... but I stopped. Now I'm a dad, and may blog again...

Saturday, February 12, 2011

205: Breaking news: general public prefers football to art, shock!

First sentence: something about music, like Country or Breakcore, or Europop or rip-rap, or something.  Second sentence: sarcastic sneer and self-depreciating in-joke.  Third sentence: shoe-gazing mumble about my own writing or my own thoughts.  Fourth sentence: crowbarred in quote from Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins.  Fifth sentence: me wishing I was rich and successful.  Sixth sentence: question about what the rest of the blog will be about.
                                            
Second paragraph: one long sentence that stretches the length, width and breadth of the entire paragraph which rambles on aimlessly filling up space, word length and 8-bit bytes, and uses a semi-colon because I really like the way they balance a sentence like a set of weighing scales; but what happens in these cases is I over flourish the syntax by slightly misusing technical words and by this point the sentence has generally forgotten what it was about at the start and might as well be consigned to the recycle bin for all the good it’s doing.

Blankspace has been open now for two hours, but all the art lovers of Manchester have instead put on their football fan hats and gone to watch the derby.  If we showed the match in here we might be able to rope in a few stragglers so we could add their number to the clicker.  In my little bubble I imagine that art lovers and football lovers are separate groups with no crossover; then reality reminds me that everyone in the world is obsessed with the game.  Still at least it’s not tennis; Jesus Christ that is a boring game.  And the Manchester derby is a good bit of local culture; I should be at the pub, pint in hand, roaring at the television like it’s Wrestlemania 2000 and I’m 18 again.

I wonder how other non-football/pub related cultural venues are doing this afternoon?  As far as I can tell it is a sunny day and might even be warm.  If this was a summer day I would be happy to watch the derby then retire to the revelry of the beer garden.  Oh wait, does football turn off in the summer?  I think it might do.  Cricket?  I’m told that cricket is just a big picnic/piss-up in the sun.  Can this be true?  It sometimes seems that everyone in Manchester cares about the football.  I have heard ancient old ladies discussing form, injuries and points of City and United on the bus and in the cafe.  I never saw this in the little city of Lancaster where I come from.  Football is just bigger and more prominent here; even my friends have become noticeably more obsessed with it since moving here.

I went to see a few Everton matches when I was younger, and am definitely up for doing it again.  Although I don’t share the passion for Everton that my family do (granddad, dad, uncle, and cousins), it’s still a good day out.  Memories of Goodison park:  having a hotdog with those crispy onions shaken from a packet (the only time I have had onions like that); the woman who throws Everton mints into the crowd from a basket; sitting right at the back one day; my granddad laughing at a chant about an ‘Italian cunt’ of some description; being behind the net as an aging Neville Southall pottered and creaked; tight-knit terraced houses painted blue; police on horseback; and that’s about it.  I can’t remember anything about the matches, players, opponents or scores, but somewhere in the boxes of old stuff at my parent’s house it is possible I have a programme or two.

Final paragraph:  either an attempt at a witty summation featuring a call-back to the start of the blog, or a bland petering out of the blog that just sort of ends at a nowhere point.  Penultimate sentence: which will it be?  Last sentence:  I don’t know; I can’t tell anymore. 

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