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I wouldn't want to sit on those chairs though to be honest.

I might have had a bit more on this had I not been anally savaged by the gambling Gods yesterday. A win is a win is a win though as they say. Why they say that though is just silly.

What a sh*t day for punting yesterday was. There's a fine line between winning and losing and this translates to a fine line between having a nice Columbia University mug and having one in a thousand pieces on the floor and coffee stains on the walls and ceiling.

Micheal Owen nearly scores then goes off injured AGAIN. Of course Peter Crotch then scores England's winner. Someone that tall should not be called Crouch in my opinion. Russia then go and hit the post which had it gone in would have won the match and of course Israel somehow go and win instead. And Italy score in the last minute. I think Bob Hall is still running.

***

As some of my recent posts have alluded to, I've got a wee cold at the moment bless my little cotton socks, and some of the remedies and medications I've been experimenting with have taken me off to some pretty strange places when I dream and when I've been awake as it happens.

When I'm in this state I become incredibly brusque. Not because I'm taking my bad mood out on people, I'm just denied my natural alacrity and speed of thought. When I'm asked a question my mind chooses the path of least resistance to find an answer to save me time and energy and my delivery can sometimes come across as rather discourteous.

So now, it's pissing with rain and there's a knock on my door. I have a bell you know, but people still knock. I'm dressed in my warmest Marks and Sparks pyjamas, dressing gown and a cream coloured cowboy hat. I open the door and stood before me is a gentleman of about 40, he's wearing a wax jacket and seems fairly harmless; he has slightly feminine mannerisms and seems to be the type who get out of the bath when they need a piss and can't wait to creosote the garden fence when opportunity arises. We'll call him Ron.

I don't know why I called him ma'am, it wasn't meant to be derogatory, it just seemed like the thing to say at the time. I've been laughing retrospectively ever since. If I do say so myself, even if I didn't mean it, it was a wonderful piece of deadpan delivery in the sort of Bill Murray style. I didn't mean to offend the chap or be rude to him, this is just how I am when I'm in this state. I shan't go out until my condition improves or I'll lose friends.

***

In other news, I've played a lot of poker recently so all my dreams and reveries involve poker. While that creepy kid in the 'Sixth Sense' sees dead people, I see flops, turn cards and rivers. This morning I played a heads-up no-limit session with Fidel Castro. I've always sort of admired Castro in so much as he's gotten at least nine US presidents arse hairs up, not quite so much for the starving of his own people, but his David to the USA's Goliath is inspiring stuff.

Now then...heads-up we played with live chickens flying about the place and a woman with a snake around her body dancing seductively. Hugo Chavez was also present and played the recorder every time Fidel took a pot down and sort of cackled like a Latin American looney-toon.

I lost the battle when my Kings were beaten by Fidel's hand which contained the Old Kent Road, and the four Railway Stations. By this time the dream was not quite so lucid and I began to wake. When I did come round there was moisture around me. I have a water bed and feared it had sprung a leak, but fortunately I had just pissed myself. Phew!

Mark Twain once said the greatest of all inventors is accident. This is very true. True for poor Thomas Midgley who's best intentions and inventions nearly killed us all and true for Alexander Flemming who saved us all by accidentally inventing penicillin.

Ralph Waldo Emerson held to the maxim only the shallow believe in luck, the strong believe in cause and effect. I like the boy Emerson, he's says some clever things. The kind of things you can plagiarise at parties to make your self sound clever and trap off with the dumb blonde with the comfy chest furniture.

From a punting point of view, the Twains of this world would appear to be in the "it's all a lottery camp," while your Waldos' are of the ilk that stay up all night analyzing horse racing form and weather reports and generally researching the life out of a race or football match in order to find an edge.

This weekend offers a cornucopia of delicious punting opportunities and none of them involve Arsenal so there is potential here to really get myself into some financial deep waters. Thusly, I shall be using a blended gambling strategy of blind luck for the horse racing and informed opinion for the football as I don't want to posthumously upset Messrs Twain and Emerson as I know they'll be keeping an eye on me.

Using blind luck I shall be having a shilling or two on Bob Hall in the Gold Cup tomorrow. A P McCoy and Cheltenham go together like a concrete bench and piles, but I'm getting a stirring somewhere within about Bob Hall and although it may be the prawn sandwich I ate for lunch, I'm confident it's something more profound and at 13.5 there's value in finding out.






Football now and golly where to begin? It's important that one set aside all xenophobic prejudices and approach these fixtures clinically and unemotionally. This is tricky for me as I'm afraid I have a deep seated hatred for the other members of our Union. Fortunately, I couldn't give a hoot about Englands chances of qualifying so this balances things out somewhat.

When it comes to patriotism, my love or loathing of my own country does not begin and end with the England national football team and all those fans, mostly from the North with very little in the way of education, who accuse people like me of not being a true fan and being unpatriotic, do run along.

You have not the intelligence or the vocabulary to argue constructively on this matter. Just put your little flag on your van, eat your burger, give your wife a hard time and leave me alone. If being a true fan and being a true Englishman involves being over weight, toothless, wrecking whatever city England are playing in, beating up the locals and singing songs about the war, then let me never be a true Englishman.


I digress. England will not qualify for Euro 2008 simply because the players don't care about it. And nor should they. International football has become an irritating diversion for them rather than an honour. Why bust your chops playing against Austria or Andorra when you might have a Champions League game the following week against Barcelona?

If your club is paying you 100,000 bags of sand per week and you're getting appearance money and win bonuses which amount to many more bags of sand, why would you risk an injury playing for England when your only reward is qualifying for a tournament that would interfere with your summer holiday?

The idea that the large numbers of "foreign" players has evaporated the pool of talent the England coach can draw from is nothing short of Xenophobic drivel. Between 1967 and the mid 1990's there were hardly any non British players in the top division in England and the national time in that time won absolutely fuck all.

The fact that we even refer to non-UK players as foreign is pretty prejudicial in my opinion and indicative of how we view anyone not from these shores. Look up foreign in a thesaurus; "unfamiliar, unknown, unheard of, strange, alien." I might be being over-sensitive, but language matters, ask the feminist types. Incidentally, before anyone accuses me of hypocrisy, my indifference to certain countries are based on real experiences rather than pre-judgements, which obviously makes all the difference, so there.

Anyways, it's money that's prevented England building on the relative success in Italia 90, not "foreign" players. Two years after Italia 90 Sky TV arrived on the scene and club football has taken precedence over the National side ever since. This is evident in all other countries in Europe. France, Italy and Germany have recent World Cup success, but with the exception of AC Milan, have been god awful in the Champions League. Spain and England on the other hand, shit in the International competitions, very strong in the Champions League.

Consequently I shall back teams that don't have a strong representation in the Champions League. Or lay the ones that do. Soooo, I shall lay Italy. I shall back Russia even though they appear to be the lay of the century. I shall also back Croatia to beat England next week because England should by then have failed to qualify and will give even less of a hoot than they may have done had it been a do or die confrontation and because Croatia have Eduardo and I love him, he is the best kept secret in the Premiership and how he keeps his hair so soft and manageable is testament to his pride and self-respect.


England v Austria - Owen and Crotchy to score 6/1
Bob Hall - Cheltenham Paddy Power Gold Cup 10/1
Israel V Russia - Russia win 1/2
Scotland v Italy - Lay Italy - Possibly back the 0-0 (11/2) or 1-1 (5/1)
England v Croatia - Back Croatia 9/2 - Eduardo to score in 90 minutes n/a