Delia Goes up in My Estimation
As an Ipswich supporter, I’m not a fan of Delia Smith, because of her Norwich connections.
But she did go up in my estimation on Thursday, when she was promoting her new book and talking about football in League One on Radio 5 Live. She made the statement that she’d rather go to Hartlepool than Chelsea to support Norwich. She also said she had nothing against the fans of Chelsea, but that she had to wait for an hour before she could leave because of the security surrounding Abramovich and his entourage.
If I was the Chairman of a football club and they had treated me like that, then I wouldn’t go.
Roy Keane on Ireland-France
Roy Keane was very blunt about Ireland on the BBC yesterday. There’s a video on the link, but here’s some of what he said.
France were there for the taking and Ireland didn’t do it. Same old story.
If I’d been there in the dressing room after the game, I wouldn’t be talking about the handball. I’d focus on why the defenders didn’t clear it. They should’ve cleared it.
I’d be more annoyed with my defenders and my goalkeeper than Thierry Henry. How can you let the ball bounce in your six-yard box? How can you let Thierry Henry get goal-side of you? If the ball goes into the six-yard box, where the hell is my goalkeeper?
He has a point, but there is one point that no-one has made in the media.
I play real tennis a lot and like anybody who plays these sort of games, you play to where the ball lands. So if you know if an opponent’s serve is going out, you never run for it. It’s the same in football. Does a goalkeeper jump if the ball is going two metres over the bar? Of course not!
I have not seen a shot of the face of Shay Given, but did he think that Thierry Henry’s handball was so blatant that the referee would blow his whistle? So he didn’t go for the ball as it came back across the goal.
So perhaps the real fault of the Irish team was that they didn’t play to the whistle.
Never Trust the French
The Irish seem to have taken their defeat by the “Hand of Henri” very well.
But it just shows how even nice Frenchmen can be sneaky!
Egypt v Algeria
This seems to be one of those football matches with more aggravation than a river full of crocodiles.
You can watch it on Eurosport at 17:30 in the UK. They are three hours ahead of us.
Was Robert Enke a Coeliac?
When I heard of the sad death of Robert Enke, the German goalkeeper, I wondered if his depression was caused by being a coeliac. Note that one of the symptoms of coeliac disease is depression, because your brain doesn’t get all the vitamins it needs. All top class sportsmen are fit and extremely well-monitored for any small health problem. They also often take high-pasta diets to improve stamina.
There have been several cases of top-class sportsman suffering depression and other similar problems, when they appear to have everything going for them.
I would never have posted this question, but someone found this blog, by typing “Robert Enke Coeliac” into a search engine. So I’m not the only person who thinks that this might possibly have been his problem. Note that I said might and I’m only speculating.
It should also be said, that if one in a hundred of the UK population is a coeliac, why is Hayley Turner, the very successful jockey, the only known coeliac?
Thank Heaven for Duckworth-Lewis
England beat South Africa by the smallest of margins; one run. And that was by Duckworth-Lewis. Phew!
There is a serious point here though. Not about cricket but about statistics.
We should all know more about how to interpret statistics. It should be the fourth R taught at school; after reading, riting and rithmetic.
The Death of Robert Enke
Robert Enke was Germany’s leading goal-keeper.
But he committed suicide by throwing himself under a train yesterday.
Why?
Last night, a program by Rosa Monckton was shown on BBC1. It was all about the pressures of caring for disabled children. It was heartrending and my late wife and I count ourselves lucky, that we didn’t suffer more than the odd teenage problems with ours.
Robert and his wife, had a child with a severe heart problem, who died in 2006.
My wife was a family barrister and she had seen many times how such a set of circumstances could destroy a family. She felt that very few ever survived intact.
Even one as successful and financially secure as Robert Enke.
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Valencia
Just watched Murray win in Valencia.
It was our last holiday. It rained and rained until the Monday, when we had to take the flight back to Stansted.
I wrote this soon after she died about Valencia.
We had not intended to go on holiday again in 2007, especially as we had already booked a fly-drive holiday in Thailand for February 2008. But my wife suffered the worst professional nightmare a barrister can! A case settled unexpectedly and she had a hole in her diary. So she felt that a weekend away before winter set in would not be a bad idea.
So why did we go to Valencia?
I searched easyJet and Ryanair for what was available at a sensible price from Stansted in three or four days time.
Valencia was either first or second for value and convenience and there appeared to be a good five star hotel called Las Arenas on the beach. The value for that was good too.
So we booked and flew out at lunchtime on Friday. The hotel was stunning, friendly, extremely comfortable and very much worth the hundred and fifty pounds a night we were paying.
But you couldn’t say that for the weather! It rained cats, dogs and hippopotami until the Monday morning, which was the first day my wife was able to have one of her beloved swims.
Valencia is an architectural gem, with buildings ranging from the classical and religious to the ultra modern.
Valencia is unusual in that after catastrophic floods in the 1950s, they diverted the River Turia around the city and created a linear park that runs from the city centre to the coast.
It would be interesting to know what fuss would be created if a city these days decided to divert a river as big as the Turia.
We ate very well in Valencia.
The most amazing and perhaps one of the best restaurants we ever visited was Ca Sento, which according to the guides is one of the best in Spain, let along Valencia. I can’t remember what I ate, but it was a spectacular gluten-free meal without any compromise to taste.
But we also ate in a tiny tapas bar behind the cathedral, where we sheltered from the rain. Superb red wine was a couple of euro a glass, food was tasty and wholesome, and the atmosphere was best described as Spanish and local. They knew about gluten too!
And then there was the incident in another fine seafood restaurant in the city centre. My wife was wearing the red tee-shirt dress with the stars, she’d bought in Nice. When we had finished, she needed to pay a visit and climbed a spiral staircase at the side of the dining room to the toilets upstairs. As she came down, I walked over to meet her and I heard a fat English lady at my side say something like, “Who does she think she is in a dress like that? She must be nearly fifty!”
Not a bad compliment for someone of fifty-nine.
I shall always remember Valencia. But I may never go back!
Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t.
St. James’s Park
Newcastle United play at St. James’s Park in Newcastle. Or they did? But now they play at sportsdirect.com@St. James’s Park, as the stadium has been rebranded.
My first thought when I heard this was a very practical one. In the days of fast sports news on a Saturday afternoon, when the call is something like, “Over to Alan at Old Trafford!”, would they really say “Over to Alan at sportsdirect.com@St. James’s Park”? No! They’d either use St. James’s Park or just Newcastle.
So Mike Ashley won’t be getting many bangs for his bug.
But he has spawned a lot of humour in the press. Here’s the piece from The Times.
It puzzles me how a man, who obviously has talent to produce a multi-billion pound business, can make such a simple mistake.
The Anonymous Widower 