As an autumn-loving adolescent, addicted to big jumpers and moping under grey Cornish skies my mother always wisely said to me "as you get older, you'll like summer more." In this she was right, as I've got a little older I have a growing fondness and regard for sunlight, an ear more attuned to the soprofic qualities of bees, an almost religious devotion to breakfasting outside with the papers and a large bowl of blueberries. Fifteen year old me would be disgusted, and fly straight back to his Smiths records and Turgenev. I like summer.
In all respects but one. The temperature rises, and my fellow countrymen collectively lose their minds on a heady cocktail of long evenings and two for one deals.
It would be all too easy to come off sounding like a grumpy liberal writing this (aha, and the Dead Kennedy's have just come up on random play - how apt), but I do beleive that the nation's gone a bit nuts. I stood outside the door at work on the final mwhistle against France last weekend, and heard the fights erupting all over town. Right, no foreigners here to kick, might as well lump you, then. Well placed as I am to observe the nations drinking habits I can confirm that it's just getting fucking silly now. A quick pint after work that same night exposed me to the most extravagantly drunk crowds I've ever seen in my life. Even at Euro '96, the absolute watershed of football's coming home triumphalism the air was a alcoholically celebratory one, but not this weird seething primal desperation for booze.
Much better writers than me have written, and will doubtless write many thousands more words on this subject. It is a nagging one, carrying as it does attendant fears of fogey-ism, of wilfully misremembering the past, but I honestly cannot recall it ever being as bad as this. The fresh and new-minted patriotism of the late nineties, recovered from twenty years of desolation and fuelled by a very real optimism has descended into an altogether more jingoistic and jaded, confrontational form of self-determination. And this is inexorably linked to a celebration of consumption at dangerous levels. A tacit media nudge nudge and wink winking, each anguished and soul searching column drowned out by five lifestyle items. The nation is pissed, and god help us all, there's a major sporting tournament on at the same time.
Or, more precisely, a major football tournament, it's hard to imagine the nation going quite so nuts over the ashes. Only wimbers seems to bring out even point five of the nationalistic fervour engendered by football, and even then it's of a laughable, easily derided middle class calibre. Try being anti football at the moment, and you'll end up being regarded as slightly freakish, even by those who the rest of the year have absolutely no interest in the game, but for the time england are in a major tournament latch on to the collective unconscious and just get swept along.
Weird weird weird. You're all Barry fucking weird. Though to be fair, I will be in the pub for todays game against our ancient hated enemies the perfidious Swiss. "That's for the Nazi Gold you cuckoo clock loving bastards" I shall cry, and my fellows will cheer. But then, I like football, I always have. I still think you're all weird though.
In all respects but one. The temperature rises, and my fellow countrymen collectively lose their minds on a heady cocktail of long evenings and two for one deals.
It would be all too easy to come off sounding like a grumpy liberal writing this (aha, and the Dead Kennedy's have just come up on random play - how apt), but I do beleive that the nation's gone a bit nuts. I stood outside the door at work on the final mwhistle against France last weekend, and heard the fights erupting all over town. Right, no foreigners here to kick, might as well lump you, then. Well placed as I am to observe the nations drinking habits I can confirm that it's just getting fucking silly now. A quick pint after work that same night exposed me to the most extravagantly drunk crowds I've ever seen in my life. Even at Euro '96, the absolute watershed of football's coming home triumphalism the air was a alcoholically celebratory one, but not this weird seething primal desperation for booze.
Much better writers than me have written, and will doubtless write many thousands more words on this subject. It is a nagging one, carrying as it does attendant fears of fogey-ism, of wilfully misremembering the past, but I honestly cannot recall it ever being as bad as this. The fresh and new-minted patriotism of the late nineties, recovered from twenty years of desolation and fuelled by a very real optimism has descended into an altogether more jingoistic and jaded, confrontational form of self-determination. And this is inexorably linked to a celebration of consumption at dangerous levels. A tacit media nudge nudge and wink winking, each anguished and soul searching column drowned out by five lifestyle items. The nation is pissed, and god help us all, there's a major sporting tournament on at the same time.
Or, more precisely, a major football tournament, it's hard to imagine the nation going quite so nuts over the ashes. Only wimbers seems to bring out even point five of the nationalistic fervour engendered by football, and even then it's of a laughable, easily derided middle class calibre. Try being anti football at the moment, and you'll end up being regarded as slightly freakish, even by those who the rest of the year have absolutely no interest in the game, but for the time england are in a major tournament latch on to the collective unconscious and just get swept along.
Weird weird weird. You're all Barry fucking weird. Though to be fair, I will be in the pub for todays game against our ancient hated enemies the perfidious Swiss. "That's for the Nazi Gold you cuckoo clock loving bastards" I shall cry, and my fellows will cheer. But then, I like football, I always have. I still think you're all weird though.
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