come on! lets be having you!
You don’t realise how important generosity is until you are caught up in it and have a chance to reflect on how lucky you are to be surrounded by people who are generous with their time, their care, their advice and their money to a lesser extent.
My social family marathon ends today, at times it was hard simply because there was a conflict between that need for social anonymity and with the making of the necessary time for social participation. In the end it was easier than I had imagined to strike a balance between doing nothing and doing almost everything with friends and family. For my family, my social participation was important so I made the time, their generosity an obvious reward was at times overwhelming, my holiday waistline, exhibit – A, is the most visible proof thereof.
I go to work tomorrow so a whole other routine will begin to unfold, it will of course still be cradled by these people who make my life easy but they’ll be more remote and I can begin to quietly find my sensible feet again.
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January is easily the longest month of the year, other months have as many days but January has a deep bottom, North of the equator it’s cold and there’s so little daylight, South it’s all sunshine and happiness but it is also when the holiday period ends. January is about adjustments and hanging in there until the next payday and it’s hard because life’s not a light switch that you can easily flip off and on.
On Thursday, I did something I thought I was not capable of and that was to covert another man’s bicycle lock. I am sure that at the time of writing coveting another man’s bicycle lock was probably not carved into the stone tablets but if a rewrite was in order I could easily foresee it bumping coveting another man’s wife out of the top ten because lets be honest that’s almost passé and we could incorporate it into gluttony or greed. So today I went out and bought my own bicycle lock, not as cool, not nearly, but a substitute that I’m sure will be coveted by other bicycle owners amongst us and they are plenty.
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Delia Smith, in a drunken moment during half time between made a passionate call on all of the Norwich supporters, to help the team as they battled for survival in the Premiership in 2005, a battle which they ultimately lost but the supporters rallying cry remains memorable:
“A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let’s be having you! Come on!”
Liverpool lost some ground against Stoke in their quest for what amounts to a footballing Holy Grail, there first Premiership title in 19 years, inevitably there’ll be lots of questions asked about selection and player performance, all understandable but what it requires now is for the real best supporters in the world to stand up and be counted. This season is going to be a bun fight and we are in it, the team’s got the mentality but do the fans have the belief? Lets be having you! Come on!
Stoke, in freezing conditions who play a physical brand of long ball brand of football are difficult to beat with their supporters egging them on. Liverpool traditionally don’t match up well against these sorts of teams look no further than a FA cup defeat to Wimbledon. The match reminded me a quote that I recently read in Simon Kuper’s book, Soccer against the enemy:
“We know British sides play through the air – we call it, ‘on the second floor,’ and we prepared for that. Though in fact,” he smiled, “they scored both of their goals along the ground.”
Stoke never managed to score but neither did Liverpool. My spirits sank for a few cursing minutes once the match ended but then I remembered Delia Smith’s announcement and I realised that is what it requires and for us to enjoy the run in, we are right there, in it to win and not playing for fourth.
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24 Season was good right to the last few minutes, I will definitely be getting Season 3 sometime in the near future for the sake of continuity and that great feeling of blanking out a few days. I have but one rule when I watch 24 and that is not to fast forward, still I do occasionally, mostly through the summation of the previous episode.
