The trouble with boys

Dearest sister,

It is in my annual state of hopeless confusion that I write to you once more. As you have already doubtless surmised, given the date atop this page and your boundless capacity to read into my soul better than I myself can, I have been left reeling by the annual visitation of that man who to you shall always have no appellation, but to me is known as François.

Please, darling Nancykins, do not judge me harshly. Be certain that your stern words of admonishment do so keenly resonate within my being each time I think of that man. You know how seldom I cast your better judgement aside on such matters. Nonetheless, however heartfelt your counsel, I cannot envisage such a scene in which your own heart could resist entering such a palpitatitudinous state as does mine on that first Saturday eventide of each July on which he knocks on the door of our home and announces: "Me voici".

I have made many prior efforts to define my feelings to you, almost entirely in vain. I fear that this is in some measure due to the incoherence to which François renders me; would that I could more completely detail the workings of my heart. However persuasively his recent misdemeanours stand as evidence, it not so easy for me as it is for you to suppress the memory of our initial happiness. Though I am aware of your immediate disquietude on hearing the news of our engagement to be wed all those years ago, I know you were able to reserve some portion of your heart for the residence of no small amount of felicity on my behalf, however tempered it may have been by suspicion.

To this day I am unable to credit my naïvété's tenacity. I marvel at how it withstood the years of François' many overseas jaunts whose details he was so reluctant to divulge, or how he would never allow me to look into the luggage compartment of his motor vehicle, or how he would often partake in a run in the middle of the night because it was "good for the blood", or his inexplicable stamina in the boudoir. I cannot believe that it was not until one night - could it really be a full decade past? - that I received a telegram from an officer of the law stating that he had been refused entry back into the country on account of the discovery of a vast quantity of illegal chemicals in that cursed luggage compartment.

As you know, the shame and indignity brought upon me by François' criminality rendered our relations irretrievably mutilated, and I forbade his return to our home. I quietly continued with my life, resolute in my efforts to consign every thought of him to oblivion. But it was a rude shock when he appeared almost exactly a year after the discovery of his wrongdoing. I opened the door to find him on his knees, his hands clenched together as if I were his God and he were pleading for his very salvation. "Please, my love, you don't know what my life is like. It is a Calvary, except there are only fourteen Stations of the Cross. I have twenty, plus a Prologue, every wretched year." If I am to be truthful, his desperate words were not necessary. Forgetting my previous twelvemonth's strife, I welcomed him back.

He informed me that he could only remain for three weeks at the most owing to his ongoing rehabilitarious treatment and his newly-found vocation teaching other young vulnerables not to get captured by the same traps which had so definitively ensnared him. On reflection, his evasiveness should have piqued my dubiety, but I was simply too happy for his presence in the house once more to question.

This became a yearly occurrence. It would appear that he believed me to be cretinous, because each July he would return and speak eloquently - a touch too eloquently - of his wonderful adventures and the fulfilling work helping to eradicate the scourge of toxic dependency. He must have thought me to be quite unworldly, so much so that I would be unaware of the existence of modern telegraphy and its resultant miracle of inter-continental communication. I knew full well of his real escapades. And yet, despite your total incredulity, dear Nance, I would utter nary a word about his egregiositousness.

In spite of the mounting exhibits of the intricate fabric of lies on which our love is based, my self-disgust can barely compete with the irrational desire which still pulses so fervently. I have yet to tell you what follows, Nancypants, for fear of the opprobrium which would surely rain down on me like so much leaden rain on the fertile meadow of my love - but in the winter before last, I travelled to Mexico, where François had informed me that he would be resting as part of his recovery; I was intending to supply a most romantic surprise. I searched the village he had named as his temporary lodging-place, but he was not there. I roamed the nearby pueblos, but no-one had even the merest knowledge of any gentleman by the name of François. I returned home to find an officer of our local constabulary, who sorrowfully informed me that François had instead spent his wintertide "shooting up," as the horrid idiom would have it, in the Dolomites. Needless to say (though I shall say it regardless), I did not mention this on François' aestival sojourn.

Before this letter is sealed I must make a confession, Wance, the likes of which I have never made in my entire life to this moment, and over which I have been procrastinating since this note's commencement. It is not merely blind love or the insane thrill of my heart which compels me to dear François: I feel a guilty frisson of curiosity at the constant possibility of his demise. Lest you think of me as a sadist of the highest order (or perhaps you wish to see the end of him too, I should wager!), I must stress with the utmost earnestness that I do not want to see him perish; such an occurrence would rend my very soul and make the prospect of a prolongalisation of my carnal existence frightfully unbearable. It is simply that the awareness that at any moment he could do something which would end his days on this earth sustains me, such as when he is descending one of the mountains overlooking our estate on one of his modern velocipedes and he travels precariously close to the edge of road such that but for a few inches of tarmacadam he would plunge to his doom down a sheer mountain face. Once again, Nancy, I do not wish for this to happen, but the knowledge that it may is invigorating in a way that perhaps your staidness would not permit you to acknowledge.

Supplementary to this is, I am almost ashamed to say, is the fact that I am quite fond of the drama that frequently portends when François' motor vehicle throws up a long cloud of dust along the path to the house every year. To know that one may awake any given morn to find officers of the law swooping upon the premises and arresting François for possession of this of breach of those conditions is, however I may outwardly weep and wail and curse whatever wretched deity would permit such grief to enfold me, something which illuminates my usually bleak world. I know, sis, that you are at this moment, on reading the previous sentence, pouting and muttering about what a silly girl I am, that I have an active life full of multifarious distractions. I cannot pretend that you are completely in the wrong, but such is the entanglement that is my weary mind these days, the opportunity to close one's eyes and imagine that one is a heroine in an inexpensive novella is difficult to pass up.

I must restate that it does oftentimes leave me quite angry that people, be they strangers, acquaintances or family, yourself included, should take it upon themselves to pass such judgement on my beloved, and that their dudgeon should be so profound. François is far from the only man on this earth who is troubled by such demons. The most popular of gentlemen, the sort that form the heart of a splendid soirée, who have an endless supply of party tricks and who could charm the stuffiest of Inland Revenue officials from a furlong away: it is they who often have the most to conceal.

I fear that I have yet again come to the end of another chapter in our correspondence and realised that I am as enveloped in my own meagre universe of melodramatic self-involvement as ever I was. Alas, it is getting quite late, and I shall have to conclude. Give my regards to Derek and Elisha and Tarquin, and see that Mummy is kept cool when the heatwave arrives, as it shall.

Love,

Sminky.

Photos (1, 2, 4, 5) by ©Scott BeLew (A.S.), Grufnik, Biff Bang Pow, John Spooner

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Notes on Everything

I'm going to try to refrain from using the 'B' word in this post, but I fear it will be like eating a doughnut without licking my lips...I wish I'd paid more attention in religion class because I bet there are some killer metaphors I could steal...Federer probably feels like shit right now, but if ever there was honour in defeat, this is it...Federer looked like a little boy lost at Roland Garros a month ago, and frankly it was a frightening, in a small way, like an old certainty beginning to crack. One could say it humanised him, but that would be patronising - just because we're incapable of such greatness doesn't mean we can put it down to some kind of otherness. Nonetheless, it was kind of endearing. Perhaps there was a possibility of him going the same way at two sets down here. Thank God he didn't...Did you know, children, there was a time when a spell of 39 consecutive games without a break of serve (not including tie-breaks) signified nothing more than the tiring, eye-aching dutifulness of the habitual sports fan, rather than a proxy journey into the inner wonders and eternal weirdness of the human soul?...In an alternative universe, this match is still going on; what's more, we're all still watching it...I thought for a moment that God must hate tennis, but he's really just a hell of a dramatist. That rain was a classy touch, no?...I hope there's a disclaimer on those tickets, otherwise the All-England club are in for a torrent of ECG bills...When you think about it, aren't humans amazing? I don't know if one can say we've invented these rituals or had them thrust upon us by our own innate beings, but either way it's inconceivable that they shouldn't exist. Perhaps there's a bunch of aliens out there, existing in a state of transcendence far beyond our imaginations, and they're laughing at us and our silly little stickball games. But you know what, Zlorbazoids? Screw you. It's ours, and we like it, and I feel sorry for you that you'll never get to know the feeling of watching a cross-court backhand winner on a television screen and involuntarily gasping as a result...It's sometimes a bit of a shock to see the global viewing figures for the biggest sporting events and to realise that only 0.001% of the earth's population was watching, and that the world is still turning...Was I the only one who felt a twinge of inadequacy while watching this?...Most of the match was predictable; you knew, or at least had a strong hunch, that as soon as it looked like one man had found the poison, the other would immediately find an antidote. 'Predictable' is often used as a euphemism for boring, apparently...Good guys wear white. Angels wear white. Tennis players following the strict attire regulations of the All-England Lawn Tennis & Crocquet Club wear white...The alternate attempts of each player to manipulate the space of the court in baseline tennis is a thing of wonder when executed by these two, and particularly so when carried out with such controlled power. Simon Barnes likens tennis to a duel. I'm proud to live in an age where we have a bloodless substitute for sword-fighting. Fencing doesn't count, from my voyeuristic armchair view. Tennis is what fencing looks like in super slo-mo...Nadal's passing shot at 7-7 in the fourth set tie-break!...Federer's backhand winner at 7-8 in the fourth set tie-break!...Federer's roar when he won the fourth set tie-break!...It's said that in the future, scientists will be able to work out how this match got better and better and better the longer it went on...Not to generalise, but I kind of turned against the crowd when they laughed at the French umpire's tripping up over the word 'challenges'...Rafael Nadal prised the sword from the stone today...Sport as substitute for nuclear Armageddon: Federer and Nadal fire every weapon in their stockpile at each other so we don't have to...Or should that be Nadal and Federer?...This is fucking ridiculous...I wasn't born when the Thriller in Manilla happened...Rafa's OCD rituals are quite sweet, aren't they?...Tit-for-tat replay challenges...Sitting on my sofa, hundreds of miles away, even I was intimidated by Roger Federer's serve...I have a pain in my neck from shaking my head so much...Are footballers just a big bunch of wusses? If they cry at losing a penalty shoot-out, how would they cope in a tie-break, or with being 7-7 in the final set of a Grand Slam final?...I haven't eaten in, like, twelve hours...It is a skill to be able to withstand the crashing waves of silence in the seconds just before a serve in a Wimbledon final...Usually in any sports tournament, you would like to see some upsets along the way. This time, even forgetting about the benefit of hindsight, who in their right minds would have wished for that?...What's a Euro 2008?...Oh, sod it - 'Beauty', and all derivatives thereof...Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, thank you. Just, thank you.

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Looking back over the posts in the blog so far (my, is it three weeks already?), I notice how often I've invoked the idea of romantic love, or more specifically heartbreak, in describing my interaction with Euro 2008 and football generally. I don't know if this is a sign of a lack of imagination, or vocabulary, or girlfriend. Regardless, lest you confuse me for someone with someone endowed with the capacity for original thought, I shall continue with the theme.

I've approached this tournament, despite resolving to regard it with chin-stroking detachment, instead much like someone on holidays, drunk on sunshine (and possibly alcohol), falling desperately in love with someone new almost every night. One evening, this person meets a beautiful, out-going, vivacious woman, and their first two dates are simply sublime. Our pathetic protagonist wakes the next morning full of all the world's joys and imagines a beautiful future for him and his new belle; indeed, he gets so swept up in this vision of eternal bliss that he heads straight for the jewellers and buys a brilliant diamond engagement ring. Tonight, on their third date, he's going to pop the question!

But as he collects her that evening, she doesn't seem herself. She's quiet, lethargic even. As they walk to the restaurant, it's almost as if he is propping her up, as if she would simply collapse otherwise, so little energy does she appear to exert. They reach their destination and are shown to their table; he pulls out the chair for her to sit on, but she doesn't seem to know what to do, and he practically has to push her into the chair. In conversation she is distant; she never initiates it and responds to his small-talk not with words, but with a sound resembling "mmhnghm". The rest of the time she merely stares down at a spot three feet beneath the table. He by now, being quick on the draw and all, realises that something is amiss; perhaps she's ill? He tries to gently and reassuringly take her by the hand, whereupon she screams, runs into the corner of the room and curls up into a shaking, whimpering ball. He, of course, runs back to his hotel and immediately posts about it on his blog.

Or something.

Anyway, it's hard to reconcile the Russian display tonight with the glory that mine eyes saw in their previous two games. Maybe Sweden and Holland aren't all that good, and Spain are? Maybe Cesc really is the man-god us Gooners believe him to be? How did Arshavin disappear like Cristi...I mean, CR7-85? Who knows? This isn't the time (or let's face it, the place) for reasoned analysis.

You know, I'd rather get carried away by intoxicating beauty than look at things with total objective rationality. There's nowt wrong with objective rationality, of course. It's just that football can bring us moments, or even entire games, of exquisite wonder. The thing is, these are rationed; supply is kept deliberately low, but just high enough to allow us enough of a glimpse every now and then that it keeps us hooked. When a sudden glut comes along, we stock up and practically blow our own heads off. That's my excuse, anyway.

So I still refuse to learn my lesson, and after a quiet evening of feeling sorry for myself (and the Russians too, obviously) I'll hop on the Spanish bandwagon and hold on for dear life on Sunday. At least we'll be spared any Stalingrad references in the press.

I had a kick-ass title prepared for this post had Russia won tonight: 'Exit, pursued by a bear'. Ah well. Maybe I'll get to use it if Michael Ballack powers home a couple of goals on the way to a German victory in the final.

Did you just get a shiver up your spine too?

Photo by pmpboarder on flickr

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(embarrassed cough)

"It was just a thought when everything was so sad. I thought life has some beautiful moments and you should tell people you love them. I wanted to show some emotion."

Ah, Raymond. I feel for you, pal. It's happened to us all. We've all done something silly while drunk on a cocktail of hope and despair, no? Some of us have proposed to our partner live on national television; whilst other among our number have rashly declared that despite our estrangement and the harsh words and icy glances we've exchanged subsequently, we're still in love with you, Dutch football!

Yep. I was one of them. It might be something to do with my being a "beautiful game"-spouting pseudo-intellectual pygmy* who's read Brilliant Orange twenty times and longs to see something in Dutch football that is, perhaps, merely a ghost these days. Perhaps I got carried away by the contrast with the vapidity of the 2004 team and the 2006 vintage's descent into record-breaking levels of indisciplined ridiculousness, in tandem with Portugal. But hey, tell me you weren't swept up by the majesty of their performance against Italy, which was surpassed by the win over France four days later. Tell me Sneijder's goal in the first game and his and Robben's against the French won't come instantly to mind when you recall this tournament in your dotage. Wasn't your heart warmed by Marco van Basten withdrawing Kuijt and Engelaar and sending on Robben and van Persie? What does that Cruijff chap know, anyway?

And like poor old Ray, we were left feeling a bit silly returning to the seaside the morning after we'd scrawled our words of devotion in six-foot-high letters on the pier wall. At least we didn't do it on live TV, I suppose.

(Oh, and Gabriele Marcotti says we're morons. Cheers, Gab.)

So, like some shameless football slut, we discard Holland now that they've fulfilled their usefulness and jump on Russia instead. We're surely on more solid ground here. As Jonathan Wilson (the finest football writer around, I'm beginning to think) pointed out at the weekend , it's with them that the idea of Total Football is most faithfully embodied. Wilson points out that this has at least as much to do with Russia's own sporting tradition as with the fact that their manager is Dutch.

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed a match (in a non-partisan capacity) as much as Russia-Holland. Sure, Holland appeared relatively sluggish - James Richardson's pun of choice on the Guardian podcast: "Holland Dozier Holland" - but Russia were superlative**. Whenever they had the ball, they looked to score. (The same went for the group decider against Sweden, too.) It didn't matter what the score was at the time. Even when a single goal to the good late in the game, they still went for it. This runs against the prevailing trend which says that possession is merely a means of not conceding a goal. This was glorious anti-anti-football. Most teams would have instinctively shifted their weight onto the back foot and doggedly hoped to protect their lead.

Like England. Good lord, remember how close they came to qualifying - to eliminating Russia? If that thought doesn't send a chill down your spine, you're probably English, in which case you're understandably excused. Think of the difference between the styles of the respective teams. Take England's collapse in Moscow last October: they take the lead and without even thinking, cede two-thirds of the field to Russia, giving up any notion of threatening to score again. They don't even try to control the game by maintaining possession, keeping Russia at arm's length. I would call it 'panic', but that just makes it sound like a reflex rather than the neurosis it probably is. Sometimes it works (cf. the win against Argentina in 2002). This time it didn't.

While we're dragging the party down, let's recall how our hopes are continually elevated and then callously thrown out of the fifteenth-floor window at these major championships. As well as Holland this time, I can think of Argentina in 2006, Anyone But Greece in 2004, Holland in 2000 and, um, Holland in 1998. And Spain, anytime. Yet here I am getting giddy at another bunch of teasers on the basis of a couple of games. The rational course of action would be to pre-emptively adopt the crash position and brace oneself for the inevitable.

Well, luckily, I'm human and therefore inherently stupid. So I hope...no, no, fearlessly predict that: Hiddink will figure out how to counteract the counter-attack of the Spanish; we get a fantastic game between two of the most technically accomplished teams around, with Russia winning; they will then overcome Germany with a wave of almost ideologically attack-minded football; pundits all over the world will not decry Russia's "naivety" and won't say "if only they didn't go for a second goal"; Andrei Arshavin's tournament will be hailed as the greatest since Roberto Baggio in 1994; and I won't be stood forlornly on the pier on Monday morning, clutching an engagement ring in my fist before chucking it into the ocean.

Photo by Georgio R. (away for a while) on flickr

*It's one thing being an intellectual pygmy; imagine being a pseudo-intellectual pygmy.

**'Superlative' being the superlative of choice when one can't think of an actual superlative to say.

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