It's another Bank Holiday weekend

 It's West Ham and another Bank Holiday weekend.

It was rather like waking up to find that you'd lost your wallet, mislaid your keys and then discovered that this was no nightmare and it did indeed happen. You were stunned, appalled, dumbfounded, quite flabbergasted and wondering whether your football club would ever recover from this most disastrous blow. Football supporters would like to think that, ideally, their team could win every single match throughout the Premier League season in the way that Arsenal once remained unbeaten throughout theirs.

But you were never prepared for the horrendous events which unfolded last night at the London Stadium. West Ham United had already lost their opening day of the season encounter with promoted Sunderland at the Stadium of Light. Perhaps the most galling aspect of last Saturday was the compliant nature of West Ham's defeat. They were destroyed, thumped, overwhelmed by Sunderland and there was something very feeble and submissive about the loss that must have grated with even the most devoted hardcore of West Ham's fanbase. 

What we saw last night was a West Ham in emotional meltdown, almost confused and bemused, struggling desperately to achieve any semblance of mutual understanding on the pitch, a disturbing lack of attacking co-ordination and any kind of forward thinking momentum. In a word, West Ham were clueless. Now the thought occurs to you that all may not be completely beyond repair because, essentially, we're only two games into the new Premier League season and a major re-structuring of the side's midfield could stop the rot. 

And yet during the summer, the chairmen, directors and members of West Ham's so called recruitment team simply dropped off to sleep in the sweltering heatwave. Perhaps they felt there was no immediate cause to panic and that, given time, new players would arrive by the conveyor belt. For a while, some of us gave the club the benefit of the doubt and patience would be a virtue. But then, desperation set in when the players needed for this radical overhaul became either too expensive or distinctly unimpressed by the promises West Ham could offer if they joined the club immediately.  

So here we are with just over a week to go before the transfer window is shut for a while. West Ham have the sum total of four players, a new goalkeeper, two defenders and two strikers whose combined age is so old that even their fans can hardly remember what it was like to have a young, dynamic side. This week alone, West Ham have been heavily linked with Southampton's young Portuguese midfield player Mattheus Fernandes, Quentin Timber, the flying Dutch winger and, in the last couple of days, the strong, sturdy and hearteningly creative defensive midfield French Under 21 player Soungoutou Magassa. 

The chances are that in the forthcoming week Magassa will probably sign for West Ham and the club might have a proper compass, a real focus, a significant change of fortunes and, a genuine sense of direction. To disenchanted West Ham supporters this may be regarded as nothing more than a sticking plaster, some temporary measure designed to pacify and appease them. Who is this youngster and is he the answer to West Ham's almost permanently chronic problems? Besides Magassa is no Sir Trevor Brooking, Alan Devonshire or the terribly under rated Alan Curbishley. 

Last night, West Ham were criminally exposed and left to hang out to dry..All the encouraging signs shown in their pre season tour of the USA, vanished without trace. There was a worrying lack of any creativity, productivity, brightness and boldness, athleticism and, above all confidence about the team. There were round pegs in square holes, very little in the way of imagination and innovation. There was a lumbering ordinariness about the Hammers, a muddled mediocrity and only the Brazilian Lucas Paqueta, alongside perhaps Aaron Wan Bissaka, to redeem the whole performance.

Their opponents yesterday evening were Chelsea and once again you didn't need a degree in quantum physics to know what was wrong with West Ham. There is a clear disconnect within the club, something very static and sloppy about them, a feeling that nothing had been done during the close season to address this most urgent of issues. And then there is Graham Potter, West Ham's now vilified manager, attacked at every level, blamed for everything and of course under pressure. It's all his fault, or is it?

The team who play their football at the London Stadium have now conceded eight goals in their opening two games and surely that statistic tells its own graphic story. West Ham are now at rock bottom of the Premier League and this must hurt them, tearing at the very infrastructure of the side. Wounding accusations of shoddy mismanagement, absolute incompetence and a complete lack of any investment in the club have to be put right. Before it's too late.

Some of us of course have been here before. When Ron Greenwood left West Ham in the late 1970s, after 20 years of exemplary service and superb management, it was widely felt that, although the club would never threaten the bigger boys in the playground at the top of the old First Division, at least they could still tread water, remain buoyant and still remain one of the most entertaining sides in the top flight.

Then, West Ham were relegated to the old Second Division and all of those commendable principles fell by the wayside. Upton Park would play host to the likes of Oldham, Preston, Grimsby, Millwall, Shrewsbury, Notts County, Swansea and Cardiff. Sadly, these were not the household names that the club had become accustomed to playing. This was a cautionary tale, a rude awakening to those who felt the East Londoners were a well respected national treasure in footballing circles, lovably gentle and inoffensive and dedicated to football that was played in the right way but never good enough to win anything.

There were times during those difficult days in the old Second Division when the opposition at Upton Park were just swept aside rather like the dust on the surface of an old dining room table. West Ham were far too good for those lower division sides who just weren't in the same class as the team in claret and blue. And yet for three long and meandering seasons, West Ham were shamefully incapable of beating the unglamorous names of the Football League pyramid. It was time to roll up the proverbial sleeves and knuckle down the task in hand. It took ages to amend the fault lines but eventually they came up with roses and smelt the coffee.

So here we are back in the present day. The gloom and doom mongers, the moaners and complainers, the pessimists and despondent voices can be found in every corner of the East End. From the fans who used to congregate at Green Street market to the Boleyn Ground, a now sadly decaying stadium that once housed its charming assembly of natural, homegrown talent. It was all quite sad and threadbare.  But hope springs eternal because where can the club be without it? Will the London Stadium become their downfall? Some of us will be hoping for the best rather than the worst.

West Ham now face two of the most critical games at this infant stage of the new season. They travel to Wolves in the Carabao Cup on Tuesday and then move back into the Midlands for their next Premier League match against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. Forest have spent heavily in the transfer window and will be showing no remorse for West Ham's deepening predicament. The omens don't look good but then again who knows?

Here we are again on Saturday and those lovely traditionalists will be grumbling under their breath. You will listen to your weekly schedule of football matches ranging from the Premier League and right through to the Championship, and Leagues One and Two through gritted teeth. There will be a good deal of terrified forbearance and a naive optimism based on nothing in particular. We know what might happen but dare not predict the future with any certainty.

At the moment, it does look as though long, hard winter stretches in front of West Ham. The first autumnal leaves will rapidly be replaced by the first frosts. The Premier League will become that turbulent roller coaster that almost left the club gasping for air last season. And yet, bizarrely, football supporters tend to criticise their team without knowing quite why. It's the managers who become the target for the boo boys, the players responsible for this current state of turmoil and maybe we wonder at  our own preposterous sense of loyalty to our football club. 

We point our accusing fingers at our own motives for going to our home ground, ask questions about our footballing allegiances. Are we the ones with delusions of grandeur, are we the ones who should stop taking football and sport too seriously? Our health and happiness should be foremost in our minds and nothing else should matter. But come three o'clock this afternoon we'll be bellowing our encouragement, maintaining once and all that your team is the greatest in the land and we're going to win the Premier League. Some of us will privately chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Still, for the team who won the World Cup for England in 1966, we must think that better days in football lie ahead of us. Come on you Irons.  

Autumn calling.

 Autumn calling.

You can feel it in your water, sense its presence and know it's in there somewhere. Autumn is calling rather like a summons from some unidentifiable source, a premonition of dramatic changes in the climate and the beginning of shorter days. Summer is fading away albeit gradually and that may sound like a fond farewell but of course there's an element of truth because we can sense a transitional period whereby the heavenly heat of summer begins to cool down and, before you know it, the kids are back at school.

The Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kipper, Succot and Simchat Torah will be beckoning us together for another gathering of the great and good. We will pray for a healthy and happy New Year and we'll all be together under the same roof of religious harmony, communal bliss and family bonhomie. It'll be time for just sharing good humoured laughter, corny jokes that always brought a smile to our faces and general satisfaction with our place in the greater scheme of things. 

At the moment of course, the latest political developments would suggest that we could be on the brink of a dramatic and heart warming breakthrough. In the land of NATO, the countries of the world are inching towards common ground, quite possibly peace and reconciliation but there can be no way of telling. The mysterious goings on in the highest circles of diplomacy remain a well kept secret but promising. By now you'd have thought they'd reached a unanimous, bilateral agreement but not quite yet. 

In the USA, a man who continues to defy belief, classification and categorisation, just grins on cue when a TV camera falls on his face and then starts blustering, jabbering away in short, sharp sentences at times unintelligibly and incoherently before lapsing into traditional soundbites. His name is Donald Trump and, according to some, it's nonsensical rhetoric. But, hold on! We are now underestimating the power and influence he still manages to exert.

But Donald Trump, president of the United States of America, is still in charge. He is at the heart of everything, a central figure, that reassuring voice, calm and collected, tactful as always and never shrinking from the most exacting of challenges. Trump is not a control freak, merely somebody convinced that he will win the Nobel Prize For Peace one day and everybody will thank him, that world domination will be his. Or maybe not to all of the above.

The truth is though that Trump maybe whistling in the wind. The sight of a once recklessly ambitious businessman trying desperately to hold the world together, was almost unsightly at times. Trump's horrific confrontation with Ukranian president Zelensky is now well documented. Not only did they have the most combustible of public arguments with each other but there was never any hope at all that world peace was ever on each other's agenda. 

So, for the moment at least, things appear at a complete stalemate. Putin wants his slice of the political cake with his very own specific demands and this whole fiasco smacks of ultimatums and emotional blackmail. Putin looks so snug and self assured that you wonder if he's taken any acting lessons recently. Zelensky, for the first time, had the friendliest of conversations with Trump. The cynics would have insisted there were grudging smiles between them and there is still an icy undercurrent between them. Perhaps they will just make up and  get on with the business of being good mates.

In the background there's British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer who, as a human rights lawyer, must be familiar with the legal ramifications of long term wars between nations and the morality issues that lie behind this terrible conflict. Starmer looks as though he probably needs a good holiday on one of the Greek islands with his family. Once again everything is categorically, his fault. The economy is in tatters, the cost of living crisis is deepening and worsening by the hour and those Labour busybodies are doing next to nothing to help anybody. If Starmer thinks he'll emerge from this Ukraine- Russia bloodbath with any credit, he may have to think again. Nobody wins any war under any circumstances.

Meanwhile back in Britain, the seasons are changing slowly but surely. Shortly we'll all be huddling together in our warm homes, crackling log fires soothing the soul, hot soups ready to be sipped  comfortingly and a thousand pubs will be seething with activity. Those gaming machines will be flickering away colourfully, snooker tables jammed solid with experienced punters and the bars will be ratcheting up a healthy profit from the huge variety of lagers, ciders and wines always available to thirsty drinkers who have probably been going to the same pub for ages. 

Now of course a majority of pubs have become restaurants, carveries, eating and drinking venues. There are curry and steak nights, the eternally popular pub quizzes, karaoke evenings and live rock bands who love to make their guitars and keyboards heard in some distant village miles away. And then in a small corner an important game of dominoes will be heard tapping away and maybe a vital game of shove hapenny will also take pride of place.

And before chucking out time in the said pub, groups of men will be playing darts and of course women. Now darts has always occupied a neat place in the affections of many a pub landlord and lady since the game is so well established that it was hard to remember a time when it wasn't there. The throwing of arrows at a heavily pockmarked darts board is now a nightly occurrence in most pubs across the land. Suddenly, the tension will be broken with the famous cry of 180 which is greeted with raucous cheers by a jubilant crowd propping up the bar.

Yesterday though all of the world's great leaders came together and tried to knock heads together, determined to bring this deplorable and disgraceful conflict to an end. Trump, given half the chance, would stop the fighting and killing at source and now rather than next week or month. But then President Putin of Russia just stood there smiling like the kid who'd just bought a packet of lemon sherbets and liquorice allsorts and got exactly what he wanted because mum had been so lovely and kind.

Putin, of course was plugged into his headphones because although his command of the English language is probably impeccable, he still felt at ease with everyday Russian. Putin just wants everything his own way, a smug and, quite possibly arrogant man who believes quite clearly that Russia should have everything that belongs to the country by right, history and heritage. But then again there have been the usual discussions, intense negotiations and the eternal quest for compromise if things go wrong.

To the outside world there is still a sense that we're not quite there yet, that we're just labouring, plodding, hesitating and avoiding the main objective. The world of politics is so confused, fragmented and divided that you can only assume that eventually it'll all fall into place one day. Somebody will listen to the voice of reason and common sense, clarity and compassion. Someday will say that enough is enough and that'll be it, the line under the sand, no more death, pain and suffering, communities rallying together, mutual love and understanding the predominant emotion.

But, shortly, the rustling leaves on trees will flutter away, dropping onto the grass before turning the most becoming shade of yellow and brown while conkers will be cracked at school. Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester City, Aston Villa and Newcastle United will be battling away for the right to lift the Premier League trophy next May. And then the England men's football team will hopefully be heading towards their promised land in next years World Cup hosted by the USA, Mexico and Canada and life will be precious and cherishable. We love life and wouldn't have it any other way.   

Opening day of the new football season.

 Opening day of the new football season.

So why do we keep doing this to ourselves? We do it every football season and we don't quite know why. It is this unwavering devotion to the Beautiful Game, the game we became besotted with at an early age and could never adequately explain or justify since we were children and kids are supposed to play the game in the back streets and roads with coats for goalposts. And, of course Jimmy Greaves may have been your pin up boy. He was that iconic poster on your bedroom wall, the striker you struck up a lifelong friendship with even if you could never relate to him since you were a child of nature. 

But today you will be totally committed to the cause because football is addictive, the most riveting of spectacles and, besides, you'll be watching the Premier League highlights on Match of Day since your mates will be there, sharing your agony and ecstasy. You'll always find yourself questioning the root cause of this seasonal ordeal, this unnecessary purgatory since you could be fixing shelves in your dining room, painting the walls for the umpteenth time or just roaming around shopping centres looking for that elusive bargain. Football is not compulsory or a must, an essential part of your day or weekend. It is football and not the end of the world if you lose.

And yet we do take football far too seriously because we can't keep away from the transfer speculation involving your club, the make or break, critical importance of your team's chameleon like performances. Your team are unpredictable, annoying but then we become uncontrollably triumphant when we win. Here's the deal. You spend nine months simply watching those roller coaster rides through wincing eyes, the fluctuating tides of fortune or misfortune.  There will be endless discussions, post mortems, wailing laments, floods of tears, dripping beads of sweat, timeless anguish but, quite, possibly, an upturn in form, victory snatched from the jaws of adversity. 

You'll be sitting on the edge of your season ticket seats desperately hoping for a flying start to the new Premier League season, righteous redemption, salvation from the dangers of relegation. Young and old,  children and adults, families, wives and girlfriends, husbands, cousins, uncles, aunties, neighbours and friends, they're all united by fun loving camaraderie, terrace rivalry and good humoured banter. You've been going to your team's stadium for as long as you can remember and perhaps you're hardened to setbacks and disasters, constant underachievement. But you've now been released from workaday duties and presented with new challenges and opportunities. This is your moment to shine in the August sun.

So these are the opening sentences and chapters of the new football season where issues will remain unresolved until next Spring. Then the daffodils begin to nod enchantingly at you and the tulips will acknowledge your existence with a slight shiver and shake as you walk past these hardy perennials in your local wetlands. Football was always the game that heralded new beginnings in August as winter hunkered down for the duration, hiding away discreetly before the season took a sharp bend into February, March and April. 

In the old days at Upton Park you would appear on the open, inviting terraces and stands of the South Bank, having squeezed through squeaking turnstiles and then placed yourself strategically near the front. With a 10p programme in hand and having forked out the criminally extortionate sum of £12.50 for the afternoon's entertainment, we stood there faithfully through thick and thin. In 1978, football was a completely different kind of animal, a living organism that seemed so vibrant and thriving. There were no multi millionaires, no Smart Phone gadgets, none of the paraphernalia that we now commonly associate with the modern game. 

We had no way of establishing instant communication with each other because London was still dotted with red telephone boxes and thick telephone directory books. In those far off days there was not a single sight or sound of mobile phones with in built cameras. You wandered into your local football stadium and just mixed amiably with your mates, work colleagues, school pals and the extended members of the football community. There were no fashionable accessories to show off or new fangled objects that you could boast about shamelessly. It was just you, the traditional burger, hot dog or a small carton of fish and chips while around you there was an electrifying atmosphere. That was unmistakable. 

Personal memories of an opening day of a football season remind you of some classic fixture from way back when. It was West Ham's first game in the old Second Division in 1978 and the Chicken Run was in unforgiving mood. The club had just been relegated from the top flight, the old First Division and some of the hardy claret and blue followers were still moping and sulking. West Ham fans were never entirely satisfied with the fare they were delivered regardless of the division they happened to be in. But this was an entirely different set of circumstances. 

In their opening day fixture against one of the oldest clubs in the world, West Ham were in rampant mood, pumped up, reinvigorated, batteries recharged after the summer break. In the bright, warm and hot sunshine at Upton Park, West Ham clobbered and battered Notts County 5-2 as the spritely and supple, nimble footed and graceful Hammers were on cloud nine. David Cross, a striker, previously of Coventry City and Norwich, made an instant impression with a valuable goal scoring contribution. 

In recent years, West Ham have been on the wrong end of some savage maulings at the hands of Liverpool and Manchester United on the first day of the season. Opening day fixtures for your team were awkward and often humiliating experiences if you followed West Ham.You often felt their minds were still preoccupied with heady, dizzy and euphoric days on Spanish beaches. Still, we are here now and the football season is back where it belongs- taunting and teasing you mercilessly. 

Last night, Premier League champions Liverpool opened up their account with a marvellously pulsating 4-2 victory over Bournemouth. Liverpool should be joined by the exalted company that normally hunts down the team at the top. It will, inevitably, be the magnificent Arsenal, full of football's natural impulses, passing the ball for fun and admirably durable, a force for good. Then there's the gloriously instinctive Manchester City who won four consecutive Premier League titles without seemingly breaking sweat. Aston Villa and Chelsea will, of course be there or thereabouts while Newcastle United should never be knowingly underestimated or overlooked as potential top three contenders. 

Today will be the day when football stretches its arms and yawns contentedly after a beautiful summer. Managers will be haunted by the spectre of relegation, barracked and heckled by fans who were rather hoping for an outstanding season of trophies and silverware. The players will be richer than ever before and the game will be just as controversial and toxic as it always has been. But if your team play at the London Stadium you may have to settle for anti climactic mid table mediocrity or, hopefully not, relegation to the Championship or even the lower Leagues. Wherever you are, have a superb football season everybody.  

   

It's a heatwave.

 It's a heatwave.

Yes folks it's a heatwave and that's official. It is, undoubtedly gorgeous out there, a stunning profusion of loveliness, beauty, art, a throwback to those luscious, heavily perfumed days of high summer, where the yellow and red rose beds are now blooming, blossoming, strikingly attractive, England enjoying the kind of heat and sunshine that we normally associate with the Mediterranean. But then there are those for whom this exceptionally warm spell may find barely tolerable. It's too sticky and humid, they cry plaintively.

It's far too hot and, besides, we do need rain because the farmers of Britain will be begging for the wet stuff. The rain is vitally important for the healthy growth of their lands and the fertile crops that proliferate with some regularity in the more moderate temperatures of an English summer. But we woke up this morning and once again there was a glorious and royal grandeur about the day, radiant rays of warm sunshine beaming down on suburbia, the urban landscape, town, city, garden, park and fields of gold. 

It is hard to find a happy medium because in some ways this was, essentially, the summer we must have been privately wishing for and then pondered again since, in Britain, none of us know what our preferred climate would be. By May and early June, we had the first indications of a good summer, full of happy vibes, warmth and sunshine. But then the dark clouds gathered and we grumbled albeit briefly because we knew that once the winds began to strengthen and the rain showers increased fairly rapidly, we knew we were in trouble. This summer though, didn't quite conform to that traditional pattern. 

So by the end of June and the beginning of July, Wimbledon tennis had come and gone and we declared a dry, pleasant fortnight at Wimbledon. There were no real disturbances and rain interruptions with every hope that once the sun poked its head over the horizon in the morning over SW19, there were optimistic weather forecasts just around the corner. It was time for the sun to put its hat on and relax in the languorous, relaxing heat. It shimmered across Centre Court and Courts One and Two almost constantly and was therefore accepted as quite the hottest fortnight of tennis ever experienced. 

Now we took to our seaside beaches and esplanades and covered every acre of yellow sand with hundreds of sun umbrellas, those quaint looking parasols that keep us in welcome shade if the sun does prove too much for some. Here in Britain, we dig out our industrial fans in our stuffy offices, gazing fondly at the cloudless, flawless blue sky and wondering if perhaps we were imagining it. And yet it is here and it just feels that, in early August, as if the climate change advocates were absolutely right. Yes, they say quite categorically, we knew that our summers were definitely warming up with a delightful consistency. 

A couple of weeks ago we were shocked when the temperatures plummeted by several degrees and although never cold or freezing, things had cooled down quite noticeably. But then it occurred to us that maybe we needed a break from the sweltering sun, a chance to put our weather into some kind of sober perspective. We could never challenge Spain, Italy and Greece for wall to wall sunshine because in the Med, they turn on the central heating system at the beginning of May and never turn it off. 

So here we are slowly wending our way towards the end of high summer and the last crack of red ball against willow cricket bat can be heard faintly on some peaceful village green where the gulls are now making steady progress away from the English countryside. They remind you of summer's final grace notes, the final, delicious chords of England's orchestral flourish. 

There is a timeless and joyous feel about those final weeks of summer, a wonderfully gratifying sensation about a season that promised so much and then delivered accordingly. In the cornfields and lush meadows of Middle England, they'll be taking their combine harvesters out for one last journey into a world of gently waving productivity. The strawberries have always been at their sweetest and those salads simply irresistible. 

But we'll look back on the summer of 2025 as a hearty and wholesome one, impressively warm and for those who ventured onto Hampstead Heath for the first time, it just felt very satisfying. We were hoping to read our football poetry on some sun kissed field in the middle of nowhere and we almost got there. And yet, we didn't care in hindsight because the day itself was warm and just blissfully perfect. We might have got lost in the labyrinth of winding pathways and deep forests that you seemed to get lost in temporarily but didn't care. You knew you'd emerge from the canopy of tree branches and thick bushlands and then back home, not quite the destination you were hoping to reach. But never mind, hey. Life is indeed beautiful. 

Jim Lovell dies at 97.

 Jim Lovell dies at 97.

It was 1970 and we knew that our rental TV black and white DER set was about to disappear into obscurity, never to appear again quite literally. Our hitherto trustworthy TV had had enough. It needed to wind down and rest. It had lived in our dining room for so many years that we'd quite forgotten how long we'd been watching it for. Our black and white TV was in its last cathode ray, ready to conk out at any minute, about to witness its Last Supper. It had been a good friend to us for many years, faithfully flickering onto the screen with fuzzy images and lines at times but then flourishing when there was something good to see. 

Jim Lovell, one of the last all conquering Apollo 13 astronauts, had travelled to the Moon and back but never got the chance to take those first steps on the Moon. You were still a child at the time but the now vague memories are barely discernible images in your consciousness. Lovell was live and black and white and in our family home, a source of immense fascination. Planet Earth was still the place you wanted to remain but here was a man whose remarkable sense of adventure, enduring curiosity and scientific mind had most of us spellbound. 

Shortly before, Lovell, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were gripped by a sense of wild experimentation. What would happen if you wanted to really go to the Moon and actually walk on it? But, Armstrong bravely ventured where none had gone before by actually stepping onto the Moon's surface. And then it happened. Armstrong climbed out of his rocket and capsule and started jumping up and down on the Moon's surface before seemingly dancing with sheer delirium, relieved to have created an epic moment in history for mankind. 

But Lovell, who yesterday died at the age of 97, was more than just a fascinated visitor to outer space. He was commander of Apollo 13, a ground breaker, pioneer, general genius and huge intellect. He knew he was doing something that most of us could have only dreamt of achieving in our wildest fantasies. But Lovell went up to the Moon before floating around, observing the spectacular and barely able to take in the vast scope of his achievements. 

Lovell never actually stepped on the Moon. That was after Armstrong took those giant steps for mankind and played golf, broke into song and then began spinning around delightedly in his NASA suit, laughing as if somebody had just cracked the funniest joke and then just enjoying that iconic moment. They'd always maintained that man would never step onto the surface of the Moon because it was physically impossible but, 55 years ago, you sat down right in front of your TV and were transported to another world. 

You crossed your legs literally with your eyes riveted to the screen and ignored your mum's warning to the effect that, sitting so close to the TV,  your eyes would be severely damaged and you'd need glasses in later life. Of course mum was right and the glasses came later on in adult life. But then the Apollo space missions were scheduled to appear on two of the TV channels and this was compulsive watching. So it was that ITV or Thames Television and the BBC joined forces and devoted saturation coverage to the Apollo missions. 

You can still remember the professorial and science teacher extraordinaire Patrick Moore, pince nez or glass in one eye, engaging with his enraptured TV audience and talking about the planets around the solar system quite naturally. There was the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Pluto and Moore left us with enormous wisdom and was the ultimate authority on all matters relating to space and some far distant corner of the universe. Moore was intriguing, admirably knowledgeable and a man with an insatiable thirst for more information. 

But Jim Lovell was just one of many boldest astronauts, a man possessed of lifelong ambitions and whose inquisitive nature would take him to places that most of us would never see or experience. To this day, the likes of Lovell were taking calculated risks, regarded as mad by the cynics but then revered by millions of TV viewers. And yesterday was his final journey into the unknown, exploring areas of far away constellations and craters that none of us could possibly imagine. 

These days our modern imaginations are taken to different dimensions. Now, we watch those science fiction TV classics as Star Trek and will tell our children and grandchildren about the make believe exploits of Spock and Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. We'll tell them about the immense contribution made to the film industry where Star Wars and then the Empire Strikes Back left us breathless and richly entertained. It was space but not as we would know it. 

Jim Lovell, who sadly passed yesterday, would have been proud to know that the generational baton was in safe and capable hands. Hollywood legend Tom Hanks did wonderful justice to the role of an astronaut and, more recently, William Shatner, Captain Kirk, who just fancied a whirlwind visit into outer space. It did seem a quite logical development and perhaps we should have known that Shatner would do something like it. Lovell and the great Apollo missions will always be synonymous with some of the greatest moments in our childhood. 

National Finish Your Degree Day

 National Finish Your Degree Day.

This is normally the day when school children across Britain jump out of bed, wait excitedly at the front door for the post to arrive and then discover all of those very extreme and contrasting emotions. They will just bite their fingernails, hoping against hope that all of those industrious and dedicated weeks, months and years will bear fruition. Put simply, they just want to know how they've done in their GSCEs and, in a week or so, their A Levels. 

It's one of those crucial, life changing and defining moments in their young life when kids get all hot and bothered in case their exams have gone disastrously wrong. It may not be the end of the world if things have gone belly up for them because they can always re-take the aforementioned exams but, if they have failed quite emphatically, then the gnawing doubts and mental anxieties will inevitably set in. They've been a terrible disappointment to mum and dad and how on earth are they going to rectify what would appear to be insoluble problems. 

But today is what happens if you were fortunate enough to pass these exams and go to university because you may want to know how you've done with your degree. University studies were sadly beyond your academic aptitude for learning about subjects you could never quite grasp. So you became resigned to your fate and you knuckled down life at a secondary school unaware that some of your classmates may have been clever enough to study what seemed demanding subjects as physics, chemistry, biology, maths, economics and art. 

And yet today is National Finish Your Degree Day and even that sentence somehow seems so far removed from everything you had experienced at school that even the mere mention of this day seems like wishful thinking on your part. The truth is that one exam and one exam only determined your educational journey and shaped your future career plans or lack of any in my case. If you passed your 11 plus and went to a high or grammar school, you were considered brainy, erudite, quick on the uptake, bright and capable of becoming a working or middle class individual, climbing the ladder of management and one day becoming a company director. 

So here you are this morning, privately optimistic about your degree swotting, all of those diligent mornings, afternoons and evenings locked away in your Halls of Learning and whole heartedly memorising the finer points of your degree and leafing through thousands of reference books, thick and weighty tomes with mind blowing information about bloodthirsty wars, battles, dates, places, detailed descriptions about chemical terminology, complicated logarithms and cosine maths tables. 

Controversially, todays university students will be required to pay monumental sums of hard cash for their further education. And in recent times, we've all heard about the outraged reactions of students who have to cough up thousands of pounds on a degree course for any of the subjects just mentioned. Subsequently, all of today's young teenagers may be burdened with a hellish debt they may never be able to pay off. So they take out these troublesome loans with no prospect of meeting these daunting financial requirements.  

But you do have unwavering admiration for those who have forsaken everything just to get to this point. It's hard to know how much importance society still attaches to school qualifications since the great economists, bankers, scientists, doctors, commercial artists, laboratory technicians, engineers and politicians would still attribute their successes in life to a good university education. The professional classes who go to such eminent public schools such as Eton and Harrow may well be born with a silver spoon in their mouths but a privileged background doesn't necessarily mean that a streetwise intelligence is guaranteed. 

The arguments rage over huge tuition fees and then there are the extraordinary financial demands placed upon youngsters which continue to be a major source of discussion in the polished lobbies and corridors of Westminster. And once again the class system in England, always the oldest bone of contention among social commentators, rears its ugly head. How is it the super wealthy invariably prosper and inevitably end up in strikingly impressive four pillared homes with several Rolls Royce cars in their crunching gravelled driveways? Perhaps these are the gated communities who sneer disdainfully on the rest of Britain. But maybe this is completely wrong and this is some distorted perspective of the way we live today.

And yet today is National Finish Your Degree Day. It's time to assess your molecular biology degree and wonder exactly what it is you want to do with it. You could become a well respected hospital surgeon, a leading medical commentator who knows all about their field of expertise or maybe you could be the next distinguished professor familiar with all the latest experiments and potential cures for all diseases. This is your day for sober reflection and breathing a sigh of relief. After all, you've worked yourself into the ground and deserve your moment in the sun. Well done and congratulations. 

The new football season

 The new football season.

There used to be a time when the new football season in both England and Scotland was warmly anticipated rather like a picnic in the countryside or a day at the seaside or some luxurious holiday  around a hotel swimming pool. Perhaps a lazy beachside retreat next to a turquoise coloured sea would set you up very nicely for the new football season in August. It was timed to perfection rather like a stopwatch. 

For fans who supported teams in the lower divisions, there would be an ever present dread and foreboding, a sense that there was no point in hoping for anything apart perhaps from a decent League or FA Cup run. In the Premier League, though, the algorithms and statistical data would mean something entirely different. You somehow knew that the season would be accompanied by loftier standards and expectations. There remained a real possibility that you might but probably not win any conceivable silverware but there was nothing new about that.

So here we are at the beginning of August and the new club kits are being prepared, washed and cleaned thoroughly. Both the home and away shirts look in pristine condition, preparations are under way for the great pilgrimage to every Premier League, Championship, League One and Two club and dad will iron out the creases of those retro shirts that occasionally date back to when Kevin Keegan or Clyde Best were but teenagers.

But every season, football becomes more and more trapped in a dizzying merry go round of financial madness and rampant materialism, a billion pound operation that becomes so money crazed, greedy and acquisitive with every passing year that you can hardly bear witness to this moral abomination. For year on and year we look aghast at a transfer window so obsessed with its million pound addiction that you somehow wish a rational speaking figure would just get hold of the game and shake it to its senses. 

And therein lies the enduring dilemma. In the old days when football was played against a sensible backdrop of pounds, shillings, tanners and old sixpences, football was pure, unblemished and grounded. It was a game, above all, free from corruption, endless vanity projects and players who were only worried by the size of their next country mansion and those gravelled driveways groaning with the latest Jaguar or Ferrari model. 

Of course, the traditionalists can vividly recall the decade which completely lost its wherewithal, its ability to look no further than the price of footballers, their marketable potential and maybe their capacity to perform in some outlandish reality TV show. They long for the days when Tom Finney, the Preston plumber, simply played football for fun and pleasure rather than the extra digit on his wage packet  which became as much an anachronism as the tram, trolley bus or the rationing of butter after the Second World War.

Still, although there's only a fortnight to go before the much reviled and despised referee blows his first kick off whistle of the season, there is much to look forward to despite the crass expenditure of wildly inflated footballers who still believe that they're genuinely misunderstood. But then you look at the game's outside influences, the dubious chairmen and those spivs whose only objective is to make a quick buck and then make as much money out of the deal as seems humanly possible. It is hard to look beyond football's darker boundaries since this seems so disreputable and unpleasant. 

And yet in two weeks time Premier League champions Liverpool will open their defence of their title with hopes shining in abundance and the usual suspects such as Arsenal, Aston Villa, Manchester City and Chelsea snapping at Liverpool's heels. Next week, FA Cup winners Crystal Palace meet Premier League champions Liverpool in the Community Shield in the customary curtain raiser to the football season.

Even now you can visualise the yearly build up to the start of the season. Groundsmen and women will be painting fresh coats of white onto new touchlines, goal-lines, nets will be lovingly installed on opposite sides of the ground and vast terraces swept and cleaned rigorously. Behind the scenes, legions of fans will be dusting down their cashless cards and phones where tickets of the day will be sold via a QR code or the yearly guarantee of the conventional season ticket. 

It all seems a far cry from the days when you marched confidently into the South Bank at West Ham United and then passed what seemed like a full paddock of horses with stern looking policemen gripping tightly onto their reins. The opening day of a new football season was like the beginning of a school term since in many ways you didn't quite know what to expect. You were familiar with old acquaintances but hadn't a clue how your team would fare throughout the season. 

You then squeezed your way through creaking, rusting and decaying turnstiles and then wandered out onto the hugely populated terraces and seats. At first you were awe stricken at the sheer size and volume of the ground even though it was still empty. Still, you stood there stoically on that famous day in the middle of August surrounded by vocal and vociferous kids with scarves amusingly tied around their waist. Some were still wearing the Adidas T-shirts of 1970s vintage while others were weighed down with several burgers and hotdogs dripping profusely with tomato ketchup.

You now took out the much cherished footballing literature of the match programme. Way back in the distant past, football match programmes consisted of a couple of A4 size pieces of paper with just a couple of notices for future matches and the obligatory advertising of local timber merchants or tyre companies. But your programme was your passport into a world of fantasy and imagination. Perhaps 90 minutes of sheer escapism would provide the most delightful of all distractions and, quite possibly, a victory for your team if they were in the right mood on the day. 

From late summer and right through winter, your feet would be constantly subjected to the ever changing climates. Through sun, rain, wind and snow, you simply didn't care because it was just good to be alive and still is of course. You were watching your team and who cared if they were thrashed 5-0 on a Saturday afternoon since this was the rich tapestry of life. You could read your team's body language from the kick off. Of course every team who visited West Ham's old Upton Park ground would lick their lips and salivate at the home's team's reckless and cavalier attacking style. West Ham were simply easy to beat, fallible and gullible, vulnerable and fragile when their defence was frequently broken into with consummate ease. 

But here we are at the beginning of August and the summertime revelries will soon be replaced by an autumnal cavalcade of brown leaved colours, the endless family picnics in parks now a distant memory, the outdoor pop concerts a barely audible guitar and family parties joyous gatherings that once gravitated into the garden before going back into the kitchen for a while. The ducks and geese will fly back over well cultivated fields and thousands of residential rooftops before soaring over beautifully medieval churches and peacefully idyllic panoramas. It is still very much  a microcosm of your life because it only occupies a small place in your weekly itinerary.  

Football will always have its natural place in the grander scheme of things and will always have the most important value and currency. It is of course obscenely expensive and unbearably repetitive at times since the Beautiful Game is virtually a seven day sporting event. Premier League games are now spread out over an entire weekend and the rest of the fixture schedule is a random manifestation, matches taking place on both Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and, now ludicrously, on Thursdays.

Still, football fans really wouldn't have it any other way because it's in their bloodstream, their natural conditioning, their lifestyle and mentality, the way they organise their lives throughout the weeks. So, come on everybody, let's celebrate life and usher in the new football season. We would never have it any other way. Step aboard the fluctuating roller coaster of ups and downs that is the football season. It's football and we'll be there for them at every possible moment. You may be sure we will.