28 June 2010

Bugs, Football and Rattles

Well, I'm back in London after a rather manic ten days, dropping off the dog at my mother's, racing up north to visit Kay, sightseeing, then helping her pack up and come back to London, collecting the dog etc. Then for some extra punishment I went down with a gastric bug - I'll spare the gory details, except to say I had a temperature and spent several days rushing into a small room! The good news is that with that and the sweltering weather we have been having, I have lost twelve pounds and don't even remotely fancy food at the moment, so may resemble a stick insect by the end of the week (well, there's ALWAYS hope!)

Greg's sister, Jill, brought Kay's stuff down from Lincolnshire on Saturday. She had to come as far as Stansted anyway to drop her daughter (Rhianna) off at the airport. Rhianna was flying off to meet up with her German boyfriend. She ended up on Sunday watching the England match in Nuremberg of all places! I would imagine she had to keep her own nationality a bit of a secret!! Anyway, Jill carried on down the motorway to me, bless her, and brought all Kay' stuff safely home. She spent the weekend with us, though I was miserable company as I was still hatching my gastric bug and Kay was brewing a cold.

We three women watched the football on Sunday. The result was to be expected. Even I (with absolutely no experience in football) could see our boys weren't up to it. It beats me why we pay so much money to keep these football primmadonnas and their hangers-on (WAGS, managers and coaches) in a manner to which they have become accustomed. Why not just pay them a modest wage like the rest of us have to survive on and only give them hefty bonuses if they actually win a game? That should apply to all the national as well as European or World Cup games. That would give them an incentive to try to win at least. As it is, they earn ridiculously big money for doing badly. And can someone please explain to me why we have non-English managers,who apparently can barely speak English, managing British clubs when there must be plenty of indigenous folk up for the job? After all, surely an England team should be managed by, errrr, an Englishman; a German team by a German, a Russian team by a Russian. Or am I being too simplistic? Who's to say they are not spying on the team they're manging and giving the trade secrets away to their own country's team? How can they remain unbiased? Anyway, the best team won and that is what the World Cup is ultimately about. A shame, but England was so obviously not the best team. While we were watching, Kay came up with a great name for the German WAGS. HUFS = Hausfrauen und Freundinnen. Maybe it'll catch on.

Before Jill left, we rounded up a few things for her to take back with her. They were old items belonging to her mother, which had been given to Greg some years ago, but he had never used and which I thought now rightfully belonged with Jill. One was an old music centre (turntable/cassette/radio deck) which comes complete with loudspeakers. Greg had kept his mum's music centre in his bedroom alongside his bed, although, as I say, he never used it. Or so I thought. As Kay was carrying one of the speakers and I carried the other downstairs, Kay's one made a funny rattling sound. We thought it was about to fall apart and that its innards had come loose. Whatever was wrong with it? Once at the foot of the stairs, Kay found her speaker's front side came apart and inside she found the amplifier......... and two small empty bottles of whisky! Are we never going to stop finding them.. and in the strangest of places?

22 comments:

Dr24Hours said...

Refreshing to see a Briton being fair about the side. So many merely decry the lost goal, as if that would have led to England's triumph. The Germans were the better side, resolutely.

The USA were victimised quite a bit by poor refereeing as well, and we have had our bit of whiners. But Ghana defeated us fairly. They too, were the better squad.

Strawberry Jam Anne said...

Good to see you back Addie and hope you are now feeling much better. I am not a football fan at all but do agree with you about the players being grossly overpaid and feel, like you, that they should only be paid on results, giving them some incentive to do well. A x

elsy said...

i'm with you on the footballers salaries and cant fathom why they are worth so much.....still i agree best team won by a mile.....wish you better

Saz said...

thing is...is your reaction different now...were you angry? sad? curious? or even find it a bit funny? I ask only cos my reactions to things continue to surprise me..

luv saz x

Kit Courteney said...

You're right about the Germans playing a better game. They did, by far.

I do wonder, though, that if our second goal had been allowed, and we'd gone 2-2, whether our morale would have done wonders for us.

Probably not. And we'll never know.

I stand by what I said on mine re the ref and his 'toilet-time'...But I'm sorry to hear about yours!

Ellen said...

Glad to hear that Kay is safely back home - plus belongings - for the summer holidays. I am not a huge football fan, but I agree with a lot of the things you said. Winning for bonuses - that might be the incentive they need - I like it! Best wishes.

Anonymous said...

Hi Addy,

Hope you are over the worst of your bug. You just seem to soldier on and your life, to me, is always frantic. I hope you are now getting a breather.

Couldn't agree more on your sentiments about the football. I always find it strange to see a manger wearing the crest of another nationality. In Scotland we had German Bertie Vogts in a tartan scarf looking as Scottish as Rod Stewart. But my biggest gripe is the players. Germany have 2 Poles, a Turk, a Brazilian and I don't know whatever else. Lots of nations do now and I think footballers born in the country must get riled at the fact they cannot get a game ahead of someone who wasn't even born there.

All the best

Nechtan

AGuidingLife said...

HUFS - I like it

Does that mean you didn't have to do any motorway driving at all? I hope so.

I also am wondering how you are dealing with keeping on finding things. Is it feeling different now?

Nota Bene said...

Well you've had a time of it! Your football analysis is spot on...I think you should work for ITV as I hear there's a vacancy! Like the idea of HUFS...which I guess is what they do when the shops are shut...

Flowerpot said...

I so agree about the footie! But sorry you've been suffering - I do hope you feel better very soon. The whisky bottles made me laugh. I once had a similar experience - those bottles do turn up everywhere!

DD's Diary said...

Hope you're feeling better. Completely agree with you about the football! And I hope you smiled a little over the whisky bottles xx

Furtheron said...

hope you feel better before you disapear completely :-)

The old where are the bottles hidden stuff... I've loads of funny stories I've heard about this. I wasn't a bottle hider, stupidly I only drank in pubs which was a stupidly expensive way of being an alcoholic looking back at it... I could have had as much as a footballer if I hadn't done that :-)

Least said about the football the better... hopeless. Like you say Rooney complaining that the people who had spent large proportions of their income to get there to watch that rubbish were booing him was a bit rich frankly. He would do well to try to live on an average salary for a year to understand that

Working Mum said...

That was an upbeat post depsite the football and goodness, what a place to hide whisky! I expect you will keep finding it.

When my grandmother died, my mum and her brother kept finding money hidden in the strangest places, they were worried they would miss some so had to search everything. Found thousands of pounds we never knew she had!

Millennium Housewife said...

interesting party game there - hunt the whiskey bottle... xx

Daphne Wayne-Bough said...

How about FLUFS (Frauen, Lieblinge und Freundinnen - Wives lovers and girlfriends) ?

pinafive said...

alcoholics are good at hiding places..
one of my friends hid vodka in the barbecue at home, unfortunately while cleaning the garden six months later she drank it and relapsed (she's sober again now Thank God)

Spencer Park said...

Pay footballers on results? The poor dears would be broke and homeless!

laurie said...

oh my the whiskey in the speakers. oh my

Shammickite said...

I had to laugh about the empty bottles inside the speakers. After my husband died, I found empties in all sorts of unlikely places too. But the funniest thing was when I was doing a bit of renovation and reached up into the celing and found 2 empties up there.... all cobwebby and dusty and they dated from long before we moved into the house, so obviously he wasn't the first to be hiding the evidence!!!

Grumpy Old Ken said...

How nice to see you positive and getting on with life. (not meant to sound condescending) You never ever forget but life goes on. Come and see derby County with me and my wife!

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