I was going to put a question mark after the title, in a brave effort at optimism and I wasn’t going to mention football, in an attempt to hang on to the many readers who can’t stand the game.  However, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions and I’m trying to write this and watch three games at the same time:  Wales v Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czechia v Republic of Ireland and Italy v Northern Ireland.

They’re all part of the closing stages of qualifying for the World Cup and they’re all tight and tense, apart from the game in Bergamo, where Italy were 2-nil up with not much time left (and won 2-nil). ***

Anyway, ever hopeful, I travelled down to N17 last Sunday to watch Spurs play Nottingham Forest, who were just a point behind us in the relegation battle.  They’re now two points ahead after beating us 3-nil.  Essentially it looks as though only West Ham, who loathe and detest us with a passion (for reasons I’m not quite sure of), can save us from relegation.  We’re showing few signs of being able to save ourselves, particularly at home.

“You’ve got to ditch that team,” Mo said.  “They’re hopeless.”  That’s not the way it works, as she well knows.  Thanks to the great Pat Jennings (1967 FA Cup final), I’m lumbered, waiting hopefully for some decent football to cheer.  Yes, we are currently useless, devoid of confidence, too easily picked off by any side that scores first against us but better times must be ahead, surely.

Question is:  will I live to see them?

Relegation will cost Spurs untold millions but, you know, the only reason I’ll be really upset is because it’s bound to cost a lot of people their jobs, people behind the scenes, who probably don’t earn that much but love the club and work tirelessly to make things run smoothly.  They’ve undoubtedly been let down by those higher up, who are proving themselves beyond clueless.

I’m increasingly convinced, this being the era of the conspiracy theory, that Vinai Venkatesham OBE, our relatively new chief executive, who spent many years at Arsenal, is some kind of Trojan horse.  He certainly seems to be presiding over our destruction.  Doesn’t make it any better that I recently discovered that I’m related to somebody who went to the same prep school…

This being spring, officially, despite the other day when here in Lichfield we had four seasons in quick succession, including a good effort at snow, I did a bit of cleaning.  Proper cleaning.  As in hauling stuff out of awkward corners; pulling out fluff-encrusted dead slaters; wiping down cupboards; emptying said cupboards and disposing of contents dated 2017;  thinking about tackling the dreaded (but oh-so-useful) Venetian blinds; cleaning the winter boots; retrieving the summer sandals and sunhats (ever optimistic on the weather front, which could quite easily go the way of the footy).

Yes, you’ve guessed it, it’s the classic blog-avoidance strategy.

I couldn’t bear watching the aftermath of the footy, with the winners leaping about in delight (they still have one more match to win to get to the finals this summer) and the losers not knowing what to do, where to put themselves, how to stay upright, what to say…

So, never being one to give full concentration to the blog before midnight, I put on an old, almost antediluvian episode of New Tricks, which was followed by an even older Inspector Lynley mystery.  The opening scene had a smooth, suave expert witness saying he was still convinced that the woman appealing her prison sentence for murdering an abusive husband knew exactly what she was doing at the time, that there was no way she could now plead insanity.  The judge agreed and the woman’s father threatened the expert….you get the picture.

Next morning, we see the expert, in a beautiful home, giving his wife a surprise present and a kiss before heading for his swanky car.  “Hmm,” I say to myself.  “What’s going to happen here?  Is the car going to explode?  Or…?  No, the car’s going to explode.”  And, a millisecond later, that’s what happened.  I started laughing and thought, “Mo would be furious.”

Time after time, if we’re watching something together, before I can stop myself, I’ll say what I think is going to happen and often, too often, it’s right.  Could there be anything more infuriating!  It’s daft, really because I’m sure I’d be wrong about The Mousetrap.  Didn’t Winston Churchill leave at half-time because he’d sussed it out?  No way I’d outthink the great Agatha.

Anyway, golf, that great game of ours.  Played on Tuesday, in very blustery conditions, even for a person brought up on Ireland’s north Atlantic coast and staggered to what I thought was a very respectable 30 points.  The winning score was 43.  Wow.  Beyond impressive.  Perhaps I should have a lesson or two and discover the route to the practice ground.  On second thoughts, doubt that would do it.  Too late.  Too late.  As a Scottish friend was fond of saying whenever the game was driving him to distraction.

 

***Gutting.  Wales and Ireland beaten on penalties after late equalisers by the opposition and no goals in extra time.  In this case you can’t say “Ah well, there’s always next year.”  The World Cup is every four years.  Bugger.

I’ve been at two wonderful, very different concerts this week and apart from the technical excellence of the performers the thing that impressed me most was the teamwork.

Friends and I were in awe at the CBSO’s Scheherazade, a vibrant performance inspired by their charismatic Japanese conductor Kazuki Yamada, pouring his energy and enthusiasm into his musicians.  They responded with every ounce of their skill and musicality, working together to weave Rimsky-Korsakov’s magic, leaving us all entranced – and breathless.

In the first half, we’d had a bit of Berlioz and Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23, with the renowned Scottish pianist Steven Osborne, so we were totally spoiled.  We floated home, full of the joys and on the train home we encountered a similarly euphoric group who’d been to a comedy club gig at the Town Hall.  The only unhappy punters were the Villa fans who’d just watched their team lose 4-1 at home to Chelsea.  Football bloody hell.

At least it’s only Villa’s title hopes that are disintegrating; at Spurs it’s the whole edifice, with relegation looming.  On Thursday night, we lost 3-1 at home to Crystal Palace, continuing our role as Doctor Tottenham:  if you’re finding wins hard to come by, just come to us, we’ll revive you.  Down to ten men before half time – captain sent off – we went down with barely a whimper.  Oh, admittedly, I did hear, on the radio, the magic words:  “Spurs are having a go…”  Even so, Palace didn’t have to get out of second gear in the second half, so comfortable were they.

Thank goodness I’d decided weeks ago that I wouldn’t be going – the late, eight o’clock kick-offs are a killer, it’s so hard to get home, especially if there’s a lot of added time, which there was.  There were lots of empty seats as people streamed out, fed up and wanting to be in bed before the early hours.  If you were leaving uplifted, after a CBSO-type performance, you wouldn’t care what time you got home…

TEAMWORK.  Ah, would that my football club knew the meaning of the word.

Optimistic note:  wonder if any team’s been relegated and won the Champions’ League in the same season….COYS.

Did I mention that the concert tickets cost a £1, for a seat in the stalls?  It was a summer promotion and we ended up at the CBSO Benevolent Fund Concert, with the players giving their services free.  The Fund is keen “to help put health and wellbeing central to the company’s core values.  The Fitness to Work Scheme was devised to tackle this damagingly embedded culture of normalising exhaustion and injury in the pursuit of excellence.  Now we provide regular free specialist treatment, better access to knowledge about our bodies and minds and work to improve available data on our experiences to strengthen health and wellbeing policy.

“Already we feel the benefits of what we have achieved – including happier musicians, relief from stress and injury and better working relationships across the company.  We are proud to work with some of the best practitioners in and around Birmingham:  sports massage therapists, physiotherapists, counsellors, performance coaches and breathing experts, to name but a few….”

Musicians are athletes too.

You’ll be glad to know that we put some notes in the Benevolent Fund buckets.

The other concert, on Monday evening, was The Serenade Trio of Clare (piano), Lisa (clarinet) and Helen (soprano) strutting their stuff at Sutton Coldfield Town Hall.  The last time I was there was many years ago to give blood but this time it was for Let’s Face the Music and Dance and it was a joy.  The programme gave the threesome the chance to showcase their talents with numbers as varied as Let’s Face The Music and Dance, Ave Maria, the Clog Dance from La Fille Mal Gardee, Oblivion and Cheek to Cheek, to name just a few.

Afterwards, expecting an encore, I waited expectantly with my camera but the girls had disappeared to line up in the foyer to thank us all for coming, so there’s no sign of them in the picture below.  Apologies to all concerned.

Ah, faded grandeur, yet another reminder of Spurs.

Nearly finished the blog and nary a mention of golf, so let’s see what we can do:  Luke Donald has agreed to captain Europe’s Ryder Cup team for the third successive match, this time in Ireland at Adare Manor.  He’s led the Europeans to wins in Italy and New York and is risking biting the bullet again, aiming to became the first captain to win the cup three times in a row.

Hannah Green of Australia won the HSBC Women’s World Championship at Sentosa in Singapore for the second time, made even more special because her husband Jarryd Felton was caddying for her.

And, finally, a moan from me.  We were playing our comp last Tuesday, only a 13-hole Waltz but a comp nonetheless and when my team and I arrived at the 18th tee, one of the greenkeepers had been driving a big machine up and down and the tee markers were lying at the side of the tee.  There were a few more groups behind us, so why on earth he’d been instructed to get stuck in instead of waiting until we’d finished, who knows?

He parked up at the back of the tee and I don’t think he understood my gesticulations and Gallic shrugs asking where the markers had been….We chose a spot and carried on and fortunately we finished well down the field.  Still, I made a formal complaint.  After all, a competition is a competition.

You know how things are ticking along nicely enough and you think everything is more or less under control and then, oops, in the time it takes to open a cupboard, all the plans go out the window and domestic chaos ensues?

Admittedly, in the general global scheme of things, finding a few alien beings resting in amongst the spare pillows and duvet and the Liberty quilt that was a wedding present 43 long years ago is not going to attract the attention of Lyse Doucet or cause the BBC to interrupt their Winter Olympics coverage with a news flash – that was for the arrest of the Andrew formerly known as prince.

Anyway, I put an SOS out on the WHGC Ladies Social WhatsApp and found out that speed was of the essence because if they spread, they ruin carpets as well as clothes and not just jumpers – anything with wool in it; they made a mess of one person’s woolly carpet; and another had to have the hall, stairs and landing carpet replaced.  A strong spray of some sort was recommended or a kit from Lakeland and a previous sufferer immediately offered to come round and offer advice.

She’s on hold until I sort out the bedding and do the initial spraying, with something that I wouldn’t normally have in the house – I’m trying to be eco-friendly but am ashamed to say I have my limits.  A friend recommended stuff that could be bought from the vet’s and another friend discovered that it was in stock at Pets at Home, so off I went.  As well as being asked if I had an account, they wanted to know if I had a cat because there’s something in the spray that is particularly bad for cats.  Let’s just hope it’s equally inimical to carpet moths – or whatever their proper name is.

My chosen product got ok reviews on the website but a personal recommendation rates highest of all in my book and I’m still hopeful that an infestation can be prevented, that this is just a recce by a tiny advance party that is still asleep on the job….This cold weather and keeping the radiator off should buy me a smidgeon of time, if that’s possible.  Can you count time in smidgeons?

Just in case you’re alarmed by the featured pic (which appears at the top of the piece unless there’s a technical glitch, which is not unheard of), don’t worry:  there was no spraying anywhere near any foodstuffs, let alone a glass of red, Lidl’s best, Stellenbosch, a cabernet sauvignon merlot mix from South Africa.  Very palatable when you’re stressed, though I would stress that alcohol is no substitute for meditative deep breathing and a good night’s sleep….

I don’t suppose Lyse Doucet has too much time to watch the Olympic Winter Games but as a Canadian she’ll know that her countrymen have been making a lot of noise in Italy, the curlers especially.  There have been a few spats and accusations of cheating and at one stage one of the Canadians told one of the Swedes to “Fuck off”, an expletive that needs no translating.  As luck would have it GB’s men, the world champions, aka Scotland, meet Canada in the final.

Curling, with its granite stones that come from Ailsa Craig, that lump of rock off the coast of Ayrshire in the Firth of Clyde, near Turnberry, is baffling in its complexity to those of us who have been channel hopping rather than concentrating.  Even so, we’re now practising our floor sweeping with renewed energy, with frantic brush work that negates any need for the gym.  Never mind the fact that most of us wouldn’t be able to stand up on the ice let alone control a stone that weighs nearly 20 kilos.  The precision is astonishing.

The other night, at bridge, we were discussing the Games and marvelling at, well, everything:  the speed and skill and artistry of the skaters and skiers; the bonkers bounce of the snowboarders with their stratospheric somersaults and twists; the lunatic speeds of the lugers, skeletoners and bobsleighers – of almost everybody, really; they’re all amazing and completely mad.

So, there we were, four supposed grown-ups, a few decades in, sporty people once but hampered now by knees, hips, wrists, feet that creak more than they once did, working out whether we were regular or goofy.  You may remember, that’s the basic snowboarding stance.  So, how do you decide?

Turns out you stand with your feet together and get somebody to give you a little push – not too hard and definitely not down a slope – and whichever foot you put forward tells you your stance.  We all gave it a go and turns out I’m regular, if that experiment really was the thing to go by.  There’s a wee skateboarding park a few hundred yards from the house where I could test it out but think that would be unwise.

Although I do have a duvet or two that are on their way out and would help soften the landings…

 

 

 

I had a birthday last weekend (thanks to all of you who sent good wishes).  No, it wasn’t a big one – just a normal one…….but perhaps at this end of the age spectrum every one becomes a big one?  Anyway, I was lying in bed, dozing, and was brought fully awake by the phone ringing.  The name showing on the display was “Rossie” and I instantly thought to myself, “Gosh, it’s my birthday!”

Rossie is an old pal from school and lives in Greystones in Co Wicklow.  A horsewoman and a hockey player, she would have made a very decent fist of golf but the game never stole her heart.  Although we don’t see each other all that often she never misses my birthday, nor I hers.

“Happy happy birthday” she breezed down the phone and I thought what a lovely way to start my day.  As you can imagine, two Irishwomen can blether away for hours but we were only fifteen minutes in when the conversation turned to football – Rossie being an ardent Liverpool supporter.  Soon we moved on to the disappointing form of Spurs and Patricia’s gloomy trips up and down to N17.  At that juncture eleven points from nine home games was providing scant enjoyment for the faithful but undaunted P was going to sally forth again that weekend for the home fixture.

As my brain was grappling with which day were Spurs playing, I said to Rossie, “What day’s this?” and barely were the words out of  my mouth when she screeched, “It’s the 31st.  It’s not your birthday at all.  We’re a day early!”

Cue much chortling and guffawing and disbelief that we could both get it wrong.  Still makes me laugh when I think about it.  And, no, she didn’t ring back the next day, just sent a text, “Happy ACTUAL birthday!”  What a hoot!

Last week I posted a photo of the first daffodil in bloom and I’m happy to report that that lone, brave little soldier has now been  joined by squadrons of others.  And far away, on the west coast of America one of the blog’s favourites, Justin Rose, was also blooming, and in quite a spectacular way.

The Farmers Insurance Open, played over the two courses at Torrey Pines, has been kind to Rose in the past.  He won there in 2019 with a record score of 21 under par and when he opened this year with a blistering 62 I’m sure many of his rivals suspected they were on a hiding to nothing.  How right they were.

Rose, now the grand old age of 45, went wire to wire following up that opening salvo with scores of 65, 68 and 70 for a record breaking score of 23 under par and victory by seven whopping shots.  It was a masterclass of a different order.  After all, a test of being seven ahead with only eight holes to play is not the norm.

He stayed in his own bubble of pure focus and concentration, controlling the controllables to the best of his ability, never wavering for a single second.  That oft-given piece of advice – just take it one shot at a time – can hardly be bettered but is rarely accomplished, even by the best in the game.  Rose kept a grip like a steel trap on his mind over the hours it took for the last round to unfold with nary a flicker of focus.  And so, much to my delight, he secured his thirteenth win on the PGA tour, the most of any Englishman.  I was doubly delighted because I still feel a tad guilty at pulling against him so vehemently at last year’s Masters.

There have been so many advances in golf in my lifetime.  The landscape of fitness, technology, coaching and technique are all different and highly advanced, pushing boundaries to the limit.  In my opinion the final frontier with room for significant improvement is the mental side.  I have two small personal examples for believing this and for marvelling at the human mental capacity.

Many years ago when playing out in Australia Alison Nicholas, former British and US Open champion, persuaded me to accompany her to Cairns so she/we could scuba dive off the Great Barrier Reef.  Ali was a reasonably accomplished diver whereas I was a complete novice, never having ever even donned a wet suit.  The company we were diving with assured me that total beginners were their speciality on these “hand-held dives.”

With some trepidation I allowed myself to be led down a guy rope tethered to a pontoon anchored in the outer reef.  The worst 40 minutes of my life then ensued with my instructor seemingly impervious to my sheer terror as my mask filled with water and I fought every instinct I had to bolt to the surface, which I knew was definitely the thing NOT to do.  I remember thinking that it was strange that it was here that it was all going to end.

I realised that my very life depended on me not panicking and on following every instruction from our guide.  I must have done a good job because he failed totally to gauge my distress.  When we got back to the surface I threw up every few minutes for SEVEN hours, so I truly understand the phrase being sick with nerves.  Not even a sip of water would stay down.  If I had only been able to summon a smidgeon of that focus when competing on the golf course, I’ve no doubt I’d have done a whole lot better.

Another occasion when my mental capacity took me aback was when Gill Stewart and I attended an Anthony Robbins gig in London Docklands.  Robbins was adept at exploring how control of your mind could lead to extraordinary feats, to which both Gill and I can attest as we successfully walked barefoot, in a measured fashion, across a ten-metre bed of white hot coals.   Gill didn’t suffer a single burn while with my final step I lost focus and instantly earned myself a blister.

The mind, indeed, is perhaps the final frontier in sport and that mastery might keep older competitors, like Justin Rose, at the top of their games for longer.

One thing is certain, they’ll undoubtedly have the clarity to know their own birthday.