I is for...Internationalism

Us English like to think that we gave sport to the World. We sing songs about how football is coming home when we hold a tournament and at the Olympic handover ceremony the London Major was banging on about how we gave the world table tennis. The only drawback is then everyone has a point when they say how come if we invented all these games we are so crap at them, fair enough.
England fans are accustomed to losing at sport and on the whole we accept it in good grace but there are some countries that just seem to sting a little more when they beat us.
Losing at anything to Australia hurts, as does getting beat by France, Germany, America or South Africa. Losing to Scotland, Ireland or Wales also cuts just that little deeper but it happens so rarely that we can pass it off as a once in a generation fluke.
In contrast to having certain countries that we hate to lose to, there are some that we almost don't seem to mind when they roll up and beat us at whatever sport it is we invented and everyone else is now better than us at it.
For some reason, we seem willing to accept being beaten by Holland, Brazil, West Indies, Canada and New Zealand which is just as well as it happens so often, with the exception of Canada of course that isn't that great at sports that doesn't involve ice skates and men hitting each other with sticks.
I say as we gave the games to the World, we can take them back and follow the American baseball example and hold a World Series with just us in it. Would be great for our self-confidence and we can top the Olympic medal table in 2012. Yay us.

H is for...Heavyweight Boxing

Back in the 80s and 90s i would set my alarm clock for 3am to get up and watch the boxing. In those days Mike Tyson was ruling the heavyweight roost and fighting regularly so ITV would beam the fight live to our homes from Madison Square Garden or wherever the fight was taking place. Before he lost the plot completely, Tyson seemed unbeatable and was exciting to watch as he took apart whoever got off the stool in the opposite corner.
At the same time we also had the Eubanks, Benn and Watson middleweight scraps to make it the golden age of boxing.
After Tyson went to prison for rape, heavyweight boxing seemed to lose its sparkle. Lennox Lewis became the champion and although he fought under the banner of being British, he wasn't and was never really accepted as such. He was a good fighter but not spectacular and his fights were always quite boring to watch. He went and now the Klitchkow brothers are the top dogs and they are quite mechanical and stiff.
With Calzaghe retired, there just isn't any fighter at any weight that i would set my alarm to trudge downstairs at 3am to watch anymore and that is really disappointing because boxing is one of the greatest sports we have dreamt up. Heavyweight boxing especially because these guys were so big and powerful that one haymaker could change everything and that kept it exciting. Shamefully, i just don't seem to care anymore.
Possibly it has something to do with the East Europeans now dominating things and the nature of the Ukrainians and Russians who hold the belts is to have less of the showmanship and excitement of the American fighters but god they are boring and boxing needs another Tyson to come through because this has to be the worst time for boxing that i have ever known.

G is for...Googling Yourself

Everybody has done it at some point, wrote their own name into Google and see if anything pops up. I just did it and had 619,000 hits. I had to wade through to page 6 before there was actually anything about the real me so the other 618,999 i presume are other people with the same name.
Luckily i haven't really got much of a footprint on the Internet but some people do put an amazing amount of personal details on this thing which has it advantages and disadvantages.
If i was an interviewer, i could plausibly google an applicant and there would be a good chance that they would have either a Facebook page, blog or somewhere where they spill their thoughts, likes and dislikes so i could form an opinion of them long before they get within the door for an interview.
Likewise, a boyfriend or girlfriend could be thoroughly checked out beforehand and a decision made to block their number in your mobile and leave a voicemail informing them that you are moving to Alaska.
My advice would be to be very careful with the information you put out there, even more so if you are actually a loon or have a liking for knitting your own underwear because the information is only a few clicks away and available to anyone who might have a motive for digging up facts about you.
Even worse you might google yourself and find out someone saying nasty things about you like this guy on page 10 of my google results who said I'm a real brick. That's not too bad, sturdy, reliable..my mistake, that first letter isn't a b. The bastard.

F is for...Feck

Father Ted was not only one of the best comedy shows this country had produced, but it gave us the word that the English language has been missing, a sociably acceptable way to say one of the most common but socially unacceptable swear words.
We knew what the priests really meant when they told Bishop Brenan and others to Feck off and it quickly became an everyday word because we had been waiting for a way to say the word without actually saying it.
I was never happy with saying freaking or fricking, they just never seemed guttural enough and muttering that someone was a fugging twit just seemed too cutesy. A bit too close to saying hugging possibly.
Focker or Fokker was the closest we got to it, the satisfying hard k seems to be the key and Stan Boardman made a career out of making jokes about the German Fokkers bombing his city during World War 2.
I make regular use of feck and mumble for fecks sake at least three times per day when i mess up and it is all thanks to Father Ted. God Bless his feckin cotton socks.

E is for ... European Champions League

Two points to this post. One is the return of the European Champions League where the best of the best of European club football teams play each other to find the best team in Europe and therefore arguably the World. Portsmouth went out of the little European Cup early on so all that's left for me is to hope that Manchester United don't win it.
Very unpatriotic of me perhaps, shouldn't we English be cheering on the English teams? Nope because it seems that everyone who is not a Manchester United fan, hates them. Very tribal English supporters and there teams, very much an attitude of if we can't win it we don't want you to either and as a Pompey fan and therefore in no danger of appearing in a European Champions League match this side of hell freezing over, i will be cheering for Inter Milan this week.
The second point is the idea that creeps up every few years just after England do crap at a tournament. The blame will be put squarely on all the foreign players we have in our league which blocks the progress of the English players. The teams that mostly get it in the neck for having so many overseas players are Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United which just happen to be the four teams who top the Premier league and make it to the later rounds of the Champions League every year. Would Liverpool fans be happy to give up Fernando Torres and go back to having Emile Heskey upfront again just so England can do a bit better in World Cups? If a budding English player can't learn to be a better player by daily training at his club with the likes of Cesc Fabregas or Deco then he probably isn't England material anyway.

Paid For By Stanford

While English cricket recovers from its dalliance with Allen Stanford, there was been a story in the newspapers a few months back that at the time made me laugh, and must be giving a giggle to those who have had their fingers burnt by Mr Stanford.
Last year Allen Stanford got up a West Indies 11 to play England at a tournament of five cricket matches. The winning players to receive a million dollars each, donated from Stanford's own pocket.
Captain was Jamaican captain Chris Gayle and this is where it gets pant wettingly funny.
During the tournament, while Stanford was proudly watching his team beat England, Gayle was giving his own special type of delivery to Stanford's girlfriend at the time.
As a member of the winning side, Stanford then had to present him with a cheque for a million dollars. Hilarious and well played that man.

D is for...Disarmament

Anyone with any sense would like to see the whole world disarmed of Nuclear Weapons. Of course that isn't going to happen because that particular genie is out of the bottle and all we can do is hope that nobody ever gets to use them again. The bombs we possess now are many more times powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and whatever the rights or wrongs of those two events, so the death and devastation would be even more horrific.
So why keep them hanging about? It is all about willy waving. America, Britain, France and all the rest of the Nuclear club (including Israel of all places to have such a devastating weapon) see them as a way to make themselves look big as they deal with other countries around the world. The subtle undertone as discussions with less friendly nations that we could obliterate you so play nice.
As Pakistan and India showed, and North Korea and Iran have taken on board, everything changes once you become a nuclear power. If i was in charge of either N Korea or Iran, i would be going hell for leather to develop the bomb and then parking it right in the middle of the town square.
Of course the biggest threat isn't from a country, its from terrorist cells and what good is nuclear weapons against them? None at all unless you are willing to take out half the country they are in at the same time.
So as much as i support the idea behind CND, it ain't gonna happen so save your subscription money and just hope that the uneasy balance between the haves continues and if the have-nots decide to join the party, well, you can't blame them.

C is for...Country & Western

For obvious reasons, Country & Western music is not that large a draw in England. A trip into our country will yield no wide expanses with cowboys and High Chaparral style ranches. It's farmers blocking roads with their tractors and the Wurzels singing about how they have a brand new combine harvester. True story and yes it did.
I remember a short lived C&W satellite channel a while back but otherwise the image is of Billy Ray Cyrus and Dolly Parton who is more famous for two other things rather than her songs.
The BBC music website used to lump Country and Folk Music together in the same genre which leads to headache inducing scenes of men skipping while wearing bells on their ankles and banging together sticks while wearing rhinestone shirts.
There have been some decent country singers that have made it here. The aforementioned Dolly and Billy, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash and Kenny Rogers i can name off the top of my head and if i thought a bit harder i am sure i can think up some more men and women who appeared on Top of The Pops wearing a stetson and singing about how their dog died and their car got reposessed or their wife or husband left them.
Unfortunately, what comes with Country and Western music is probably the worst sounding instrument known to man. The Hawaiian steel guitar.
It sounds just like louder and more powerful version of the Stylophone that Rolf Harris would try and hock to us back in the 70s. Bloody nasty thing that was and if i never hear a Stylophone or a Hawaiian steel guitar ever again i will be happy. Even happier if i never hear that Coward of The County song also.

B is for...Beckham

When David Beckham was voted the 2nd best footballer in the world in 2000, George Best made the remark that "He cannot kick with his left foot, he cannot head a ball, he cannot tackle and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that he's all right."
I always thought Beckham was a decent enough footballer, his ability to ping a football half the length of the pitch and land it directly at his colleagues foot was admirable but i always felt that he was very lucky to make such limited talent go such a long way.
Now he is itching to get away from LA Galaxy and not head the ball or go past an opponent in the Italian League with AC Milan.
Despite his argument that he didn't go to America for the £125 contract and it was to try and increase the popularity of the sport over there, nobody actually believed him. After Real Madrid he had options to come back to England or join any of the Italian clubs who were making noises in his direction but he took the money and went to play in the backwater which is the MLS, by all accounts the standard of our lower Championship leagues.
Now that he has had a taste of the big time again after his loan at Milan, he wants to stay in Italy and has said that he would be disappointed if he had to return to Los Angeles.
Maybe he thought that his England career was over, that he couldn't cut it anymore in the Premier League, Serie A or La Liga but he must regret stepping away from the spotlight when he did and now at 33, his best years are behind him.
Frankly, i am surprised that AC Milan are willing to shell out the millions Galaxy are rightly demanding for him, he can cross a decent ball and take a great free kick but apart from that he managed to make an excellent career out of actually having very little and if the deal falls through and he finds himself back at LA Galaxy, he only has himself to blame.

A is for...Anonymity

Seems quite a controversial topic, especially when it comes to bloggers. There are two sides to the argument that goes with anonymity. One is the right for a person to decide to keep their identity out of the public domain while the downside is the ability for some people to use the same lack of identity to act like a moron.
Looking around at some blogs there have been some downright nasty comments left for the author or other commenter's and most of them have no link back to their own blogs. The anonymity afforded to the abuser induces a great sense of bravery to the person who decides to give a miss to debating like adults and goes for the option of name calling and personal attacks. It is very doubtful that in the real world they would act in such a manner, mainly because they would be nursing a fat lip or worse seconds after opening their mouths.
Some bloggers who hold less conventional views and seem to attract the potty mouthed idiots, switch on comment moderation so they can weed out these idiots which is fine but can be used by the more unscrupulous authors to skew the comments they allow on their blog towards there own way of thinking.
Unfortunately, it is the price bloggers have to pay for having a unregulated Internet where we can say whatever we want on any subject we want but i would rather have to put up with the odd socially backward commenter unable to engage in debate rather than make everyone identifiable with their real life details which could lead to all sorts of problems.