I’m so farkin’ bored.
Some of you may know I’m on gardening leave right now after leaving my previous employers in London last month. I’ve got just under two more months of this before I move to my new job.
Its very exciting for me because it is based in Dubai, so we’ve been redecorating the flat in London to hopefully sell it, as my wife, my three cats and I are headed out to Dubai to live in September. Those with better memories than I may remember I did a series of articles when I lived abroad in Singapore from 2009-10, and how much I enjoyed living there. In particular a wonderful evening I spent with fellow VC member StumpyBlue at the Marquee Bar watching us lift the title under Carlo that season.
It was such a good night. I wrote (at length) about it so here it is in case you have a need to read it again.
https://chelsea.vitalfootball.co.uk/article.asp?a=518701
Now, following the Blues over land and sea (and Leicester, hence the OLASAL acronym) has always been a amusement of mine. There’s something truly great about being the other side of the world in a random bar and finding that you are in the company of fellow blue bloods. Its always fascinated me the way you can have a bloke looking daggers at you wanting to rip your farkin face off for staring at his Mrs’ hugely impressive bottom, unable to express himself unless with broken bottles and machetes as he doesn’t speak a word of English, and yet the Chels come on TV and you are lifelong mates and he’s buying you both some weird-looking lurid greeny/brown shots. Weird isnt it? Its a cliche but I love how football brings us together.
Dubai has, I’m told, a very loyal and passionate group called UAE BLUES and I’ve certainly seen their banners at the Bridge for many years now. I’ve made friends with some of them on Twitter and am really looking forward to becoming one of them in a way that, for one reason or another, I never really managed to do (apart from THAT night) in Singapore.
Of course the downside is I’m not renewing my season ticket.
Talk about gutted.
Regular readers of my SOTN series will know that my Dad has had a massive effect on my life, most notably in the form of giving me the greatest gift anyone could ever wish for, Chelsea. I have been going to games with him on and off (a lot more on than off) for 26 years now and I missed it massively when I went to Singapore, and its fair to say I’ll miss him massively when I head to Dubai even if I’ll be back a lot more often so will still get to about ten or twelve games this season in all likelihood. So mixed feelings for sure. Its an incredibly exciting opportunity but God I will miss going for a curry with my Dad and watching us home and away.
But I’m not in Dubai yet.
You’d think the weather in London right now (22 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, beautiful British summertime) would make for a blinding spot of gardening leave wouldn’t you? Look up ‘Pub weather’ in the dictionary and there’s a picture of our nation’s glorious capital city today right there.
Yet, I have to say, Its dragging. I can cope with a lot but without football things get very bored very quickly.
I’ve been on holiday twice in the last six weeks. I’ve painted the flat. I’ve almost completed my first novel. I’ve completed four different PS3 games on ‘hard’ (thats the game, not me). I’ve taken back up writing SOTN articles. I’ve roared past 20,000 tweets. I’ve seen literally all the smut on the interweb, some of it several times. I’ve taken a six pack of beers over to Wandsworth Common to sit in the sun and watch the planes. I’ve figured out the meaning of life. I’ve written letters to Boris Johnson and Ryanair. I’ve blogged. I’ve been blocked on twitter by Oliver Holt. I’ve made some very nice cupcakes. (yes really). I’ve jotted down on paper literally every single permutation of the transfer market on our squad for next season. I must have watched the Chels-Munich CL final about ten times. I’ve beaten my all time best word score on Countdown (fark yeah! Four letters!) and I’ve watched Border Patrol so many times that I am actually able to guess correctly how many bags of dried fish fillets/kilos of high grade Vietnamese heroin the Chinese woman has hidden in her bra and luggage before the Aussie customs guys suss her out. I’ve even done some washing. Yep. Actual clothes. I am indeed, THAT bored.
The football season is many, many weeks away and already I’d donate a kidney if I thought it would bring the football back sooner.
Most boring of all as I’m sure you’ll agree is the endless know-nothing pontificating of football correspondents who think that by writing for the Daily Mail or the Mirror or the Indysoddingpendent that they ought to be taken seriously. Its mindblowing. Can you imagine if air traffic controllers, police, firemen or bank managers were as astoundingly wrong as astoundingly often as these clowns?
I don’t even think they care. In fact, I know they don’t. I reckon they are all on a Caribbean island right now and have been for weeks – there are lifesize paper mache models of each and every one of them at their desks in London as we speak.
They all have a very clever journalistic equivalent of the out-of-office set up.
They type up:
‘MONEYBAGS CHELSEA OWNER ROMAN ABRAMOVICH IS PLANNING AN AUDACIOUS SWOOP FOR…’
…and then put in a random name generator. The computer auto-selects a name from a list (Hulk/Cavani/Suarez/Bale/Fernandinho/Les Ferdinand/Bobby Charlton/Alexei Lalas/Spot the Wonder Dog/one of the Care Bears) and the story gets printed. Easy.
It then resets and posts another article time delayed for two weeks time which goes:
‘HUGE BODY BLOW FOR BLUES AS ((insert player name here)) SNUBS CHELSEA’
Easy. I half expect to see us linked with a big money move for Robert Fleck one of these days.
Not that the journos care. Their desktops whirr away in Wapping. Their job is done. They do nothing but sit in groups by the pool concocting ever more outrageous ways to stitch up John Terry whilst sipping ice cold beers and doing poodle-leg sized lines of Bolivia’s finest from between the smooth breasticles of any one of a small army of Thai ladyboys of questionable repute.
Probably.
Actually that cant be right.
Even a random name generator would be right once in a while by pure statistical accident.
Can someone wake me up when the footie is back on please? Ta.
CAREFREE.
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