No news might actually be good news

Pre-season. Ah the joy of a few brief football free hours. David Mitchell wrote in the Guardian about the pain of constant media focus on football in the summer and he's right, although not funny which is, after all what he's there for.
For Crystal Palace fans, it has been a pre-season of unrelenting gloom. Players leaving. Players not coming back. Chairman leaving.
None of which individually bother me other than the probable departure of Ben Watson. It's just that taken together, it spells another mediocre season where the focus is on anything other than football.
My enthusiasm is slightly tweaked though by an email from an American here in London. He's got friends coming over in September and wants to know if the Palace Swansea game was likely to sell out. Not at £30 a ticket. I'll break the cost to him nearer the time.

You make me brave

I'm sure there are cliches that go here. I'm sure that the first year is the hardest. I'm certain there are millions of people worse off than myself, whose pain is greater and constant, whose lives are masked by pain, poverty and hunger, humiliation and exploitation, disease and despair. It doesn't mean I can't feel loss and be affected by it on a daily basis. The suffering of others should never prevent you from
This Thursday is dad's birthday. I used to feel embarrassed that he would take flowers or wine to his mother on his late father's birthday or their anniversary. I felt certain that she would be over it or that she wouldn't want to be reminded of his absence.
And as I approach what would be his birthday, the first since he died I am drawn to follow his lead. And I see that it is what I have to do. Not just to help mum with her pain but to get help with my own.