A lot has happened in my world since I last wrote an SOTN for you.
I’ve moved to Dubai and work pressures with my new job have prevented me from contributing on here. To be fair, Merlin and the various contributors on the site have done an amazing job and I very much doubt my particular brand of painfully clichéd and over-verbose caustic observational editorial satire will have been missed too badly.
I had an amazing run on Vital, and on blueandwhitearmy.net before that and even cfc-net before that, stemming back more than 15 years. I have to say I’ve enjoyed every single piece I’ve written and it has given me enormous pleasure to see the amusement and enjoyment the readers have had (most of the time) in what I write. Also the frothing indignation and stuttering, hilarious, barely-coherent fury of the scousers; so often an easy and irresistible target of my sarcasm and well-flogged clichés.
Yes, I still hate Liverpool.
But times change and all good things must come to an end. Life goes on. This will be my last ever SOTN.
But what has compelled me to write my retirement piece, marking the biggest of three huge footballing retirements today, closely followed by the great Clarence Seedorf and not-so-great thieving cheating scumbag Javi Garcia?
Well, let me explain. One of the coolest things that happened to me recently was my little brother tweeting me a link to his first couple of Chelsea editorials online. I clicked, I read, I digested and I was mightily impressed. The boy can write.
So without further ado, I’d like to formally introduce my brother as the newest occasional writer for Vital-Chelsea.
He is a great guy, well over six foot and not finished growing. He’s athletic, so much so in fact he may well go to the next Olympics to continue our amazing Team GB rowing heritage. He has terrible, terrible banter, no chat whatsoever, the worst dress sense you can imagine and literally the worst hair I’ve ever seen on a teenager. He has no taste in music and doesn’t drink. Thomas knows more about football now than I ever will.
So for those who know me you’ll know as someone who is 5’8 at best in heels, built like a row of toilets instead of an Olympic rower but with world class dress-sense, spotty football knowledge, probably the single greatest 120 Gigs of iPod tuneage ever assembled by the hand of man, sharp banter, epic chat, an even more epic beer gut and almost no hair at all, you might think the family resemblance is tenuous. In truth nothing could be further from the truth.
I love him and he is one of the most important people in my life. The differences are superficial. We have many similarities. He’s a mad Chelsea nut, goes home and away and like me he gets the blue obsession from my Dad, someone else who has featured heavily over the years in my editorials. And he hates scousers. And T*ttenham (but not as much as Willian…)
And he can write. He is a lightyears better writer now that I will ever be, and he has a lot to say for himself.
Plus he knows how to use punctuation properly, which is one better than me!
So please make Thomas welcome here – I’m so proud of him.
Thomas, my brother. Over to you mate.
CAREFREE.
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