Beer and Football

The girls are all away: staying at the seaside on Easter Sunday, whilst I'm here at home alone, ostensibly looking after the dog, but also having a few hours time to myself. I saw a homeopathic therapist a couple of days ago - after all, conventional medicine had hospitalised me with a wrong prescription for a bad back, so it seemed sensible to seek a second bit of input! And she recommended that I make sure to take time alone, as that's clearly something that my nature needs, and is the one thing I'm guaranteed to have little of, living in a small apartment with a wife and two small kids :-)
When they're away like this, it always take s afew hours to even adjust to the fact that nobody's going to walk in and disturb me whilst I listen to music, or type away. Nobody's going to walk in and start talking through the film I'm trying to watch, or wonder why I've not gone to bed yet when it's already 1 in the morning.
Or, like last night, walk in on me listening to music at 1 in the morning, complain of a tummy ache, and start throwing up all over. Poor Willow had got the tummy bug (Ayla had it last weekend, so last Saturday I'd sat with a sick child on me most of the day). This time Willow had it, through the night and through the day (whilst Ayla and Es went off on an egg hunt). So not only could she not touch any of the mountains of chocolate she has waiting for her, but it looked like she couldn't even go for the night at the hotel, with Mama and Ayla, Oma Femmie, Oom Fjodor and Nienke.
Luckily for her, and I guess me - she's there now and I'm sat here now, enjoying the quiet - and doing what else but thinking of them :-)

I've been thinking of something to write about Iraq. It seems that the nightmare over there has become absorbed into our world view, that it's one more horror piled on top, that we won't start pondering the blood till the day that Iran is next in line. Then we might march again, parading our ineffectuality.
I'm wondering what can be done. I wonder what the legality might be of mounting a public fund-raising for the resistance. As the resistance there is labelled "insurgency" and "terrorists", I'm guessing that the laws here might be twisted sufficiently to make such an act a one-way ticket to Guantanamo.
The same laws doubtless would have done for the International Brigades fighting Franco's fascists.
Of course a big difference is in the nature of the resistance. The media tells us it's all allah-bothering nutters and Ba'athist gangsters. I've no way of judging, but I can imagine that a hell of a lot of the people are like me, who would be inclined to take up arms if some army invaded and started shelling and shooting and piling up the prisoners into naked pyramids. I also imagine that it would be strengthen the hand of those ordinary people over there who are resisting - the everyday insurgents if you like - if they knew those of us over here, who oppose the war and are disgusted at the actions of our own governments and corporate bosses, weren't all mouth and no trousers. If we could, at least, put our money where our mouths are.
Lots of respect then to those who do take personal action. Especially to Sam, the clown. Who has now gone to Palestine, to try and bring at least a few smiles to the kids suffering the adult madness that is war; just as he previously did in Iraq.

It's having kids of your own that really restrict your actions. The more your own world requires and demands security on your part, instead of the liberty of the only responsibility being your own conscience, the brutal truth is responsibility in feeding and clothing two people who really can't look after themselves. And in educating them to be as honest and true as they can be. But most of all, in being here for them. Even if at times, I am a grumpy, chagrined old fucker, and at other times, I feel the need to be alone.

So here I am alone of an evening. 10 o'clock, and no kids to wake up and no wife to wish good night. Sunday night and no work tomorrow, so I suppose at least Jesus died to give me a day off work. Listening to music on my MP3 player, so here in my world it is in fact far from quiet. Drinking another beer and waiting a while till the next football begins. It was the last normal speelronde for the Dutch league this afternoon, and I was still at home with a sick child, I didn't go to the pub to watch the games, but saw the highlights on TV this evening. Good news, in that AZ finished second, and Ajax fourth, so they avoid each other in the first round of the playoffs.
I'm an awfully cliched man sometimes - beer and football. It's something that I've tried to express before. I am, by choice, a quiet person, who doesn't get into the limelight, who doesn't get into fights. I'm not political, not interested in power, don't want to be rich or famous. I would be more than happy to live somewhere nice with my family, watch football and play cricket and drink beer.
But I didn't declare the war. The arseholes who run things had to go and piss around with my life when I was just a kid. I'm a sensitive lad - and I take things like mass unemployment and immigrant expulsions very personally. Most of all, going through police roadblocks, seeing thousands of riot cops and troops-dressed-as-riot-cops - pass by me every morning on the way to school - I took it personally.
Es doesn't know how I can fight. I guess it's best to keep it that way. But I think I see the link between the insurgents and the kid who bunked off school to go down the picket lines (and the pub!) It's a question of the scale of the response, the measures justified: guns might be one thing, but I think there's many resistance fighters in Iraq who disagree with targetting or hurting civilians.
Especially kids. It's a measure for me, being a father, of how you justify your cause. If you can justify killing kids, then you're a lying toerag and I want nothing to do with you. Because there's no justification. Whether you're an American pilot or a Jihadist fighter or an IRA ASU, the death of a child should be cause for you to stop and reassess your whole strategy, the scale of your response. If you can pass that off as 'collateral damage' or 'regrettable' or 'inevitable innocent caught in crossfire' then you've already lost your humanity and no world you might want to take us to can be remotely worth inhabiting.

It was 'Dennis Bergamp Day' at Highbury yesterday. Surely that's worth a drink?
And the cricket season has started, the World Cup is coming, and I'm away two nights next week for work, where I can drink for free and watch the Arsenal in the Big Cup semi, then the next night, Ajax-Feyenoord and AZ-Groningen in the playoffs.





Most of us just want to drink beer and watch football.