OCCUPIED COUNTRY

One Of Those Days In England

A pleasant change today as I took myself off to Boundary Park to watch Oldham Athletic take on the might of Hull City in a relegation/promotion dog fight. I've been starved of live football for the past few weeks due to a combination of City playing away and Internationals interfering with the domestic fixture list.

I love the atmosphere in these lower division clashes. The parochialness (is that a word?), the shabbiness of the grounds, the fervour of the supporters. Hull, for example, brought 3,000+ to the match today and they were in fine voice even when their team had fallen behind and they knew that their tenure at the top of the division was probably about to end. Oldham, by comparison are fighting for every point they can muster to keep themselves in their current division. You could sense the tension in the crowd, the baited breath, the explosions of fury at every disputed decision that went the way of the opposition.

I sat with Higher-Than-a-Ten John and his wife. The Easter Monday sky above was heavy and threatening and the flood lights were needed as kick off approached. British Summer Time my arse! In stark contrast to the City of Manchester stadium where my seat is on the back row of the third tier, my seat today was a mere 15 feet from the touchline. You can hear every curse, every crunching tackle, you can see the effort and determination etched in the faces of the players. The winces of pain. The sweat and the snot.

The spectators provided a running commentary peppered with the sort of witty dialogue that the likes of Bennett, Tinniswood and Nobbs would kill for. The players and officials can probably hear every word too which makes half the stuff even funnier.

Anyway, for Oldham a 1-0 win and another 3 points in the bag. For me? One of those days in England: full of nostalgia, full of inner happiness. Full.

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And then, after we had eaten we turn on the TV and there's a tsunami alert after another earthquake off the coast of Indonesia. It's pretty much in the same place as the last and there's panic in Indonesia - Aceh in particular.

It's a good job it's just a natural phenomenon though isn't it? I mean, I'd hate to believe it was somehow all the work of an omnipresent creator wouldn't you?

I expect the Happy Clappys are already practicising their "He moves in mysterious ways" speeches ready to churn them out ad infinitum as and when. It's probably got something to do with the fact that we are all self-indulgent twats with no time for the One True God. Well, either that or he's upset at the outcome of the Schiavo appeal. It seems odd that he seems to moving mysteriously just after the Christian religion's most important dates in the calender - Christmas and Easter. No doubt the Muslim Not-Happy-and-definitely-not-Clappys will be reading significance into that.

At least this time round the poor bugger's have had some warning. Warnings provided by the endeavours of the scientific community I might add - not a fucking Angel or 'owt like that.

As my old mate Couldn't-Give-a-Shit-Mick used to say:

"If - and it's a fuckin' big if - God exists, then he's a twat pure and simple."