It’s been a pretty heavy and decadent week and today marked the end of it. Next week is all about giving my body a break and getting started on the book. There’s no shortage of enthusiasm regards the book because I’ve already done quite a lot of work plotting it so I know I’m onto a good thing, and also I sense a few people doubt I can do it, which is the best inspiration of all.
Even if it’s not a huge success, just to have one published would be terrific. It would be a big ‘check!’ off my list of potential lifetime achievements.
The other’s really do range in terms of possibility and, therefore, ego. I won’t list them as you’ll think me either odd or ridiculously over ambitious and deranged but they include more achievable ones. Driving a train is one. Going for a hot air balloon ride, another. But then there are some more, shall we say, lofty ones. Becoming a billionaire, that’s in there. Not for greed, you understand, but just to see what you could get up to if everyday had limitless possibilities. Which is a bit greedy, in a way, but it’s more a greed for experiences than the filthy lucre itself. You just happen to need the filthy lucre. Is all this a bit sixth form? Yes.
So today was my last day of ‘holiday’. I watched the football in The Lion, having correctly predicted on Friday’s entry that the score would be 1-1. I should have put a bet on, in retrospect, but obviously if I had done the score would have been 7-3 according to ignorant and wrong scientists.
There’s a crazy theory that if you go back in time and change one little thing then the future will be changed beyond all recognition. This was a scientific theory best demonstrated in Dr Steven Spielberg’s well respected paper ‘Back To The Future’.
So, say I watched that match yesterday and then nipped back in time to visit the bookies and put a bet on, either the game would have had a different outcome or the world would have been devoured by aliens? Or Marty McFly’s Mum would never have met his Dad and he wouldn’t have been born? No! It wouldn’t have made any difference! Little ol’ me minding my own business in the betting shop. Impossible.
But that’s the way the theory goes. It’s one of those examples of science being clearly wrong and me being clearly right. It happens all the time.
The only way me going back in time and putting a bet on would effect that result is if it was a mammoth bet of, say, ten million pounds, and news filtered through to Goodison Park where some official went up to either of the managers and said “Someone in Ladbrokes has just put ten million pounds on this game ending 1-1." Then perhaps the manager may, although it’s unlikely, tell the players this news in the dressing room. They’d then probably just shrug because ten million pounds is peanuts to them and so wouldn’t think about it much but THEN, when Everton got awarded a penalty and James Beattie run up to take it, he might have thought to himself ‘God, that bloke’s but ten million pounds on this game finishing 1-1. If I miss this, that might not happen.’ And so he’d not be concentrating as much as he should and instead of the ball hitting the underside of the bar and going in, as it did yesterday, it would have hit the top the bar and gone over. Hence, history changed.
But I’d only bet about a fiver! It makes no difference! Nothing would be altered! Nothing!
Damn you science!
Is all this a bit sixth form? Yes.
Football’s treated me well this weekend however, unlike science. My team, Super Fulham (as they are officially known) beat Liverpool 2-0 and therefore gave me bragging rights over most of the people I met when I went out for T-A’s birthday celebrations last night.
That is the sole point of being a football supporter in this day and age. Bragging rights. The league is already won, no doubt about that, so the only point in teams still competing is so one person can run up to anther person in a pub and declare that his team are brilliant, as opposed to their rival’s team, who are rubbish.
A scientist may argue that how ‘good’ a team is can only be ascertained over a set period of time by monitoring and comparing a number of factors. But as we have already demonstrated today, science is largely wrong. And how many scientists even follow football or enjoyed it at school? Exactly.
Is all this a bit sixth form? Yes.
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