1st to 7th January 2023
The Post-Christmas Low
We’re only two days into 2023 and it already feels as though we are racing away from the festive season. Some call it the New Year blues; Christmas is over, the festivities have all come to an end and all we have left is the remainder of the Quality Street, an extra inch on the waist and a high blood glucose level. Two days in and I’m missing Christmas.
Christmas means different things to different people. For me, it is important to remember that it signifies the birth of a great man. Santa Claus. Okay, it’s an old joke, but…you know me! I’m not religious but appreciate that Christmas is a very important time of year for those that are. Christianity.com says that ‘Christmas is a time of spiritual reflection on the important foundations of the Christian faith. A celebration of God’s love for the world through the birth of the Christ child: Jesus’. That’s fair enough. I’ve been involved in a few nativities over the years as a schoolboy, and watched a few as a parent, and I do love Christmas carols, but I’ve never really been sold on any of the religions.
I have quite a romanticized view of Christmas, which is probably why I enjoy the cheese of Christmas films and TV so much. People, some people, are friendlier and the goodwill of the season often brings the best out in them. There’s a sense of community and togetherness at Christmas that you don’t seem to get at other times of the year.
There’s nothing quite like a Christmas tree to brighten up a house, and I’m going to miss it when it’s back up in the loft; it takes a few weeks before I get used to it being gone. The decorations that usually adorn the streets too; when they’re down, the evenings seem so dark and miserable. It’s as though the magic of Christmas is extinguished for another year, sending us back to reality without a second thought for how we feel about it.
Spending time with the family is the most important thing, which you only really appreciate as you get older. We’ve never been a family who has had money to burn, but I always remember a good haul of presents underneath the tree. I’m not saying that your Christmas should be ranked based on the value or quantity of gifts that you receive, far from it, but as a child you can barely sleep thinking about the visit of Father Christmas and the thought of him delivering your presents.
When our kids were little, the look on their faces on Christmas morning was a gift in itself. If you could bottle that excitement and wonder, you could make a fortune. Christmas spirit and magic, harvested from kids around the world, could be the answer to the world’s problems.
We are all guilty of falling into the routine of going to work, coming home tired and not spending quality time with your family. During the festive season, you have the opportunity to pull out a board game, watch the TV or just sit and chat. It’s those times that you will look back on that will mean so much.
As Cliff Richard once said; it’s a time for living, a time for believing. True that, Cliff.
The first day back at work is fast approaching, which is another reason for the New Year blues. I know that I’m lucky to have a job, a regular income. I don’t take that for granted. But it would be nice to win a fairly substantial lottery jackpot. Semi-retirement sounds so good right now. It’s not that I don’t like my job, as there are days when it’s quite rewarding. Like any job, though, there are aspects of it that drive me mad. An early start in the morning isn’t going to help either, but I can’t think about that right now. I’m still on my Christmas holidays at the moment, and don’t want to ruin my last few hours.
The New Year Blues
First day of the year, back at work; this is clearly why the New Year Blues is a thing!
I don’t hate my job, there are certain aspects of it that I actually like. It’s quite varied, and we can often help people when they need it most. It’s not just about fixing taps or plugging leaks. We get all sorts of queries and requests, many different ways that customers may need help. And I’m all about helping people.
There are frustrations like in any job; I’m not sure whether there are many people in employment that can say that everything is perfect and there is nothing that can be changed for the better. This job is no different, with many migraine inducing moments to contend with on an almost daily basis. I get frustrated, have the occasional rant but, ultimately, I just want to go to work and do a decent job for my customers. It can sometimes be a thankless task but I’m going to try not to moan and groan too much.
I promise, I’ll try!
I’ve never been one to play office politics, and I haven’t been fuelled by blinkered ambition in any of my previous jobs either. And the older I’ve got, the more I tend to speak my mind. Even though I know that I’m not, and have not always been the perfect employee, I get frustrated when I see things that should be managed better. That can be colleagues, managers, other teams or departments. In my current role, there’s no real way to make any changes so occasionally you need to vent to blow off some steam. If you didn’t there could be a serious risk of a Falling Down moment (IMDB it if necessary).
Like I’ve always said, I take my job seriously, but I don’t take myself seriously. I can be professional when I need to be, and I can dick around when the time is right. But, as I saw on an internet meme recently, you should only treat people with the respect that they deserve. Regardless of position and without prejudice, respect needs to be earned.
Although I don’t mind the daily grind of a full-time job, I do wish that I was independently wealthy and able to do as much, or as little, as I wanted. I’d start a business, doing…something. Maybe. Fund our little fundraising venture. And, without a doubt, I’d spend some time trying to finish one of the many novels that I’ve started over the years. Especially my Christmas story, which I promise is a classic just waiting to be released upon the world.
The tree is still up, but the festive season is over!
If it was up to me our Christmas tree would still be up as the daffodils were flowering and the first wasps were merrily and indiscriminately stinging their way into spring. However, there are certain signs that herald the end of the festive season. Those three signs are:
A – Sky Movies Christmas disappears and reverts to Sky Drama or Sky Harry Potter.
2 – We see Heart Xmas fall off the DAB channel listings for another eleven months.
D – Michael Buble packs away his tuxedo, pulls on his Bermuda shorts and hits the beach.
And, if any further evidence is needed, the final of the PDC World Darts Championship was played out in front of a crowd of drunken darts fans; many dressed as Super Mario, or Mexicans, or superheroes.
And what a final it was! The mighty Michael Van Gerwen had looked unbeatable throughout the tournament, barely raising a sweat as he swept aside the opposition on his way to the final. Michael Smith was also in good form, scoring well but prone to missing the occasional important double finish. However, MVG and Michael Smith played out an immense match which saw one of the greatest legs of televised darts we have ever seen.
Both men, both athletes…hit four 180’s in a row! Both men had the chance to nail a nine-dart finish. It was unheard of, especially at this level, with the pressure of playing for the World Championship. MVG hits another two perfect darts, just the double left to hit. As the final dart left his hand, the world watched…its trajectory arcing towards the double twelve. With a thud, the crowd groaned as it narrowly missed the thin, red section of the board.
Michael Smith stepped up to the oche, confident and focused. He couldn’t, could he? In his quickfire style, his arm swinging like a metronome, he hit the treble twenty. Treble nineteen followed and, without hesitation, Smith fired his final dart into the double twelve to rapturous applause from the frenzied crowd. A nine-dart finish in the final, winning the leg against the throw and setting the tone for the rest of the final.
Michael Smith was victorious, winning the match 7-4 and lifted the World Championship trophy, became world number one and as an added bonus, took home a cheque for a cool £500K. Not a bad payday for a few hours work.
A great final, and probably a fitting end to what has become as much a part of Christmas as Buble, It’s a Wonderful Life and pigs in blankets.
If I didn’t laugh…
This week I’ve gone from the New Year blues to the New Year flu, having picked up the bug that James has had over Christmas. James started to feel ill the day after his birthday and his temperature shot up to 40 degrees. He had aching joints, a headache, sore throat and was feeling nauseous, throwing up a couple of times.
He didn’t move from his bed for two days, barely eating and only managing to eat the occasional bowl of ice cream or drink a hot cup of tea. But, he was certain of a miraculous recovery in time the New Year’s Eve celebrations that he had plans for in neighbouring St Ives. I can understand it, in a way. He is nineteen, and there would be nothing worse than stopping home at New Year when your mates are all enjoying themselves in party central. After barely touching a drop of alcohol, we received a call as midnight approached, asking us to pick him up as he was feeling so ill. The flu had returned, if indeed it had ever left in the first place.
We had thought that the rest of the house had avoided the bug, but after day one back at work I started to feel that familiar sensation in my throat that is always the precursor to a sore throat. The coughing soon started, and my joints began to ache. A sleepless night followed.
I don’t think that I’m too much of burden when I’m not well, I’m a bloody legend if you ask me. Sympathy isn’t something that is readily provided around these parts so moaning and groaning isn’t going to get you very far anyway. Heather tends to stay away when I’m ill. She’ll drop drinks off, painkillers, cook food, but she says that she likes to leave me alone to rest. Obviously, I’m very grateful for that as I’m lying in bed, softly whimpering.
On my first day of feeling ill, James sent me a text message that said, “RIP”. A moment or two after that a news report popped up on my phone to say that David Gold had sadly died.
The David Gold in question was not me. However, I did have a moment where I wondered if I may be a ghost, living out the afterlife thinking that I was still alive, like Nicole Kidman and her family in the film, The Others. It was in fact the David Gold who owned West Ham United and had previously been the owner of Birmingham City, who had passed away after a short illness.
David Gold and his business partner, David Sullivan, bought Birmingham City Football Club at a time when we needed to be saved. There had been years of mismanagement and the football club was in a dire state, even by our standards. They turned things around for us, invested in the club and the team and we became relatively successful, even reaching the dizzy heights of the Premier League. We have a lot to be thankful to Gold and Sullivan for as Blues fans, although as the investment in the team dried up, we became frustrated and the relationship between the fans and owners broke down. When the club was sold, we thought we had found the rich benefactor that we had been dreaming of and the Gold and Sullivan era was over. What transpired after that is another story completely, and one that I’m feeling too delicate to talk about right now.
The text that I received from James made us laugh and is a good representation of how we tend to deal with things in our little family. How we deal with life generally is to find the humour in things. Usually, the dark humour. And we can be dark, let me tell you. It’s not that we don’t see the gravity of certain situations, it’s just that we choose to deal with them by cracking jokes, mocking each other and bantering relentlessly.
Our evening meals are not for the faint of heart. We’re more Channel 4 after the watershed than BBC1 early evening. No subject is off limits and some of the chatter is largely inappropriate. We’re more Jimmy Carr than Jimmy Cricket, if you will. There is never any malice or vitriol, and we are often self-deprecating with what we say around the dining table. We can push the limits sometimes, I must admit, but never with the intention of offending or attacking anybody. British humour is often dark, sarcastic and heaped with irony, and I think we do it pretty well over fish fingers and chips.
In one of Jimmy Carrs stand up shows he said, “Tonight’s show contains jokes about terrible things. Terrible things that may have affected you and the people that you love. But these are just jokes. They are not the terrible things.” Who am I to disagree with him?
I’ll talk about it more another time, but that is exactly how I feel about the situation that I’m in with my dodgy lymph nodes. I could sit back and worry, let things get on top of me. Or, I could use my preferred method of dealing with things; cracking jokes about it and blowing off steam by not only mocking the cancer but myself too. When I was first diagnosed, back in 2018, I had been trying to lose weight. I was watching what I was eating, exercising and watching the inches around my waist slip away, together with a couple of my excess chins. I had stopped being so careful with my calorie intake for a month or two and was happy to see that I was maintaining my current weight, even though I was back to my fish and chip dinners and full daily snack quota. After my surgery and subsequent treatment, the weight began to pile back on again!
“You can say what you like about cancer,” I would say. “But it certainly helps keep the weight off.”
Gianluca Vialli, footballing icon…
There are certain players that seem to transcend the footballing world, universally loved by fans the world over for their exquisite skill, their mercurial talent. The likes of Pele, Maradona, Eusebio, Banks, Hurst and Bobby Charlton to name but a few.
During the nineties, English football saw an influx of foreign players, some more successful than others, and there was criticism from within the game that homegrown talent would be adversely affected by this revolution. It seems odd to say this now considering how important foreign players are to the Premier League, but back then it seemed to be a way of saving money. Cheap labour rather than pay inflated prices for a British prospect.
Would Manchester United have been rejuvenated as they were without Eric Cantona? Imagine Middlesbrough without Juninho and Ravanelli. If Jurgen Klinsmann not signed for Spurs, would he have redeemed himself with England fans as much as he did?
The club that seemed be the front runner in bringing legends of European football to England, though, was Chelsea. Yes, they had Dennis Wise and Gavin Peacock, Paul Furlong and Mark Stein. But, in the 95/96 season, manager Glenn Hoddle signed Ruud Gullit, and so followed a golden era of world class players joining the London club.
The following year, after Hoddle left to manage England, Gullit took over as player-manager and his brand of ‘sexy football’ was born. That year Frank Lebouef joined together with Roberto Di Matteo and Gianfranco Zola. Zola became a Chelsea legend, a beautiful player to watch, but another Italian also signed that season, and was one of the reasons why I grew a soft spot for Chelsea at that time.
Gianluca Vialli played 488 games in his club career, scoring 167 goals and was once the most expensive player in the world when he transferred from Sampdoria to Juventus for £12.5million. When he came to England, he was still a huge name in European football, and although in the final years of his career we loved to see him play. He was hardly prolific, and would often be used off the bench, but he was a player that had an aura and players, and fans, of all colours respected him and his achievements.
In 2018 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and after a year-long battle he was given the all clear in 2020. Sadly, in December 2021, the cancer returned, and it was announced on Friday that he had passed away.
As well as being a footballing legend, Luca Vialli also appeared to be a gentleman; softly spoken, friendly and funny. We rooted for him, wanted him to do well. They say that you should never meet your heroes, but I’ve got a feeling that, if you ever got to spend time in his company, you wouldn’t be disappointed.
Tributes have been pouring in from the football community, all of them providing an insight into the respect people had for him as a footballer but, probably more importantly, their admiration of the man.