Category Archives: Blog
Barca is down but not out
Ok , from the perspective of a cule, let’s be honest: it was not one of those magical nights we’ve got used to with Barca. Sure, we paid tribute to that Victor Valdes block, celebrated Villa’s goal, and forgot how many oles we cried- so many passes did Barca make, for long periods, without interruption. But Valdes later let in a howler, Messi threatened but was incapable of delivering, Pedro was non existant., and Pique got another yellow card which means he will miss the second leg. In the …
My team is back in town- Visca Barca!
Great evening last night aboard Bar & Co, the superb Latino bar on the Thames were Barca’s UK based fans –British, Catalans, other Spaniards and even an American from Washington DC-gathered to share a meal, a few beers, and a large cake emblazoned with the club colours between singing, exchanging old campaign stories- from Valencia to Rome via Manchester-, and celebrating a video showing the historic 5-0 victory over Real Madrid at the Nou Camp earlier in the season. Among the new members of our UK fan club , and …
An evening with ‘Rocky’
As one gets older, I find some school memories sweeter than others and worth cherishing as part of that enduring, if precious, collection of good times. Let me share this one about my old school mate ‘Rocky’, and his revival. I remember Francis Rockliff- or ‘Rocky’ – as one of the more colourful seniors, two year older, born with radical instincts and music in his head. He was destined to walk on the wild side and thus never became a prefect but instead ended being beaten by one. My early …
Bilbao Revisited
Just back from a visit to Bilbao as part of my latest wonderings through Spanish football (theme of a new book I am working on). This City is much altered since I first visited it on a ferry from England some thirty years ago. The air is much cleaner, it’s got one of the best public transport systems in the world, and its river is a joy to walk along now the Guggenheim gleams nears its banks and there’s a Calatrava bridge joining one side of the city with the …
Shakira cule
My candidate for the best news of the week is a report in the Spanish media today that Shakira is thinking of buying a house in Catalonia where her sister already lives. The beautiful, talented, and engaging Columbian star is one of my favourite singers and dancers and it will be great to see more of her along with my regular visits to the Nou Camp. A real bonus would be her finding a house she likes in Sitges where I like to take my holidays and have many friends. …
Good sense prevails at The Garrick
So the Garrick Club, my beloved and enduring watering hole and eaterie will not ban ladies from its totemic central table, after all. Thank God, reason has prevailed. Due to unavoidable work commitments, I was sadly unable to attend last night’s special meeting of members which voted against a motion that endeavoured to get round the Equalities Bill, by making the table ‘members only’, thus excluding women who are guests but not full members . Women guests have been granted gradual access to previously restricted areas of the club in …
Journalists:get your own house in order
There are sectors of the British media that take to exposing the alleged sins of the world with unashamed gusto. From parliamentary expenses to Vince Cable’s ministerial gaffe, not to mention the countless invasions into the privacy of other individuals – often in apparent violation of what or may not judged contempt of court. The media are less comfortable when their own less reputable actions become the focus and target of attention. The Murdoch stable can thus not be best pleased with the growing controversy over the alleged hacking of …
Snow Prayer
So you haven’t been able to buy presents , quite on the industrial scale of previous years, or you might have missed an extra day or two at work, or the car you were driving is now abandoned on some minor road somewhere between Bath and Oxford, or your flight to some place in the sun has been grounded, and you’ve slept your last night , not in a manger, but on the hard floor of a crowded terminal. Well I can’t remember the last time I woke, as I did …
Football’s Globe Trotters?
FC Barcelona are making their Spanish League wins look so easy that they are in danger of becoming football’s equivalent of the Harlem Globe Trotters. For those of you unfamiliar with the HBT, they are the legendary basketball team that became just so skilful and so much better than any of their rivals that at one point they decided just to focus on exhibition matches- with a bit of theatrics thrown in- as there was no point in pretending there was any competition capable of beating them. They became very successful, …
My Book of the Month is Giles Tremlett’s Catherine of Aragon
Catherine of Aragon is not a name that slips easily off the lips of most English schoolboys, unless they’ve been educated as Catholics, still a minority breed. Few early students of English history have failed to memorise where she was in the Tudor pecking order: ‘divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, and survived. ’ Oh yes, Catherine was the one who was divorced first. Of Henry V111’s eight wives, it is Catherine who has endured in the collective memory of the English people, arguably for the wrong reasons. Catherine was mythified …
