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The moment of truth
It’s all over, and there seems to general agreement that the best team in the tournament won the trophy. However there are plenty of precedents in which that did not happen. The 1966 World Cup may have been one.
England lost, and yet they might not have, if they had seized the moment, after the substitutions had been made, and after they had equalised out of nothing. The Spanish were disorganised, off balance and under pressure. England were ascendant and had a throw in around twenty yards from the Spanish goal line. What would Rodri have done? He’d have thrown the ball to Yamal. What did Kyle Walker do? He looked around, for many long seconds, then threw the ball to Stones, who passed it back to Pickford, who went long and gave it back to Spain. They regrouped and England barely saw the ball again.
Courage over caution, that’s what the moment called for. Walker took the opposite approach, and that’s when England lost.
Don Juan
Watching the game on BBC it’s good to see Juan Mata on the pundit panel. One of my favourite Man U players and an exceptional human being. I wish he was still involved with the club, if only to dilute the Dutch cabal that seems to taking over the coaching side.
Off target
www.bbc.com/sport/football/videos/czk0y5dkmrpo
Quite a few of these celebs are unknown by me, but whatever if they do win it isn’t coming home. That would be Scotland.
Yes, I know the FA was formed before the SFA but the first recorded football club is said to be the Football Club of Edinburgh in 1824. 
To the pedant who accused me of being an ABE, (Anyone But England I assume) I’m not. I have two dogs in the race, so I am neutral. But why should the English expect their team to be our second choice?
Out there
Thing on Netflix called Obliterated. It explores the boundaries of bad taste, burns them to the ground and drives off into the unknown. So far, it’s great.
Fugit
It’s hard to believe but Mr Brightside is almost 21years old. It’s even harder for me to believe, but Skinner’s Rules is ten years older.
The Kinkster
Kinky Friedman died yesterday. I knew him. I read his books and when he was signed up for the Edinburgh Book Festival I volunteered to chair him.
It was an interesting gig. He brought his guitar, did an hour of songs and standup and only read from his current book because I persuaded him. Afterwards we went to eat. I blew most of my chair fee on the tab. He told me ‘It will be returned to you tenfold,’ which of course it never was.
Kinky was a great friend of Willie Nelson. During that dinner he talked about him, fondly. He told me that one of the things about Willie was that he never refused an autograph, to the extent that he would stand for an hour and more in the rain signing his name for fans.
A couple of years later I was looking for a title for a Skinner and recalled that story. I called Kinky and asked if he minded me using it. He said ‘Fine, go ahead.’ Thus, my novel, ‘Autographs in the Rain’, came to be called what it is. Around that time a couple of US kids appeared in the queue after one of my Festival gigs and asked me to sign a book for him. ‘The Kinkster reads you,’ they assured me.
I hadn’t thought about him in a while, but it was a shock to hear that he had died. This afternoon I read an obituary that said he’d gone back to recording music independently in his later years. When I looked for it on Apple Music, I found a song. It was written and recorded in 2018, and it was about, and dedicated to, Willie Nelson.
The title? ‘Autographs in the Rain.’ Returned to me tenfold, you might say.
Taxi for Jo
I don’t like to go public with my feelings about US politics, because I have American family and friends on either side of the fence and find it better to sit on it. But …
Until tomorrow I am the same age as Donald Trump. Would I feel comfortable about running for office today? Yes. If I did and I could would I vote for myself? No.
Last night’s US debate was supposed to determine, among other things, the fitness for office of the two candidates. The general consensus is that Joe Biden failed to do that, spectacularly. Today his spinners are hard at work, claiming that it was only an off night, and that he had a cold. Maybe he did, but the job for which he is running doesn’t allow for that. The incumbent has to be on the ball seven days a week, and perform dynamically regardless of the state of his sinuses.
Whatever, the bottom line is this: the issue is not only how the candidates are now, it’s how they will be in four years time. That’s why I couldn’t responsibly vote for myself. On that basis could any elector place their security in Biden’s hands? I don’t see how.
Could they take a chance on a 78-year-old Trump, all other issues aside? If he is re-elected, halfway through his term he will be the age that Biden is now.
I’m the last guy in the world to encourage ageism, but if I was a US Democrat, I would be saying ‘Joe must go. The devil’s at the door.’
To be replaced by? That’s their business, but I would look for and have in place someone much younger, charismatic and possibly with no political back story. I can think of a couple of possibilities but for now, let’s watch that space and see what happens over the next month or so.
A non-life
Those who have read the dedication of one of my books know that when I was two years old, my mother had a stillbirth, a boy, my brother, whose existence, by which I mean his time alive in the womb, was basically denied by the system.
Things may have changed since then, but in 1948, stillbirths were recorded in a closed register. It was the same within my small family. I had no knowledge of the event until I was seven or eight when my dad let something slip while talking to an acquaintance, in my presence. A few years passed before I asked him about it. When I did, he told me, but in the briefest of terms.
It ate away at me but I didn’t follow it up until I was in middle age when a reader told me that the stillbirth register was in fact accessible, on request. I now have a copy of my brother’s non-birth certificate. I carry a piece of him in my heart and the older I grow the more I feel that I am living his life for him.
I am not going into the circumstances, for all I have are third party stories. However what did anger me when I saw the certificate, and still does, beyond mere anger indeed, is the fact that the attending obstetrician was allowed by the system to certify the event, to attribute its cause, and to enter it into the register without counter signature, or any independent endorsement.
‘Feeble’ was one of the words he used. I weighed ten and a half pounds at birth; you may understand why I might need some persuasion of that!
I hope that the stillbirth certification system has been changed at some point in the 75 year existence of the NHS. Finally, I intend to find out. If it hasn’t, the Holyrood Health Secretary will be hearing from me.
R.I. P. O. F. F.
Every time I have to go through or to Edinburgh Airport, I hate the place a little more. It’s a profit centre for private investors, one with a captive market to be ripped off to the max. Six weeks ago I parked there for an hour and a half while collecting family. £15. Today when seeing them off I did the same thing, for the same time, in the same space. £22.
I know, it’s not Edinburgh alone. A few years ago I took a taxi (black cab: it had to be) from Heathrow to Windsor. Next day I took another, back to the airport. The cost was half of the outward journey.
We’re being told at the moment that our major parties are tough on crime. Time they took a look at this, ‘cos it’s ******* criminal.
W*nker
Normally I am not a fan of book reviews, as they are no more or less than one person’s opinion, but for this oI will make an exception. Spot on, and shame on the publisher.
Stop digging!
Those who know me well are aware that in the Thatcher era I worked for the party of the great and good.
Then, behind Atilla the Hen, its stars included Geoffrey Howe, (I have a memory of him having a fag and an Irn Bru with the late, wonderful, Margot Macdonald) Michael Heseltine, (possibly the best Prime Minister we never had), love him or hate him, the incredibly brave Norman Tebbit, and the charismatic Cecil Parkinson.
Yes, there were some at the other end of the scale. The last two Tory Secretaries of State, pre-Holyrood, for example, men I would cheerfully have followed into withering gunfire. (Until they were past the point of no return: then I would have wished them a cheerful farewell and exited stage right.) And another, a Defence Secretary in the first Maggie administration, who was less acceptable in my view than a turd at a dinner party.
But never at any point back then did I ever imagine that those people would be succeeded by such a car crash as the one we are witnessing now.
I’m trying to find a bright side to look on, but all I can think of is Monty Python.
Durability
Over the years I have gone with Scottish bands above all others. I have an obscure personal connection to Texas. I was a fan of Shuggie and Shout at the apex of their powers. (Who? Work it out) I have been tied to Del Amitri since they wrote and recorded the greatest World Cup song ever. But for quality, creativity, durability and general all round niceness, one stands out; Rock on Deacon Blue.
Explain?
Can someone explain to me why ‘poo’ is more acceptable than the other word for faeces, the one with four letters?
Wally
Watching Rishi read his suicide note my partner asked me why he wasn’t under an umbrella. ‘That,’ I told her, ‘is the fault of a man called Steve McClaren.’
Unified
I’m a boxing watcher, have been all my life, so here’s a prediction. Usyk beats Fury easily on points. One note of caution: if one judge had scored one round differently, ie for Joshua rather than Usyk, AJ would have been won.
Wet Wet Wet
All you music lovers out there, can anyone tell me why incontinence pads are known in the care industry as Kylie sheets? I must say, it’s got me spinning around.
Davey must go
A bad night for the Tories in England for sure, but before the rest get too excited: much is being made of Labour’s win in Blackpool South, but nobody is making anything of the fact that the Labour winner polled around 1500 fewer votes than its candidate in the 2019 general election.
Fact is that angry Tory voters stayed at home or voted for Reform, a fledgling right wing party that may help deliver a massive left wing majority nationally later this year.
For me, the other major losers in Blackpool were the shameless Lib Dems, who actually achieved a negative swing.
Question
Am I the only person in the world who can’t tell Ryan Reynolds and Ryan Gosling apart?
Short memory
Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, has declared that the people must decide who leads Scotland.
I had time for the guy until I read that, for there are a couple of gaps in his logic. When his party fulfilled its manifesto promise in 1999 by setting up the Scottish Parliament, the voting system was put in place in the expectation that there would never be a majority administration, and that if by some chance there was it would always be Labour.
In fact ‘the people have decided’ only once, when the SNP won 69 seats out of 129. On every other occasion we have had a minority government, or a deal cobbled together behind closed doors.
And then there’s Anas’s own position. Did the people vote for him? I don’t think so.
Persnickety
I am pedantic, okay, but I am annoyed, genuinely, by the number of journalists who do not know the difference between principle and principal.
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