Notting Hill Carnival 2022

 Notting Hill Carnival 2022

It only seems like yesterday. After an unenforced three- year absence Notting Hill Carnival is back on the streets of West London. Yesterday it was children's day for Carnival as is usually the case. But the glorious spectacle will be back, a street party extravaganza that will always be matchless. Then the sheer harmony and musical communality of the whole weekend will once again bring to London a stunning electricity and vivid vibrancy. London has suddenly exploded into a kaleidoscope of colour, energy and laughter in the capital city. How we've longed for the Notting Hill Carnival. Our patience has been rewarded.

Today the Carnival will come into its own. The streets and roads of Bayswater Road, Bishops Bridge Road, Inverness Terrace, Hollywood Park Avenue, Uxbridge Road and Harrow Road will be bopping, grooving, shaking its hips, boogying and abandoning itself shamelessly to fun and frivolity. It could be quite a day and for those who thought we'd never see its like again, the documentary evidence will be on hand to record another weekend of joy, unabashed happiness and fascinating rhythms.

Of course the people will be there in all of their multi racial and multi- cultural magnificence, predominantly black but then embracing precious diversity and tolerance. The steel drums will be pounding away in superlative fashion, the ghetto blasters at their finest and most mellifluous, the sound systems blasting out into the late August sunshine and life will be sweeter than ever. And then there is the procession  itself. 

It will start in Notting Hill and end in Notting Hill which almost sounds fairly logical but this year Notting Hall Carnival should have an even greater resonance, importance and poignancy. The locals must have thought they'd never be allowed to ever leave their homes for fear of being laid low by Covid 19. But now they have now been given permission because the coronavirus has seemingly vanished although the realists tell us that we'll just have to cope with a rampant disease that must have felt like it would go on forever.

Still, they'll all be there today; the ladies with their spiky feathers the colours of the rainbow, the kids riffing the latest Caribbean themes, the jerk chicken, the outrageously stylish beach shirts, the smoke, the hint of incense hovering in the air and of course a community of people who will suddenly feel remarkably liberated if not relieved. They will walk together rather in the way they have since the late 1950s and then the seminal 1960s where everybody and everything dramatically changed overnight. 

We all know regrettably about the unfortunate events that so disfigured Carnival during the 1960s and 70s since it's branded indelibly on our consciousness. The news agenda throughout was dominated by futile murders, bloodshed, disgraceful violence, gang warfare on an epic scale and hundreds of police desperately trying to pacify the ultra- aggressive hordes determined to ruin the August Bank Holiday.

Now things seemed to have quietened down in West London and there is a genuine sense of frisson and breathless anticipation about the Notting Hill Carnival. For at least a year before Carnival, the preparations were extensive and thorough. The costumes were designed with meticulous attention to detail, sequins and beads, flowers and fripperies almost an integral part of what makes Notting Hill work.

But the days of long running battles with the police towards the final hours of Carnival have now been consigned to history. Notting Hill has had enough of its belligerent troublemakers, the thugs and villains simply intent on stealing, stabbing and soiling the Carnival with their ubiquitous presence. The mindset is now much more positive. The hooligans of the 1970s have left their flick knives and guns well away from Notting Hill and this year is all about incessant celebration, boastful braggadocio and gleefully invisible enjoyment. 

In an age now where racism must be allowed to end as of now and dissenting voices well and truly silenced we can only hope that sanity prevails and the good times can once again roll. Britain is a much more cosmopolitan, free and easy, liberal nation, a nation of welcoming acceptance of all religions, creeds and races. Carnivals transcend both the colour of your skin, and caters to all of your tastes, preferences and lifestyle choices. It doesn't matter who you are and where you come from because everybody should be given the red carpet treatment.

And so Notting Hill Carnival will slowly wind down in much the way it always has done. Smiling policemen and women will be dancing to the hypnotic beat with members of the public who just want to savour the feelgood ambience around the back streets of the neighbourhood. So whatever you're doing on this August Bank Holiday have a brilliant time. Anybody for a rum and Coke.

 

Brazilian gold

 Brazilian gold

The announcement was made shortly after breakfast. There were fanfares and trumpets, heralds and standard bearers. There was rapturous acclaim, stunned astonishment and a general mood of rejoicing. Nothing had happened like this since the last time a Premier League football club had made a similarly remarkable signing which these days seem to be more of a frequent occurrence than a VAR decision made in controversial circumstances or when that stupid white spray is used by a bored referee.

Yesterday your team West Ham United made the kind of signing that almost left us in an ecstatic state of the mind and rather like a man in a drunken stupor without even touching a drop of the hard stuff. Already West Ham have persuaded seven new players to enter through the hallowed corridors of the London Stadium and then the Rush Green training ground in Romford, Essex that is their fairly recent new home.

Firstly, there was the Moroccan defender Nayef Aguerd followed by lifelong West Ham fan Flynn Downes from Swansea and then, most importantly,  West Ham's new centre forward Gianluca Scamacca. The Italian was  genuinely welcomed into the club in much the way that the Pope is normally received whenever he steps onto the airport tarmac of any country he may be visiting. Maxwel Cornet, a winger by trade but immensely versatile when the mood suits him or the occasion merits it, was the next arrival from relegated Burnley and then we had yesterday when the world took a sharp intake of breath.

Yesterday Lucas Paqueta, by all accounts, one of the most sensational players ever to have joined West Ham in recent times, signed for the London Stadium club in a five year deal and the cost was over £52 million. Yes folks £52 million. Suddenly your mind travelled back to a far distant day in the late 1970s when Phil Parkes became the most expensive goalkeeper in Britain, and quite possibly the world, when he signed for West Ham with a £565,000 price tag attached to him.

But for obvious reasons some of us could hardly believe this story. It had surely been made up, some hallucination, some made up joke, a trick of the eye. Or maybe it was blissfully true and all West Ham fans birthdays had come at once. Lucas Paqueta, formerly of Lyon in France and before then AC Milan, had taken that giant leap of faith and decided that his future lay at the club whose representatives had once brought home England's only World Cup victory in 1966.

So you swallowed hard, gulped for a minute or two, pulled the toast away from your mouth, slurped a satisfying cup of coffee and didn't think for a minute that you'd seen or heard this milestone moment, this notable landmark, the most radical of breakthroughs. There you were wondering whether anything was going to change at the home of the claret and blue world beaters and then a Brazilian comes along and makes you think of one of the country's greatest of them all. His name was Pele but surely Paqueta isn't the modern day incarnation of the great man. Or is he?

For the last couple of days you have followed the latest developments of this amazing transfer window saga and for a minute, were caught up in its byzantine complexity, its bizarre twists and turns before recognising that it was for real. Firstly, the Lyon president demanded well over £35 million and then swiftly changed his mind at least two or three times. Then you remembered the greedy and mercenary nature of the world football transfer market and feared the worst.

What followed now was some ludicrous game of the Price is Right, a popular TV quiz show in Britain from yesteryear when most footballers were simply content with their lot. Initially Paqueta was just a chess piece and then he became a pawn. Now the cattle market began to grow in its feverish intensity. The auction sale had begun and the bidders became more vociferous by the minute and hour. Did we hear anybody from the back of the room?

With every passing minute you looked, hoped for and wished that at long last West Ham were about to mean business, that this wasn't any old season when only mediocrity stalks the Hammers all the way to the opening game of the season. The irony was, of course that at least six of the players who had already joined the club were ready in situ for the opening day contest against Manchester City at home followed by the matches at newly promoted Nottingham Forest and last Sunday the 2-0 defeat and debacle to Brighton at the London Stadium. Any advances on £52million.

Suddenly, we thought our eyes were deceiving us. Brazil, undoubtedly the most magical, mercurial, stunning, beautifully constructed national team of all time, had given West Ham, one of its finest modern day products, a spectacular play maker, match winner with one of the most impulsive touches and a footballing academic with honours degrees after his name, an artist with all his oils and watercolours in place just in time to see his club at the bottom of the Premier League. Now that's what some of us call perfect timing.

The nostalgic time keepers among us flicked back through their memories and went right back to the last time the Brazilians had transfixed us, left us besotted and smitten, drooling and swooning at its utter brilliance. In recent years the Premier League had jolted us out of our seats with the enchanting Juninho who came to Middlesbrough during the 1990s, stayed for a while and then left with adoration ringing in his ears. Emerson also donned Boro colours but then complained about the cold British winters. 

But then you cast your mind back 52 years ago to your youth and recalled how mesmerised you were by Brazilian football even though you had no clear recognition of the game itself. In Mexico City the Brazil of Tostao, Gerson, Rivellino, Carlos Alberto and the incomparable Pele. Even farther back in time there was the tricky Didi and the vivacious Va Va, players with a thoroughbred pedigree and who had to pull themselves out of the poverty and squalor that had fallen over Brazil just after the Second World War and the 1950s.

Brazil though were all about intuitive and counter intuitive football, vivid patterns and shapes on the pitch itself, breath taking improvisation, off the cuff, witty, humorous play, pretty cameos, short, sharp and instinctive passing that gave rise to clarity, coherence and cohesion. They played the game as some of us have always believed it should be played, along the ground, within close proximity of team mates, patient and persevering, clever and cunning, grammatically perfect.

And now Lucas Paqueta is the new Brazilian on the block at West Ham. Some of the more cynical among their fans may point out that their last South American wizard Felipe Anderson didn't really meet any of the club's specific requirements. For a while the goals seemed to flow but then Anderson seemed to hit a brick wall and the thrilling running and delicate touch deserted Anderson and that was his final bow for the club.

But the Brazilians are back in the East End of London and your vocabulary continues to serve you well. Brazil are infinitely inventive, wondrously perceptive, ostentatious and demonstrative. They reflect the whole of the country's passionate love of the game, their genetic feeling for the game and of course there's the intimate relationship with the ball at all times since family and friends still play football from early morning to the darkness of night. The Copacabana beach is still bursting with football. 

In the favelas and shanty towns, football is Brazil's provincial theatre and mainstream play stage. The country has now six World Cups under its belt and the image of a young Pele at 17 trapping the ball with his chest ingeniously and scoring one of the goals that beat Sweden in the 1958 World Cup Final still melts your heart whenever you see it. 

And so it is that Paqueta arrives in Stratford with West Ham rooted to the bottom of the Premier League. You suspect that he may have had pause for thought on his flight over to England because, quite frankly a relegation struggle may not have been uppermost in his mind. Paqueta has obviously been brought to make and score goals and at the moment, none are on the board for West Ham.

At the moment the Brazilian should be taking his medical and wrapping up the formalities before running out in claret and blue. Tomorrow West Ham go to Villa Park for a Premier League match that already has a critical look about it. The Villa game may not be the right environment for Paqueta to throw himself into. But next weekend West Ham meet their noisy London neighbours Spurs at the London Stadium and even now this one could be electrifyingly atmospheric.

The kettle though is on for Lucas Paqueta and the man whose country has given the world some of the most fragrant coffee plantations, will be posing for the cameras in East London. He may not know what is about to him and therefore cautionary warnings should be issued. West Ham were always regarded as the one of the game's most cheerful entertainers and, to some extent, still are. But then invitations are left in their defence, the back doors are flung wide open and everybody has left the lights on. For Lucas Paqueta this is the moment when cultural shifts are achieved and rock bottom of the Premier League turns into the dizzy heights of the top flight. We can only hope.

Blackpool, Liverpool, Southport and family.

 Blackpool, Liverpool, Southport and family.

Blackpool used to be, and probably still is, the Las Vegas of Northern England. Such ridiculously exaggerated comparisons have always been regarded with a healthy scepticism. Blackpool, the Las Vegas of England is a comedy routine in a working men's club. It is a daft analogy and one that should be dismissed with all the contempt of somebody who loves to write satirical articles in Private Eye. So it's time to bury this discussion in the dustbin where it so rightly belongs. 

And yet after a leisurely family visit to see your wonderful son Sam and his equally as lovely daughter in law Lucy you were taken back to your childhood or your son and daughter Rachel's formative years. It was a time of innocent enjoyment, darting in and out of amusement arcades, being delightfully taken to every machine that pumped out hundreds of tickets and then sliding onto the dance floor after dinner when the red coats of Butlins and the blue of Pontins were poised and ready to entertain the toddlers.

Many years ago my wife, a rock and wonderfully loving, supportive presence, was always there in the evening, sitting at our usual table with full glasses of Coca Cola and gazing adoringly at our children. We knew the years would pass rapidly because when you have children time flies at the highest altitude and with remarkable speed. One day we both woke up and found they were consenting adults, allowed to vote and drink before venturing into that big, wide world where everything could happen and did. 

The transitional point between childhood and adolescence can often be fraught with difficulties such as unavoidable accidents at home, painful struggles with homework at times with just an episode or several of tears and tantrums. No one can predict our futures or map out their direction but holiday time for our children was the ultimate in escapism, a break with the norm, the most exciting adventure they could ever have experienced. 

But on one of our days out, Blackpool was our chosen destination of seaside. Then we took ourselves to Southport and Liverpool but that's for another paragraph. We chose Blackpool because it had the famous Golden Mile, a handsome stretch of road that seems to go on indefinitely. Along the Golden Mile are flashing, stunning, blinking lights that keep going for the best part of the day and night, you suspect. There are a stately procession of amusement arcades, machines so musical and blissfully noisy that it's rather like being witness to one of the greatest light shows of all time.

Then Blackpool lets itself to go. There are seemingly thousands of fish and chip shops and a vast multitude of bed and breakfast hotels, five star hotels, four star hotels and three star hotels. There are an abundance of souvenir shops, striking cafes and attractions that go crash, whoop and tinkle, ringing, hooting and a whole host of childish noises. It is now that you begin to realise that any resemblance to Las Vegas is just fanciful thinking. Besides, Las Vegas has got those very lucrative gambling casinos, the Hollywood great and good, the glitz, glamour and the hotels with wondrous fountains and the very latest in sophisticated technology.

Now this is not to suggest that Blackpool is lacking in both class and sophistication because quite clearly it does have both. It does have the big, fancy and lavish cabaret, the best in singers, groups and hugely talented musicians. Admittedly, it can no longer boast the likes of Danny La Rue, Britain's most opulent of drag acts, a man so androgynous that even whole decades of women would flock to see him every year at the Winter Gardens. But Blackpool is wholesomely attractive, brimming with life and vitality. It can still serve its hot meat pies with unashamed delight. It can always laugh at its old fashioned charm that is utterly timeless and Blackpool Tower

My precious family even booked tickets for the Blackpool circus. Inside the magnificently imposing Blackpool Tower there is the famous ballroom, recently the home of BBC's Strictly Dancing for one week shortly before Christmas. And of course the circus. You remember taking your children to the circus roughly 20 years ago and the place still has that inimitable magic. For a while your belief can be suspended in much the way that the daring high wire trapeze acts demonstrated on our visit.

Blackpool is a dazzling dream come true. The ladies and gentleman who trod gingerly across a high wire deserved unqualified admiration. Then they sat on each others shoulders with only a collection of white poles to maintain their equilibrium. Balance and danger came face to face with each other, as they edged nervously and confidently from one end of the wire to the other. As a collective family. they were just sensational. Then there was the proverbial clown with the red nose and the children were in joyous uproar.

Then there was our day out to Liverpool. Now everybody knows about the glorious heritage and history of Liverpool. We've all heard of course about that legendary boy band who did rather well for themselves during the Swinging 1960s. You could hardly avoid them or any mention of their name. They were the 1960s, the essence of the decade, dominating our every waking thought and imagination. They were the Beatles and here we were in their spiritual home, their backyard, their playground, their domain, their patch of land.

The Beatles Story Museum is situated slap bang in the middle of the Albert Dock, once one of many Britain's maritime, naval hotspots and proud homes. The boats are still moored romantically in the Dock itself but we were here for the Mop Tops, the Fab Four. Headphones in our ears we were regaled with a comprehensive tour of the Beatles back story. Slowly strolling around acres of descriptions of the boys school we learned of three of the lads lack of qualifications and then discovering that Sir Paul McCartney was the cleverest of the four with five O Levels and one A Level whatever they mean now to anybody in particular. 

But we were informed that both John Lennon consistently larked around after school but did go to art college and did have an aptitude for song lyric writing. Hence we were stunned by stirring renditions of Yesterday, Hey Jude, Sergeant Pepper's, Get Back, Paperback Writer, Love Me Do, Please Please Me, Ringo Starr's endearing Yellow Submarine. Each section was illustrated perfectly with huge paragraphs of text and information and you could only wonder at the sheer wonderment of the whole experience. By the time we came out of the Beatles Story you almost felt as if the 1960s had never gone away and the 1970s was simply unknown territory with few signs leading towards another tumultuous decade.

And finally there was Southport, possibly overlooked by what some would perceive as its older and younger brother or sister depending upon your point of view. For a while we lingered by its bracing waters and decided to take a boat trip around the resort watching with some apprehension in case the gulls swooped down and nicked the human fish and chips in our capable hands. Thankfully we didn't actually buy the said food and our feathered friends could only watch in despair.

Finally we headed to a family friend who lived in Redcar. Here we did yet another long and invigorating spot of seaside walking, sedate browsing in the local shops and sampling the delicious pasta and fish of our friend's hospitality. Our genial host Maria treated us to a hearty breakfast, tea and private conversations that were both amusing and hilarious.

We bid farewell to the North of England, pleasantly relaxed and revitalised. But then we remembered Blackpool because you can hardly forget the seaside, the continuous and harmonious squawking of gulls, the shrill whistling and then the amusement arcades getting louder and louder, the lights now shining and flickering with ever greater intensity. Oh how we did love to be beside the seaside. 

National Book Lovers Day

 National Book Lovers Day

For all book worms this is quite definitely your day. It is hard to quantify just what proportion of the world will take themselves off to a quiet corner of their room and  carefully open the first thrilling pages of a paperback, hardback, Kindle or, preferably, a book that is quite obviously absorbing and a compulsive page turner. Sometimes reading can take you to places you would never have imagined possible. But these are our private moments, our chance to discover new worlds, places, peoples, cultures and locations.

The chances are that this morning you've jumped onto your train to work, college or university, flicked admiringly through your latest favourite novelist or genre of a book oblivious to the commuters around you. Let them read their latest science fiction, short story, romance, classic or that memorable tale about one of the innumerable wars that have so grotesquely scarred the globe throughout the ages. You may want to leaf through the updated version of a showbiz celebrity whose lifestyles bear no relation to yours. 

Yes folks. Today is National Book Lovers Day. A vast majority of the population are divided on this subject. You either love reading or you just detest this simple pleasure. Some simply haven't got time to read, can't be bothered or just think it's a complete waste of time. Then there are those who can't get enough of reading and devour books as if they were going out of fashion. It is one of those great preoccupations that takes us away almost completely from the troubles and tragedies of the world around us.

Book lovers, by their very nature, are studious, curious, inquisitive, fascinated, thoughtful and just interested in the way the human race study and analyse, ponder and dwell for a while. We may take ourselves off to local library for hours on end and research material for the book they'd always wanted to write but never thought was within the realms of possibility. So we dig out hefty reference books, encyclopaedias perhaps, maps, genealogy archives in an effort to find out more about our ancestry, our family tree and our historic past.

We've been reading or not reading for almost as long as we can remember. Some of us read almost incessantly during the 1980s because we left school with no qualifications and just wanted to broaden our minds and horizons. So what began as just a way of passing the time became a conquest of the great classics. You read voraciously and almost constantly- well not quite but it seemed like it at the time. You wandered around your library, browsing the shelves and just opening your mind to literary brilliance.

It seemed to start with the great German writer Thomas Mann and then made a logical progression to any classic book that presented what seemed like a daunting challenge at the time. And yet it wasn't at all. Then you found yourself in your local WH Smith and startled by the sheer volume and size of some of the greatest pieces of literature ever seen. Once you'd developed a habit for reading you simply couldn't stop yourself. Then your eye was taken by the incomparable Thomas Hardy. It was a seminal moment for yours truly.

At school you'd read a book devoted to Hardy's love poems and probably thought nothing of it at the time. But this was a huge, thick volume of four of Hardy's most descriptive, illustrative novels ever written. There were well over 1,000 pages in this mighty tome and the book had to be bought. So you began Far From the Madding Crowd and couldn't take your eyes off the plot, the gorgeous language, the vivid imagery, the word paintings and the purple prose.

So you read and read and read and you were hooked for life. Hardy represented some of the most magical lyricism and heartfelt story telling you'd ever read. You began with Somerset Maugham, both his delightful short stories and novels. Maugham wrote simply, with brevity, short, sharp sentences, lovely descriptions of the Borneo rainforest, plantation officers, well defined characters with eccentric lifestyles, islands and stunning sunsets, tropical paradises and words that carried you away to distant lands.

Now you found yourself in the wonderful world of Charles Dickens, surely one of the most remarkable story tellers of all time, an anecdotalist of the highest order. Dickens pushed back the frontiers, broke new ground and then indulged himself with the kind of social commentary that made for compelling reading. Dickens wrote about Victorian poverty, squalor, feuding families, whimsical characters that almost leapt off the page and held your interest for hours on end. He wrote penetratingly about the class system, dotty aristocrats, comic figures, chimney sweeps, costermongers and legal companies.

Then you thrilled to the elegant high society novels of Henry James, the bold and buccaneering seafaring tales on the boiling oceans as illustrated by Joseph Conrad. There was Rudyard Kipling and DH Lawrence who was controversial, outrageously offensive and morally questionable, an author who broke down all the sexual boundaries with the kind of licentious language that would never be tolerated by any reader who just wanted to be entertained without any sex in their books.

You now discovered HG Wells, a man who some believed, gave the world a pessimistic, dystopian vision of the future and presented science fiction in vivid, at times shocking detail. The Time Machine and War of the Worlds ensured both Wells celebrity and notoriety. Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Leo Tolstoy provided you with quite the most astonishing stories ever told. Both seemed to last for ever. Proust's glorious evocation of nostalgia and the French bourgeoisie was spread over three mammoth volumes running to well over 3,000 pages in all. Tolstoy's unforgettable War and Peace spanned a vast panorama of Russian battlefields and an intricate tapestry of generals, soldiers, heroes and one of the most turbulent periods in Russian history. 

But here was my relationship with the world of books. More or less the whole of the 1980s were spent swotting diligently and gaining a much clearer understanding of a world hidden away intriguingly on the pages of the memorable classics. On reflection it probably gave me a very revealing insight into the world of the leading authors of both the 19th and 20th century. 

And so we move into the world of Kindle, an electronic device designed to take away some of the hassle involved in turning the pages of a book hoping that you won't lose your place. For years the act of folding a corner of any book remains problematic since you become very wary of missed pages but then slightly conscious of its pristine condition. 

So the world of publishing remains ever so slightly mysterious, the buying and selling of books still a hugely popular activity and libraries are still open and available to those who just want to find that elusive book that will tick all the right boxes, books that are both informative, amusing and enlightening. The bigger books you'd like to read but haven't got the time for continue to be there at your disposal. The days when libraries used to keep disciplined rows of ticket boxes with your name and address, now seem prehistoric but please enjoy National Book Lovers Day and be sure to cherish your bookshelves. Happy Reading. 

The new football season.

 The new football season.

The beginning of the new English Premier League season is normally accompanied by a blizzard of Sky Sports razzamatazz, vast showers of confetti, heightened expectations, exaggerated predictions and the firm belief that this season will be infinitely better than the last. Now this season of course will be quite unlike any other conventional season since the whole of this Premier League campaign will be promptly interrupted by the small matter of the World Cup. Here the fun and games may begin. 

In the middle of November both England and Wales will endeavour to represent the British Isles in a World Cup so incongruously scheduled in the middle of November that most of us will probably forget about the Christmas festivities and the intense planning that goes into the yearly end of year celebration. It could have been far worse of course but whoever may be the top four contenders at this crucial point of the season could well find themselves slightly disoriented. Footballers thankfully are creatures of habit so it may be best not to worry about their welfare at the beginning of August. 

The fact is that any season brings with it a whole baggage load of controversy, hugely polarised opinions on the ever sensitive subject of VAR, anatomical analysis of most of the players and whether a toe or elbow constitute offside or not. In the old days of course off side was clear and cut unquestionable that everybody knew where they stood. There are bound to be loud objections to the colour of the referees shirts, the lightness of the ball, the length of the grass and huge outpourings of annoyance about multi million pound footballers who are simply self obsessed, self centred, selfish and materialistic. 

A couple of seasons ago the hugely talented midfield player Jack Grealish signed for Manchester City from Aston Villa for £100 million, a figure so obscenely deplorable and shameful that many of us could hardly believe how much lower football could possibly get. It was the lowest common denominator, the scraping of the barrel, football at its most grotesquely greedy, grasping and corrupt. Telephone directory numbers have now become the accepted norm for modern day Premier League footballers but this was akin to moral sacrilege.

So most commentators, pundits, radio phone in experts and statistical analysts will open up their data, examine their spreadsheets, note down the number of assists, passes, tackles, newly fangled transitions and turnovers of play, zonal systems and then reach some kind of scientific conclusion. We wish them well with that little project. Essentially, footballers are not programmed robots and can never be expected to perform in the way we would like them to play. 

This season will probably follow the tried and tested formula, the customary direction, the familiar route with much the same landscape but one or two unexpected surprises up its sleeves. There can be no definitive pattern nor can their be an outright favourite but usually the Premier League template shows little sign of changing unless they bring back the Third Division North and South and completely re-structure the game's inherent infrastructure. 

It's hard to believe now that victories in football matches were once rewarded with only two points and there were 42 physically punishing matches in the old First and Second Division. Football has come a considerable way since those halcyon days when the likes of Fulham's Johnny Haynes once brought home his £100 a week wage packet home to his family. Over 60 years ago footballers were qualified plumbers, well mannered postmen, milkmen and sheet metal workers before football took over their lives. Tom Finney was the Preston plumber and nobody asked for a rise or pleaded poverty while he was playing They displayed their wondrous ball skills on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm and the fans asked few questions.

Nowadays of course the Premier League is now spread over the entire weekend with matches on Saturday, Sunday and Monday or any random time of the FA's or TV's choosing. One of these days we'll eat our breakfast and find that Manchester United have already played Brighton and Hove Albion just after the last coffee and croissant. It is a game so far removed from the 1950s and 60s that it is hard to imagine a time when it was free from its money grabbers, spoilt mercenaries and the ones who are only concerned with their financial welfare but little consideration of their team's status. 

For what must now seem like an age Manchester United's often brilliant midfield player Jesse Lingard has now finally joined Nottingham Forest. But this wasn't before West Ham had bent over backwards to try and re-capture the player they'd signed on loan during lockdown. It is a damning indictment of the way the game has progressed- or should that be regressed- that Lingard's only motive for leaving his boyhood club was the number of noughts on his bank balance. 

The whole sorry saga unravelled for West Ham in quite the most unseemly way with various derogatory accusations that suggested Lingard only wanted to finish his career with millions in his bank balance. So after much chest beating, agonised delays and broken promises Lingard chose the City Ground at newly promoted Nottingham Forest over the London Stadium at West Ham. Your mind began to wonder how former Forest boss and the legendary Brian Clough would have reacted to Lingard's dithering behaviour. Maybe he would have pointed to the first million pound player he signed when Trevor Francis signed for Forest from Birmingham City. 

Now, the proletarian working classes who used to dominate the old First and Second Division are nothing more than some sepia tinted engraving on a Victorian mantelpiece. The chairmen who used to run timber merchants and local wallpaper shops are just Lowry figures who would stand outside factory gates ruminating over the pennies and shillings at the end of the week. Fast forward 60 years ago and the combination of Arab sheikhs, American baseball enthusiasts and, until recently, Russian oligarchs are in complete charge of their investments as well as the acquisition of new players. 

It could  hardly have escaped your notice that the players too no longer accompany their devoted fans to the ground anymore and that superb photo of Sir Matt Busby joking with his hard core, loyal Stretford End supporters at Manchester United almost feels as if it was captured at the beginning of the 18th century. 

They were the days when your local heroes would quite happily jump onto a tram or trolley bus cheek  by jowl with the dockside labourers and the bricklayers from the building site next to your ground. They would chat and talk, discuss and analyse the stonewall penalty their team should have been awarded to them from an over fussy and officious referee.

It is the madness of football, the game that once treasured its close-knit relationships between both the fans and supporters but can only cling onto ancient memories. That comforting rapport and bond has now been sacrificed by the endless cash machines, the hole in the wall machines that keep coughing up hundreds and thousand pounds given half the chance. It is rampant capitalism at its most abhorrent. 

And so to the present day. Arsenal became the early leaders at the top of the Premier League season with a convincing and, at times, gloriously inventive 2-0 victory over Crystal Palace. Their football at times was a throwback to the memorable days of Arsene Wenger, their passes neat, quick and pleasurable, their movement on and off the ball truly astonishing to behold but this is the opening weekend of the new football season so judgments may have to be reserved until, perhaps, the middle of September.

Tomorrow Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool, who ran Manchester City so close in the run into the Premier League title chase, travel to Fulham who have now developed a habit of bouncing back and forth between the top flight and the Championship. Their once music hall comedian and chairman Tommy Trinder may have considered Fulham fans to be the luckiest in the world but when your team simply seems to lose its identity throughout the season there is little that can be done. Then you remembered the hilarious Alec Stock and the equally as amusing Bobby Campbell and just accepted that the game should never have been taken seriously anyway.

Leeds United, under American boss Jesse March, were, last season, marooned near the bottom of the Premier League season but they face a Wolves side who show distinct promise but then flatter to deceive. Newcastle meet newly promoted Nottingham Forest in a game with echoes of a classic FA Cup tie during the 1970s. Spurs, with the splendidly clever and tactically outstanding Antonio Conte, host Southampton in what should prove a straightforward win for the home side but, given Spurs infuriating unpredictability at times could dissolve into either a goal-less draw or a late Southampton goal in the 90th minute. 

Then there's Frank Lampard's Everton, a side who are sitting tenants in the old First Division for seemingly ages and now in the Premier League. But last season the almost unthinkable happened at Goodison Park. Everton were struggling against relegation and looked decidedly ropy at times but then Everton recalled Howard Kendall's First Division champions during the 1980s and that proved the ultimate antidote to all their ills. 

Then Leicester City who, quite remarkably, won the Premier League several seasons ago, face a Brentford side who were back in harness in football's top flight for the first time since 1947. Under Tomas Frank Brentford frequently delighted the purists among us who, the cynics probably felt, were simply one season wonders and would return from whence they came. But their football was eye catching, adventurous in the extreme and almost carelessly cavalier. They have now lost their one and only genuine playmaker in Christian Eriksen to Manchester United but still look set fair to prosper this season. 

Manchester United could face a critical and defining season for the club. We all know what happened to their Dutch, Portuguese and quite recently German managers but there is another Dutch master in charge of the club this season. Once Sir Alex Ferguson had retired into the sunset we knew that United would dwell on distant glories and somehow Old Trafford would never seem the same. But the Premier League titles have well and truly dried up and the rebuilding work may take much longer than some might have expected. United face Brighton, a side with such a commendable and progressive outlook on the game that you feel sure that the seaside in deepest Sussex will always be the right place to be.

And finally there is your team West Ham who stunned everybody last season with their Europa League semi final exploits. Some of us never really saw Eintracht Frankfurt in the rear mirror but then it all became anti climactic and the Germans moved into the Final. Still, this is a new season and for those who have become almost hardened to the alarming ups and downs at the London Stadium club, anything could and probably will happen.

Five fresh new players have well and truly boosted morale but our friendly Hammers will surely hoping for some kind of continuity rather than that comical decline into nowhere in particular. Wherever your football team are and whatever its trials and tribulations, ebbs and flows, highs and lows, may long term success be your companion in rain, snow and sun. We are rubbing our hands in feverish anticipation. 

England women are Euro 2022 champions.

 England women are Euro 2022 champions

Jill Scott, now the veteran matriarch of England's women football, is 35 but you would never have known it. She looked radiant, glowing, full of pride and still capable of talking a good game. Women's football has never known a moment like this and perhaps it will again. This was one in the eye for the men's game since it is now an agonising 56 years ago and a day since Bobby Moore, the Charlton brothers Jack and Bobby, Roger Hunt, Alan Ball, Sir Geoff Hurst, Sir Martin Peters, Nobby Stiles, George Cohen and Ray Wilson dared to dream and then found the dream to be absolutely true. 

At long last the yoke has been lifted, the burden of history lifted quite comfortably and rather than the boys basking in the adulation, the girls are now sitting pretty at the top plinth of European and world football. Let's hear it for the girls. Let's hear it for the sisters. The sisterhood have done something those men have singularly been unable to do and they seemed to do it within a much shorter time frame.

There comes a time when the men of the world must have thought they were invincible, that after all of these years of teenage teeth gnashing, frustrating cul-de-sacs, missed opportunities and nothing but unmitigated misery, something would give. And it did. But not quite in the way we were hoping it would. The men must have cursing in all manner of colourful language. How did the girls achieve something so important within the historical context of the game, that the men have been struggling with for so many decades now?

Now what becomes patently obvious is that perhaps the women should become full time counsellors and psychologists to their men folk if only to tell them that there's nothing complicated about winning major tournaments. Maybe it's all in the mind and simply a case of adopting a positive mentality when it comes to the crunch. The mindset has to be right and as long as you maintain your concentration for 90 minutes and look as though you might snatch the winner in extra time, then it's a piece of cake.

In the end it was all about the collective ethos, team bonding, feminine solidarity, feminine discipline, the ability to shut out all external distractions and just get the job done. England are the new women's Euro 2022 champions and how they deserved it. This was a victory for dedication to the cause, committed hearts, focused minds and sheer bloody mindedness. The girls did get the job done efficiently and profoundly skilfully. They were cleverly cohesive, competing for every ball as if their lives depended on it and just very impressive. 

So if Gareth Southgate and England skipper Harry Kane were watching last night then you might like to know that your country still needs you and desperately wants you to win the World Cup in Qatar a week before Christmas Eve. No pressure there, then. Is there some formula the girls have in their possession that the men simply can't get their heads around? All suggestions on a postcard, please. Perhaps the women would rather pass on any inside knowledge that we may never find out about. 

Still, the fact remains that last year England's men reached the Euro 2020 at Wembley and were passed off the park in the second half. Luke Shaw's early opening goal for England last year is almost ancient history now but then England were almost swallowed up in the second half and devoured with much relish by an Italian side guided by an immensely shrewd manager in Roberto Mancini. Enzo Bearzot he most certainly was not but Italy in their cool, calculated manner, beat England in the penalty shoot out.

Last night though was entirely different and much more like the way it was 56 years ago. It may not have been the day but the day after the 1966 World Cup Final 56 years later that England imitated their male brethren. True, there were no endless laps of honour including men with blond hair and jigging around Wembley Stadium with teeth grinning. Nobody slumped to their knees in sheer exultation when the final whistle went but England did win something very special and that must have been the best feeling in the world. 

When the final whistle went last night the white shirts started skipping around the new Wembley stadium, going through that familiar routine of hand fluttering, grandstanding, sliding through carpets of confetti and just letting themselves go. It wouldn't have got any better than this and the fact is we were just thrilled and overjoyed because as men there was a feeling of helpless fallibility. After all those years of laborious struggling, striving and prosaic ordinariness, the women showed us exactly how you can win a crucial Final without getting flustered, hot and bothered and panicking.

For the first half at least the game itself seemed to be locked in a vice of its own making, both England and Germany, sparring, tentatively flinging out punches to the solar plexus and not really threatening each other as such. In the old days this would have been regarded as the cautious, conservative approach, testing each other's emotional reflexes but never landing the vital knock out blow. But the game slowly unfolded and England eventually found a way of constructing attacking movements, of exerting their home advantage, probing, flowing, moving the ball among themselves effortlessly and thoughtfully.

Then England got the breakthrough they were looking for. Keira Walsh, a substantial and hugely influential presence across the whole of the Wembley pitch, picked out an immaculate through ball. The ball was beautifully floated through the eye of a needle to Ella Toone, who, running judiciously onto the high pass, squared up to German keeper Merle Frohms before chipping the ball over the head of Frohms and into the net for England's opening goal.

From there onwards the secure back line of Lucy Bronze, Millie Bright, Leah Williamson and Rachel Daly bolted up their defensive vault and just denied the Germans any time on the ball, adaptability itself as they looked to charge forward themselves. Then Keira Walsh, the provider of England's goal, Georgia Stanway, Beth Mead, Fran Kirby, Lauren White and Ellie White all pulled together as one glorious team unit, scheming, scrapping, toiling, pinching the ball from the Germans with decisive tackling and then breaking thrillingly, frenetically at times but always coherently. England knew what they were doing and they knew this was going to be their day on the last day of July.

Then the second half arrived and we all know what invariably happens then. England simply lost their bearings, squandered possession wastefully and carelessly and the Germans stylishly hauled their way back into the game. Now the likes of Felicitas Rauch, Lina Magull, the scorer of Germany's equaliser, Lena Oberdorf, Sara Dabritz, Alexandra Popp, Jule Brand all began to impose themselves with creative and quick witted passing through the lines.

The dark green shirts of Germany were ganging up on the white shirts of England, surrounding them in a kind of football stockade. The passes were pretty, fluent and ornate, the rhythms now hypnotic, their attacks works of art and their sense of togetherness always in evidence. With the game still finely poised, the Germans with Teutonic thorougness and sheer perseverance, hit England below the belt as we knew they probably would.

A neat interchange and intelligent piece of approach work on England's touchline produced a huddle of intricate passes. The ball eventually found its way to the byline and a smart cut back across led to Lina Magull superbly flicking the ball past England goalkeeper Mary Earps. It was a textbook goal, a sucker punch when sucker punches weren't really needed. But it was the equaliser the Germans probably thought was highly merited.

Now it was extra time and England began to find yet another gear. Beth Mead and Fran Kirby in particular were wonderfully effective, linking together, carving open the Germans and teasing them out of position with cunning intent. The ball had now become England's closest relative and how they cherished it when they had it. This game was about to change quite favourably for England. The game was wide open and England pounced on every loose ball that came their way. 

Suddenly with minutes to go of extra time to go, England won themselves a corner from the right which was swung over with perfect weight. The white shirts flooded forward in keen anticipation and the ball landed on the right spot at the right time. After a brief clash of bodies in the six yard box the ball seemed to ping off one England shirt. In a split second, Chloe Kelly on standby duty, stabbed the ball towards goal and then prodded the ball delightedly over the line. A second goal for England and that was all they required. 

England women are the European Championship, Euro 2022 champions, winners and trophy holders. Now that was a sentence many of us thought we'd never begin to articulate again in any sporting context. By now the almost 90,000 were just deliriously happy, families and children abandoning themselves to high fives, St George banners decorating Wembley's vast open spaces. 

For the men of course there were conflicting emotions. In a way it didn't really matter which gender had won any kind of trophy and maybe that's all that really mattered. But this was a night for Girl Power, female empowerment, female assertiveness, equality, the most level of all playing grounds. The worlds of cricket and rugby are also embracing women's sport with much feverish fervour. It is a long time since you could say with some truth and conviction that England are European Champions. But goodness knows we've waited long enough and now it's happened. Well done Ladies.