A trip to London town with Ellie and Hannah and Kim to see Wicked! – Ellie’s 14th birthday present. Last year was a bit of a washout for the girl – the big 13th which had been talked about f’rages and which we’d all looked forward to f’reven more ages was kinda hijacked by my mother. Not really her fault, mind. And given the choice I’m fairly sure she wouldn’t have chosen August 18, 2008, to die. I’m fairly sure that given the choice, she’d have popped off – “sat at the top of a big slide and just,,, slide away” as she once put it – a couple of years before that. But she wasn’t given the choice and whoever it was who did have the choice, whoever it was who did the choosing, they chose two days before Belle’s birthday. And Jews being Jews and not wanting to hang around with these things, the funeral was two days later on August 20. Ellie’s actual birthday. That went down well. Actually, given that most 13-year olds are egos on legs, I thought she dealt with it remarkably well. Suddenly she was shifted from thinking about me and what I want and how much they’re going to spend on me and me and me and me… suddenly she had to think about someone else.

So we’ve had all the lines, all the gags. It was a wicked idea. They’ll have a wicked time. And they will. Right now they’ll be high on Haribo and having the time of their lives. And rightly so.


A Blog entry. Blimey. The last Blog entry was FA Cup Final day and I remember responding to Adam Clark’s mail about being in the press box at Wembley. I remember thinking that it should be kinda confronting – at least a little bit of the “What am I doing? Where did it all go wrong?” stuff should have been floating around. I remember even writing the Blog as a two-parter, to try to encourage myself to follow it up. But that didn’t work. Well, it didn’t then – so I’m going to follow it up now.

So. Yes, I would have liked to have been in the Press Box at Wembley on FA Cup Final day. But – and this is the key thing – not because it was FA Cup Final day. Because it was The Big Thing that was happening that day. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had been The Biggest Party. Or The Horse Of The Year Show. Or anything at all. It goes back to that childish desire to be at the best party in town. The thing is that all the stuff that goes to support you being in the Press Box, all the work you have to do, all that fills my head with dread.

You see, unless you’re the bloke giving out the medals you’ve got to make a pact with The Devil. You only get to go to Wembley if you’re prepared to go to Derby on Tuesday or Bolton on Saturday. And not just once, you’ve got to do that all year. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine anything worse. Being a football columnist, someone who stays at home and pontificates about the state of the game. That I’ll do. The get your hands dirty, day-to-day stuff? Not on your nelly.

There’s another reason, a more heartfelt reason. The reason I was watching the game at all was that I was killing the hours until it was time to go to pick LouLou up from whatever party she was at. And that’s what I want to spend my life doing. Being a football writer? Well that would just get in the way of all the good stuff in life.

What I’d really like is a job where they paid me to stand up in front of Young Impressionable Minds and tell them what I think. But where on earth would you find a job like that?