Pitching Balls

I popped back down to see the children and to say goodbye to my boy before he went on his school trip because it’s important to set eyes on the people you love in case anything happens in the emptiness of their absence and a negative angel sitting on my left shoulder reminds me of the news headlines featuring grieving parents at the scene of some coach or bus crash and I’m besides myself with paranoia and choking fear and freak out his mother by voicing my concerns when I ask who’s driving the coach. My name’s Head. Dick Head. Still he goes away early in the morning and we return to our separate lives.

It’s been ages since I went to a football game and the ups and downs of what is proving to be one of the most exciting seasons ever must be witnessed close up for I have no intention of chartering these novel emotions from someone else’s point of view and the Arsenal faced Manchester City Saturday afternoon at the Emirates and the midfield Spanish maestro Fabregas was back in action after months of injury and there was no telling what an uninjured Emmanuel Adebayor might do having scored the single goal last weekend which allowed Togo to qualify for the World Cup in 2010. The African teams you'd expect to be there in the summer of 2010 are fielding a strong presence in every European league and the sum of their number makes a huge impact on world football and it is a testament to their growing popularity on the continent itself that nineteen fans lost their lives trying to support Drogba and his Ivorians in a game against Malawi that same weekend.As we all know there are now 410 days 6 hours 10 minutes and 45 seconds and counting down till the start of the first match in that World Cup and already the internet jokers are out in force virally posting an image of the only way South Africa can win the World Cup next summer. The uneven playing field. The programmes are out and the hotels all over Madibaland preparing for the biggest wildebeest stampede in all of their winter history because you can bet your bottom penny the fans think they'll be heading out to sun sand and soccer but Johannesburg is freezing in June and no not many fans know that.

In truth football is a crucial area of interest to me over the next few months and beyond in reportage work and in a large chunk of our fiction which has developed and matured to the level of being sent out and raised enough interest to be the sole motivation over all of next summer and that’s been three years in the making. The Arsenal showed off their returning gladiators with two fantastic goals made by the Spaniard for the Togolese goal machine and it seemed what we’d been missing was there in full view and the sixty thousand plus crowd basked in real sunshine and the idiot who sits amongst us went on and on about how he can’t believe how pale his skin went over the winter and I resisted the urge to say I don’t have that problem because it’s probably what he was trying to get me to say. The crowds seem lifted by the big yellow ball in the sky and policemen meant to be stewarding the crowds are clearly there for the game mostly and a woman in the crowd makes us all laugh with her public admiration for the Arsenal legend Thierry Henry or perhaps that is in fact her husband’s name.

When my boy had gone packing I enjoyed a pleasant afternoon with my girl drinking tea in an empty park and catching up on our creativity. I tell her the film on football is written and out there and she wants to know if I took on board any of her ideas and I say yes I did the female lead is a theatre director as per your suggestion and she goes too cool anything else yes that line about the future oh right so I practically wrote her then why don’t I play her because you’re too young. Why’s that because her lot is a miserable one and doesn’t end happily she’s thrown into prison and her boyfriend has to kiss her through the bars of a jail and he dies somewhere between the third act you really don’t want to play her. As parts go she sounds like fun dad but who do I have to kiss oh some activist and who’s playing him oh some unwashed randomer living on the streets stressed out hungry kid oh you mean some minger. Great. I think she’s off that idea.