Sogger’s Blog

In this post, I am first going to blow my own trumpet, then mute it and draw a parallel with something I saw last weekend. Here we go.

Between the ages of about 7 and 17, I was probably the best footballer in the county in my age group (that’s me blowing my trumpet - I can do this because nobody can corroborate it and I have “moderate comments” activated :-)).
However, I come from one of the sparsest populated counties in the country, so it doesn’t say too much (that’s me muting my trumpet). We would often travel to Manchester or Liverpool to play against teams with 11 snarling Wayne Rooney lookalikes, or to Newcastle to be humiliated by teams with 11 chirpy Gazza play-a-likes. So, I was the best player in the county which had the worst football team - does that count for anything?

Anyway, I played simultaneously for many teams at different levels (school, club, region, county) which explains why my knees are knackered). At the local level, we often used to play in competitions where there would be several teams, each playing the other and a winner emerging (as they do), and we usually won. Not surprisingly given that statement, we often played against teams that were far inferior. This seemed to infuriate several watching parents, many of whom would berate their offspring for pulling out of a tackle or missing a rare chance to score. I have seen children in tears because dad actually threw his coat to the floor before jumping up and down on it and swearing loudly.

Once, on an icy pitch, I slid the ball past a player, and swerved round him, keeping the ball and myself just on the touchline leaving him standing. However, a parent of a player from the opposition was having none of that and nonchalantly stuck out his foot and tripped me up. I think he got a red card for that.

This weekend, with my youngest son, we were walking past the local pitch when we saw the same sort of competition in progress. It was as if I had been transported back: teams of weaklings with players 2 years younger than others that had accumulated all the best players from the area. I watched coaches shouting at the group of players before their next match, trying to get them motivated, fathers jumping up and down on their coats, loudly swearing ‘”putain, c’est quoi ce bordel”, quietly proud mums and even one child leave the field in tears as another goal went in.

My 8-year old is football-obsessed and he is showing all the signs of being an excellent sportsman and wanted to get involved. However, I don’t want to turn into one of these parents who live their dreams through their children and trip up any child who gets in their way. I should be OK, but time will tell!

Maybe I’ll force him to play piano 3 hours a day instead - at least his knees won’t be worn out by the time he’s 20…

When I was young, a convoluted set of events led my uncle from the far north-west of England to the far south-east. My uncle was a tough guy and apparently an excellent footballer. In fact he was so good, that Manchester City invited him to go for a trial with them. Unfortunately, he was a big Manchester United fan, so decided against it (I suspect that, with hindsight, he regrets that decision).

I should say that my dad and I never really got on with my uncle. I remember it coming to a head many years later just as my parents announced proudly to him that I would be going to university. He started off on a self-righteous “Students, waste of taxpayer’s money…” etc. rants. My dad’s reply stopped him dead in his tracks: “We can’t all be bus drivers you know”. If you know my dad (and you will if you read another of my posts), you will know that this was completely out-of-character, and, as far as I am concerned, the put down of the year - I don’t think they have spoken to each other since (I am assuming that you realise from this that my uncle was a bus driver).

Anyway, a couple of times before this incident, we went down to the deepest south-east to stay with him and his family for our holidays: “Drive towards Skipton, turn right at Scotch Corner and keep going south” were all the directions you needed. So off we went in my dad’s mini-van, kitted out with cushions in the back for me and my sister to sit on. Seat belts, pah, who needs them? On arriving in the south, the differences for a young boy from deepest Cumbria were striking:

1. It was flat
2. The people spoke with a strange accent
3. The bricks were a different colour
4. There was sunshine!
5. The roads were not paved with gold; rather, they were large slabs of concrete joined by tarmac that melted in the said sun.

Like most young kids, I was a big football fan. It was during one of these holidays that I went to see the “local” team play; at the time they were one of the best teams in Europe. I saw them beat Anderlecht in a pre-season friendly and then Newcastle 3-0 on the first day of the season (I still have the pre-match programme and can remember where I stood (under the ‘M’ on the large “Portman Road” that was displayed on the stand roof).

The team had a player called Kevin. He was a young player breaking into the England team and was described as having the potential to become one of the best ever English players since, erm, the last one who would become the next best English player.

The most amazing thing though (for me), was that Kevin was my uncle’s friend. Imagine saying that your uncle’s best mate is David Beckham or Tiger Woods and you are not quite there, but you get the idea. “Why don’t you come with me round to his house?” my uncle asked me one day. I was completely flabbergasted - my uncle taking me to one of the country’s best footballer’s house! Just like that. I grabbed my autograph book and off we went.

I imagined driving up a long drive to a huge house, indoor swimming pool etc - you get the picture…but your picture, like mine, would be wrong: this was well before the days of big, big money in sport. In fact, we didn’t drive there, he lived just round the corner in a semi-detached house, not dissimilar to the one in the picture. Kevin himself answered the door and invited us in for a cup of tea after my uncle explained that I wanted his autograph (I didn’t really, but it would have been churlish to say so). I was too overwhelmed to speak: I just held out my autograph book (i.e. and old exercise book) for him to sign. On the walls were pennants and his England caps - yes, they really are caps. I put one on, and had my picture taken with him (sadly, it’s been lost).

Now, as far as I know, it may have been a top-of-the-range semi-detached house. However, when you see pictures of the houses of the likes of David Beckham, it doesn’t really match up.

The big money came into football in the early 90’s: this was the late 70’s. Kevin’s star shone brightly for a brief period, but too soon as far as sports super-stardom is concerned. He finally retired after injuries at 27. That’s life, but I bet there are a lot of 70’s and 80’s footballers who rue just missing out on the Sky Sports windfall!

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t seem to have ended too well (no gig as a TV football pundit unlike many others from his era for example). From what I can find out from Google, things haven’t changed too much, but articles from the web can’t give the full picture (this one being a perfect example), so let’s hope he’s happy with his lot.

Unfortunately, my dad’s put-down means that I don’t get to speak to my uncle too much these days, so, even if they are still friends, I’ll never get the real details…

Have you ever had an MRI? I had one today; it was part my why-am-I-having-epileptic-seizures-all-the-time saga? See my older posts for more details.

I should explain that I have had lots of MRI scans in the past (in a previous professional incarnation I studied MRI images of people’s knees in order to try to calculate whether their arthritis treatment was working or not).

As I already said, my epilepsy first showed itself in around 1994 when I working with the radiologists looking at the said pictures of knees. It seems crazy now, but it wasn’t taken too seriously at the time and I had a colleague take an image of my brain with the result “yeah, no tumour there”. Fast, professional and re-assuring.

Times and locations have moved on; today, I felt small, weak and frankly, a bit scared. The French medical system is notoriously protracted, and it was only after a visit to a GP, who referred me to a neurologist (for medication), who referred me to a neurologist (for an EEG) who referred me to another neurologist (for the MRI), that I finally arrived at the clinic.

An MRI is not dangerous in itself. It’s very ingenious in fact, but that’s for you to find out- if you are ever given the choice between an X-ray and an MRI - take the MRI. If you are claustrophobic, are sensitive to loud noise or have a nervous tic, keep away unless absolutely necessary.

After having a drip inserted in your arm, your head is clamped, headphones placed (obviously) on your head, a panic button placed in one hand and you are slid into the machine. With suitably funereal music, you could almost imagine being sent into the fires for your own cremation. Unfortunately, I was not treated to funereal music - I had “An Englishman in New York” by Sting. Why, I don’t know, but there you go.

I once watched a friend playing Counterstrike, a ridiculously violent shoot-em-up game. The sounds from that game reminded me of what I heard for 15 minutes. Repetitive banging with tonal changes for interest (all of course with Sting crooning in the background - although I don’t remember songs about Quentin Crisp featuring in Counterstrike).

Anyway, the good news is that I don’t have a tumour (God, I hadn’t even considered that before the neurologist informed me) and I don’t have any dead bits of brain (apart from the bits that I killed this evening with a very nice 2006 Chardonnay.

So now it’s back to the old routine of trying different combinations of medicines that might reduce the seizure rate to around 1 per 3 months (according to neurologist 2). I guess I should be relieved by all that, but I feel a little shaken up by it all really.

A little aside:

The funniest thing about all this epilepsy stuff is that I am pretty sure I remember when it was triggered. I was playing for Writtle FC (oh yes, those heady days of amateur football in the Chelmsford area). We had a corner, I was positioned just outside the box and said to myself (wait for it), if this gets flicked on at the near post, I’m gonna make a late run “just like Bryan Robson” and head it in. Sure enough, near post. Sure enough, not quite as good a player as Bryan, a head butt to the side of the head and a somersault that left most people thinking I had broken my neck rather than induced epilepsy. So you see, every cloud has a silver lining - I am not Bryan Robson!