Transfer Madness

£50m for Torres seems about right. £35m for Andy Carroll? I hope I am as wrong about that as I was about Roy Hodgson.
I had forgotten that it was Chelsea at the weekend. Shouldn't we have a clause saying that he could not play in that game?
Got to feel sorry for Anelka, and that is not something you can say everyday.

two in a row

So the Mighty Reds sneaked past Fulham, after their convincing display against Wolves. It means we only need 8 or 9 points to avoid relegation. Which is both good and sad. We need about the same to get 5th place. So our best chance of Europe next season is to win the Europa league. But it shows that things can get better, and I take heart from that in both football and real life.

Still hanging in there

Blue Monday over a week ago, but I am still hanging on by my fingernails and expecting the sky to fall at any minute. I need more good news. I find it almost impossible to watch the news now - just too glum for words.

Beyond Blue Monday

Yesterday was apparently the most depressing, or depressed, day of the year for most of us. Really felt like it. Anyway that it gone, so maybe I can be more positive from now on. The trouble is the crushing anxiety that is currently a constant companion.

Deep breaths.
Next!

Till things are brighter

Things are pretty bad wherever you go...

Been a bad time, and things are still remarkably tough. Call it reality biting, or seasonal disorder, I find it hard to keep my head in the right place. The black dog is not exactly with me, but I can hear a howling in the trees behind the garden.

And this feels like a year of change. Mrs Breadcrumb will find out next week whether she has a new job which will mean uprooting us all. The Breadcrumbs would of course have to find a new school. And their joint carer is probably getting married and going home to central Europe in the summer.

I would like to be really positive about it all, but I live my days in a state of dread worrying about what imminent disaster is about to befall us.

Compared to some others we have it pretty easy - oppressive debts but a fairly large (though unstable) income. Loving family life.

So it goes.

dear oh dear

Losing to Wolves at home for the first time in 26 years is not a good way for the once Mighty Reds to go into the new year. I wish them, and everyone else, a better year in 2011 than they had in 2010. And particularly Roy Hodgson, in the new job that appears to be coming his way...

I'm still standing

There is never a good time to quote Elton John, but at the end of 2010 that is about all I can think. This year has been a gruelling slog, and it is still not clear exactly what the light is at the end of the tunnel. Or whether it is real or an illusion. Certainly, to jump metaphors, we are not yet out of the woods.

Still, here we are, another day older and deeper in debt (as they say - not entirely accurately).
If we are still in the same position in 12 months, that would actually be a major achievement. So, time to pause. Rest. Try to regather the energy that seems completely spent. Pick myself up off the floor. And go to it again.

God, I am tired. But the fight is not gone entirely.

Hope that 2011 is better to you than 2010, or you can imagine.

Half a world away

Britain is under a metre of snow, as shown by the love of my life. Meanwhile, I appear to be visiting the set of Blade Runner. Literally half a world apart.

two nil torres

I really did not expect that. Been a good month for the mighty reds, but beating Chelsea two nil was unexpected. Roy can rest easier tonight. What a difference a month of good results makes.

A history of the world in thousands of Objectives

In London for a week, and able to slip away to the British Museum. I thought I was getting a little bored of going there everytime I could. But when I walked through the doors into the Grand Court I changed my mind (again). The changing light as it got dark made the area feel amazing. Going up into the Mesopotamian section there was such a wealth of artifacts about such as little known area of human history. Then coming out of that section (53) into the Grand Court at the cafe at the top of the old reading room - amazing (again). It made me feel proud that in the UK we can still do such amazing things so well.

And of course the History of the World in 100 objects is an amazing series of podcasts/broadcasts.

I'll be back

Amsterdam

In Amsterdam for a week. Wondering round I am coming to the view that Amsterdam is in fact a massive trick played on the stoners, tokers and nere-do-wells by the strict and Presbyterian Dutch - who do not partake, but do take the rent, and the taxes. The smokers and hookers and visitors are all non-Dutch, while the Dutch seem to exist in a parallel world of books and high design.

Sadly, I am now old and reactionary enough to side with the Dutch. I find myself wandering past yet another "coffee" bar and thinking "don't you have anything better to do?" Suddenly Bohemanian just seems to mean not working hard enough. What a difference 20 years makes - not in the city but in me.

LFC again

I’ve just been reading Michael Lewis’s Moneyball. Tom Hicks and John W Henry both crop up in it as baseball club owners, which is relevant to their battle for LFC. Moneyball is about the way the Oakland A’s baseball club overachieved for their budget, because their General Manager worked out ways to value players in a different way to other clubs. Hicks appears a couple of times in a generally negative light as someone who overpaid for underperforming players. Henry appears as a club owner open to new ideas, and willing to learn and change to become more successful. If those are accurate representations, it would be a good sign for LFC.

Make or break

I was a supporter of Roy Hodgson becoming manager at LFC. Now I think he is at make or break point. A defeat to Everton in the derby game and I think his position will be unsustainable. LFC in the relegation zone until November would be unacceptable to the supporters and club. Personally I hope he makes it.

this week's blasts from the past

Johnny Cash and Scritti Polliti. Odd combination I know.

So tired

A month of deadlines, many of which are making Douglas Adam’s famed whizzing sound as they go past.  There is something incredibly disspiriting about getting up tired and dragging myself down to write.  At least I have something to do, so I should be grateful.

Onwards and upwards – or at least sideways.

October looms.

Thin margins

My life is getting run on ever thinner margins. The global slowdown and recession took away all my room to manoeuvre, and any room for error. Like many people I am in daily worry about letters from the bank and credit cards. In theory I am a lot better off than many people. I worry for them.

These are hard times. Which is a cliche, and easier to say if you are the multi-millionaire, Eton educated son of a multi-millionaire. Harder for those of us with no safety net. The people that the banks, in their wisdom, are now screwing with high interest rates and no opportunity to change to another provider because of their tightening of credit controls. We are paying interest rates that are double what they should be realistically. They rebuild their profitability, and the rest of us cannot sleep.


Things are scheduled to be brighter. But I worry about rain.

A joy for ever

Groove is in the Heart. Deee-lite.

There has never been a time in the past 20 years (it was released in 1990) that this song has not been a real joy to listen to. If you haven't heard it - go buy now.

Planetary

I have at last finished Planetary by Warren Ellis and John Casaday (and Laura Martin). And I mean at last. I first came across it on a newsletter from those nice people at Page 45 in Nottingham (a recommended comic shop). Probably 5 years ago. I read the first compilations and then waited. And Waited! But not as long as the people who started at the beginning. These meagre 27 issues took more than a decade to be delivered (really - 10 years). And then I decided to wait for the Absolute edition rather than read it piecemeal.

It was worth it. If you love comics, and for some reason have not read this - go buy it now. If you don't love comics, you'll probably enjoy it but it will not mean the same to you. Just at the moment, think it is better than Watchmen.

The Absolute editions are worth the money, because the artwork and colouring need to be seen. Bright lights, flat pages, clean hands, full attention. Beautiful. And the homages to all the other comics add something rather than being pastiches. You seen how things could have turned out differently.

Now off to read Locas II, a compilation from my all time favourite Jamie Hernandez

Latitude

I didn't think that Belle & Sebastian would be suitable headliners for Saturday night.
I was wrong. They were excellent. They created a real family party atmosphere, and Stuart is really funny. Their off the cuff version of Jumping Jack Flask should be the stuff of legend. As was their stage full of dancers for Boy with the Arab Strap.

Overall Latitude was brilliant, though the organisational aspects were down on last year, and there were 2 terrible incidents.

Holland or Spain

If it can't be England, I shall settle for that choice. Either really. But for different reasons.
And then I think I shall forget about football for a long, long time.