A beginner’s guide to FOOTIE (part 1)

Eboué, Touré, Senderos,Flamini,Hleb,Silva, Fabregas, Pires, Ljungberg, Lehmann

No this isn’t your new vocabulary list. If I added Henry (shouldn’t that be Henri?) you’d realise it was the Arsenal team that beat Argentina/Villareal last week. With the help of Sol Campbell, they managed to survive the second leg as well. I watched this match in a bar in Barcelona.

I’m home now and hear that Barcelona will also go to Paris for the Champions League Final.

So why no British names on the list? Lots of reasons…but does it matter?

‘Wayne Rooney’ is a good honest (?) British name. Homegrown talent - nurtured, trained and hero-worshipped by Everton. He defected to Man U for an obscene amount of money. Still, he had to keep Colleen in frocks somehow. For what other reason would she choose to wake up next to him each morning?

In the early sixties I supported Blackburn Rovers. I went to every home match. My pic was on the front page of the Bolton Evening News when my mates and I went there for the FA cup semi final in 1960. Yes ,1960, and I still have all my own teeth.

The Rovers were all white and all British. One of them was even called ‘England’ (Mike). There was Dave Whelan (JJB), Derek Dougan (new boy), Bryan Douglas, Peter Dobing, Matt Woods, Harry Leyland in goal, Ronnie Clayton (capt) … yes I know that’s Steve Mc Donald’s woman. Ally McLeod played on the wing (!) before becoming the Scotland Manager.

We girls would have loved a Thierry Henry. But -THE POINT IS - the team never seemed to change all that often. I knew those players like members of my family. We were loyal to the team and they were loyal to us. They usually left Rovers because they couldn’t run fast enough, not for pots of money. Over recent seasons, most Liverpool fans would have been hard pressed to identify most of their team.

So, YES, we want Thierry and Eric Cantona and Mikel Arteta (my Basque). But we also want the time to get to know and love our team and for our team to get to know each other.

Leon Osman doesn’t sound quite as English as Wayne Rooney, but he was also trained by Everton. He cost nothing in 2003 and is now making a real name for himself in top class football.
KAZ

Free Day out

When I get back to Manchester I’m going on a free day out.
WHY? BECAUSE I CAN
I can get completely free local travel with my bus pass from April 1st. Unless it’s Gordon’s April fool.
So I go into town for 0p. What next? Well I have a £6 Tesco voucher and a £30 book token which I got when I left college. I don’t know how I managed it, but I earned £28 on my Advantage card so I can go wild in Boots. I get fed up of all the coupons in my bag which stay there til their expiry date and then get thrown away
The slight problem is PRIMARK. My bus drops me off right at the main entrance and it is seriously going out of your way not to walk through to Market St. I got into that habit years ago when it was Lewis’s. I can’t buy a T shirt.
What about lunch? At home I often forget about it, but this is a DAY OUT. I could take back that skirt to M & S that I bought 3 months ago. I’ll never wear it. Or is that cheating? I could buy a sandwich with my Tesco voucher and eat it in a bench. It might be raining.
Entertainment? I’ll look round the art gallery after spending the vouchers. I can take so long browsing round Waterstones that I probably won’t have time. My pal Graham works there so he’ll probably treat me to a coffee anyway if he has a break.
KAZ

10 THINGS I CAN´T DO

1: Find my car in a large car park 2: Find my way out of a large car park 3: Throw away a piece of bubble wrap until every single bubble has been popped 4: Remember what I came into the room for 5: Own a pen for more than a day 6: Tidy up as I go along 7: Walk through Primark without buying a T shirt 8: Eat spaghetti - unless I’m alone and wearing a plastic mac. 9: Read a bloody thing without my reading glasses 10: Get into my car without saying OK!! Or sometimes OK?? 11: Stop a list at 10 ...... KAZ

Update

UPDATE Dumb and Dumber Kev asked me yesterday - ´Is Joanna Lumley married to Gary Barlow?´ Ah well, I don´t suppose that question will crop up on University challenge will it Jeremy? Ginger Chris Evans is soon to take over from Johnnie Walker on Radio 2 ´Drive Time´. I am OUTRAGED. It should , of course, be the sublime Stuart Maconie. As well as being an all round good chap , he has a great taste in music and comes from Leigh. Carry on ALMA Roy´s rolls used to be Jim´s Cafe. Jim was Alma´s husband. Thanks Gert. What makes me laugh? Caroline Ahearne and Craig Cash have overcome their differences i.e. her alcoholism and her depression. They are getting together again to write another series of the Royle family. Sue Johnston and Ricky Tomlinson will be there again. The bad news is that - because he is doing this - Craig won´t have time to do another Early Doors. Sob. Must save up for the DVD. Old gits who won´t give up Do you really want your Rock Stars to be pensioner peers? Sir Mick Jagger (aged 62) has recently boldly gone to Shanghai to perform. It´s somehow appropriate that the lyric ´You make a dead man come´ has been censored. 80% of the crowd are expected to be rich foreigners from the west. This is hardly surprising as ticket prices are equivalent to several months´ wages for the average Chinese person. KAZ

Benvinguts

Benvinguts - welcome!
When I say I’m off to Spain, I’m not. I go to Catalunya, on the coast, north of Barcelona. It´s about 35 miles from the French border.

Catalunya is not Spain. The language is Catalan which is definitely not Spanish (Castillian). It’s a bit of Spanish and a bit of French - Frespagnol? During the Franco years (1935 to 1975 it was banned.

Watching Hollyoaks dubbed in Catalan is a very surreal experience.

It’s not like Wales where you have signposts and information in Welsh and English. It’s all Catalan (no Spanish on principle) so you have to get used to it.

The good news is that the pronunciation is straightforward - so there´s no lisping or pretending to be an extra from ´ello ´ello.
Here´s your vocabulary list:
fred = cold, sisplau = please, germans are brothers, pebrot is green pepper. bullit = bolied
You don´t eat TAPAS you have TAPES.
no entenc is ‘I don’t understand’ - not surprisingly

x =ch so you can guess xocolata or xampu
Red wine is ´vi negre´ - 49p a litre if you don´t mind a cardboard box.

I read recently that Torschlusspanik in German means ‘fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older’.
Thank goodness for Catalan .. the word for retired is ‘jubilant’ Now that makes perfect sense to me.
KAZ

Mike Baldwin

I´m in Spain
I had to come away because I just couldn't bear to be around for Mike´s final decline. Thanks to Birdy I can keep in touch here.

Mike Baldwin and I go back a long way. I knew him when he was a young shaver who employed Vera and Ivy in the raincoat factory. That reminds me, Ivy died recently - in real life. Do you remember Ivy Tilsley? She´s the one who got sacked from the street when she turned up with Lesley Ash lips long before Lesley Ash had them.

Anyway, I read Mike´s reminiscences of his long career on the street. One thing rang true - he said ´We used to mess around on set, but there´s no time for any of that these days´.
I remember ´messing about´, we used to call it ´fun´ or ´havin a laff´´. It was the opposite of tense, stressed out or miserable.

My ex colleague Jack was a great prankster. Staff, students and bosses all enjoyed his antics. In 1995 there was a change of management and a year later he was sacked. He took his case to a tribunal where they used his ´pranks´in evidence against him. In many workplaces people are looking over their shoulders all the time. OFSTED is not renowned for its gsoh.

Mike entertained us well. I hope he enjoys his retirement.
KAZ

TOY BOY and Pensions

OK … so I,m not Demi Moore and Kev isn't really a toy boy. He's 57(ish). He's got 8 more years to go before he gets his state pension at 65. By that time I may have run off with that old chap who reads the Daily Mirror in Wetherspoons at lunch time.

This doesn't sound like me, but it's not really equal ops is it? I do feel a bit sorry for the poor chaps who have to work for five extra years. Eileen's bloke is a real, genuine toy boy (sorry I hate that expression). He’s just turned 40 and Eileen is the same age as Kev. Can’t begin to think how old she’ll be when he retires. She gave up work last year ´cos she couldn´t stand it any more. She´s no money but at least she´ll stop taking the tablets soon.

How lucky I am to be one of the last people to get a state pension whilst I’m still young enough to enjoy it.

Apparently Bismarck introduced a form of pension in Germany in 18something or other. Previously, everyone had to work ‘til they dropped. In UK pensions (for over 65s) weren’t introduced until 1925. As life expectancy was 56 it wasn’t really all that generous was it?

So they are a recent and soon to be extinct phenomenon.

I think of this when I go to my local Sainsbury’s Metro where all the students shop. There’s an old codger there on the till who’s OK but not very quick or efficient. He always looks a bit dejected. He’s not working for the buzz or the job satisfaction. He’s poor. He needs the money to live. Just like the local students who work beside him.
Still - good for Sainsbury’s who employ him. It seems that most firms don’t like any wrinkles in sight. Sometimes I don’t blame them. I’m a bit ageist myself.
KAZ

I Love Lucy Mangan

I have the concentration span of a gnat with Attention Deficit Disorder. So when I started blogging I decided that none of my posts should be longer than 100 words. Ha Ha …. I’d just forgotten how opinionated I am.
But at least my sentences are short.

Now I love Lucy Mangan who writes the column in G2. She has a bad attitude and makes me laugh a lot.

On being asked if she had any decaf she replies - ´ I´m sorry, I only have beverages whose raison d´ etre has not been removed in order to accommodate the self indulgent witterings of morons. Would you like some water instead, or will its reckless combination of hydrogen and oxygen induce some kind of convulsion?´

She gets paid for blogging really. Nice work, but no doubt she’d tell me about the appalling stress of meeting deadlines.
However, she uses extremely long sentences. Recently she broke all her records with a sentence containing 70 words. It included the word concatenation.
Now I can read without moving my lips, but after 70 words you do feel a bit breathless.

I particularly liked Lucy’s tribute to the Queen mum (here) .

Longest sentence in this post = 20 words
KAZ