JPT Heaven
55,001 fans crowded into Wembley. 40,000 made the short trip from Bedfordshire, 15,000 from Humberside and one journeyed from Lower Bavaria via Munich Airport, Heathrow, Barton-Le-Clay, Greenfield, Flitwick and West Hampstead.
During the three day break I managed a good fill of Fish & Chips, plenty of great English beer, a really decent Curry and squeezed in my first Wembley trip in over ten years and first cup final since 1989.
The boys done well. 1-0 down, 2-1 up, heartbreak with two minutes to go at 2-2 before 3-2 in extra time. Scunny are 41 places above the Hatters in the league but the form-book was thrown out of the window as Luton more than matched their so called superiors for style, skill, passion and commitment. The BBC described it as arguably the best game of football played at the new Wembley and who am I to argue with that.
The euphoria quickly passes and on Saturday it´s back to the day job. Lincoln City away and another week closer to certain relegation to the 5th league for the first time in a hundred years. However, for the time being, who cares?
Ich bin David
Which brings me to German as a language. After a five year break I restarted my German lessons this week. They say it´s like riding a bike, in which case it´s a bloody strange bike. My teacher said I had a good vocabulary but had a lot of bad habits. I was surprised that she knew me so well after only half an hour and during that time I didn´t fart once or pick my nose. Then she explained that my most obvious bad habits were grammatical. That came as a surprise and a bit of a bonus.
What did I learn? Firstly, I can count to twenty. Secondly, I can conjugate the verb Sein and Haben. Thirdly, I have a 33% hit-rate on the Die, Der and Das´s. Finally, I need to put more verbs at the end of sentences.
I have two lessons a week for the next couple of months. I hope as time goes by that I will start to write more and more of this in German and that this lovely new keyboard (attached to a quite wonderful MacBook) will help me with my ÖÄÜ´s and ßßßßßßßß´s.
Danke.
No way sis
[F#m].....[A]......................................[Esus4].............[B7sus4]
Maybe the grammar is crap and the spelling a bit colloquial but these words kick off Wonderwall by Oasis and represent the high point in Britpop, 1990's rock and my evening on Friday.
Our Noel on stage with his guitar
Supported by Scottish band Glasvegas (Half Joy Division, half Big Country), Oasis this time managed to turn up and play a blinding set. No excuses from Liam this year. Last time he was in Munich he lost his front teeth during a heated discussion with two Italian 'businessmen' in the bar of the Bayerischehof Hotel. His resulting discussion with the Bavarian Police meant that there was no lead singer to stand deadpan in front of the adoring audience. Gig cancelled.
It looks like the dental work was a success and his Bavarian experience did not put him off. Standing resplendent about 5 meters in front of me, the worlds cockiest monkeyman was in fine form singing a great mix of tracks from the new album, most of the 90's classics and some tracks from, er, the other three albums that, um, didn't sell so well. And were they worth the billing from last weeks NME awards, "Best live band in the world"? God yes! The last (first) time I saw Oasis was at the massive Knebworth outdoor concert in Nineteen Ninety something along with eighty thousand other people. We were about as far from the stage as was possible and could just about make out the band in the distance. This time I could almost feel the droplets of spit land on my balding pate as young monkey Galagher spat his way through hit after hit after (non) hit and (future) hit.
Strangely, at Knebworth I was surrounded by people who all seemed to be the same as little old me. This time, I was surrounded by people who all seemed to be like I was at Knebworth. I am constantly amazed at the power of music to span time. Last week, I sang the words to Wonderwall as my anthem from the 90's at the same time a load of kids sang Wonderwall as their anthem from 2009. I think that is so cool. Twenty years and nowt has changed as they say up North.
So, today was the day that Oasis threw it back to me. I think I took a good catch and will look after it until the next time they come to Munich. Maybe then at the tender age of fifty something the kids will be thirty something thinking how amazing it is that their anthem Wonderwall is being sung by a load of teenagers who were still pooping yellow when they saw Oasis for the first time in 2009...
Bring on the Killers!
A day in the life...
I sat down in my office and turned on the computer and then it happened. Nothing. No e-mail, no worldwide web, nothing. Just a great big blank screen with the words "The Internet has been deleted" sitting in the middle of the screen. Someone looked up from the next office and shouted, "Has your internet been deleted?" which was returned with a chorus of agreement from the offices in the vicinity.
I phoned the help desk to find out what was going on. Apparently someone in the United States was cleaning up some of the old internet protocols and they pressed the delete key by mistake. Of course there is so much stuff on the web that you got the old Windows Message "file too large for deleted items. Delete anyway?" and one mistaken click later, the internet was gone. Puff. I bet that poor guy panicked. If he'd been using a mac he at least could have pressed the escape key and probably most of the web would have survived. The odd porn site and the occasional irrelevant blog might have gone but at least the majority of the web would have survived.
So there we were. No Internet. Someone shouted that Patience was still working which was something but how was I going to update myself with the interesting e-mails that were sent overnight or find out the latest news from the BBC? There was only one thing to do. Have a coffee. Crap coffee maybe but at least it was caffeine and that would give some time to decide what to do next. Unsurprisingly the coffee room was full to bursting. The conversations seemed to split three ways. The younger people seemed to only be worrying about their inability to read or update their facebook pages. The older ones were reminding everyone in raised voices that this was bound to happen in the end and life was much better (winters colder, summers hotter) in the olden days when they used Semaphore and letters to communicate. The third group, visually identifiable by their Birkenstock sandals seemed to just be discussing that if only people had listened to them in the first place and used Linux instead of Windows we wouldn't be all standing here. I have to believe this is what they were saying as it actually came across as a whole series of grunts, beeps and other noises created during engineerspeak.
In the corridor someone shouted "I've got a signal on my Blackberry". I don't know who it was and the body was indistinguishable after the stampede but when the fastest and fittest had grabbed the handheld device it all turned out to be a little joke. A bit like this text.
My wife said on Friday night, "What if the Internet was deleted?", to which I responded "it can't". But what if it were. Would we miss our e-mails most or our facebook communications? I would miss Google, without which I would have had to turn to a book to give me the lyrics to the wonderful Beatles track, A day in the life, the eight lines of which started this irrelevant piece of drivel. Saying that, I still had more fun writing this tosh than a thousand e-mails would ever bring....more to come.
A change is as good as a rest?
God giveth and God taketh away and in this case God giveth good. You see, I am lucky to be a fully paid up member of the ENFP club and as a part of the 5% of the TI’s management population that share this gift/curse, a change is better than a rest. I had this small club described to me as filled with Journalists. A group of people who need to have lots of plates spinning but sometimes lose focus so spectacularly that they don’t notice the piles of broken crockery building up around their feet.
As a child/younger person, I would change the layout of my bedroom at least once a year. The ABBA poster would come down from over the bed and be replaced by a Porsche. My desk would move from under one window to along the side wall. The wiring for the sockets and lights would be changed for different coloured cable. Actually that’s not true. But what is that my feet do get itchy from time to time and now is one of those times.
So what have been the highlights of the last six years?
1) Drinking so much vodka in Moscow that I called my sister on the phone and forgot I had done it the next day.
2) Drinking so much vodka in St.Petrersburg and not knowing how I cut my arm somewhere between the bar and my bedroom.
3) Seeing the pyramids from a speeding Egyptian car and thinking, mm, they’re big.
4) The view over old Prague from the Castle.
5) The drive from Istanbul to Ankara after midnight including a customer meeting with no shoes.
6) Goose Liver in Budapest.
7) Going to Siberia in a heat wave.
8) Finally having some free time in Istanbul and wandering around the Spice Market and Grand Bazaar.
9) Learning that Warsaw and Wroclaw are two different places but Wroclaw and Breslau are the same.
10) The worlds cheapest taxi ride complete with free, loud Gypsy folk music in Bucharest.
11) Dinner with EBV in Wroclaw. Beer, wine, Vodka....
12) Helping to open the EECSC in Prague. A truly great bunch.
13) Never having a bad meal in Turkey.
14) Landing safely in a Tupolov at St Petersburg and joining in the chorus of cheers at our bumpy arrival in one piece.
15) Late night tea in Kiev, a city with no litter.
16) Spending a couple of days in Israel and bobbing up and down in the Dead Sea.
17) Seeing Romania change for the better over four years.
18) Using Euro’s in Slovenia and Slovak Republic.
19) Playing football in Hungary and being a not too bad goalie.
20) Building the best goddamn team in the whole of East Europe!
And the regrets? Well, they are mainly the countries I did not manage to visit. Dubai, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan to name a few but hey, there’s plenty of time for that and maybe in a few years when the ENFP kicks back in, a change will be as good a rest and I will tick off the final few countries with a smile spreading from ear to ear (no mean feat in my case, I can tell you!).
