26 March 2010

I don't feel particularly wretched about not having blogged all week and I'll tell you why: I've been writing this on the back of a used envelope each day in between very long days at the office and very long sleeps.

It's odd that I can sleep so much. I've been in bed from eight o'clock every single night, can you believe it! I'm leaving something out. It's a very important detail. It was not actually only a mere detail but a very definite turning point in my week, in my month and indeed my year. Perhaps even my life? How terribly dramatic of me. I'll stop building it up and admit to you all what I've avoided admitting to you until now ...

I was hypnotised.

Last Friday morning, following three morning cigarettes for breakfast (N.B. not with breakfast), just as I used to have when I was a smoker, I called up the Kentish Town branch of my chosen hypno-guru group and made an appointment for the following Tuesday. That's right - it had been a couple of days of reliving my pack a day habit and I was desperate.

What an odd experience! The man, a very enthusiastic ex-smoker who was exceedingly confident in his own abilities, spent an hour reminding me why smoking is a ridiculous and pathetic habit and spent the next hour lulling me into a state of extreme relaxation and talking to my subconscious mind. And it really did feel as if that was what he was doing. But, how, I wonder, can you talk to the subconscious mind when subconscious and conscious are just signifiers, just words attaching to a concept? The separation between the two is not a line. The difference might be described but cannot account for the intricacy of the device. Best not to overthink this and just accept that I no longer have a physical, behavioural or emotional addiction to cigarettes. Thank goodness. It might have set me back a fair few pounds but it was entirely worth it. Now, if any of you laments the fact that I will no longer ever pass around the cigarettes like your personal benefactor, please feel free to dance on my grave. Perhaps you ought to look at your own pathetic habit and go suck the life out of someone else.

I've surprised myself. The hypno-guru must have really worked a charm. Just feast on the seething resentment that he's engendered within me.

Now, he said that I would sleep well this week. What he didn't say was that I would sleep for ten hour solid blocks every night and feel utterly exhausted the rest of the time. I've had to cancel two social engagements. Poor old Nana that I am.

I have however managed to do some research on the international football racket this week which was surely the most worthless goal that I had set myself recently. Go on - ask me what off-side means. Nick did, that cheeky bastard, and I managed to blow him out of the water with my response. I'm quite sure that I understand the rule moreso than any of you, having done some serious reading on the most difficult rule to comprehend, no less enforce, so I challenge you to dare try me.

Now that I understand the rules of the game and have a solid background in the affairs of FIFA, I will move on to national football. But before I do, I have some general comments to make about the sport.

Firstly, one of FIFA's sponsors is Coca-Cola. I don't drink products made by this giant because of an article that I read a couple of years ago about the bottling companies in Columbia. The workers there are frightened out of establishing unions through threats of violence and murder. Many of the workers have diasappeared, only to turn up weeks later, lying dead in ditches. It's a dirty business and Coca-Cola has washed their hands of it on account of the fact that their relationship to the bottling companies, and hence the violence, is made up of a series of contractual arrangements which are too far removed from them to warrant any action to be taken on their part.

It smacks of the arguments that were used late last century during the child labour debacle whereby public opinion finally forced some fashion industry giants to clean up their manufacturing contracts and practices. However, I still go into H&M and find myself walking out again empty-handed, not because the clothes were manufactured in Bangladesh but because I know deep down that no one in Bangladesh is getting the money that I put down on the counter. They are getting a pittance.

So, FIFA. Another organisation that has too many false smiles and dirty back stories running a mile long in every direction and I haven't even started on the allegations of bribes and what-not. Football is a dirty sport.

But, I move on anyway to national soccer as I am determined not to leave things half-finished this year as I would generally do and such is my nature. Before I do, I have some feelings that I take with me into the foray of the club world which might taint the exploration. I have a number of friends who follow soccer in England and associate themselves with a certain team. No doubt they could tell you why they've chosen that particular team. I might be able to understand why those of them who reside in this country for the time being support national soccer here however, they do not support their local team, have no affiliation with any club except that they say that they would like them to win and moreover they all came up with the idea that they would support a certain team whilst they were living in a whole other country on the other side of the world.

I might point out here that it smacks of being sheep. But I'll go further, especially on the point that sport is an odd pastime for me. I don't really understand competition. I think that nationalism breeds wars and other nasty bigotries and sport can elicit a national pride (nothing wrong with national pride, pre se, mind) that is too extreme to be reasonable. There seems to me to be a lack of "stepping back" and seeing the pastime for what it is. What is it? I would hope that it's a chance especially for children to be social, learn sportsmanship, skills, comradery. Perhaps also to procure fitness and enjoy and explore the use of their bodies. Pride perhaps? Is that why someone sits down in the antipodes and follows religiously the movements of a team of sportsmen on the other side of the world whilst they take part in none of the above aspects of the game of that team?

So, I'll move on. I'll finish what I started and I will watch a full season of games and then I'll be a soccer expert but do note that I view the entire escapade just as ironically as I view, say, the blog. Pointless, futile, sad.

It's time for more pointlessness. That's right - just when you thought that I couldn't possibly churn out any more: it's poem time!

Auden says:

“Poetry makes nothing happen. It survives in the valley of its saying.”

And down to that valley we shall go:

I enjoy the game the most
When a player uses his caput
To pit the ball against his host
For a smart attack toward the post.

No…

I enjoy the game the best
When that attacker runs the length
To smash a ball into the net
Chasing it with a cartwheel fest.

No…

I enjoy it only once
The drunken fan puts down his jug
Strips his body to the bone
And speeds forth through the game alone.

And the crowd cheers. That’s entertainment.

I'm not pleased with the poetic effort, but I kept getting interrupted. I'll leave it be for now, forget it and never edit it.

Incidentally, I’m reading Auden’s Letters from Iceland at the moment. Daddy bought it for me when he learned that I was to take a trip there. It is just a trick! It’s so funny! I must have laughed aloud a hundred times over as many pages.

Now there was one final point that I would make about this week which was not particularly pertinent but warrants a small mention and that is the Budget. Doesn’t he have fantastic eyebrows? I wonder if his hairdresser gives them a little prune each time he goes to the barber just in the way that my beautician would wax my fingers and toes without my asking her…

The Budget wasn’t particularly interesting. Do you agree? I feel for the political and financial reporters this week. They do so want to make the subject media-savvy but just can’t get a rise out of anyone. Goodness, not even the Tories had much to say. It was like watching some bored school-children hosting a fourth form debate in front of a disinterested class – except for the cider-John down the back of the class who can’t believe that he has to face a 10 percent tax increase on his favourite tipple.

This is what Horace has to say on politics: One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

I don’t agree, but doesn’t he write well? Speaking of another Horace, I will be attempting to get myself to the V&A for the Horace Walpole collection this weekend. The crafty bastard had collected so many wonderful pieces that it’ll be like having an invitation to his drawing room for tea and sneaking around the house whilst on the way to his lavatory.