The Only Way Is Up

It is a truth universally acknowledged - or hypothesised by me, anyway - that when things are all running smoothly and you feel you can handle anything Life throws at you, Life muscles in and bites you on the arse, slaps you round the face, then kicks you headlong into the gutter before sniggering and sauntering away.

So I've temporarily locked life away in a tamper-proof box and am resorting to late-night blogging and, of course, football until I can be arsed to go and open the lid again.

So forget all this World Cup mallarky; that's old news. The real thing kicks off in a matter of days, and I shall soon be pootling off to Torquay to watch for myself. Oh yes, it doesn't get any better than that.

And my self-worth did peep round the doorway and toy with the idea of maybe moving back in for a while when, having sent a letter months ago to Bradford's fanzine with this very suggestion, I read this on City's website today. In case you care (I have it on authority that at least one of you does...) they are bringing back the strip worn in 1911, the year the Mighty Bantams won the FA Cup. The replica strip is going to be worn at cup matches this season, to commemorate the days when we were, um, good. Admittedly it's hard not to dwell on the fact that the reason the anniversary is so important is that we've done pretty much bugger all since, but all the same...

What would make it an even better commemoration, though, would be if "Speirs" could be printed on the back of the fans' shirts. Jimmy Speirs scored the winning goal that day. He was killed in 1917, at the Battle of Passhendale.

I received an email the other day from an old friend who'd joined the army straight from school. The email said "I'm now a banker, which is a sell-out, but it's better that being shot at." It sure is, and on reading it I felt flooded with almost physical relief that he was safe and well. I'm soppy like that; I'm an idealist; I'm naive; I'm basically an idiot.

And I am City to the core.

And I don't understand why, 100 years on from the victory of which we're so proud, we're still sending men to remote parts of the world to shoot the crap out of each other and blow one another up.

Oh well, here's to this season - and the only way is up.

My life has been punctuated by surprisingly interesting and pleasurable diversions recently, from Andi Osho's preview show (if you go to Edinburgh, GO SEE IT!! GO! GO!) to watching the Mighty Yorkshire thrash an uninspiring Middlesex, to hearing from 3 old friends. My visit to York University, however, cannot be squeezed into this category.

For those of you fortunate enough not to have been, York University is one of those esteemed institutions founded at just the wrong time. Whilst the likes of Durham and Oxbridge can boast dreaming spires, Manchester and Bristol Victorian grandeur and newer establishments dazzle with an abundance of chrome and glass and futuristic magnificence to rival the Jetsons, York exhibits a level of archictectural prowess of which communist Bucharest would have been proud. That is to say, it's made of concrete.

Not nice concrete, either, if such a thing exists. The University's own "Brief History" can only bring itself to describe it as "low-rise, prefabricated buildings around a man-made lake", which is true if a giant tin bath full of water surrounded by generous quantities of duck shit constitutes a "lake". Perhaps this gloomy picture can be brightened slightly by knowing that the Boomtown Rats have played there, and apparently students are occasionally ticked off for hunting the rabbits, though they were probably just trying to ease the monotony of being stuck for three years in a marshy, concrete jungle which makes Dagenham look picturesque.

Oh, and there was pubic hair in my shower. Quite a lot of it and, crucially, it belonged to someone else - presumably the previous occupant of my room at Alciun College. Sorry, I was going to try and inflict that image on you a little more gently, but frankly I can't think of a tactful way to put it. My "accommodation", for which we queued for over an hour because there were 600 of us and two women on the desk who seemed to want to have a nice chat with us all, was also notably devoid of lavatory paper and a waste bin. As for being "en suite", well, it was one of those student all-in-one shower rooms, by which I mean it's perfectly OK to have a shower provided you don't mind having to perch on the edge of the toilet while you're doing it - which is probably prefarable to wading around in the puddle you're creating on the floor while trying to dodge the pubes that are now floating in it. There was a somewhat superfluous shower curtain which had seen better days, but as my mate said "I was worried if I used it I'd end up laminated between it and the wall."

This is not the worst of it, though. You would think, wouldn't you, that one of the few perks of staying in student accommodation is that at least you can guarantee there'll be a cheap bar somewhere within spitting distance. Right?

Well, I don't know. There were certainly SIGNS for various bars. We even found one of them, but it was shut - students in York clearly make a run for it at the earliest possible opportunity, and apart from the rabbits basking in the drizzle knowing they won't get shot at til September, the ducks and geese merily defecating on all the walkways and the occasional stray bishop attending the General Synod (which was going on at the same time) the campus is entirely devoid of life in the summer, and, consequently, it is also devoid of beer. It was also starting to feel like an episode of The Prisoner: one sign pointing towards a bar looked promising, so we followed it; a while later, we saw another sign, pointing left, and licking our lips in anticipation, we followed that, too. There were no more signs for a while, until we saw one pointing down a hill. We were practically running at this point... and came upon a dead end. We retraced our steps and went back to the sign. Sure enough, it pointed down the hill. On the other side of the very same sign, an arrow pointed back the way we came. I stand by the fact this mysterious bar doesn't exist. If anyone has ever found it, let me know. My only consolation was that the food was fabulous. For a start, they had proper gravy - none of that "jus" rubbish Warwick served up at its far slicker conference operation the year before.

I survived, though, thanks to the Huby arm of my lovely family who took pity on me and drove me into Heslington for a couple of pints of Black Sheep. Thanks Fiona - I owe you one.

Thank You For The Music

I realise in advance that this post threatens to destroy in an instant any credibility I've built up over the last few years in presenting myself as a cynical and on occasions angst-ridden Smiths fan, so I'm going to make my confession early on and get it over with: on Friday night I went to see Mamma Mia. No, wait, that's not the worst bit. I LOVED it.

I really did. I absolutely loved it. Much as I'm relishing the opportunity for a spot of self-absorded-yet-communal mopery in the form of an Eels gig in September, I sent my inner Smiths fan into temporary hibernation for the night and rocked up with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law to the Prince of Wales Theatre in Coventry Street (yeah, the yellow one you can buy on the Monopoly board. In case you every wondered where it is, it's just next to Leicester Square - much where it is on the Monopoly board, in fact.) Now if you are one of the three-or-so people left in the Western world who hasn't been to see the Meryl-Streep-sings-ooh-Dominic-Cooper-is-nice-I-hope-they-sing-Waterloo frenzy that was the film version of Mamma Mia, let me explain the storyline. First of all it has NOTHING to do with Abba, much in the same way as the (even less-convincing) musical "We Will Rock You" has nothing to do with Queen. It doesn't even have anything to do with Sweden (it's set on a Greek island, though I'm not wholly sure why), and even the 70s barely get a look-in. Mamma Mia is the sort of happy and wholly unlikely plot that gives cheese a bad name, a valiant if spurious attempt to get all the hits from Abba Gold plus the ones that that boy band covered into an a two-hour singalong fest with occasional if unnecessary six-packs and a few skimpy dresses thrown in for good measure. The basic plot is this: a 20-year-old, whose ageing single mother used to be some sort of singer so that the plot isn't clutching at straws so much when the songs come up later, wants to know who her dad is, and so rather than going on Jeremy Kyle and demanding a paternity test she invites the three possible fathers to her wedding, having found their names in her mother's diary, which has handily been hanging around for 20 years unguarded, and into which its author has non-discreetly apparently listed every sexual encounter she ever had. Presumably she meticulously wrote their addresses down too so the daughter knew where to send the invites, and in another happy twist of fate they never moved house, and clearly none of them have anything pressing to do back home, because they all obediently turn up on said Greek island as invited. Not only that, but they prove to be quite good at singing and dancing, enabling them to play a full part in what follows when their ex-lover, her two ageing sidekicks, possible daughter and for that matter all the inhabitants of the island start breaking into spontaneous choruses at opportune moments in the unfolding drama. We get Dancing Queen at the hen do (well they had to get it in somewhere) to Slipping Through My Fingers (as her daughter puts on the wedding dress) to The Winner Takes It All (when confronted by her old flame and possible father of her child from all those years ago). Even Waterloo featured, if only as an encore. The only one they didn't manage to work in was Fernando, which is a shame because it's my favourite, though it's probably just as well, because, knowing the lyrics, the plot would have had to go from spurious to utterly surreal for that to work.

The upshot of all this is that the daughter decides she's too young to get married, but that's OK, because one of her mum's blokes steps in with the line "Why waste a good wedding?" and he and Meryl Streep (or Linzi Hately in the stage version) get married there and then. Surprisingly the vicar, who seems to be inexplicably Anglican and either way not Greek Orthodox as one might expect, smiles jovially and goes right ahead as though this sort of thing happens every day - I'm sure in real life his bishop would have something to say about that. But then I'm sure in real life he would think it rather infradig to join in with the obligatory chorus of "I do, I do, I do", so let's just suspend our disbelief for a bit.

But anyway, despite - or because of - all of the above, it was simply brilliant. It was so utterly implausibly ridiculous that we were happy to go with it all, and anyway, Morrissey fan or not, you can't help but admit that Abba were something else - proper tunes, for a start, my mum would say. Great tunes, memorable lyrics, and enough fond memories of Discos Gone By (remember EYP 1998, people?!) to have people literally - and I use this in its correct sense - dancing in the aisles, clapping and singing along. Some in costume, but please be reassurred that this was going a little too far for me.

It's a rubbish plot - as I say, it would have been a lot easier to nick a hair off them all and run one of those DIY paternity kit tests, and would have involved a heck of a lot less singing and leaping across Greek beaches in anachronistic flares. But it's GREAT. You should see it. Please? It would make me feel a lot less self-conscious at having had so much fun...

A Quest for World Domination

So there are just 22 hours left to wait before tomorrow's titanic forces battle it out to determine who will gain the ultimate victory, which comes up for grabs only once every four years: I'm talking, of course, of the epic struggle between Paul the Psychic Octopus and Mani the Psychic Parrot.

So where's the drama? Well the unlikely-named, German-based but Weymouth-born (you didn't know that, did you?) cephalopod, who I'm sure I don't need to tell you already has a 100% success rate when it comes to this year's World Cup predictions, has predicted Spain to win, whereas upstart and somewhat less humorously-named Mani is certain it's going to be the Netherlands. So, what can we conclude from this? Well, apart from possibly concluding that it's all just a load of bollocks, or that Mani knows which side his kroketten are buttered whereas Paul is just keeping his tentacles crossed he doesn't get turned to calamari, maybe we can hope for a nail-bitingly close match? Crucially, in his picture, Paul is sitting on top of the Spanish flag, but with two tentacles most definitely resting on top of the Netherlands. Perhaps this means it will go to penalties, with that Robben bloke or one or his tall blonde over-consonanted colleagues missing that crucial goal?

Not so, says newcomer Harry the Crocodile, wading in at this unacceptably late stage and devouring chicken from under the Spanish flag, which inexplicably leads his Aussie owner to declare not only that Spain will win, but that "it will be a close match - 1-0 to Spain."

So where does this leave the gamblers amongst us? Well, it would be both unwise and unfair to desert Paul after all this time and put our faith in some upstart bird with no football-based track record who currently spends his time pecking out lottery numbers in Singapore's Little India, or, worse, some narky reptile with a penchant for chicken whose fortune-telling credentials are so far unknown. Paul's choice, on balance, seems more than probable, and our own leading commentator, a man unrivalled in his skills as a crisps salesman as well as his knowledge of the game in question, agrees with him

But at the same time, you can't help but think that Paul might be getting a bit cocky. He certainly looks more than a little smug in his Daily Mail picture ("Schtuff you, Holland!" he could be saying), and maybe it's high time he was taken down a peg or two. As for Harry, well, he's probably just copying the Cocktopus, thinking he will be hailed a hero for mere plaigiarism, for which, frankly, I'd like to see him turned into some expensive handbags. As for Mani, well, he has an honest face (look at those little eyes!) and a sob-story to boot: day after day performing cheap fortune-telling tricks for passers-by from his tiny cage on a hot, dusty street. Mani is, after all, the avian equivalent of an X-Factor semi-finalist who's come from a Council Estate in Newcastle yearning for their big break.

A further selling point of predicting a Dutch win, though, is that, in my heart of hearts I'd love to see it happen. For a start, when we went to Spain a couple of years ago it was, to all intents and purposes, broken, and thus we failed miserably in climbing up to the top of Columbus and going up in a cable car as both had broken lifts. In the Netherlands, conversely, I climbed up Utrecht's Dom Tower and took in the obligatory views of the (freezing flippin' cold, but still) city below. And more to the point, two of my favourite people live there, and, in England's absence, are cheering on the chaps in orange. And anyway I don't want to give some freakish, eight-legged creature which I've always thought wouldn't look out of place in a sci-fi film the satisfaction of knowing he was right, AGAIN, and I'd be even less happy about giving some repile the wrong impression that he somehow had psychic powers when he's clearly just trying to get in on the act and has a good PR adviser. And finally - I promise, finally - it would amuse me hugely if lots of gamblers lost a lot of money because they were daft enough to place a bet on the basis of a prediction made by an over-confident sea-creature who I'll wager has never even seen a terrace or drunk tepid tea from a polestyrene cup in sheeting rain or eaten a dodgy handburger proffered from a van by a bloke called Dave in his poxy, tank-dwelling life.

So, GO NETHERLANDS! I'm off to buy an orange t-shirt, and tomorrow you will find me in the nearest bar drinking Amstel - which incidentally Camino claims, somewhat improbably, is "Spain's most popular beer". Not after tomorrow... I hope.