Someday

Someday I'll come back here. It's just a mattter of time. Wait and see, eh ?

The Arrogance Of Man

Goodbye snow. Or good riddance, perhaps ? A common thought this week, no doubt, as humans came face-to-face with Mother Nature in the form of huge amounts of snowfall across Scotland.

Finding himself defeated by the elements, man turned angry as he always does when he cannot control every aspect of the planet around him.

As ever, when that mastery of the elements eludes humanity someone has to be to blame. And those who are blamed try to look for excuses. Funny really.

Rather than wonder at nature; its beauty, its danger, we treat the weather elements as an enemy to be defeated in a battle to preserve 'our way of life'.

Are we winning ? Ask those trapped in their cars on the motorways, tired and cold and frustrated and, yes, angry.

Now, apparently, lessons will be learned, plans will be drawn up, new laws introduced so this is less likely to happen again. We must await the results of all of this human activity with a great deal of interest.

But will you allow me a smile and a sense of almost profound happiness when the natural world triumphs again ?

Ingerlund, Their Ingerlund

Who'd be a member of England's World Cup Squad right now ? Any volunteers ? No, I thought not. Me ? Frankly, I'd rather be sitting in front of that Utah firing squad.

So spare a thought for the unlucky 23 who are there just now and the manager and all his staff. Don't be full of Scottish glee at their misfortune because, well, at least they are there while the Scots have failed to qualify for the party.

Their lack of comfort at failing to win a couple of matches at the World Cup goes beyond costing some of us a few quid at the bookies. It says a lot more about the people who play the game, those who watch it and the general culture of the society that produced both.

Of course England, with the talent available to Fabio Cappello, should have been able to beat USA and Algeria. They did not although it should be noted they didn't lose either. Of the factors the players and management have direct control over which produced the results perhaps the most important are player fatigue and the doggedness of their opponents.

Tiredness should not be overlooked. Yes they are athletes but the demands placed on their bodies to perform at their optimum is something mere mortals have very little grasp of. They have all spent eight months making the English Premier League the most watched and talked about football competition on the planet and the physical and mental exertions that places on them are great.

It is not just a game of football. Manchester United versus Chelsea is not like the Sunday amateur game at the local public park. Unless you see the effort required to be a professional at close quarters it is a difficult thing to appreciate. They do work hard. It's not simply a case of running about for a couple of hours each day then swanning off to the local pool hall or gambling away their millions (although that happens as well). Anyone who thinks it's a cushy number should try it.

So after all that they are now expected to be at the top of their form after a long season when any sensible person at this time of the year is contemplating a fortnight summer holiday. If office workers think like that, why not Wayne Rooney ?

And then there is the other main factor; the opposition. England may look at their three group opponents as potential lambs to the slaughter but from the opposite perspective there is the real chance of causing an upset.

No doubt the USA, Slovenia and Algeria have been looking forward to their day in the (winter) sun for months. And their coaches have been planning how to stifle superior opponents for just as long. No less a person that Jean-Paul Satre once mused that footballl would be an easier game if it wasn't for the presence of your opponents, words which Cappello can meditate on now with some bitter experience.

The case in point is the USA. They were gifted a draw they might not have achieved on their own merits but the fact still remains that their level of tactical awareness and preparedness far outstripped anything they managed against Slovenia in their next match. It was very much a case of going after the English and letting the other games take care of themselves.

And as if these factors produced a dangerous thicket to be negotiated with care there come the ones over which Cappello and his men have no control. Apparently, a nation expects and that expectation, on current evidence, only adds another obstacle to success.

Every World Cup since football's regeneration in England started 20 years ago brings more and more of that country's population into the World Cup vortex. It's not so much about the game and sporting pride as the national interest.

Only the people who run the UK government face the kind of pressure placed on an England team entering the World Cup. The players are not workers trying to achieve the highest goal their job allows, they are representatives of the nation; a nation that believes only in its own greatness and senses a chance to seize it every four years on the football pitch. 1966 and all that. But that same nation feels no need to offer anything of its own to help achieve that goal. It is a demand for power fuelled by other people's effort. A right but without any need for responsibility. Ask what your nation can do for you, not what you can do for your nation.

The English media fuels a sense of entitlement without the need for self-sacrifice. I imagine before a ball was kicked in South Africa the English team felt weight down by all of this. Just look at Robert Green's face as he stood in the player's tunnel waiting to walk out onto the pitch before the USA game. Contrast that with the South African team singing their way onto their own field of (shattered) dreams.

And when it all goes pear-shaped, as it surely must, the blame game starts. People with no idea of what it takes to be a professional athlete become experts. Fans whose only effort is to walk to the ground from the boozer get the right to hound and pilory people.

And before you start on the "I pay your wages" line, consider this. The money England fans paid to watch their team under-perform in South Africa goes straight into FIFA coffers, Rooney and co never see a penny of it. Even their multi-million pound club contracts come from Rupert Murdoch, not the fans.

Perhaps the best bit is the sudden conversion from ordinary punter to tactical expert, where supporters feel free to sound off about not just the failings of the players but the inability of the manager to get the best out of them.

The sport follows the sport. The blood-letting, the recriminations and the players' wounded response all combines into a downward spiral that only makes things worse.

The only way out is honesty. Let England the nation and England the team draw up some parameters. The players should show humility, respect and even start to downplay their own chances of ever becoming world champions. That could lead the way for a nation to re-assess its relationship with the national team, accept its limitations and sooth passions in danger of going wildly out of control. The only other option is a not-so-slow descent into national psychosis.

I Guess

I guess I'm just finding life a bit difficult at the moment.

I think people have difficulty in interpreting my intentions.

I want for nothing.

I like to think things are better and different.

I wish.

Icebergs In Tayport

You know the feeling you get when you've heard a song some time ago, liked it, but the passage of time means you forget some of the lyrics when it pops back into your head for the first time in ages ?
You still want to sing it to yourself, or even just remind yourself how good it was. Thanks YouTube.

Cry For Africa

Its former colonial masters have two images of Africa; war and famine. The nation states which comprise the continent would much rather it wasn't that way. And the people who are citizens of those states must have the same wish.

Despite endemic corruption and under-development they have made some progress and are always seeking to make even more strides towards persuading the white man that there is more to their world than meets our eye.

That must have been at least one reason for Angola deciding to host some of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations matches in Cabinda. OK, so other reasons mights have included trying to pacify locals,most of whom have never accepted Angolan rule almost since the day Luanda was given control of the former Portugese colony, on its own independence in 1975.

But since a 2006 ceasefire in the long-running "forgotten war" there must have been hopes that some kind of normality could be mapped out for the oil-rich enclave, even if there was ongoing resentment at the way Angola exploits those oil revenues for its own ends rather than for those of the Cabindans.

To some degree Angola's image to the rest of the world, which the Luanda government knew could be portrayed in a more positive light with the award of the 2010 Africa Cup of Nations, rested partly with the risky decision to build a new football stadium in Cabinda and stage some matches in the tournament there.

And now, with the attack on the Togo team that has been wiped away. It is a tradgedy for Angola and Cabinda first of all because, despite the 2006 accords it proves the Angolan government and the separatists have not made lasting progress towards a meaningful resolution of the independence struggle. It could signal more violence in the region.

It is bad news for Angola's reputation abroad and for the dream, the hope that the country put before expectation, that it could organise a huge international event. Those who had wanted, and worked towards, throwing off the image of a civil war-torn nation have had at least some of their hopes dashed.

And, lest we forget, it is bad news for the whole of Africa. The developed world will say, "We told you so." Africa again becomes a place of endless violence, a place of fear and loathing where it is not safe to tread and which, some might say, we should simply give up on as a basket case.

With the World Cup heading to South Africa this summer will the half a million tourists expected there still look on it as a holiday or a scary trip to the heart of darkness ? And more to the point, will the cries of the powerful simply say it's not worth the risk to give Africa a chance to prove that it is more than just a place of hunger and bloodshed ?

Carry On Regardless

A friend asked me, in all seriousness, why this weekend's football had been postponed. Another, with more good humour, enlightened me about the problems they had getting a train to and from work. Others ask why the pavements haven't been cleared and the bins emptied.

Ahem. The football's off because overnight temperatures where I live are about the seasonal norm for Siberia. The trains aren't running because the diesel's freezing in the fuel tanks. And the streets haven't been gritted because there's no salt, while the bin lorries can't get up steep hills because the roads haven't been gritted.

In case you haven't noticed we have a weather emergency. That doesn't mean a wee bit more snow than usual or some additional nights of frost. It means a weather event so unusual that we have not seen its like in one, perhaps two, generations.

Given the facts as they exits I am amazed the entire country hasn't ground to a complete halt. Yes, we are not prepared for this. But my question is why should we be ? We certainly should be equiped to deal with what we know and have experienced in the past. But 1963, the last time we got a winter like this, is almost 50 years ago. Who is around who can offer their pearls of wisdom to us now who was working back then ?

So we do what we can with what we have and leave the rest to Mother Nature. That's the long and short of it folks. Those who desist are no respecters of the weather and, when it's -11C outside during the day, I would much rather give the elements their due.

It is a times like these you realise humans expect too much of themselves and of others. We think we can carry on regardless no matter the conditions and then find out we can't. And when we can't then someone must be to blame. But when things aren't normal then things don't work normally.

When the Inuit see the winter coming they build an igloo and wait for it to pass. Even in Siberia, although the roads are open and people go to work, they batten down the hatches.

But our frenetic lives cannot be disrupted. We must be able to go to work and our bosses simply demand that we be there no matter the risks. If there is no need to be at work, or no work, then we must be able to roam free to spend money in shops, socialise, be busy.

And if we are unable to do any of the above then our lives are unfulfilled, we become sad, or more likely anxious, stressed and angry.

What's the best thing to do ? Stop worrying, probably. It'll get warmer soon.