due sense of dread, I am turning this week to cricket - Ashes fever hangs heavily in the air. I am almost certainly going to regret typing this, but the current Australia side is as weak as any I can remember (although the 1985 Australians were pretty feeble). The sight of the current crop's top batsman, Philip Hughes, being destroyed in the last warm-up game by crappy old Steve Harmison, of all people, will have brought cheer to many an Englishman's heart, while their Warne-less spin options are laughable. I think England will win the series (2/1, Paddy Power), and by a convincing 3-1 scoreline too (12/1, Bet365) - we always lose at Lords, of course. I also recommend bunging a few bob on the increasingly impressive Jimmy Anderson to be top wicket-taker (7/2, Stan James). He might have got rid of that ludicrous purple streak in his hair, but he can reverse-swing a cricket ball, and that's good enough for me.
Skeleteen are described by a reviewer on the Beatcrave music website as "a tsunami of heaviness engulfing the daring listener into a ocean of unpredictable dynamics, rhythms and melodies". What a twat. A fusion of shoegazey grunge and noisy rock is a more realistic appraisal.
Ferdinand: particularly thick, even for a footballer.
The human subconscious is a dark and mysterious place, but it can exert an extraordinarily powerful control over our hapless, weak-minded conscious selves. As you know I am currently undergoing frequent and epic bouts of gym-based exercise. This is no fun, of course, and the physiological cost is catastrophic. Frankly, my body desperately craves carbs, on a more-or-less permanent basis, and it uses underhand tactics to get them. So as I shambled home this evening I found my legs marching me into Somerfield, where I grabbed the first carb-rich foodstuff I could find - the aforementioned chocolate croissant. I picked up a few rather heavier items and set off; leaving the cool of the supermarket for the rancid heat of the high street, I hoisted my heavy bag of shopping onto my shoulder and frenziedly munched into the tasty pastry. Ooh, hang on, that doesn't feel right. Shopping is too heavy - I'd better adjust for superior weight distribution. But my subconscious sparked into action and rammed home the point -
No, no - you need carbs first. Tuck in. Worry about the heavy bag later. Tuck in.
Seconds later I had trapped a nerve in my shoulder, and while contorting in pain I aggravated an old injury in my leg. I may be out of action for several weeks. Curse the chocolate croissant and its exquisite carb-rich flakiness.
This isn't the first time my subconscious has exploited my frailties for its own evil ends. A few years back I was on holiday in southern Spain, and I decided to get up early to visit the Gargana Verde - an amazing cleft in the landscape, featuring a sheer drop of about 500 metres that you clamber down to a soundtrack of singing Black Redstarts, past a nesting colony of Griffon Vultures to a little dry stream bed at the bottom. My kind of place, and breathtaking in more ways than one. But in the first of several key errors, I forgot to take any water with me. Or a hat. This wasn't a problem on the way down at eight in the morning, but on the three-hour scramble back up it reached midday, and I was seriously struggling. You know you are in big trouble when you have to stop for a breather every ten steps, then you look up and see actual vultures circling overhead.
I finally managed to drag myself back to my hire car at the top of the gorge. Must drink immediately. Am dying. But where? Rural Spain isn't like rural Essex - you can't just pop to the nearest Tesco. So I just drove, furiously and at speed, in a desperate search for anywhere that would sell me water. There was no joy for mile after parched, hallucinigenic mile. And then - there, in the distance. A reservoir. At this point my subconscious decided it had seen enough and it was time to take command of the situation.
If you pull over you could go and drink from that big pool. Go on.
So I did. Insane with the thirst, I was in no position to argue. I climbed over a fence and scrambled down a bank to the reservoir but the sides were very steep, and the water level was low - I couldn't actually reach the water, which was, er, a bit on the stinky side. A fallen tree allowed me to edge out a little to where I might be able to reach down ... but no, still just out of reach. I was living the torment of Tantalus - punished by the Olympic gods by a life surrounded by water that he was unable to drink. Then a brainwave; I shall confound mighty Zeus by scooping up the water. But with what? Luckily, my ever-reliable subconscious stepped in.
I ended up drinking putrid water from a reservoir using my own fetid espadrille as a cup, which I had been wearing non-stop in the Spanish heat for nearly three weeks.
Even in my thirst-fogged, confused and utterly befuddled state, I remember thinking that this was a new low, even for me, and that nobody must ever know.
This week's celebrity spots
I was in Seven Dials in Covent Garden on Friday, loafing about as I am wont to do, when noted beauty Sheridan Smith strolled past, en route to one of the nauseatingly trendy shops in that part of town. If you're wondering who she is, well she's on BBC3's Two Pints of Lager. Nobody anywhere has ever knowingly sat down to watch an episode of this execrable 'comedy', but the BBC keeps churning it out to fill up airtime on its licence fee-justifying if virtually unwatchable digital channel. For some unfathomable reason, Smith is romantically linked to TVs unfunniest funnyman, James Corden.
Smith (l): fragrant; Corden (r): wanker of intergalactic standing.
Anyway, without wishing to shred my already tattered PC credentials, I have to report that in real life Sheridan Smith has truly sensational funbags.
Recommendations
I frequently receive abuse from less sagacious readers about my predictive powers, but I felt it was time for a review of some recent successes. You heard it here first that Andy Murray would soon revert to being Scottish again - I just got the round wrong - while Serena Williams remains the Darling of the Blog, and Michael Jackson's sad death prompted a healthy 4/1 windfall over his uncompleted O2 concerts. It's what he would have wanted.
In fact, you would now be £110 up if you'd followed each of my betting recommendations (to a £10 bet) over the last year, despite the fact that most of these are written in the small hours of the morning when I've had a few, and they're largely guesswork anyway. Either way, if you want to coin it in, listen closely to Uncle Spim.
On that basis, and with a due sense of dread, I am turning this week to cricket - Ashes fever hangs heavily in the air. I am almost certainly going to regret typing this, but the current Australia side is as weak as any I can remember (although the 1985 Australians were pretty feeble). The sight of the current crop's top batsman, Philip Hughes, being destroyed in the last warm-up game by crappy old Steve Harmison, of all people, will have brought cheer to many an Englishman's heart, while their Warne-less spin options are laughable. I think England will win the series (2/1, Paddy Power), and by a convincing 3-1 scoreline too (12/1, Bet365) - we always lose at Lords, of course. I also recommend bunging a few bob on the increasingly impressive Jimmy Anderson to be top wicket-taker (7/2, Stan James). He might have got rid of that ludicrous purple streak in his hair, but he can reverse-swing a cricket ball, and that's good enough for me.
Skeleteen are described by a reviewer on the Beatcrave music website as "a tsunami of heaviness engulfing the daring listener into a ocean of unpredictable dynamics, rhythms and melodies". What a twat. A fusion of shoegazey grunge and noisy rock is a more realistic appraisal.
