It's not about Lance

Sufferfest

I was riding along the pavement the other evening when I heard my name called by a young voice; from a car. The car pulled over and I saw who it was; my favourite ex-student and driving the car was her Dad, a thoroughly nice man and ex-professional cyclist. I’m not going to name either; he doesn’t speak English and won’t read this, but we were having a private conversation that I didn’t ask him if I could repeat – so Mum’s the word. Suffice it to say he has won stages in major races and been placed overall in lesser stage races and been a national champion. A class act. As are his offspring; I’ve taught them.

We’ve never talked much about cycling. He made it very clear to me the first time we chatted (diggin the school garden) that the life isn’t much fun. Bradley Wiggins is making much of the sacrifices he’s made to win a Tour, as well he might. According to my source, everything comes second to the bike; its train, eat, rest, sleep, train, eat rest, sleep, tra…… you get the picture. Things like family, trips, holidays, taking the kids to school, shopping – family life then, are subjugated to the need to maximize your potential on the bike; it’s your job. Nothing else counts. Now he was enjoying the hell out of simple things like fetching the kids from school. Oh, and diggin the school garden to plant spuds. Cool. But after all the stuff about Lance (L.A.) I thought I might just ask his opinion; talk about opening the flood gates. Basically he said everything I’ve always thought but obviously he’s got way more perspective, factual content, and above all experience. So here goes then, more or less in the order the conversation took:

Maitre Jac

 Sudden outrage. Why the sudden outrage. It’s what I can’t get past personally. We’ve (all us real bikeys) always, always known that “You can’t win the tour de France on mineral water” as Maitre Jacques said in the 50s. So my source told me that he always gives the example of M/way driving. Everyone, but everyone, speeds. We all do it, we’re all culpable, all guilty, but where’s the screaming outcry, the hullabaloo, the kangaroo courts in the press and the blogs and online every day?!

Armstrong was a great Champion. This from a man who’s ridden in the peloton with him. He said he didn’t have much to do with him, but knew that he was a great rider and a great champion. He pointed out that no one could beat Armstrong, that everyone had the same “help” but no one could touch him, no one could get near him. I agree and always will – we all know that Lance was the best! I may not like it but I know it. And I might add that I’ve seen him in March in Murcia looking as sick as a dog coming in in the last group up the mountain and over half an hour behind the young Alejandro Valverde. Who won the Tour? Who do you think! A friend in the choir remembers L.A. riding the Tour of Burgos back before the cancer; he didn’t win – anything – but he didn’t get in the team bus either. He rode all the way back to the city after the finish of the race, another 80 kms. He’s always been that stubborn/determined, that ready to go the extra mile …… or 80 kms!

The peloton isn’t cleaner. Nothing has changed – how can we tell – because the Tour de France times remain the same; stages and overall. They should be slower; considerably if the doping that had such an effect is no longer taking place.

Speed Kills!!

One thing that he insisted on is that things have changed enormously since the days of Tommy Simpson. I can remember “old boys” telling me about swigging brandy before the off in local Time Trials; what Tommy took was a mixture of Cognac and pure amphetamine; speed kills! No; my source was adamant that it was always described as “help” in his day and before. He told me about a book he had a home from his country that detailed the help available to racing cyclists – and called it just that – help. The point he was making and I’d like to make is that it wasn’t harmful. It wasn’t portrayed as being bad; if you wanted to win, to succeed, it was what you had to do – the help you needed. Just that. What’s all the fuss about? I’ve never been fast, but I know that you simply can’t ride over the kind of distances and mountains that a major stage race takes you without a lot of rest and recuperation. A lot. Note I say ride. Now think about racing over that same route! You’d need help.

Some time ago, riding in France I met a young Irish bikey who was trying to ride the route of the 3 major tours. http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=1&page_id=127504&v=YJ I invited him to stay when it got to the Vuelta, which he did. He was young and strong and fit; my mate David and I struggled to keep up with his rhythm and he had all the bags on. John made it; an unbelievable ride, but he was shattered after all three of the rides; and he was “resting” from his day job all year to do the rides. Apart from massive beer abuse (my fault, all my fault) John was riding clean, but here’s the thing; he was riding, not racing, and I don’t think there are too many people who could match his achievement. Not just physically; it’s draining mentally too.

In conclusion; I’ll say to you all again: why the sudden outrage, the sudden feigning of ignorance? Us bikeys we knew all along. I’ll say again what my mate Mart always says, “Everybody, from the sponsors, the management, the media, the fans – they all demand that level of performance.” You wanted it; you got it; so what’s with all the sudden outrage? See you out on the bike then? Or not.

About Armstrong

About Armstrong

About Armstrong. It’s all about power – which to me has always seemed to mean money. Are the two distinguishable?
 

         B. A. - before Lance, there was a little European sport called cycling (actually it’s called professional road racing) which didn’t amount to a hill of beans in the tennis and golf context and probably didn’t add up to much stacked up next to football (American football) and baseball or even Association Football or soccer. Not financially that is; it was rich in talent and tradition and got you out of the house of a weekend. But no one got rich from it. Even the great champions had to ride all season and sometimes in the winter too to make a decent amount of money. Eddy Merckx used to ride Six Day events in the winter for the appearance money and the prize money that it brought him – we’re talking the Muhammad Ali of cycling here. I think most would place Merckx up there alongside Ali and perhaps Nicklaus, and Pele as the giants of sport; those who had been so dominant that no one else could get a look in.

         That was B. A. After Lance won his first tour it all changed. If you read his books you’ll find that he was more surprised than anyone. That he had to be persuaded to return Stateside for a day prior to fulfilling his kermesse commitments and it wasn’t until he actually saw the huge crowds on the streets of New York that he began to understand the impact his victory was having; after all, an American had won the Tour before. Lemond won three. With Lance it was different and the sponsors went bonkers. Nike alone pumped millions into making, marketing and maximizing sales of clothing and other accessories. But there was more; much more. Middle class America took to cycling and wanted more.

         Conversely, when Lance retired, the shit hit the fan. The sponsorship of a minority, non-telegenic sport, thousands of miles away in Europe dried up like a one day lake in a desert. Hence the power struggles. How to divvy up the remaining dosh!? If you look at the pro-sports that have their act together, especially golf and tennis, you don’t see unseemly squabbling over the delineation of power. They are administrated in an efficient and orderly manner. They have been since Mark McCormack spotted the huge potential of the new telly markets. Cycling on the other hand has suffered bitter infighting.

         Now let’s talk about drugs; please! Doping – goodness, such an outpouring of outrage! The whole world dopes; housewives on Valium, hangover merchants on aspirin, tea and coffee for goodness sakes, are drugs. So is beer and whisky; 1 in 4 hospital admissions are booze-fuelled.

         Now let’s look at cycling and drugs; first it was brandy, then poor old Tommy and the whizz; then it got more sophisticated and then it got considerably more sophisticated. But Maitre Jacques said it all in the 50’s; you can’t win the tour on mineral water. Or as my best mate Mart, bike shop owner and lifelong bikey says, “The crowds, the sponsors, the television, the sponsors and the team managements all demand levels of performance that simply aren’t natural, that cannot be attained without pharmaceutical help.” Whether it’s in yer steak, a syringe or a blood bag.

         What gets my goat, really makes me angry is this; there are many many people biting the hand that feeds them. Especially journalists. They are besmirching our sport to round up the circulation numbers. They should be thinking about who and what pays their bills, and writing about the wonderful, exciting newly competitive racing we’re all watching agog these days.

         So what’s going down? This; almost (but not quite; he had help, both corporate and private) singlehandedly L.A. moved cycling into a different league as far as the dosh was concerned. He did it by bringing the States on board, marketing it thru’ his name. Armstrong was branded. And boy did the brand move some units!

         So why is he being witch hunted now? Cos’ he’s gone and there’s no one to fill the void. The market has contracted and the USDA, the UCI and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all are fighting for what’s left in the cart. Nike aren’t interested in marketing a little Spanish lad with a penchant for cow’s arse, are they? If there was another Lance in the pipeline, it might all be a bit different. But there isn’t. Not yet. Maybe there never will be. The truth is he is and was a phenomenal athlete, far and away the best of his generation. Maybe the equivalent of Merckx; in longevity if not in all round ability.

         The real questions are how on earth Lance has acquired such vicious enemies; tho’ there’s no doubt that he was dominant and ruthless and a manipulator so was every other great champion. By definition he wouldn’t have achieved such success without those qualities. Hinault was at least as bad. And why everyone in the media, the sport’s government and administration and Joe Public seems determined to ignore the wonderfully open new racing (surely an indication that it’s cleaner than ever; really as well regulated as Cavendish would have us believe) and commit as open and public a Hari Kiri as is possible.

         Three indisputable facts: firstly, Lance Armstrong, whatever you feel about him, was and is a great champion. No one can take that away from him and he knows it. Two, the popularity of the sport, if not the pastime, is due to his Magnificent Seven. Three, the only loser here is the sport and its new young practitioners, boys and girls of all ages and at all levels.

         Why hasn’t he persisted in his legal battle? It’s massively, hugely expensive and Lance has chosen not to contest things in the past, saying publicly that he would rather spend the millions on cancer research than give it to the lawyers. Reading his books (well written by a Welsh girl; Sally Jenkins) it’s clear that all he really cares about is his kids and a cure for cancer.

         Personally I’ve always thought there’s a great deal more to cycling than elite men’s road racing. See you out on the bike then!

Dividing the Cake – the myth of economic growth

Dividing the Cake – the myth of economic growth

Mmmmmm - cut that cake

Rainforest - have YOU seen it anywhere?

The wisdom of nine year olds is a remarkable thing. For instance if you ask them what we breath, they will tell you oxygen. If you ask them where we get oxygen they will answer from trees, above all in the rain forest. If you ask them what happens when the rain forest is all gone……… well, suffice it to say that they are blessed with more wisdom than Obama, Putin, who ever rules China and India and the rest of the eejits allegedly in charge. They know. So do you. So do I. We choose to forget most of the time. The kids won’t have that luxury.

It’s the same with the cake; I like to think of it as a cake. If I was to tell a class of nine year olds to imagine a cake they would do it easily. If I ask them to divide it up, and it wouldn’t occur to them to do it other than equally, they would envision slices for all. Equal slices for all. If I then asked them that when the plate was empty was there any more cake they would all shout, “No!” Some might look at me as if I were a bit dim; a slice or two short of the full fruit cake. But the eejits in charge insist that there is more and more and more cake to be had.

What the fuck is that all about?!

Greed.

Plain and simple. Greed.

Good ol' days - Medieval Robber Barons

Here’s the thing; there’s more than enough to house, feed and clothe everyone, but if we do it equally the rich don’t get richer. Nothing’s changed. Tribal days; chiefy did good. Feudal days; robber barons and kings (if they stayed alive long enough) done good. Capitalism; capitalists do good. The poor do worse and worse. Kids get murdered for protesting child slavery; kids get abducted and sold into slavery, for organs, for prostitution; kids die of starvation, war-induced and self-induced; kids get killed in war zones. And that’s just kids.

All this is done in the name of “democracy” which is capitalist code for capitalism these days; or, really, it’s just the old concept of Empire updated. In tribal and feudal days it was plain old conquest, now it’s dressed up for popular consumption as economic growth. The bright ones among you will have spotted, as the bright ones (often those that think outside the box – like Hitler, Idi Amin, Uncle Joe Stalin) in class will spot, that if Mum just gets out some more ingredients, she can make another cake. What if the cupboard is bare? And the supermarket is closed? And it’s a Bank Holiday? What if the supermarket is open and the shelves are stocked but Mum doesn’t have any money …………

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." Pete Townsend

The fact is that the supermarket is being robbed blind left right and centre – as ever, not by the man on the Clapham omnibus or Citizen Joe Smith or by the kids, but by the biggest Robber Barons yet known to man. To ensure growth in the biggest industry on the planet, weapons, we need wars – real and imaginary. Often the one leads to the other. So we are back in the Middle Ages with the Christians against the Saracens. To ensure growth in the drugs industry we need illnesses and new ones are being discovered and developed every day; older, cheaper methods of curing people with healing, herbs, and prevention, are falling by the wayside and in some cases being suppressed. Herbalists have been censured and imprisoned in the U.S. To ensure growth in petrochemicals we must have more cars, plastic and “trains and boats and planes” to quote the ol’ song. The biggest culprit is the infernal combustion engine, which pollutes the air we try to breathe, and cuts down the rain forest that renews the oxygen in that air; it’s hard to know which’ll get us first, the cars or the chainsaw.

But supermarkets are not giving out plastic bags any more, you say. When I was a boy there weren’t supermarkets and there wasn’t packaging and recycling was done by the rag and bone man and people simply re-using things. I remember going to the Greengrocer with a string bag, I remember the milk bottles on the doorstep and real newspaper wrapping your fish and chips. Please; don’t start me on fish and chips! There simply wasn’t plastic all thru’ the house. But now we have growth. We played football in the street ‘cos there weren’t cars parked all down both sides of it. Growth has seen that off! But I recycle my paper, you tell me. There is an argument that the chemical processes involved in paper recycling do more damage than they prevent; another goes that by recycling we are diminishing the demand for the Scandis to plant more forests up there in the rarified atmosphere of the deep dark land of the winter. The truth is simpler; if the price isn’t good enough all your recycling gets lobbed into the landfill anyway ‘cos no one will buy it. Job done. Economic growth environmental waste management style – way to go!

Come back to the kids a minute – they’re the inheritors; if you give 2 six year olds a stick to play with they’ll have a ball ……… by the time they’re nine, they’ll have learnt they need a Gameboy, an X-box and a Wii to be happy – Oh yeah, and a telly and a computer in their room. Teacher? Not me, I’m fighting a rearguard action. Advertising, capitalism’s vanguard.

“Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz,

  My friends all have Porches, I must make amends”

Janis Joplin.

Janis

Heavy Stuff



The place known as school.



I was late for school again this morning; on the way I riffed through a few old excuses (tho' I never use them, I just tell my Head of Studies, who is a saint, the simple truth; I overslept) from times gone by. Here's my two all time favourites!

I once worked in an office; just the once was enough. I worked there with a friend who'd kinda got me the job. He was incorrigble. He would trot between the filing cabinets and his desk with a plastic shark on a lead; he egged us on to hold up marks out of 6 for the girls going past, strict Winter Olympic ice dance style; his desk jotters were little masterpieces of Steadman-esque cartoons and doodles. One of the forms his incorrigibilty took was a distinct lack of punctuality. This sin was leavened by a gift for the creative. His excuses were world class; they reached a zenith the day of the elephant. Our much loved chief clerk, a man with a similar, yet different gift for delineating his own job till it barely existed, was nominally responsible, among other things such as counting windows and hot drinks dispensed by the hot drinks dispensing machine, for discipline. Ian always felt it was his duty to step up Bill's activity levels and so it was that most days he would potter not at all shamefacedly up to Bill's desk and trot out the latest little creative outburst. Until finally one day he simply opened the door, at about 9.45 (which definitely sounds earlier and less late than a quarter to ten) strode up to Bill's desk with purpose and said, "Sorry I'm late Bill, it was the elephant." That good and kindly man knew when he was beaten, looked up at Ian and simply replied, "Righto Ian, carry on."

Nellie?

And the circus was not in town.

When the powers that be could bear it no more they moved Ian somewhere else. I went along later, as did one or two of the other lads. I found us rooms in a nice house with a nice garden and the landlords sister who was so pretty everyone fell in love with her - in fact one of us married her; but that, as they say, is another story. Its good one too. No, what I want to tell you about is my other favourite excuse for tardiness. Sometimes tardiness gets to the point of not arriving at all. I myself was once relieved of my post in the Time Office of the late and I suspect not at all lamented East Moors Steel Works for being late; three days late! Thus it was that when interrogated about his latest job interview fiasco, Mick simply said he hadn't managed to get up. Not get up in time mark you, but get up, full stop. Clustered round his bed, we working lads pressed him as to the cause of this failure, "Why couldn't you get up?" he simply uttered, the single word, "Gravity."

Heavy stuff!

The case of the amazing disappearing bike: now you see it, now you don’t, now you see it............



My townbike - no one can b'lieve its got no gears, but it goes like shit off a shovel - when I'm ridin it!

I want to tell you a story, as the great Max Bygraves used to say, about how living in Spain is a daily adventure. Sometimes I get fed up of the endless chatter and the directionless, couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery nature of organisation here, which permeates society from government level down. Just walking into a bar requires half and hour of senseless chatter before the where, the what and how many of the sitting and drinking has been settled. As the Spanish custom is to change bar every half hour, this can be a tiny bit wearing. I usually go and order up a beer and drink it quietly while I wait.

         But then there are the times when all this suddenly shifts into overdrive and events overtake you with breakneck speed and your left spinning like a top on the pavement in Briviesca during fiesta – but that’s another story.

Boys in Brivvy, maybe, its the only place I've seen them at it, spinning their tops.

Big sporting and cultural events, for example are set up and broken down with an impressive speed and efficiency unimaginable in Blighty. And that’s precisely what happened when my bike got stolen today! Oh, you need to know that the bike cost 79.99 euros brand new, with lights, from Decathlon, and was bought specifically with this scenario in mind.

On Wednesday I finish school an hour early – at 1.10. The girls have nicknamed our hour off, “Happy Hour.” The leaden skies and the stiffish wind didn’t inspire me to rush home and get out on the bike, so I pottered on my town bike to the cake shop and them thought, “I’m near Cristina’s school, I’ll go and meet her.” She was off to the despensa, which is a co-op organised and run to provide organic produce at cost for its members. Cristina is always good fun and things happen around her, and another friend, Pilar, works in the despensa, so I thought I may as well tag along as I’ve never actually been there before.

            So we chatted while Cristina shopped and I stuck my head out of the door to look at the bikes every now and then. But too much then and not enough now, cos the third time I looked mine wasn’t there.

            “Oh shit,” I said in English, as I went out. Both the girls speak English and immediately guessed what had happened. I wasn’t actually that bothered; I knew it'd be one of the school kids that had been loudly larking about in the square below all the flats; I also know that lots of them know me and that lots of people in the barrio know me as I teach their children. My reaction was simply, “I have been a pillock not locking the bike, even though we were just inside the shop.” And I have another at home, well two more actually, but one of them is my proper bike.

Immediately Cristina thrust her bike into my hands and everybody left the shop and began talking all at once. “Here we go,” I thought. But what happened was this. She immediately asked a pair of girls sitting chatting what they had seen. The others who came out of the shop did likewise. Cristina said, “Go down to my barrio!” so I headed off to where her Mum lives; think 1970’s walk up council estate in urban wasteland – identical from Vladivostok to San Diego. As I got there (it was just gone 2.00 when by law, all right minded Spanish people must be off the streets and eating their lunch – I kid you not, it looks just like curfew!) it was obvious that I wasn’t going to see anyone, let alone the bike.

Suddenly, a voice, “Jeremy, go up to the park, by the church, I’m going to G3!” a young man in a car that I’ve never seen before. I didn’t recognise him from the shop, I was pretty sure he wasn’t in the shop. Maybe he’d been passing, or lived around the square and had seen something. Way to go …….. as the yanks would say, I have a posse! I did as I was told – no one in sight. So I pottered quite contentedly back to the shop, more worried about Cris missing her lunch hour and her siesta, as she has to go back to teach all evening till ten. As I rode up to the shop a woman came out and told me that I had got my bike back. What!?

“We’ll take you there in the car,” she gestured to a waiting husband and car. I made to rush off, but she said, “Hold up,” one never rushes in Spain, and told me what had happened. The still unidentified young man had the bike in custody, it was some young Jacks having fun. Off we went in the jam jar. Now this is where it gets incestuous; Burgos es un pañuelo, which translates as Burgos is a handkerchief and means that everyone knows you and all your business, most of the time, before you do.

“Do you know Teresa as well?” she opens with in the car, she'd obviously been information gathering as soon as I left the shop. I do as it happens, rather well. “I’m learning music with her” my benefactress tells me. They’re learning the clarinet together. We joke about how exciting our little adventure is. Now I know that our little adventure will be all over half of Burgos by tomorrow morning and have my suspicions that the other half won’t be far behind. The young man’s car is identified, I jump out and cross four lanes of lunch time quiet road to greet him and listen to his story. He does indeed live in flat overlooking the square and saw the whole incident take place. He saw the three lads sneak the bike, bent double so we wouldn’t see them from the shop. He saw them riding around in circles. Then he noticed he couldn’t see them any more and decided it was time to head them off at the pass with the rest of the posse. The thing is this; in a situation like this, when the Brits would be standing around clueless and yakking about who would call the Old Bill, the Spanish launch into action, loving all the talkin, shoutin, arm-wavin, mobile phoning, manic car drivin’ opportunities, the whole anarchic mayhem of it.

I was still puzzling over the identity of my rescuer, and wondering where the bike was. So I asked him; it was hidden on the other side of the car, it wouldn’t fit in the car or he would have simply brought it back. I ventured the opinion that I’d thought I’d find it because I teach nearby and lots of the people know me.

“Claro, of course.” He said and finally told me he was Nacho’s Dad. I looked again and saw the similarity and we both laughed ………. Every year I have about 100 pupils. This is the sixth year, so with the littlies too that I sometimes help out with, I’ve taught everyone in the school at some time or other. There are some really quite big people in the secondary school that I used to teach too, who are still getting bigger. Sergio came up to me, hand outstretched, in the bus station in Bilbao over Christmas, at least as tall as me, and I didn’t recognise him for several heart beats. So all in all there are about 1,500 parents, who all know me and very amusingly are all utterly convinced in that endearing Spanish way, that I know and will recognise them. They quite often approach me when I’m a little the worse for wear in Patillas.

You'd have to go VERY early to find it like this!

The last time, a photographer from the Diario de Burgos came in to take pix of Amando who’s finally retiring, he took lots of shots as various musicians were joined by Amando on mandolin, he stood on benches (the photographer, not Amando) and sat on stools and everyone had a ball. Then he pottered off to stow his cameras and totter off to his next venue – but not before coming over, hand outstretched, to greet me, “Hello Jeremy, I didn’t know you were a Patillas fan, I’m Lucia and Claudia’s Dad.” Its like a feckin’ mafia. But today they all came good!

Amando with his catchphrase-on-a-stick.

            Here’s the thing tho’! Nacho’s one of my naughty boys. In fact I was only telling my friend and boss, Chelo, yesterday that Nacho, who was inhabiting the naughty boy chair outside her office, suffers from a rare and terrible disease of the limbs, “He can’t keep them still!” she finished for me, being well familiar with the condition.

            This means two things; by tomorrow, the other half of Burgos will all know my story, and I will have to be especially nice to Nacho all term!

Following the Football round London; on teaching and football and teaching football.

'appy 'ammers







The Boleyn

One early morning I got a call from the Fat Controller to go and do a day’s supply teaching in a school in West Ham. I was new in town and much taken with the idea of going to one of the cradles of good footballing philosophy; the great John Lyall and Ron Greenwood, architects of modern English coaching and responsible through the years for such illustrious names as the incomparable Bobby Moore, the hero of ’66 Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters who was so good he was still playing in the 1st division when he was 37. Trevor Brooking, the Lampards, father and son, the list goes on and on. And all of them proper footballers; passers and runners, not one would've hoofed it up into the stratosphere for it to come down with snow on or indulged in a hopefull punt up to the big lad.



The school was a little like that to. I was totally redundant, useless, only there because of the legal requirement. I learnt far more than the kids did, even if it was boring having to sit and watch them teach themselves. And the little ones. I had a Y6 class, the biggest people in the school, the class had three assistants from ethnic backgrounds working with immigrant children who came from an incredibly diverse background. The Deputy Head, who’s class it was, had left an “integrated day” on a white board; this is jargon for a list of things for the kids to do. And that’s what they did; all day. My highlight was to get the key to the Sports Cupboard and open it for the girls who then gave an infants class a PE lesson. I just watched, open mouthed. In class I tried to help, but they were all so confident and competent that I was genuinely redundant. Like that big fella up front down the Boleyn waiting for the long ball lofted hopefully goalward. That’s just not the West ‘am way, see, and it was the same in school. Superb coaching – in this case by the Dep who’d got her class running like clockwork and could go out for the day and it all tick tocked away without her – or me. Simply wonderful; if a tad boring for me.



The imaginatively named Boleyn pub.

Once upon a time we stayed in West Ham with Joe, he knew of a great pub, right next to the Boleyn Ground, fancifully called the Boleyn. And it was. Great. In the back room there was proper dancing with a proper organist playing all the old tunes that your Mum and Dad knew. Just like Cockneys were supposed to be. Everyone was dressed to the nines, none more so than a large, elegant West Indian gentleman with a fairly impressive girth stretching his waistcoat tight, gold watch chain dangling at just the right angle, who was an obvious Romeo. The East End has always been an immigrants destination; Milligan and his Irish mates fighting Mosley’s Black Shirts down Brick Lane, anti-Jewish riots, the West Indians sailing into the docks often stayed, nowadays it’s the Bengali sweat shops in the Rag Trade. West Ham United’s Clyde Best is widely credited as being the first division’s first black player.

            What Joe had forgotten was that it was F.A.Cup semi-final day and that from Villa Park down the M1 to London doesn’t take that long. Soon the bus loads of fans began returning and crowding into their local, and singing at the top of their liberally liquid laced voices, “Wemberleee, Wemberleee.” Yep, the ‘appy ‘ammers ‘ad done it again. Off to Wembley.

C'mon you Spurs!

The next club on my Fat Controllers list was T.H.F.C. The Spurs. The Yids. The Double. Kick and Rush. Gazza in tears. All of that and more. Much more; a proud institution. The school was literally in the shadow of the East Stand, the kids were almost totally Afro-Caribbean, an excellent, if demanding place to work. The boss was a Yorkshireman and after a few days there I asked him how he managed to run the place so well.

“Simple” he answered frankly, “I’ve got a very experienced staff and I go over budget ever year because of it. I offer my governors my resignation every year when they complain about it, but I’m still ‘ere.”

Next I asked him if he was a football man, tread gently see, not everybody is.

“Leeds United, man and boy!”

So I asked him about the big place casting its shadows over our little playground.

            “Never been in since they went PLC.” Was the blunt Yorshire reply, “The Arsenal send their lads up every season! But the other lot haven’t been in since they went public. Says everythin’ dunnit.”

If you click on the link you can see how close the school is to White Hart Lane.

http://maps.google.com/maps/empw?url=http:%2F%2Fmaps.google.com%2Fmaps%3Ff%3Dq%26source%3Ds_q%26hl%3Den%26geocode%3D%26q%3Dwhite%2Bhart%2Blane%26sll%3D51.603276,-0.065854%26sspn%3D0.025749,0.076818%26ie%3DUTF8%26hq%3DWhite%2BHart%2BLane%26hnear%3DWhite%2BHart%2BLane,%2B46%2BWhite%2BHart%2BLn,%2BWhite%2BHart%2BLane,%2BLondon%2BN17%2B8HP,%2BUnited%2BKingdom%26ll%3D51.603276,-0.065854%26spn%3D0.016633,0.038418%26t%3Dh%26output%3Dembed&hl=en

            One afternoon as the tidal wave of kids surged down the corridors I came across the boss looking a little more frantic than usual. Apparently the lad who ran the school Athletic Club hadn’t turned in. I immediately offered to do it.

            “I can’t pay you ‘owt, you know that!” said the boss. I told him it would be fun and he agreed and just told me to give them a few races and let them go home when they’d had enough. The thing is that if you do something like that for children, they don’t forget. So we did some silly warm ups I know of; every one jogs in a line and you shout out body parts for them to touch the ground with. You start with the obvious and accessible stuff like right hand, left hand, the knees, the elbows, then you throw in “Your bottom”, giggles galore, and eventually you go for the nose and the ears by which time the kids are mostly lying on the floor in hysterics. I still do it with my Spanish children. And they still love it. Then we did some silly races; hopping, crab walking, frog jumping. Then it got serious; heats, semi-finals and finals. Boy can those kids run. Its in the balance, and the stride; there’s nothing more natural than running, is there. Its flight and chase – forget the gathering, its hunting and being hunted, pure and simple. It was beautiful to watch their natural grace and ability, great to hear the laughter and see the smiles, but best of all, the next day every one of them greeted me going past down the corridor or in class. Yes!

Up the Arse!

I know its infantile but I simply can’t resist it. During one of my many sojourns in the city of pea soupers and soot, I lived hard by Highbury. It’s a proper football club still, is the Arsenal. Many of the supporters still live nearby and walk to the game. There’s a school at the end of the road and, of course, sooner or later I got to go there too. I’m a massive fan of these lovely old Victorian schools; huge big classrooms full of space and light, steps so worn by generation after generation of children that the top of one tread almost meets the bottom of the next. What they often don’t have is playground space. One Tory government or another hit on the hooligan idea of selling off school playing fields and of course, in London land was at a premium. Which is one of the reasons why I think the Arsenal should be so applauded; for breaking the bank to keep the Emirates local. I worked a few days in another Islington school with a tiny playground underground; I kid you not, literally underground, all electric lighting and troglodytes. None of the kids was over three foot tall. I seem to remember some barbarian had built a car park on the top where their playground used to be. What I remember best about Highbury Primary School was the football. There was only room for one pitch at playtime, but under the benevolent direction of Doreen at least six games were in progress at any one time. Talk about 3D chess – nothing on this mun! It was mindboggling to watch, incredibly all ran smoothly, disputes ran at the normal level or below ……… unb’lievable as we say in Wales.

The other thing about the Arse is that they invest in their, and Tottenham’s, community. I was privileged to be in a school one day when “the lads” came in to work with our kids. There were three of them and they were all about 7 feet tall, no more than 17, utterly professional, utterly charming and brilliant with the kids, who loved them. They did some football stuff which should have had me scribbling furiously, but I just watched open mouthed again at their easy confidence and control, both of the ball and the children; believe me they were good, very good. At the teaching bit and the football bit. Then they did some Literacy work, all football inspired, which the kids lapped up in a way they mightn’t have done in class. Brilliant.

The other other thing about the Arse is the ladies. I’m a huge believer in unisex sport. Arsenal Ladies is the most successful women’s football team in Britain. They’re semi-professional and have sometimes made their Continental professional opponents look silly. A wonderful role model for all British girls, not just Londoners. The club have academies for both boys and girls and their inward investment is an example to all clubs, especially other North London clubs who ignore little schools on their doorsteps. Let’s hope that’s changed.

British primary schools are almost uniformly excellent and on the very rare occasion that they're not its because the managemant is crap. And so it was that I went to a tall old Victorian building in Newham where a Super Head had been installed to effectively break up the school. Staff were not happy. Senior staff were disgruntled. So when I asked the Deputy at lunchtime if I could use the playground some time in the afternoon for a PE lesson, she said, "Stay out there all day for all I care!" she was bitter, you could sense it. So we did - stay out there all afternoon. We did some skills for a bit and then played one of the longest games of school football ever played. In fact I'm off to fone the Guiness Book of Records now ............

That afternoon still occupies a high spot in my professional memory as the time I got paid 120 quid to play football all afternoon. Not bad, eh.

And finally I’d like to tell you about my friend Paul, a lifelong Spurs supporter. When we worked together he let slip one day that he’d played in a youth team with Glenda Hoddle. After the Ooohs and Ahhhs had died down, Paul said that wasn’t his best namedrop. He claimed that he’d beaten Olympic gold medallist Linford Christie in a race. And he had. Its quite well known that as a youngster Linford wasn’t what you could call an enthusiastic trainer. He also ran the 400m rather than the pure sprints he later became so dominant in. 400 hurts. He was also quite fond of what we can term recreation; disco’s, late nights, girls, who knows, maybe even a little recreational spliff or two. And so it was that Paul caught him on a bad day and beat him in a 400. He also claims to have snogged Kim Wilde, but that’s just going to far isn’t it!



Wet dream or what?



Binlife

Its bin a hard day's night!

Is there life after Bin Laden?

Is there life in a Bin?

Ich Bin Berliner!

I'm tin therefore I'm a Bin

Binlife, for those throwaway moments ..........

Returning from the wilds I felt the need of a few luxuries. passing the Bin by the Mercadona, I noticed there was a shapely, curvacious lady with a little torch shining it into the bin and talking to herself.

Nothing too odd there. In these parts as in many others, there are plenty of folk whose best means of keeping the inceasingly rapacious wolf from their door is to rummage and sell. For the most part they're professionals and carry the tools of their trade; a trolley of some sort and a long stick with a hook or handle for rummaging at length. Often they can be heard conversing with themselves. So can I for that matter. Frequently.

Coming out of the supermarket I noticed that there were suble differences with this lady. Firstly, almost the entire contents of the bin were now piled carefully alongside her in their bags. For a few moments I entertained the entertaining thought that maybe she'd genuinely lost something in the bin. The second difference was that there was definitely another voice joining in the conversation with a will. Unless she was a natural mimic with built in ventriloquist's skills there was someone in the bin. As I drew level with the bin I could see her companion in the intestines of the bin casting about. They had the curves and skin colour to be Gypsies, but the lady to the fore had a trace of Indian blood in her features, those lovely high cheekbones and huge deep brown eyes. I concentrated on the sounds and realised with the same shock as always that those Spanishy sounding words with an almost Slavic accent were Portugese. They were Brazilian. Brazilian Bin Rummagers by Torchlight. How not at all romantic.

The Maccy D