A bravely hard-fought victory?

A superb performance to qualify from the group stage?

Well that depends on what channel you were watching the match on – or more accurately, which punditry team you watched after the event. The BBC (England) and RTE (Ireland) seemed not only to be watching a different match, but a different sport….

Alan Hansen: “Once England got the goal the confidence levels surged, they were excellent.”

Eamon Dunphy: “They just didn’t grow in confidence at all after the goal.”

Gary Lineker: “The goal really settled them, didn’t it? They pushed on from there.”

Ronnie Whelan: “You’d think they’d have kicked on from when they scored, but they actually got worse.”

Roy Hodgson: “England’s crossing has been absolutely outstanding.”

John Giles: “Some of the crossing was just awful.”

Lee Dixon: “A great performance.”

Dunphy: “Shocking…absolutely incredibly bad…pretty awful stuff.”

Lineker: “He looked more like the Rooney we know.”

Whelan: “Rooney is a major worry, his form, his body language, his demeanour, everything.”

Dixon: “Gerrard was outstanding.”

Dunphy: “I can’t believe how bad Gerrard was today.”

Harry Redknapp: “Across midfield we were top drawer.”

Giles: “Barry got worse as the game went on, Milner, Gerrard and Lampard the same.”

Redknapp: “Bring it on! Whoever we play we’ll be difficult to beat.”

Whelan: “If they don’t improve they’ll go straight out, it was a very, very inept performance.”

…

9: It’s cool to go on holiday by yourself
With no friends or girlfriend.  And sit in a bar.  And watch the other people having a good time.  Before striking up a conversation with the barman and texting all your mates back home.  Ah, independence.  Lonely, scared, not-sure-what-to-do-until-bedtime independence.

8: You’re more attractive than the girls your mates set you up with
Frankly, it’s getting embarrassing.  If one more girl gets so intimidated by your obvious genius that she doesn’t return your calls, then you might have to have words with the lads about the bunny boilers they keep recommending you to.

7: You don’t need to go to the doctor
If only because it’s obvious that you’re dying.  What’s the point in spending an hour in the waiting room flicking through women’s magazines…when you know that this vicious dose of manflu is destined to be the end of you?

6: You’re a charming drunk
Perhaps it was just your medication ‘disagreeing’ with the booze when you gave that woman a V-sign, shouted at a bouncer, forced a stranger to let you buy him a pint and then strangled him when the barman rang for last orders. Nurofen can do that sometimes.

5: If you were a millionaire footballer you wouldn’t behave like the rest of them
Mind drifts into fantasies of threesomes, sports cars, little people utterly ignored in favour of elaborate parties full of models/hookers and sycophantic agents in sheepskin coats who’ll hopefully milk a few more quid out of the club on your next contract.

4: The ’80s were brilliant
Skinheads… race riots… industrial unrest… mass unemployment… Hillsborough… er, fluorescent socks?… Roland Rat?

3: You can fix that noise in the car engine
Followed swiftly by a frantic phone call to your dad to ask him what he does when a spanner falls into the engine,  and how to stop the suspension bouncing up and down of its own accord, like in a Dr Dre video.

2: You’d be pretty handy in a fight
In the sense that you’d be the first one to completely panic, get beaten fair and square and then stab the other bloke in the arse as he was walking away.  Who cares if he was 12?  He shouldn’t have started it.

1: You totally understand what’s going on in the news
Who are you kidding?  You can barely follow a double-length episode of Eastenders these days…

10: Sibling abuse
Cornering your younger brother, pulling his shirt up over his face and slapping him round the side of the head.  And then doing it harder.  And keeping on slapping him until he’s crying and disorientated and saying, “I don’t like this… I can smell colours…”  Just because you’re bored.  Who cares if he’s 27.

9: Making machine gun noises while holding an umbrella
See also: screwing your pool cue together like it’s an M82A1 high-velocity sniper rifle, and you’ve been charged with the task of disposing of the corrupt president of Mauritania and the loose-lipped, high-class call girl posing as his wife.

8: Cancelling social plans to play Xbox
Come on!  I’ve just got across the bridge on GTA IV.  A new neighbourhood to wreak untold carnage – I can’t leave now!  And it’s not like they can’t do it without me anyway.  It takes what……five people to carry an elderly woman’s coffin?

7: Film posters
Because nothing says ‘sophisticated bachelor-about-town’ than blu-tacking the same tattered Scarface poster to your bedroom wall that every other undergrad got free with a movie magazine four years ago.

6: Puking
If you’re under four, or undergoing chemo for Stage Four lymphatic cancer, maybe you have an excuse.  Maybe.  But if you’re hugging the bowl for mere alcohol abuse at your age, then your body’s giving you a message.  And the message is: “Your liver is about to pop.”

5: Getting overexcited in cars
It’s around a decade since you and your mate first passed your driving tests.  But the second more than two of you are in the car, it’s on.  Ignorant hip-hop up full blast, McDonald’s wrappers flying out of the window and a frantic honking of the horn every time a girl passes.  Just wait until you get out of the car park, then it’ll really kick off.

4: Pointing excitedly at planes
Sole exception: when it’s heading towards your office.

3: Alphabetti Spaghetti
“T…I…T……C…O…C… sorry?  No, just the bill when you’re ready, garçon.”

2: Picking your nose
Mucus, skin particles and germs.  Congealing and multiplying.  In your nose.  Jesus.  If the government was responsible for that disgusting coagulant, they’d have to bury it in a lead-lined chamber in the desert.  Still, wiping it under your desk is just as good.

1: Lifting your feet off the ground when pushing a trolley
And ignoring your girlfriend when she says to be careful.  Then trying to do wheelies.  Before groggily swearing at the lady from the ambulance as she holds smelling salts under your nose. ]]> http://stevehealy.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=183 0 http://stevehealy.org/blog/?p=181 http://stevehealy.org/blog/?p=181#comments Thu, 11 Feb 2010 11:48:21 +0000 Steve http://stevehealy.org/blog/?p=181 12: Pat a dog tied up outside a newsagent
Who knew Cerberus, the hound of Hades, was actually a portly Labrador called Gladstone?  Who’s now treating your finger like a chew toy, while his owner jovially assures you he’s “just playing with you”.

11: Climb a bus shelter to impress a girl
And then rue your choice as you look down at your brain-dead, comatose body while your weeping mum pulls the plug.

10: Remove a wart yourself
Turns out holding a Swiss Army Knife over a gas hob for ten minutes and laying the business section of the paper on the kitchen table doesn’t amount to a ‘sterile environment’.

9: Drink any local brew in Cambodia
Before waking up 16 hours later, naked in an alley – wondering why there’s a large scar where your kidneys used to be.

8: Intervene in a drunk couple’s quarrel
Because no matter how diplomatic you are, it still sounds like: “Hey forget about him, shag me.”  Which is why you’re now being chased down the street by your neighbourhoods version of Bonnie & Clyde.  Next time, do the really gentlemanly thing…. stare at the floor, play with a beer mat, and pretend you didn’t see that woman getting a backhander across the chops.

7: Start reading a James Joyce book
The Irish novelist once said, “A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.”  One such error might be starting his 250,000 word monster Ulysses, before discovering it’s really boring and doesn’t have any wizards in it.

6: Shoot at animals with an air rifle
Until, one dead cat later, you slip into a deep depression, haunted by nightmares and guilt.  And maybe quit your job, to work for free at the Cats Protection League.  While secretly building a memorial to the ex-moggy out of sticks and your own body hair in your shed.  Look, we’re so sorry.

5: Put your hand down the pocket of a pool table
“Ok, so the fire brigade can’t make it for two hours.  If it hits his wrist it counts as potted.”

4: Offer to set up your dad’s computer
Oh come on, he’s old – don’t let the last thing you say to him be about wireless connections.

3: Click wildly on free pornography pages
Until your screen’s filled with most garish, inhuman, depraved vision of sexual imagery since Caravaggio.  Wonder if he forgot to delete his history afterwards, too?

2: Get your mates to bury you in sand
Up to your neck?  How funny!  Until they wander off to buy a disposable camera, leaving you to fend off rabid dogs and the incoming tide.  Maybe you can build a miniature Hoover Dam with your ear?

1: Make a joke to airport security
And spend the rest of the week unable to sit down after the rubber-glove “session”…

9: Explore the darker depths of online pornography
Just what kind of sick bastard do they make this stuff for?  Who in their right mind would get off on this filth?  How does that even fit in………wow.  That’s………incredible.

8: Read OK! or HELLO! magazine
So that’s what a women goes through during her period.  I knew that guy in the boy band was gay.  Maybe I should start using anti-wrinkle cream.

7: Slide around in your socks
Like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, yeah?  And you’re cleaning that congealed egg off the kitchen tiles – bonus.

6: Construct gargantuan mealtime combos
What’s so wrong about beans, 6 pieces of bacon and a triple egg omelette – held up with ‘sausage scaffolding’ – anyway? And so what if it’s for breakfast?

5: Abandon hygiene in all its human forms
She’s barely left for work before you’re regressing to complete savagery – waddling around in nothing but a T-shirt with a gritty determination not to brush your teeth.  Next, using the bathroom with the door wide open, while finishing off a sandwich that you found down the back of the couch.

4: Talk to tramps
As if these pavement sages were somehow going to reveal the secrets of the universe.  Rather than just pull down their woolly hat, bellow half a verse of Danny Boy and then headbutt your shins.

3: Put a glass against the wall and listen to the neighbours
Listen in on what you think is them having sex, until you realise that you’ve just spent ten minutes silently masturbating to the sound of the boiler filling up.  And have formed a pressurised vacuum inside your ear.

2: Do a little dance in the changing room mirror
Then remember that they have CCTV these days.

1: Examine your privates in the bathroom mirror on an aeroplane
Then remember that they, too, have CCTV these days.

9: Any Musical Instrument That Doesn’t Plug Into An Amp
Look…if it can’t blow you backwards through the wall, like the beginning of Back To The Future, it’s just pointless.  And yes this most definitely includes those godawful plastic Guitar Hero controllers.

8: Emergency Training Of Any Kind
In-flight safety videos?  Hmm – think I’ll flick pointlessly through the in-flight magazine instead.

Office fire drill?  Perfect opportunity to check out the talent on other floors.

Goggles when paintballing? Sorry…was too busy quoting Predator in an Arnie voice.

But stub our toe on the photocopier? “Hello, Claims Direct…”

7: Appraisals With Your Boss
Or: Two Men Going Through The Motions.  You both know it’s only a contractual formality; as soon as you hear the words “personal goals”, it’s like that bit in The Simpsons when you hear it from a dog’s point of view.

6: The Threat Of Jail For Illegal Downloads
Cyber-crime?  Oh come on.  What are you going to do – e-mail me to prison?

5: Any More Than Three Blades On A Razor
It’s like the philosophy behind Victorian aircraft design: add another wing, and it’s bound to be better.  The average Joe stopped caring after two – and yet somewhere in a room in razor design HQ, there’s a guy going: “Fuck it – let’s push it to seven.”

4: Community Policemen
Sure, they can radio the real ones for back-up.  With the dogs.  And the guns.  But they’re all about 12.  They haven’t even got a proper hat.  And they’ve had what – three days’ training?  We’ve spent years training to be this much of an idiot.

3: Washing Instructions
Square, circle-with-a-cross, triangle. Whatever.

2: Signs
Particularly ones saying ‘Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted’.  Or ‘Don’t Feed The Animals’.  In fact, the lesson only usually hits home when drunk, in a disused building at 2am, and face to face with the grim, slavering reality of what ‘Guard Dogs Patrolling The Premises’ really means.

1: The Recommended Alcohol Intake
“More than 21 units per week can cause serious health problems in later life.”  Christ.  Thank God we have no idea what a “unit” is.  It’s your round!