Friday 29 June 2007

Dangerous T-shirts, testing tea bags,raving coaches and dodgy defenders!

Giovanni Trapattoni and Prince Charles

Rather than the beginning, which always seems to get more than its fair share of starts, let's go back a couple of weeks, to when this colyoom showed surprise and disgust at Prince Charles' apparent lack of grey matter.
For those of you who managed to escape my blather that week, we're talking about how the heir to the British crown had appeared nonplussed when (the then) President Reagan served him up a cup of Rosy Lea with a teabag in it.
"I didn't know what to do!" grumbled the Prince, precipitating a mean-spirited diatribe from your scribbler.
One sensitive local soul, who shall remain nameless for fear of being outed a staunch monarchist in this Republic of Ireland, took the time and trouble to point out that, quite possibly, I had missed the point; shot my load in the wrong direction, as it were.
She reminded me that over in Yammerikka, it was quite possible that Chazza's cuppa was in fact not a cup at all, but a mug, served without saucer.
Given that set of circumstances his Princeship might indeed not have known what to do, as in 'what to do ... with the bag'.
After all, you wouldn't want to dump a wet squidgy payload onto the polished oak desk of the White House's Oval Office, would you?
Hey, leave Bill Clinton out of this.
The obvious question that follows is 'Do we care?', and the temptation is to say 'Only as much as Bertie Ahern cares about repaying those 'loans' from his mates.
But this colyoom is nothing if not fair. That item slammed the Boy Windsor for being even more brainless than his host. Now, thanks to time taken by an absurdly caring and ridiculously imaginative Galwegian, I retract my accusation.
Yes folks, it is possible that Prince Charles is an eentsy bit brainier that the (late) Ronald Reagan, even if Big Ears hasn't yet had an airport named after him.
While we're looking back at recent colyooms, thanks to Chris from Yorkshire (who reads the colyoom on the blog) who, inspired a few weeks ago by the wee item about logos lost in translation, alerted me to a certain T-shirt that was, up until recently, on sale in Burton, the male clothing retail giant.
Helping lads look all 'ard and effnic, said T-shirt sports a quasi-imperial crest, surrounded by well-foreign-looking letters; a look, no doubt; that makes you want to get drunk in Nottingham and beat up a few police after the pub.
Well, while you'd be okay wearing it darn va nick in Nottingham, don't go displaying it in Moscow's Red Square, because the shirt's crest turns out to be the emblem of the Russian equivalent of the fascist National Front Party, and those funny lickle shapes spell out the heart-warming message:
'We will cleanse Russia of all non-Russians!'
How charming! How scary! How did that happen?
Or, to be more honest, how come this kind of thing doesn't happen more often? In our modern yet tiny global village, so many, like me, live our lives in foreign countries, it is only a matter of time before tremendous linguistic faux pas dribble forth.
Giovanni Trapattoni, who I strongly suspect might be Italian, is the coach of Austrian soccer champions, Red Bull Salzburg.
Showing a poetic talent that, despite his managerial achievements, suggests he might well have followed the wrong career, Snr. Trapattoni let rip at a bunch of German journalists (what, pray, is the collective noun for more than one journalist? A 'haemorrhoid' of hacks? Perchance a 'claptrap'' of correspondents? Or what about an 'emetic 'of Editors? ... email suggestions...) who were criticising his fitness coach, Fausto Rossi.
Breaking with timeless and sacred journalistic traditions, the German hacks delivered their revenge by printing exactly what the national coach said, word for word:
"Our training is strong. Is modern. Training wins also. I have 21 trophies. There is blah, blah, blah from you. Fools write who know nothing. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I can understand people paying. No problema! Let whistle, is right. Have lost. But run 90 minutes! I am a professional when it comes to psychology. We train, make fitness. You people always make qua, qua, qua! Shit fools!"
Very well said sir! I speak no Italian and only a little German, but reading that just makes me want to learn both languages, so that I can fully enter into your fascinating mind.
While we're on the subjects of words and footballers, David Hills of The Observer reminds us that we don't have to go to mainland Europe to become dazzled by footballing crassness.
Manchester Untied and England defender Rio Ferdinand (yes, the very same fella fined and suspended for 'forgetting' to turn up for a vital drugs test) decided that the time had come to put something back, to nurture his youthful roots, by fronting a major anti-knives campaign, alongside an anti-guns initiative.
Heading off to Downing Street, Rio talked to Tony Blair about how playing shoot-em-up games on PlayStations and other consoles is turning young lads into deadly marksmen, which has resulted in many young people in urban English 'sink estates' wearing body armour to protect them when they go outside.
One of the PM's staff later declared: "Kids have no male role model. Rio's just the man!"
Sadly, Rio turned out to be 'Da Man' more than the man, when a few short months later,
he listed in a magazine a few of his favourite things:
Rio's Favourite Rapper: Notorious B.I.G.
Nice one Rio! After all, what better music could you suggest to vulnerable young things than an artist whose tracklist includes such exemplary role model ditties as 'Somebody's Gotta Die'; 'Fuck You Tonight'; 'Niggas Bleed', and wholly enchanting 'Me and My Bitch'. B.I.G., an ex-dealer, was shot dead in a drive-by shooting during a gangland war.
Rio's Favourite Book: 'Cocky' which is the story of Curtis Warren, the notorious gangland criminal mastermind who made a fortune out of drugs and murder.
Rio's Favourite Console Game: SOCOM US Navy Seals, which is described in a review as:
'A game that lets you yank victims into the darkness and do the deed. There's a cool animation as the knife runs along their soft flesh...'
Clearly Rio Ferdinand is an all-round heads-up guy, more than able to lead Britain's at-risk youth into a life of violence, crime and... well, I suppose they could always become footballers instead!
cadley1@eircom.net
Double Vision
More cartoons.

Friday 22 June 2007

It feels so good to be back home, despite the Salthill Warshow!

Salthill Airshow

Gee it's good to be back home! Traumatic times are hard enough to deal with at home, but trying to operate during them whilst being away for weeks on end really takes its toll.
Anyway, now I am home, and it's time to run around like a mad thing and try to catch up with the life I have been missing.
Time is of the essence when I return from England, because for a few days I'm so knackered, on so many different levels, that there are only a couple of hours in which I can function.
In my absence, the Snapper has done a splendid job of keeping our seedlings alive, and my first job is to get out the back, to tend and tie and water and feed our plantlets.
I'm not blind to the significance of this: thrust my fingers into the soil; get mud under my fingernails; splash water around and generally interact with the earth and the Earth, the real nature of what is home to me.
Next up is a long self-indulgent soak in a lovely hot bath. Personally I find other people's bathrooms - and their loos, for that matter - are never quite as good as your own. Last week I wrote about the luxurious life I lived in my sister's house, but even her huge bath and monochrome minimalist hoo-haa bathroom cannot compare to the feel of my average Salthill space.
Ahhh... now a flick of the radio, catch up with what's going on in Ireland...
'... claimed that he had been falsely accused of being molested by priests when he was a boy...'
Ahh, yes, back in Ireland. Nothing has changed, but just what exactly did the newsreader mean by '...being accused of being abused'?
Maybe I just heard it wrong, and maybe I didn't. Don't care, 'cos I am home, and long may I stay.
England has its plus-points, but I am happy to be back in a country where strangers smile at each other, and even chuck in the odd 'howya' when they pass walking.
Despite being a native-born Londoner, I now have to de-Irish-ise myself over there, because if you happen to cast a smiling eye towards anyone at all, you will be greeted with a verbal or physical reaction that translates as
'Wot va fuck do you fink you're lookin' at?',
which it is vital to completely ignore. The required and often desired response would be along the lines of 'Don't know, it ain't got a bloody label on it!' or 'You tell me mate, my dog died years ago, so I didn't expect to see its arsehole again.'
Any and all of the above will precipitate a fight, whilst the gentle Wesht of Ireland 'Howya!' threatens only to be followed by 'Moity morning!' or somesuch harmless nonsense.
Just as Americans are infinitely more likeable on their home soil, so too the Irish are certainly at their best when their feet are firmly planted on Irish ground.
Put it another way; for some reason, the Irish are a pain in the arse to fly with.
To be fair, I'm not talking about all the Irish here, just my 'Anns'.
For those new colyoomistas among you, my 'Anns' represent certain members of the female population aged 45 and up, who, I presume, have never enjoyed an orgasm.
Such sexual deprivation is the only reason I can come up with for them being so permanently pent-up and furious. With deep inhalations of breath snorted through flared furious nostrils, they chorus as one
'And another thing... and another thing... and another thing!', all 'things' being reasons to be verra verra angry.
I have learned to deal with them simply by dehumanising them all into a single prototype, called 'Ann D'Another-Thing'.
Anyway, put an 'Ann' from the Wesht into any airport in the world, and she becomes agitated beyond all reason.
At this juncture I have to confess that I am not allergic to a queue, and when boarding a plane with open seating, I prefer to avoid the scrummage endured by the last few on board.
Hence I will try to be as near as I can to where the queue for boarding might start. What I absolutely will not do is join my 'Anns' and their red-faced white-shirted tired-eyed hubbies in a queue for a plane that has not even arrived yet.
What in god's name is the point of queuing for something that is still 33,000 feet up and quite possibly flying over Norway?
Why do these Irish women get so worked up about flying? I accept that for some of them it might be a new and exciting experience, but the majority, I am sure, have flown many times before, yet they squabble and push and give out and snort and flare their nostrils as if there were only one seat on the plane, and imminent death awaited those who did not make it.
These women have lived their lives in an Ireland that barely exists any more. I should be more patient and appreciative of the fine people they are.
Right, sure, yeh, but I'm not. They drive me crazy with their yabbering impatience and pumped-up sense of self-importance.
Hang on a mo. If you put it like that, don't they sound just a tad like me?
****
Talking of the Irish and their relationship with planes, this Sunday sees the return of my own personal bĂȘte noir, the Salthill Airshow.
Every year at this time my home town becomes packed to the gills. The local shops and restaurants make a fortune. Families have a great day out. The Airshow is really good for business.
But so is war.
War is great for business. In fact, since the end of the Cold War, the military-industrial complex has had to work overtime to keep alive the need for the planet's most expensive, effective and profitable product ranges.
By Oooh-ing and Aaah-ing at the flying death machines, you will be doing nothing more than giving your approval to the waging of war; saying that you don't object to limbless children dying of radiation poisoning on distant desert floors; admitting that global famine and illiteracy are fine as long as the powers-that-be can waste trillions upon trillions of the world's major currencies on the pretty flying machines, and their beautiful payload of cluster bombs and depleted uranium.
cadley1@eircom.net

Friday 15 June 2007

I'm seeing how the other half live, by living like my sister!

pool cleaner
My sister is a wonderful and beautiful person, as are her two daughters, my nieces. Not only are they attractive, generous and warm-hearted, but also they enjoy a lifestyle that ranks them up there with the 'beautiful people'.
For the last nine days, while they are away in Beverly Hills on a working holiday, I have been living alone in their house, looking after their two cats and being around for my parents, who live just around the corner.
Thankfully my Dad is now back home, feeling generally better, and as far as he is concerned, altogether fine.
The rest of us are still living each day as it comes, because we, possibly more than him, are fully aware of the gravity of what happened.
Had I not offered to stay here, my sister would have cancelled her holiday, so it really was not a difficult decision to make.
These trips to southern California are vital to my sister, not only because they replenish her spirit and soul, but also because she is able to do vital business, as the most exclusive of high fashion companies come to sell their lines to her as she sunbathes by the hotel pool.
From one tiny clothes shop in north-west London, my sister has for the last 30 years financed the lifestyles to which she and her girls have become accustomed. My respect for her knows no bounds, especially as she has done with her life exactly what I have done with mine own: identify what it is she loves to do, and then made a living out of it.
The main difference between us is that while my lifestyle is full to the brim with the riches of humanity and love, it is not exactly stuffed with cash, whereas my sister's is, to use one of her favourite words, 'stunning.'
Each day during my stay I endeavour to do the two things that maintain my sanity; that is, to walk and to write.
The former has proved easy, although trailing along the pavements of polluted London roads serves only to make me really miss my view over Galway Bay to County Clare.
The latter, the writing, has proved more difficult. Even though the house is empty save for me and the cats, there flows through the place an incredible and seemingly endless torrent of staff who come to 'do' things.
In the last seven days, the house has been cleaned twice by Milla, who sings as she bangs around the house. After she left on the first day the place was immaculate, and the next day, as far as I could make out, she stripped the beds of the very same sheets she had cleaned the previous day, washed and ironed the sheets and then remade the same beds with the same sheets.
A few days later the lovely Yasmin came to wash down the paintwork and clean the house yet again.
By the time she arrived, the house had also been visited by the gardener; the pool man (who, as far as I could make out, did nothing but take a leaf blower to the leaves floating on top of the cover of the heated swimming pool in the back garden!); the car washers and the window cleaners.
How fantastic it must be to go off on holiday leaving your house messy and dirty, only to return to find it all shiny and sparkly, fluffed up pretty pillows sitting on pristine ironed sheets.
In the meantime, I am losing touch with reality. Life as I normally know it is but a distant memory. I have been home for 9 days in 5 weeks, and feel a little bewildered in my sister's world of luxury.
As I sit simultaneously recording and watching TV programmes on her Sky+ big screen TV, I watch the steam rising from her swimming pool, aware that under the pool cover, a wheeled droid patrols the pool bottom, cleaning algae and picking up leaves as it goes on its 24 hour a day journey.
Everywhere I go there are TV's. There is of course a TV in the TV room, but there is also one in the lounge-dining room, and one in each of the four bedroom upstairs. In bed at night, as I reach for the remote control to adjust the air-conditioning, I worry how this house leaves upon our planet a carbon footprint the size of Cyprus.
As I sit here scribbling, the dishwasher gurgles behind me, reminding me of a time 20 years ago when my lovely nieces visited me in my London flat.
I always took them both out on their birthdays, and the highlight of each trip would be a ride on a bus, because Uncle Charlie didn't have a car back then.
My nieces are heavenly creatures, but they never travelled on public transport, so I saw these treats as part of their education.
Anyway, on one such occasion, just before we were about to leave the flat, I was finishing off washing a few dishes that had been lying in the sink.
The older of my nieces suddenly frowned and looked plain scared.
"Ch-Ch-Charlie! What are you doing?" she spluttered.
"I'm just doing the dishes!" I replied, only to see her take a deep lungful of breath and scan every nook and cranny of my skanky old kitchen.
"But but but where is you dishwasher?" they chorused together.
"Don't have one, girls. Not everybody has a dishwasher, you know!"
But, quite simply, they didn't, and they still don't.
I begrudge my sister and her girls not one penny-pinching grote of their lovely life. I am happy that they can drive their Mercs and Beemers around the leafy suburbs. They work bloody hard and happen to sell a lot of very expensive clothes to exceedingly wealthy people.
All I wonder is that if they have never experienced any kind of real or relative financial hardship, how on earth do they fully appreciate what they have?
Personally, I love my life the way it is back in Salthill, and having lived way too close to several fiscal edges, am most thankful for everything I own and rent.
Obviously I never want my sister and her daughters to suffer in any way, but I hope that in their quest for the heights of style they do not miss the wonders of the true substance of life.
cadley1@eircom.net

Friday 8 June 2007

For ignorance and incompetence, the British Royals are in a class of their own!

Ronald Reagan, Prince Charles


Many thanks to all the readers who couldn't wait to contribute to my personal debate on what it means to be English.
A couple of weeks ago this colyoom was floundering about, trying to find one definitive certainty that might be applied to the English.
Thanks to you, I am once again reminded that one thing that an Englishman can always rely on is the eagerness of the Irish to offer their thoughts on the English. Whilst none of these particular pearls of philosophical and political opinion presented anything new to me, there was one email, from John in Renmore, that separated itself from the usual bowl of hate spaghetti and post-Famine racist begrudgery to which an Englishman living in Ireland must become immune.
There are only so many times you can say
"It wasn't me. I wasn't there."
So in the end you don't bother.
Renmore John reminded me that to be English is to exist as a subject to the crown; to be a subject of the Queen, while each Irish person is a citizen of the republic.
It would be great to believe merely because the Irish are not nominally 'subjects' that they enjoy greater freedom, liberty and societal status, but we all know that is hogwash. Hierarchies exist everywhere, and my personal quest for independence from intrusive powers does not seek to dethrone our leaders, but merely to identify which ones might be least harmful.
My Gran was a staunch monarchist, and she loved to remind us of how hard life was for the Royal family. I would go as far as agree with her that if you're just looking for a quiet life, then to be born to rule might be a bit of a bummer.
For years I thought that Prince Charles was probably an okay dude. He liked his Scottish croft; did a bit of watercolour painting; wrote the odd children's book; grew his own veggies and very probably sampled a little home-grown in front of the fire of an evening.
There were stories about his ineptitude as a human being; how he had a valet who squeezed his toothpaste onto his toothbrush for him, but I pooh-poohed such talk as small-minded frippery.
During the early 1980's, had someone asked me whether I thought Ronald Reagan or Prince Charles was the most intelligent, I would have scoffed and snorted at having to make the comparison. Clearly the then US president was a mindless plastic puppet, while Prince Charles was maybe a tad eccentric, but well educated and intelligent.
How wrong I would have been.
Just after being shot in an attempted assassination, Ronald Reagan made a most fascinating entry in his (recently-released) diary:
'.then we learned I'd been shot and had a bullet in my lung. Getting shot hurts.'
Some more cruel than I might think this description of what most would consider a major life-event lacks power and poetry, but maybe it's brilliantly concise and to the point.
Whatever your criticisms may be, the man clearly knew what was going on.
Back in 1981, when Prince Charles visited Washington, President Reagan observed in his diary:
'Highlight was noon visit by Prince Charles. He's a most likeable person. The ushers brought him tea - horror of horrors - they served it our way with a tea bag in the cup. It finally dawned on me that he was just holding the cup and finally put it down on a table.'
Reagan goes on to explain that at this point, having for a while watched the heir to the British throne scrunching his nose and appearing confused, deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver had escorted the prince back to the White House, where appropriate apologies were made.
Perhaps because his ancestors had already lost ownership of the entire continent after a war of independence started by the Boston Tea Party, Prince Charles made an effort to minimise the chances of another tea-based international incident, by explaining:
"I didn't know what to do with it."
Good gord lord above mutha help us now. It scares the hell out of me that I could have been so wrong. The man didn't know what to do with a teabag? And there was I thinking that he was generally as able as the next person to play king to my subject.
Thanks, John in Renmore, for making me wonder once more about the Royal family, and (never thought I'd live to see the day when I said this) thanks to President Reagan, for showing me that on a scale of ignorance, stupidity, incompetence and inanity, the British Royals are truly in a class of their own!
*****
Mind you, the yanks are well able to upset foreigners themselves, and not just by waging war against them. Major American corporations seem to specialise in thinking up potentiallyoffensive gems.
When US beer giant Coors unleashed their slogan 'Turn It Loose' on the massive Spanish-speaking market, they were clearly unaware that they were telling their potential customers to 'Suffer from Diarrhoea'.
The Coca-Cola Corporation upset millions of Thai people, by suggesting that the soft drink would 'Add Life', which translated into the local vernacular as 'Coke Will Bring Your Dead Ancestors Back To Life.'
Back in 1996, some genius in the marketing department of shoe giant Reebok decided the time was right to introduce a new woman's tennis shoe called the 'Incubus'. Just a bit of a shame, really, that nobody told them how Incubus was in fact a demon from medieval mythology who performed unspeakable sexual acts upon unwilling and unwitting women as they slept.
For my personal favourite we have to go to Brazil, where the quintessential American car brand Ford launched the 'Pinto' model with their customary multi-million dollar razzmatazz, until some gentle local soul had the courage to point out that they might just have a lickle ickle bit of a problem flogging a car that had the same name as the popular local slang term for tiny male genitals.
Anyone fancy a Peugeot Cocklet injection? How about a spin in an Alfa Romeo Fat Arse GTi?
cadley1@eircom.net

Friday 1 June 2007

How will the capitalist, the communist and the fascist settle their football scores?

Jose Mourinho
No more inflated bladders and onion bags. Soccer all gone upriver for a few blessed months, with neither a World Cup nor a European Championship to fill the lock.
The back pages of Redtops will be filled with speculation on transfers and all the usual managerial sacking Hoo-Haa, but I will be taking a breather.
August will be round again soon enough, when the Community Shield season opener will be between cup winners Chelsea and league winners Manchester United, and we'll all be deja-vuing like there was no tomorrow.
This comes from a Chelsea fan, a happy Chelsea fan whose team, at the time of writing has both cup and manager intact.
I originally became a Chelsea fan simply because they were my Dad's team, and he took me to Stamford Bridge. Blood is thicker than water, and as I stuck with the Blues through thick and thin, relegation and promotion, there grew a deeper bond between myself and the club.
Over the decades I realised we were not the same as other clubs. No matter which idiosyncratic character is at the managerial helm; irrespective of which super-egoed players sporting bizarre haircuts and glowing reputations wore the blue shirt; sometimes despite and sometimes because of who owned the club at any particular time; permanence and consistency as a way of life had no place at Chelsea FC.
We are and always have been the Flash Harry superstars; mere Flash-in-the-pan success merchants; flashy with money and fashion and flashy with cars and birds.
On the pitch, Chelsea always had players who were capable of flashes of brilliance. Nothing that lasted, just a 'good cup side', which is a nice way of describing a team which capitulates to minnows, but might turn on the style against the big teams, on their day, when they could be arsed.
And then came Abramovich, Kenyon and Mourinho, and everything changed.
For the first time in their history, Chelsea were consistently beating the little teams as well as the big teams, home and away, week after week. It might not be pretty, but it's bloody effective, and along the way there are flashes of brilliance just so that you know you're still watching Chelsea.
Sure United and Arsenal are a lot prettier, but all they have to offer is a cantankerous purple-faced Scot and a melancholic delusional Frenchman.
We at Chelsea can offer the full Shakespearean drama, in which the players play only small parts, distant generals out in the field, occasionally appearing in cameos when their contracts are up or another vat of transfer money is to be made
Scene: Forum on stormy day: Enter Kenyon, dressed in white silk toga, the capitalist money-maker, who is also a self-avowed lifelong supporter of Chelsea's major opponents, Manchester United:
"Dollar double cook up some trouble... two giants of their Kingdoms come. All powerful are they within their own realms, and yet, without me, they have nothing (cackle). For all his power the Russian Bear needs my face to talk to our people. He needs my shoulders on which to launder his great wealth. And as for that Portuguese fascist, the pompous piratical pri-"
As Kenyon rambles, Mourinho approaches, somehow looking so good in a simple yet stylish brown tunic with gold and blue armoured trim. Sneaking up on Kenyon, he talks quietly into his ear from behind:
"And me? You say I need you too? Truly if you think that you delude yourself more than I do when I throw away medals into the crowd. I do not need either of you, you fools. I can go today and be welcomed by millions in any Kingdom in the world."
"And so you can my handsome moody and most mysterious Iberian pally boy, but the world today is a vile and unnatural place. The Communist Bear is strong, and even richer today than any capitalist, so for you to stay here you must please the Russian. Now take my advice (cackle cackle) you will never win Mother Russia 's heart by trying to make her look foolish."
"I do not need to make him look foolish. He does it very well by himself."
Enter Abramovich in flowing purple robes, with dancing ladies in entourage.
"Hail Money Manager man and Man Manager man. Hahahahaaar! I forgot your names again, but hahahahaaaar, it does not matter, because I am all powerful and can have you drown in a bath filled with boiling borscht should the whim attract me! Hahahahaaar! Did we win the Champions League yet?"
Chelsea have always been uncomfortably big yet brittle, brash yet belittled too often.
As one after another English Premiership team is bought up like the latest fashion accessory by foreign magnates of extremely dubious pedigree, should I fear for the future of my team?
During the games of the latter half of last season, Mourinho started to sit holding his left arm up against his chest, rather unnervingly resembling Dr. Strangelove and his efforts to restrain his Heil-Hitlering arm.
Kenyon is a slimy Iago slithering sycophantically from leader to leader, while Abramovich has built a fortune on the back of broken peasants, and will quite possibly get his full comeuppance when Putin is finally removed from power.
My beloved Chelsea FC will survive all these dodgy geezers along with their dark and dismal dosh. Diving up and down in fortune and fortunes, greatness will always ebb and flow from Stamford Bridge.
Attracted to the aforementioned flashiness of the club, gifted players and great characters have always entertained Chelsea fans on our road to oblivion and back.
Dazzling talents from Jimmy Greaves to Gianluca Vialli, from Ruud Gullit to Peter Osgood, Charlie Cooke to Gianfranco Zola have graced the Chelsea shirt. Great team players like John Terry, Chopper Harris, John Hollins and Marcel Desailly have stayed the course while others have come and gone.
How will Chelsea's triumvirate of massive male egos finally settle their differences?
How will the capitalist snake, the communist capitalist and the charismatic fascist settle their scores?
Perchance we need to return to great theatrical tragedy, where by the final act the stage is inevitably strewn with bloodied bodies.
Enter John Terry, Frank Lampard, steam rising from their first team strip:
"Gaffer! Gaffer! We won! We bloody won, just like you - oh bloody 'ell Lamps! Looks like we're too late!"
"Yeh, JT! They'll never know now! It's a blue day!"
cadley1@eircom.net