With no particular axe to grind. Part Three.

Prendre vous vu se que ils faits à Dial Square?
C'est maintenant une parc de stationnement.
(I suspect this translation website I'm using is a dial of steaming manure but until my A level French comes back to me - I failed - I'll keep on using it)
I have no particular axe to grind against Arsenal. I'm a Palace fan. Four times I went to Highbury to see my team play (my team! Delusions) and we lost 4-0, 4-1, 4-0 and 5-1. Thanks. Highbury is now on the way to becoming a housing estate. But Dial Square is now a car park. For those of you who don't care enough to know/read on, Dial Square is the original name of Arsenal FC, it being the part of the Woolwich Arsenal where the players worked. Only one side of the square remains but as the whole site is being constantly developed (and it looks pretty good actually) more car parking space is required.
I think I think it's a shame (if you see what I mean) but I'm not sure. I suppose that everything changes at some stage but it seems a shame that when so much of the site is listed that this one relatively small area couldn't be set aside for, I don't a Square with a bit of grass and maybe even a couple of goals. Still, I wonder if any Arsenal fans care. Perhaps they'll all be clambouring for the spaces.
I don't really know if I'm trying to make a point about anything. The importance of football in our culture? Whether or not concrete is part of our culture? Preservation of historic sites and whether or not we sacrifice recent history in favour of the more glamourous past? Does history matte anyway? Is it anything other than a series of codes devised to impart a sense of an artificial national identity?
But maybe it's just a story about une parc de stationnement. But sometimes a cigar isn't just a cigar. Sometimes it's a smoke
Enough already

Of spice and zen

If you can discover that the same man wrote the screenplays of North by North West and The Sound of Music.
If you can stop this worrying trend of eating pickled onions straight from the jar.
If you can continue listening to Test Match Special even though you're 4-0 down and already behind on 1st innings score before lunch on the third day.
If you can still hope that maybe, just maybe your football team wont embarrass themselves against lower league opposition in the third round of the FA Cup on Saturday.
If you can ignore that twat in the pub who confused place of birth with the artificial construct of national identity and finish your IPA without stabbing in the eye with your Anti-Nazi League badge.
Then you'll be a slightly confused alpha male my son.

When you walk with the animals, talk with the animals...

I feel smug. I should too, all Christmas presents bought and wrapped a week ago. They're pretty good as well and only one was bought over the Internet so at least I've given myself the gift of human interaction this year. Ahhh, bless.
I feel slightly vindicated. I have a season ticket to Crystal Palace Football Club. I have missed six home games this year including the last four before last night's fog fest. I can't say I missed much. For reference, two of the four I was on my "Gadding and Gallivanting Around Places I Used To Live Tour, 2006" and for the next two I was quite ill having not really been up to the gadding and gallivanting etc. But that's fine because last night I very nearly didn't go and having gone and suffered through a foggy one-nil win to find that my weakened circulation had virtually stopped I was able to claim some bizarre sort of moral superiority. I was right not to go to the other games because, face it, we're not that good so I didn't miss much. But having gone, I suffered badly. It's a funny old game.
I feel odd. One week ago I was having the best night of my life. And I know circumstances mean that we haven't been in touch since I was kind of hoping that circumstances could be overcome. It turns out they can’t. And I guess they never will.
I feel better. Well better than I did midweek when out with another potential person of additional interest. But she didn't really. The good news is that now that I'm dead* I feel a lot happier about letting people down rather than chugging along for fear of upsetting anyone. The fact that I haven't done it yet is neither here nor there although it probably is somewhere but I don't think I can get here from there right now.
I feel vindicated. So this is Christmas, what have you done? Well, John let me see, I think I've changed most of the negative elements of my personality, lost 6.69 stone, 42.50 kilos or 93.69 lbs depending upon your weapon of choice and hauled this old ship around so convincingly that I fully expect 2007 to be as brilliant as 2005 was bad (2006 doesn't really count due to it's nature as a repositioning year). So if I hear Mr Lennon on the radio asking the question and then informing me that war is over merely because I so desire it then I will be able to declare that I am nearly ready to consider the salvation of the world due to my new found ability to save myself.

* Refers to previous illness and fact that in Oct 2005 I was so ill I now regard the morning I woke up in hospital as the day I died. There is some scientific evidence to back this point up so it's not simple self-pity. In fact it's the opposite because now, whenever I'm stuck in a moment that has the potential to re-establish my previous ways (dull, dull, dull) then I ask myself this, "Now that you're dead what are you going to do with your life?"