2pm local time yesterday I sat sweating in the relative cool of the hotel reception, the thermometer on the wall proudly boasting 34 degrees C in said relatively cool area (it must have been another 5 degrees warmer outside.  It was – and at the risk of dumbfounding you with meteorological jargon - stinking fucking hot).  Shortly before midnight last night our flight captain cheerfully announced that the temperature at our destination was minus 1.  At this point I regretted my choice of returning-home outfit: shorts and flip flops.

Fast forward selecta to 7am this morning.  I’m scraping ice and frozen snow from my car windscreen.  The driver’s side of the windscreen cleared, I move around the front of the car to clear the other half, only to slip on a patch of ice, and literally legs up in the air, land full on my cold, flabby bottom.

Fortunately the additional padding from a fortnight of ridiculously cheap beer and ridiculously cheap and ridiculously good food softened the blow somewhat.

Actual conversation with whatsername:

Her: I think we’ve both put weight on this holiday.  We need to go on a diet when we get back.

Me: I thought I’d lost a bit of weight.

Her: Boobs are bigger.

Me: Well that’s good news.

Her: No, your boobs are bigger.

Me: Oh.

So it’s back to dieting again.  The knee feels a lot better now, so after Christmas I will attempt a couple of short, slow jogs to test it out.  Then I have until March 14th to prepare myself for the kilomathon, hopefully losing a bit of timber in the process.

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The moment: the thirty-yard screamer, the three-pointer, the diving catch, the hole-in-one, the double on the black to win.  We play because we all know we have it in ourselves to have a moment of glory.  Every dog has his day, and all that.  This is the only explanation I can think of for people who spend hundreds and thousands of pounds on golf equipment and green fees when they can’t even hit the ball straight.  They hope for the moment.  The applause, the cheers, the high-fives, the celebratory beer afterwards.  It’s why shit people play sport, I’m convinced.

An old person playing golf

And this brings me on to the subject of me playing football.  A friend says he’s organising a game of football, so I let him know I’m interested in playing.  I can do a half-decent job at centre-back, I said.  (This is not entirely true, but playing at centre half probably involves doing the least running—except goalkeeper, obviously, but more on that later—and, as every knows, you generally put your big ugly donkey at centre half and tell him to kick anything that moves.)  My mate says he’s already sorted for centre backs, so I tell him I played every position in the team for South Normanton Athletic juniors.  I can play anywhere.  Then I start thinking…

I didn’t play in every position because I was good.  I played everywhere because I was so shit I didn’t warrant being chosen in any particular position.  This is not to say my career (span: 1990-94) was a disaster.  Far from it.  My U12s Top Scorer trophy sits proudly between my U11s and U13s Sportsman of the Year trophies (Sportsman of the Year award definition: a consolatory trophy for the shittest player who turns up every week without fail and never moans when he doesn’t play).

I started reminiscing on my own personal highlights package in my head, and decided upon some of my more notable performances in the various positions I played.

Centre half.  I started off as a centre half, but my inherent laziness was a problem.  I recall our manager once pointing out, after the opposition had scored, that I was out of position.  Specifically, I was stood on the halfway line with my hands on my hips.

Full back.  I played right-back for a while until I got sent off twice in the same game.  (It was a friendly, and the opposition manager ordered his team to walk off from “these animals” mid-way through the second half.)  I was tried at left back for a while too.   The highlight was a game against ADASC at Ripley, where I found myself as substitute.  We were all aware of the ability of ADASC’s tricky right winger, but at half-time it was 0-0 and our left back, Gary Forbes, had played a blinder and had their winger in his pocket.  Unfortunately Gary had to come off injured, and I went on to replace him.  Fast forward to the end of the game and their right winger has a hattrick and we’ve lost 3-0.  The moment that sticks in my mind was the build-up to his third goal, where I ran alongside him from the halfway line as he dribbled towards goal, too frightened to tackle him because I knew I’d foul him as he was too quick and I was too shit.  I kept running alongside him until he rounded our goalkeeper and scored.

Goalkeeper.  Towards the end of my career I played one game in goal for South Normanton as both our ‘proper’ keepers were injured.  We lost 3-0 against the team who were top of the league, and I was named our Man of the Match due to a string of outstanding saves.  We were ripped to shreds and should have been absolutely hammered, but I had the game of my life.  I was goalkeeper for our school team a few times, too, until it became apparent that I would make at least one massive fuck-up every game, which would ultimately overshadow my otherwise decent performance.  A bit like David ‘Calamity’ James (below).

Midfield.  I have never and never will be good enough or fit enough to play in midfield.  I think I found myself playing left midfield for a while, which seems frankly ridiculous.  My trademark move was to charge down the wing with the ball and ‘cut inside’ onto my right foot, as my left foot was and still is only for standing on and under no circumstances should I attempt to kick a ball with it.

Centre forward.  And now we come to that one season — 91/92 I think — when I could arguably have claimed to not have been completely shit.  The season started badly with a 3-1 away defeat in which I didn’t play.  The next game we were playing at home, and again I found myself as substitute.  With fifteen minutes to go we were drawing 1-1 with Ripley (who we should have been beating) and the manager gambled, throwing me on as a striker.  Fifteen minutes later it’s 6-1 and I’ve scored a hattrick, the third goal of which was a coolly-taken penalty.  I went on what at the time seemed a remarkable scoring streak, scoring in each of the next four or five games.  And we’re not talking about tap-ins against shit teams in 6-1 drubbings, either.  I scored the one and only goal in a game against top of the league Woodhouse Imps (a tap-in, admittedly, but an important one), the last-minute winner away at Ravenshead (picked the ball up on the half-way line, charged down the left wing, cut inside onto my right foot and — aiming for the top right hand corner —slotted the ball in the bottom left corner), and a late equaliser in a 2-2 draw at RJN. 

Then — and I’m not entirely sure what happened — I got dropped.  Now, my memory gets a little hazy here (funny how I remember every goal, but can’t remember being dropped, eh?), but I’m pretty sure I was dropped to the bench for a couple of games.  Despite being top goal scorer at the time, I was still pretty shit so I couldn’t really feel too hard done by.  I think I managed to come off the bench and poach a goal in a 5-1 victory, then found myself back in the starting line-up for the final two games of the season.  Riddings were put to the sword as I scored a hattrick in a 9-1 drubbing, and then I bagged another hattrick (three tap-ins, I seem to recall) against Ripley, the side against which my one and only season of glory started.

The hallowed turf of South Normanton Athletic

By the start of the following season we’d recruited some better players and I was back to being substitute again.  Not that I minded, really, because I’d always have my SNAFC under 12s top scorer trophy and I could always say I scored sixteen goals that season, including (in case you lost count) three hattricks.

So next time I’m asked to play football I should grimace slightly, grumble something about knackering my knees “in my playing days”, and politely decline because I know I’ve had ‘my moment’.  But I won’t.  I’ll say, “I can play anywhere you know,” because I’ll always always always fancy my chances of another glory moment or three.

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Quite how I didn’t get my head kicked in on Saturday night is something of a mystery to me.  And I really can’t blame anyone or anything other than me and my insatiable appetite for strong beer.  Another Note To Self: I am a cock when I’m drunk.

The scene is thus: it was probably about midnight, and we were in a nice bar somewhere (I really have no idea where) in Sheffield.  I was, as I may have mentioned, very drunk.  My mate points at another man in the bar.  “He looks like Andriy Voronin.  Go and tell him.”

Andriy Voronin (right) dancing with Peter Crouch

As I may have mentioned, I’m a cock when I’m drunk.  I’m a big stupid fucking Clown For Hire.  My mate knows this, which is probably why he tells me to do stupid things.  So over I wandered and asked matey-boy if he was the aforementioned shit footballer, an obvious dig at his quite ridiculous pony tail.  (I’ve always followed the theory that under every pony tail lurks an arsehole.)  But anyway, some unfunny banter went back and forth.  Thankfully him and his seven-or-so mates decided not to give me the shoeing I so richly deserved.  I got bored and went away to be shouted at by my girlfriend.  And quite rightly so.

The karmic God of alcohol would have her revenge, however, by striking me down with the mother of all hangovers on Sunday.  A hangover which stretched right into the afternoon, and which persuaded me to ditch my planned 4-mile run and swap it for a far less enjoyable McDonalds.  A large ‘Big Tasty’ meal (Trade Descriptions Act, anyone?), with vanilla milkshake, if you’re interested.  All very disappointing, as McDonalds meals invariably are (especially ones purchased at the Drive Thru — or the McDrive as it’s now known, FFS.  Essentially you buy something which is tepid at best and then let it cool down a bit more as you take it home.).  So, the point of all this is that I didn’t go for a run.

Saturday had, for the large part, been very enjoyable.  A few daytime beers, a meal at Pizza Express and then on to a cracking venue called The Boardwalk to watch David Ford.  After a while stood by the bar someone said they recognised a chap in the crowd a few feet in front of us.  A lady sitting on the bar piped up that she recognised him too.  We eventually decided it was Lee “Bombhead” Otway, of Hollyoaks fame and, I’m sure you all recall, Soapstar Superstar and Love Island.

Bombhead

It’s worth pointing out here that I hate Hollyoaks, but having seen Lee Otway on TV a couple of times I thought he seemed a likeable enough chap.  I wondered if he was there because he’s a fan of David Ford or if he’d been dragged along with someone else.  After the gig — by which point I was steaming drunk — I got my chance to ask him in an embarrassing and at times downright rude chat, which I now look back on and cringe.  Things I remember about the conversation:

• Calling him “Bombhead” throughout.  I asked his real name then continued to refer to him as “Bombhead.”
• He said he’d been dragged along by his girlfriend, but thought David Ford was excellent.
• Pretty much forcing him to go and buy Ford’s first album from the merchandise stall.  (Incidentally I think you should go and buy it too.)
• Trying not to snigger when he described the sitcom he was writing with some other bloke I’d never heard of.
• Perhaps too proudly announcing he finished fourth in Soapstar Superstar (in response to me asking if it was him who came third in Fame Academy).  I said I thought he was good in it, then made some remark about not liking “that twat that won it.”  Turned out Bombhead really liked him. 

The embarrassing celebrity ingratiating didn’t stop there either.  Somewhere after meeting Bombhead and either before or after meeting the Andriy Voronin lookalike (I really have no idea), we saw former footballer and now Crystal Palace Assistant Manager Keith Curle in another bar.  Despite pleas from my girlfriend (“Please don’t go and talk to him.  You’ll make a fool of yourself and you’ll embarrass me.”) I went over to say hello, not without offering my not-exactly-favourable opinion on Neil Warnock (the manager to whom he is Assistant) and the two gentlemen (or “old twats”, as I think I referred to them) he was drinking with.  All in all a thoroughly shocking display.  I honestly sometimes think it would be better if I stopped drinking, but then I think of that invincible King-Of-The-World feeling I get after about ten pints (usually about fifteen minutes before I start acting like a dick) and I reconsider.  But, to return to my original point, I am no longer nineteen and I perhaps need to calm down a little. 

David Ford

Time for me to crowbar in another top five.  I can’t mention David Ford without saying how truly great he is.  Not only a very talented songwriter but a stunning live performer.  One of his ‘tricks’ in his live show is that he uses a loop pedal to build layers of instruments on top of each other, creating a stunning ‘band’ effect on his own.  It’s difficult to do it justice to be honest, so I’ll just suggest you all go and see him on his next tour (early next apparently, to coincidence with the release of his new album).  Or click on the links below.  Check out his MySpace page, particularly the new track ‘Panic!’ which is straight away one of my favourite ever songs, and kicks off my Top Five (in no order):

• Panic!
• State Of The Union  
• Hurricane 
• I’m Alright Now
• Katie (OK it’s me singing a cover but it’s still a great song)

While you’re checking out those links I’ll be trying to lose weight, get fitter and stop being such a dick.  I’ll be in touch soon.

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I once went on a Management Bullshit Course in which the speaker said that as we get older we find it harder to change our personality traits.  The point that stuck in my mind was the cut-off point he specified: twenty-eight.  Up until the age of twenty-eight, he said, we can still change who we are.  We can change those things about ourselves that annoy us.  After that, we’re screwed.  We’re stuck as we are.

Now, as with most theories, I’m pretty sure it’s not a hard and fast rule.  I’m fairly safe in the knowledge that we can always change who we are and what we’re like, but the point is that it becomes more difficult with age.  And did I mention I’m twenty-eight and ten twelfths?

If this were a lecture or seminar I’d ask you all to write down five things about yourself that you’d like to change.  We’d then probably do an exercise where I’d get you to write down positive steps you can take to achieve those goals.  I’d get you to create SMART objectives, and you’d leave my lecture full of optimism.  But the next day you’d probably have forgotten it all.  Is that a fair assumption or is that just me?  Have I just neatly summed up everything you need to know about me and why I’ll never change?

Why am I thinking all this then?  Well, last night, as planned, I went off to play 5-a-side football.  I actually did quite a bit of running about, which is unusual for me as I have the unenviable combination of being both unfit and lazy.  But after three Wednesday nights of football I definitely feel fitter.  Afterwards, as I said I would, I went to the pub and watched a bit of the England game with a Diet Coke.  All going to plan so far.  Then I had a beer.  A bit naughty but I felt I’d earned it.  Then I went home.

Me (centre) celebrating another brilliant goal

This is where it went a bit tits-up.  My girlfriend had some work friends over for dinner.  She’d made lasagne.  There was some left over, she told me.  “Stick it back in the oven,” I said, and went for a shower.  I returned and ate a rather large portion of lasagne with a bit of salad, plenty of coleslaw and some bread.  And a beer.  Oh, fuck it.

And then it hit me.  I’ll never change.  I love food.  I love beer.  I have very little self-control when it comes to food and beer.  Actually — scrap that — I have NO self control when it comes to food and beer.  I just love it.  I love food, and I like to eat until I’m stuffed.  If something’s nice, why deny yourself?  You might be dead tomorrow, so why not have that last mouthful of lasagne, that last slice of cheesecake, another beer?  This is why I’m overweight (it’s also — unsurprisingly — why I get so ridiculously drunk).

So, if I can’t change — if I’m always going to be a greedy fucker — then what to do?  Do I accept that I’ll be forever overweight and I’ll probably die of a heart attack in my forties?  Nope.  I need to do some ruddy exercise.  Yep, it’s come to that.  ME, doing EXERCISE!  You heard it here first.  Even though I’m lazy and the mere thought of going for a run tires me out, I need to do something on top of my weekly hour of football.  I’m not sure what yet, but I need to do something.  Just you watch me.

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Not my accident

Now in many ways this is irrelevant.  If I were 100% at fault, 50% at fault or a tiny bit at fault, it still goes down as an accident on my record, I kiss goodbye to my no claims bonus and my premium goes up.  The point is that I object to being told I’m the only one in the wrong when a motorbike rides between two lanes of moving traffic.  Yes, it was careless on my part, but it really fucks me off that motorcyclists gets all high and mighty (“THINK BIKE!” FFS) about road safety, while seemingly being a law unto themselves. 

I’m not tarring all motorcyclists with the same brush (in the same way I have to tell myself that some lorry drivers might not be cunts), but…  well, I’ve forgotten my original point.  I’m just pissed off at the moment and need to vent my spleen a bit.  Oh, and did you know that whitelining/lane-splitting/whatever you want to call driving in between lanes of moving traffic is illegal in most US states?

Anyway, this weekend I took on two demons which, as you may have noted, have plagued me somewhat in recent weeks.  I went to a wedding on Saturday where I drank all day, and, remarkably, was neither violently ill nor embarrassingly drunk.  At least not as far as I’m aware.

I’ve not been overly-healthy this week so far, but I haven’t been especially bad.  Until today.  Friday night we had a lovely meal and a few drinks with friends at Archie’s restaurant, then obviously Saturday involved a lot of canapés and beers and that.  Sunday we had a pub lunch with some other friends at the brilliant Navigation Inn in Breaston (I would very much recommend the beef or lamb Sunday lunch option and would advise steering clear of the stuffed mushrooms and risotto.  The former went down a storm with the boys while the vegetarian options were less of a hit with the girls.)  Today I’ve been a bit of a pig.  I made myself an egg sandwich for lunch, then went to Tescos and bought some salt and vinegar crisps.  And some beefy jerky.  And a bag of Marmite-flavoured cashew nuts (really not that nice, perhaps unsurprisingly). 

The reason for this apparent gluttony is that I’m playing football tonight and I don’t want to have any tea beforehand.  Last Wednesday night I was hungry when I got home so rushed a toasted cheese and marmite sandwich (my sandwich of choice at the moment, FYI).  Fifteen minutes later I thought I was going to sick up said sandwich after the first tiny bit of exertion.  So no food tonight either before football or after, when I will go to the pub and drink Diet Coke whilst watching Peter Crouch stumble around looking lost in an England shirt.

And if you’re a motorcyclist, THINK CARS for a change.  You know — those big metal things with four wheels that pay more road tax than you that you weave in and out of.  Yeah, that’s them.  And if you see a black Ford Focus I’d suggest you give it a wide berth because it might be me trying to run you down.

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Why is this important?  Well, it isn’t, really.  Not on the grand scheme of things.  It did however mean that last week I had to walk a bit more than usual every day.  My fifteen-minute drive to walk was substituted with — on a good day — an hour’s walk/bus ride/walk/train journey/walk.  On one particularly bad day it was an hour and three quarter’s walk/bus/walk/sit waiting on cold train station the one day I didn’t wear a jacket/train/walk.  The plus-side of all this was that I got a bit more exercise than usual, and I managed to read the whole of Kevin Sampson’s book ‘Freshers’ (which, to be fair, was OK.  Nothing special — just OK).

I did however miss my Friday weigh-in as I spent my lunchtime collecting my car.  Today when I finally managed to weigh myself I found that the weekend’s excesses had undone all the good of my additional walking.  It may also have been something to do with the 1.5kg tin of chocolate biscuits a work colleague brought in last week (I conservatively estimate I ate about a third of the tin).

And even after an excessive day/night out on Saturday, I still thought I might have lost a bit of weight.  OK, so I drank somewhere in the region of fifteen pints, but on the flipside I only ate two slices of cheese on toast, a bag of nuts and a packet of quavers.  Unsurprisingly — given those combining factors — I vomited pretty much all of it up all over the bathroom floor at about ten o’clock.  So all things considered I thought I’d done OK.  And I’m not admitting to being bulimic either (or advocating bulimia as a weight loss tactic), I’d quite clearly had far too much to drink and not nearly enough to eat.  Yet again I found my Saturday night coming to a premature and embarrassing end; this time however I can’t blame weight loss.  I’ve stayed at 18st 8lbs for three weeks now, and I really need to do something about it.

As much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m going to have to start exercising.  Last week I played 5-a-side football on Wednesday night — something I’m planning to do every week throughout the winter.  That should help.  I might also have to go for a jog.  And I really really fucking hate jogging.  I need to be far healthier than I have been so far.  I just need to do better, basically.

My next weigh-in will be Friday, by which time I guarantee I’ll have lost some weight.

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If you’ve got a psychology book at home, take it out, throw it in the bin — it’s worthless. Psychology books, now, will have to be rewritten.

If you don’t want to throw them away then at the very least find the section on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and rip it out, replacing it with my own, much better, Oktoberfest Hierarchy of Needs:

Maslow’s theory sought to understand human motivation based on needs.  Well I’ve got news for you all: everything you could ever want is at Oktoberfest.

If you’re on a diet though, you might want to stay away. 

I’m really not looking forward to this week’s weigh-in.  It was worth it though; the stag do was fantastic.

A few highlights: 

• Groom’s youngest brother — in charge of the kitty — at the bar (ordering for 19 of us): “Twenty-six beers, please.  Actually… better make it fifty-two.”
• Argument with groom’s other brother concerning Guns ‘N’ Roses.  He argued they were better than Bob Dylan and The Beatles.  I vehemently maintain they’re not.
• Being described by security as “the rowdiest table at Oktoberfest.”  This shouldn’t be anything to boast about, but when the festival welcomes 450,000 (mainly German) visitors a day, it’s hard not to feel a little bit proud.

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I’ve been told that losing more than 2lbs a week isn’t sustainable and perhaps more importantly isn’t healthy.  I also found out to my cost that losing a lot of weight in a short space of time gets you drunk much more easily that usual.  Saturday I got really embarrassingly drunk, really embarrassingly quickly.  At a wedding.  Take yourself back to the hotel at 9 o’clock, wake up fully-clothed, mysterious liquid all over the bathroom floor type of drunk.  And yes, I’m completely and unreservedly blaming the weight loss for my drunkenness. 

The following day someone played me an answerphone message I’d left them which consisted of three minutes of me trying to talk cricket tactics in French and announcing my undying love for a waitress I was convinced was eyeing me up.

Sunday night I had two pints of Guinness and half a pizza to celebrate getting Sandiacre Town Cricket Club’s second team promoted after a workmanlike victory in our final game.  Then last night my girlfriend treated me to a curry at Kerala in Nottingham, an absolute brilliant restaurant which I highly recommend.  As far as curries go I’d say it was a fairly healthy one, but still, I’ll make a real effort to be healthy for the rest of the week.  Then at the weekend I’m going to Oktoberfest where, I’m told, there’s nothing to do except sit and drink beer all day.  Could be an early night again…

And later today or tomorrow — you lucky, lucky people — I will post for your viewing pleasure, the next chapter or so of Happy Ending.