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This picture blew my mind. At the bottom is another mini blog that explains why.
Yes. This is definitely one of those blogs that I 'go on' a bit to the extent that I've blogged twice in one blog which even for me, is likely over egging the blog pudding to an extent that even the people who read it regularly, even the really aimless pieces, will probably give up before the end...
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Do you see what I've done with the title? I've created an expectation that the piece is going to be a contentious entry into the CULTURE WARS so that it gets shared about by WOKE/NOT WOKE folk either furiously agreeing or furiously fuming because SOMEONE THINKS DIFFERENTLY>ON THE INTERNET>AND I CAN'T GO TO BED>TILL I'VE GOT MORE LIKES FROM PEOPLE WHO ALSO DISAGREE/AGREE BECAUSE EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE ARGUED UNTIL EVERYONE'S FINGERS ARE WORN DOWN TO BLEEDING STUMPS AND WE'RE ALL HOLLOW EYED DIGITAL UNITS OF HATE AND WE CAN'T IDENTIFY WITH ANYONE ELSE EVER FOLLOW BACK IF YOU AGREE LIKE AND FUCKING SUBSCRIBE HIT THE BELL #HASHTAGSINMYBIO FEEDTHEMACHINE YOUAREBLOCKED UNTIL IT EXPLODES AND THE SHRAPNEL KILLS US ALL AND ALL OF THIS TO SERVE SOME CUNT WHO RUNS THE ADVERTS ON THIS THING AND IS LAUGHING AT US ALL FROM HIS INFINITY POOL ON HIS SPACE SHIP WHO ONLY SEES NUMBERS AND ANGER MAKES NUMBERS GO UP AND SO THATS WHAT HE SERVES US COS HE'S A CUNT AND HE DOESN'T CARE.
It's not about that at all. I really can't be arsed with the CULTURE WARS cos in reality they're a few weird people raging over a few things that don't really make any difference and the phrase always makes me think of a scrap in a library or two opera singers driving tanks at each other. I have political views and so do you. Even if you're ambivalent to all politics, that is, in itself a view. What I really like about football is, how through talking about it and attending it, I meet and engage with people who support the same team or enjoy the same sport but who (and wait for this!) DON'T THINK EXACTLY THE SAME AS I DO ABOUT OTHER STUFF THAT ISN'T FOOTBALL! - I like engaging with people who aren't me, cos frankly, I irritate myself and if everyone I knew just agreed with me, that would shite.
One of the things about democracy and that (this will get to football) is that OTHER VIEWS are LITERALLY THE FUCKING POINT. One of my favourite people I've met (a Birmingham fan by the way, for his sins) is someone who is essentially ideologically different to me in almost every way aside from the stuff that you would reasonably ostracise someone from your acquaintance for like being an actual Nazi or a nonce. We agreed they were bad, but just about everything else was a reason to disagree. As we both supported relatively crap football teams who'd played each in the not too distant past, that gave us more to talk about and made us more interesting to each other than lots of people we both knew that shared our respective ideologies but didn't support relatively crap football teams.
My friendship with this lad led to some of the most interesting conversations I've ever had, often book ended by conversations about our crap football teams. My views are what they are and like yours, they're formed by a combination of experience, upbringing and the things I read and watch. What was fascinating was learning that his ideological view was really well thought out and borne of experiences that made perfect sense. I didn't have some kind of epiphany and denounce everything I though previously and neither did he, but, at times we violently agreed on some things we probably didn't think before that 'the other side' would think and more than anything, I learned that people who think differently politically aren't automatically SCUM or LUNATICS. I'd like to think we made each other reflect and probably made our relative positions a little more realistic and a little less based on a rigid set of beliefs and where we hadn't shifted, probably strengthened each others arguments by the debate we had.
That's literally how democracy works. The ancient Greeks had a theory on that - the idea that new and stronger ideas emerge from the combat of opposing positions - and it's really one of the reasons why (some of them at least) they thought dictatorship was essentially weak - because intellectual dominance by one position, would stifle development of society and the Ancient Greeks, were, whilst MAD HYPOCRITES who had slaves and that, for the time they lived, pretty fucking sharp. They worked out atoms and had a fucking computer for fucks sake.
I fully appreciate my* readership probably don't come here for half baked analysis of the Ancient Greeks and a wet story about a mate I had 25 years ago but we're going to some FOOTBALL now.
*I don't claim any possession over you really, you can go and read another blog any time, I don't mind, this is just me chatting shite and I'll do it with or without you**
**sorry, that seems ungrateful now I've typed it, I do appreciate you reading it, I'm just trying to say, this isn't some kind of fake shit where I foster a relationship with you by pretending I'm making things 'for you' when actually, I'm all about the adverts and that - I just like doing it and you can do whatever as a result)
I've already given an example above of football being a uniting factor. I can't pretend football is MDMA or LOVE and has everyone gurning and plaiting their hair with flowers and going 'y'know what, you, you are beautiful, really, I know we're both heterosexual* but man, I think you're beautiful and that's beautiful. You know what else is beautiful? ASDA. ASDA is beautiful when you really look at it...' but as things go, I've hugged, randomly spoken to more strangers, shared emotions and had in depth conversations about all sorts of stuff as a result of football than I've had anywhere else. I'm a bit old now, but the last ILLEGAL RAVE I went to (it was a while ago) everyone just chewed their own teeth and stared at the floor and the last actual hippy I met I had to be escorted away by my girlfriend cos the smelly self indulgent cunt launched into one of the most appalling self pitying eugenics driven rants about how people should be sterilised if they come from certain social classes (which would include basically my entire family, friendship group and 80%-90% of the people I've ever met) and whilst I'm a lover, not a fighter, I really wanted to deck him for the good of humanity. (which is, I suppose ironic in a way, but hey!)
*or whatever combination of people who aren't trying to shag each other but acknowledging each other's beauty that you like
I'm not saying all hippies are cunts (all hippies are cunts) or all illegal raves are antisocial experiences where people disappear inside themselves cos that would be a crass generalisation, but I am saying that football, for all the moments where it appears STUPID, TRIBAL AND CHILDISH (and to be fair, sometimes those moments are pretty fucking good fun and to be fair, people are all really a bit stupid, tribalism is kind of baked into the history of our species and for fuck's sake, if you aren't childish every now and again, then you might as well be dead) that it also has a lot of moments which aren't those things. Football is a ritual of coming together as a group and very few of those rituals really exist in the modern world any more.
We don't tend to work en masse any more. I'm not romanticising being down the pit or on the mill floor, or collecting the harvest or whatever but it's a fact that generally speaking, machines do those things. Consequently, we don't really tend to talk as much about our shared experiences or see ourselves as part of a group in the same way. We often work alone or in a small team and if we're in a larger team, we tend to be hooked up to screens, databases, headsets and other things that put us in a bubble. We all watch different telly. There's 5 million channels and even then, we ignore that and watch something from an archive on demand, so we don't talk about the things we consume any more as we can't really agree as everyone has a different experience. We don't tend to go to church and things like social clubs are largely a distant memory in many places. I'm not making a value judgement, but it's pretty obvious that even since my youth, society has become more individual - if you had to sum up recent decades in an image, someone looking at their phone (maybe you, reading this now?) with some headphones in, surrounded by other people, doing the same, would be a reasonably good candidate.
Where all of this is leading is the FA's decision to CANCEL FOOTBALL out of RESPECT AND THAT. I'm not going to express my views on royalty. You don't come here for that and frankly, why would you care what I think? Whatever your view you can find lots of other people to argue with on Twitter (it's on this thing called 'the internet' which is getting quite popular these days)
I am going to express my view on the FA though, because that's in the self invented remit of this blog.
Over the last few days, I've read a wide range of opinions but predominantly (not exclusively, but definitely a majority) of people have expressed that cancelling football is (variously) - a bit weird, inconsistent, 'not what she'd have wanted as she loved sport,' 'fucking stupid' and 'mentalism' - Obviously, I've only put one side of the argument, but in my flawed methodology of 'looking at the internet for a bit' the pro playing argument has been much more prevalent.
I didn't know the Queen, but one of the things I thought I knew about her from the picture we had of her that was painted for us, was that she was a stickler for time keeping - one of her admirable qualities was her dedication to maintaining her timetable as she was very conscious of letting people down, of her fraility or ill health creating inconvenience and disruption for others. Whatever we think of the concept of monarchies, that's a positive quality (responsibility, duty to others and such) and one that seems to be more than Palace spin, judging by the fact she kept on keeping on right into her old age. The proof is in the pudding so to speak.
She also did genuinely seem to like gatherings and sporting events. Again, I don't know that for certain, but long after she had perfectly good reason to stop attending things, she made every effort to turn up and be among the crowd. Perhaps, like many of us, she just liked being part of something that was different from her every day. It's one of the things I like most about football and I don't think it's that wild to suggest that the Queen seemed to like a big sporting event for vaguely similar reasons to me.
I love how everyone is in the crowd, everyone kind of subsumes their ego to the event and you get a bit of a break from being you. Even the suits and ties get announced, but then, during the game, no one thinks of them. They kind of disappear until the end when they hand out the medals - and that's a good thing, because for me, the outside world and even to some extent, my sense of self disappear - which is, as I said a relief from the norm. I assume the Queen, being a person, also enjoyed in some small way, a similar sense of just watching and being there.
Here, then, is why I think the FA decision is bizarre:
a) She seemed to like sport and honouring something by cancelling something they liked is a bit odd
b) what are people going to do instead? I'm going to buy a coat and some school shirts for what it's worth...
The point is, there are very few opportunities outside of sports stadiums to demonstrate respect or actively participate in acts of remembrance and I don't think milling aimlessly around a dying shopping centre full of vape stores and pound shops is really going to be a tribute or a reflective act that puts us in touch with our shared mortal limitations.
c) if this is (and you can choose the version that suits you) a time of national tragedy/a bit sad/a moment for respect/not all that emotional, but nonetheless a moment where the page of history turns and thus worthy of pause and reflection/no big deal it seems really odd that some random lads that run the FA have decided PEOPLE MUST NOT COME TOGETHER
d) I do understand that a funeral of a head of state is a national event and it's absolutely right that people have the choice to 'attend' via their television. That's absolutely fine. It's good. We should collectively address the reality of death and that and the passing of time and suchlike - this isn't about the funeral though - there is nothing to miss today other than going 'oh, Nicholas Witchell is still going on about the same shit why does he now look like he died six months ago and was dug up on Thursday - is he actually a real person or some kind of waxwork made out the melted fat of rat bones mixed with cigarette ash?' which is a question I suppose, but not really one of much spiritual or existential value other than to cause us all to realise that no matter what, entropy is the one constant and that's we're all heading towards looking more like Nicholas Witchell than our own self image of the days of our prime
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| Smooth |
This blog doesn't have the responsibility or, for that matter, the budget of the FA - I haven't yet sold the blog to a dodgy subscription funded rebranding package (offers are welcome) and thus my budget for production and resultant incomings are both literally zero.
Despite that, I could, if I wanted, use some of the many free tools at my disposal to consult with blog readers on decisions I was going to take on their behalf. I don't run this blog along those lines cos as I said above, this isn't one of these 'it's for you! disingenuous marketing exercises, it's unashamedly self indulgent) but, the point it is, if I wanted to, I could.
What I find really strange is the FA (who, lets face it, don't have any particular right to 'govern' football, which is, as they literally said in their own press release the national sport and is drawn from a long history of football as a social game) deciding, seemingly on little or no evidence (who have they consulted here? anyone?) They paid no attention to the FSA, who, whatever you think of them, are the group you'd expect them to look to first. There's no evidence of them surveying anyone or taking a snapshot of opinion from supporters groups and that, is frankly lazy, in an era where anyone can gain an opinion in a matter of seconds.
this will make sense in two paragraphs time, I'm not trying to be flippant for the sake of mere flippancy
This is exactly what to expect from the FA though. They just decide shit and bung out half arsed statements. They never respond to criticism or seem to give a fuck what fans think. Some decrepit nobody or some repurposed CEO cunt has decided that in his opinion, even kids shouldn't play football and we all have to accept that he knows best because he is powerful. Literally* nobody on earth thinks VAR is a good thing but the FA don't give a flying fuck. They do nothing to govern the game other than let the clubs rake in money in a really weird way that corrupts the game itself, and then to disguise that inertia, occasionally lash out at supporter behaviour with random decrees demanding draconian punishments, ignore entirely the plight of clubs run by sociopaths, incompetents and convicted rapists and issue drive by punishments for disciplinary indiscretions that follow no consistent logic.
*I'm deliberately misusing literally to emphasise a point in a rant and you don't have to write in and go 'I like VAR' because a) you've are wrong and b) I don't give a fuck cos you are wrong and c) see a) + b)
They have no right to make this decision. I absolutely respect that people may think differently to me. I've just written an entire blog celebrating the fact that we are capable of more than mere group think but were I in a position to make a decision (lets imagine, I am choosing whether or not Gary should jump the queue and become king for real) I'd make at least a half arsed effort to find out if *what I thought* was in tune with *what the people who would have to live as Gary Madine's subjects think*
Ultimately, I think the FA have sacked off all of football, because they literally see football fans as a lumpen inconvenience who can't be trusted to behave and frankly, they fear 'brand damage' more than they care about anything that we think, no matter how valid it was. I think the truth is, that whatever our political and sociological standpoints, 99.99% of us are more than capable of understanding that today was a chance to raise a metaphorical glass to the end of an era. To either thank the queen or to simply acknowledge the passing of a long, eventful and (in the words of own, actual real life first born son) well lived life and, like all people in the public eye, a life that stands as a cipher for the universal experience of us all. We all live, we all die and we understand that, just as well as anyone else.
I don't really know why I've written this - it doesn't really matter and I'll probably enjoy my Saturday and it's healthy to do other shit but what gets me is, as a random shite blogger, I think many of us put more thought into the game our my spare time than the FA puts into their decision making in their highly paid committee led working lives and whilst singularly, this decision is just 'one of them Chizz, could go either way' - it's symbolic of a lazy disregard for the very people who enable the FA to exist in the first place, the group whose attendance at football make it possible for the game to be a professional sport and thus merit a governing body. The FA would do well to realise that games that people don't pay to watch don't tend to have such things and fans might care to ask the FA why, in general, they don't really tend to appear in the workings out that lead to the FA's answers.
Onward. The mini blog within a blog that I referred to above that actually, now I've written it is probably longer than the main blog. I think I'm realising why this blog hasn't yet attracted a mega deal because *possibly* it might just *not be commercially viable* as I just write *any old shit I think of regardless of whether it's a good idea or not*
Anyway...
As I've stated multiple times in the earlier main blog bit, I ain't here to talk about the politics of all this. What I do think though, (and this is sort of political I guess) - is that we live in a society where we are obsessed with material things and how we can attain a weird unnatural state of permanent youth. We're all obsessed with collecting and expressing our identity as if somehow desperately trying to erase our own impermanence.
I want, thus, to try and discuss death because it's a spiritual reality. By spirit, I don't mean 'god' necessarily, it's grand if you think of it thus, I don't mind what you call it because, whilst we can interpret that idea however we wish, it's essentially the same concept - we have (as humans) a particular sense of our own existence and with that, an awareness of our mortality and sense of our individual (or perhaps collective) selves. We form strong bonds with others and when they die, we mourn for them because it's sad we'll never engage with them again and it's sad that we realise that we ourselves are going to also die, because, in general, most of the time, most of us value being alive (and if you don't feel like that, for fucks sake, please, please, please, don't suffer alone, talk to someone because you can feel better and people do care and the sun will come up one morning)
The queen always reminded me of my grandma. Like her, she seemed dignified and at times a little impish. I don't know the queen, so I'm not going to bang on about her, but my nan was my favourite person in the world. She lived in Anchorsholme and to the outside world was just another elderly Cleveleys trolley pusher, but to me, she was one of my best friends ever. I had the privilege of travelling around with her as a kid after my grandad died and I was sent to her house 'to take her mind off things.' My gran threw herself into life and we went everywhere on trains and pensioners coach trips. With my grandad's pension and a bus pass, she forged an incredible life - one that might seem mundane, consisting as it did of flower arranging, long life learning and visits to places like Halifax or Kidderminster but that was rich, thoughtful and engaging to be part of. MY grandma had a terrific capacity to be content and being around her made you also feel that way too. A cup of tea and a slice of cake and a natter. What more could anyone actually want?
I had the incredible privilege of living with my nan for a while. We'd talk about this, that and everything. Usually our conversations were whimsical and happy but there was one time when, stuff wasn't especially good for me in general and I wasn't really doing myself any favours in the choices I was making and when she asked me about something, I broke down in tears that as I tried to stifle them turned to proper tears. I felt awful, I was laying this shit on my gran. The one person in the world I wouldn't want to weigh down with this sort of thing. She was in her 80s for fucks sake. What was I doing? Just being cared about had broken me.
You don't need to know why I was broken, nor do you need to know what she said, but the point is, her wisdom, kindness, calm and what I suppose you'd have to call 'love' (which is a word we bandy about to mean a million things, but I think my nan is probably the best working definition I have of it) was a massive part in me sorting my head out and seeing things in a more healthy way. That's why we should respect the elderly - cos they've lived through all sorts of different things and whilst it's easy to dismiss people who are out of style or seem different to us, really, the old are just us, but further down the line and with a better view of stuff and things.
When she died, I stood outside the Vic and I felt that sense of emptiness that is one of the common characteristics of grief. I had no thoughts. I felt nothing. The seagull cries and the sound of the road were everything. I've rarely ever felt such a profound sense of cold. Everything was sharp and the sky was icy blue. I'd always known I loved my grandma and I'd always known she loved me. My nan helped me know who I was and where I'd come from.
I spoke at her funeral and halfway through, I broke down as I was telling a 'funny story' that turned out to absolutely murder me emotionally. I cried in front of the 60 or so people who were there for a few seconds. I could see some elderly folk looking at me as if to say 'for fuck's sake lad, she was 91' and I sorted myself out and carried on.
Afterwards, I sat with her sons, her other grandkids, her sister in law, her cousins and her care worker from the last year of her life and after a pint or two, we started laughing. My grandma was funny, she didn't mind being teased and the evening was beautiful. Her son, (my uncle) said 'she'd have loved this, everyone together and she'd have probably laughed about how the fact she wasn't here any more meant no one had to make a fuss over her' - it was a quip to disperse the misery, but it had a real ring of truth. She had a real sense of not wanting to be 'trouble' - which, ironically as she got older had the reverse effect to that which she intended but no one minded cos she'd spent a lifetime living for others.
In that sense, I also see echoes of the Queen - someone who, like my nan, I can imagine, no matter how grim she felt physically or emotionally, 'putting her face on' (as my nan used to say when she went upstairs to do her hair and apply her make up) and facing the world and doing what she saw as her role. We're all born into different roles after all and all we can do is our best with the hand we're dealt.
I remember a night when, towards the end, she showed me, hands frail and bruised, old pictures of my grandad in uniform I'd never seen and told me 'I loved him so much, he was so handsome and kind - but I led him a bit of a dance, because that's what you did - he was too charming though' - she smiled whilst her voice trembled, 30 years after he'd died, she still loved him and it still ached.
I've never got my head around how we filmed and watched the queen whilst she grieved for her handsome prince. What were we doing there? Love and loss really, really hurts. That she shared that with everyone is something I do respect her deeply for because to be frank, I couldn't do it.
After her funeral, I did an odd thing - I sat downstairs for a bit, on my own and I looked at the order of service. On it was her year of birth. I'd never really thought about this before. I knew exactly how old she was and when her birthday was, but the fact she was born in a particular year hadn't ever really struck me. I thought about how I don't really know anything about that year. I thought about how 'the 1920s' doesn't mean a great deal to me and how, to be honest, a lot of my history is only really dates and photos of football matches.
I did what anyone else would do whilst grieving for their favourite person on earth.
I watched the 1927 FA Cup final on Youtube because why not? That's obviously what she'd have expected me to do anyway. She regarded my football fandom as an eccentric habit that she'd poke gentle fun at but indulged me by keeping all the Gazettes she'd bought between my visits so I (who didn't live in Blackpool) could keep up with the news. "I don't know why you bother" she'd say "They've been useless since Stanley Mortenson (who she liked a lot cos he was very polite to her in a shop queue once) left"
I watched it to try and work out what 1927 actually meant. I wasn't really interested in the game (Cardiff won, if you want to know) but in the general feel. What world had my nan been born into? Where did she come from? The answer was a shaky black and white one that looked to have so little to do with the one she died in that it was astonishing. This was cobbled streets, chimneys, horses and carts, rickets, slums, deference, empire and all that. It was more Victorian than it was modern, far more Dickens than Dan Brown.
It made me think about her life and who she was again. She was cool was my nan. My friends liked her as she could talk to people of all ages without being a cliche and she was funny. She was both old fashioned and modern. Like any of us, she sometimes found changes a bit frightening or unsettling, but she always saw good in people and would come to accept those changes in the main. It blew my mind thinking about the sheer weight of social, scientific and political upheaval she'd lived through.
When she died, she had a laptop that she used well. She used to sometimes order herself an Indian or a Chinese takeaway, which was something 20 years before, I don't she'd have been able to even conceptualise. She'd flown to other continents. She'd seen the space race, she'd lived through the 1960s, already in her middle age, she'd witnessed a world war in her teens, seen jet engines and nuclear power, motorways and so much more come to fruition and yet, she was born into a Manchester street that probably looked more like Lowry painting or matched Dicken's description of Coketown than anything modern Manchester served up..
She'd moved, as a kid to run a boarding house with her mum, right at the time Blackpool was building all the sprawling suburbs and just when the beautiful, beautiful 1930s trams (one of my favourite things that humans have ever built) were being painted in the sensational art deco style green and cream logos. She'd lived long enough to see them through their entire working lives and finally, to see the tramway rebuilt again.
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| No words. Just beauty. |
It brought a different perspective on my feelings. I still felt sad, cos frankly, to this very minute, I'd really like to have brew with her and be called 'love' as the world is cold and harsh she was warm and kind and I really miss that going to the football doesn't also mean popping and seeing her, but it made me realise what a life she'd had. It made me think about the richness of just being here and stuff happening around us and how, to be honest, to live forever would be probably a curse as opposed to a blessing. There's only so much wonder and so much hurt we can withstand.
That's why that picture blew my mind. I didn't know the Queen and well, I think most readers would work out that I'm not especially fussed about pomp and circumstance and all that, but she gave the cup to Stanley Matthews. She was already grown up and doing her life's work by then. She belonged to an age, like my nan, that has gone, she grew up through things that have shaped us all and yet are receding in memory, becoming just paragraphs in history books. She was real and existed in colour and three dimensions and the world around her smelled of things, made sounds, touched her skin and tasted of joy, sorrow, love and everything else. In her mind was the memory of a world that changed in so many ways and the sense memory of so much living. It's people that make that past real. Books and films just show us the surface, people are the real depth and flavour of it all.
She shook Stanley Matthew's hand. She was right there for the greatest game of football of all. The one that probably, more than any other, propelled football into the collective consciousness by a TV screen and laid the groundwork for a modern game that dominates the cultural landscape like no other TV spectacle does. After it, she met the man who had made the game what it was and who is possibly the greatest legend of the entire history of the footballing nation that gave the world organised football in the way we understand it today.
She did so much more than that, but that particular picture put the length of her reign into terms I could understand. It made me think again of my own family. It made me think about both what I miss and what I remember fondly. It made me think of a lot of things, quite outside of the binary arguments and baiting of each other that passes for a lot of discourse in this particular era.
I'd like to have raised a glass to all that if nothing else - but hey, the FA know best after all and we're just brainless thugs who get in the way of the real business.
It is what it is. I really should be able to think of something else to do on Saturday I guess.
Cheers. To stuff and things.
(again,Onward)
*You'll be relieved to know there is no third blog.
** However, I'd
highly recommend this blog for managing to say more in a lot less words
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