Starvation Army and England's Woes

As some of my readers might be aware of, I will be in Inverness on and off for the next few months, in order to have some of my bodywork seen to. I have not been able to eat solid foods for a couple of months now, but I have plenty of high energy drinks with which to fill the tank. For that, I am very thankful, especially when I see, or hear about, millions out there who are starving each and every day.

My daily food regime, however, has reminded me of a landlady with whom I stayed in this very city over 20 years ago, when it was still modestly referred to as a town. She is no longer with us – she has passed on, not due to starvation in her case, I might add, although some of her lodgers could easily have become the subjects of obituaries at an early age, because of the lack of proper food on their plates.

If cornflakes were asked for at breakfast time, I think she counted them in to the bowl, and as she could only count up to the number of fingers she had, and the milk seemed to evaporate before it hit the bowl, it meant rather empty stomachs. Well, there was always the ensuing fry-up to look forward to. She had been brought up during the War years, when rations were the norm, and maybe she hadn’t been informed that they had been done away with; that there was plenty of food to be had. Anyway, she used to fill the plate with half an egg, half of a small tomato, a thimbleful of baked beans, some kind of bacon rind, and a slice of see-through black pudding. I did see a gentleman come down to breakfast one morning carrying a pair of binoculars, but it turned out that he was going to use them for bird watching, and not to make it easier for him to find things on the plate. You won’t be surprised to discover that I still blame her for the lack of hairs on my chest.

There was a certain game on in South Africa yesterday where the so called English Lions were thoroughly tamed by their German counterparts. I am not going to gloat about it, but I have to say that some of the English players, throughout the tournament, have been abysmal, and a huge letdown to their fans, most of whom have had to save huge amounts of money over the past 4 years in order to cheer them on. Those players do not think of themselves as footballers anymore, but as celebrities – pulling on their country’s shirt is an irrelevance to them; in fact, an irritation, to be got out of the way as soon as possible, so that they can get on with holidays and with more sponsorship deals. They behaved like adolescents since arriving in South Africa, some of them rebelling against their coach, Capello, and others moaning about being bored in the camp (the best in the place, incidentally). They are simply overpaid, arrogant mediocrities. Meanwhile, Capello has played a blinder, having negotiated a new deal with the FA in the past few weeks which guarantees him millions of pounds even if they sack him today. The FA have again shown themselves to be thoroughly incompetent in having agreed to those terms with him. The media seem to blame everyone, but maybe they should take a hard look at themselves first – they hyped up the players as the “Golden Generation” of English footballers, when “leaden” seems to be a more appropriate adjective.

I suppose I should really thank the players, though, for making it to South Africa, as the amount of emails flooding into my inbox, and texts on to my mobile are sufficient to keep me laughing for the next month or so. Thanks, guys!