D'oh Week

Hi...haven't posted yet this week due to the fact that I'm looking to have finished writing the body of this thing inside the next six weeks and I've been mobilising my resources for the last big push. This has been hampered by a number of factors.

1- Still more railway delays on Monday morning as I returned from home.

2- A mild ankle sprain acquired on Tuesday evening. I was warming up for football on the (concrete) path between the astroturf pitches when I realised it was switchover time and we could go on. I went to trap one of the balls we'd been kicking around - yes, I had already done my stretches - but my foot went over it and landed side-on on the ground. I actually heard a shredding noise and thought 'goodbye ligaments and walking for the next three months' but it wasn't quite that bad. Don't think I'll be playing football until late August though. Balls.

3 - Triple balls! My friend James is getting married this weekend in Saddleworth, near Oldham. For some reason I thought that it was meant to happen the weekend after, and planned accordingly. Now I'm going to have to get up at 4.15 tomorrow morning!

4 - I've just realised that The Damned United film is going to be the greatest piece of adaptatory treachery since Robert Donat donned his Richard Hannay moustache. The word 'quirky' in that BBC article fills me with dread. On the one hand you have, arguably, the best study of identity, masculinity, class and dread published in Britain since James Kelman's How Late it Was, How Late. On the other, you have the producer responsible for Cold fucking Feet. Chances of nightmarish Yorkshire psychoscape? ZERO. Likelihood of picturesque scamps in parkas and Life on Mars-esque retro-kitchery? Stopped taking bets. Honestly, it's going to be like the first half of Fever Pitch crossed with Python's 'Yorkshiremen' sketch. I think I might just ignore it and watch the semi-legendary (okay, not legendary at all) 'murdering cowboy-builder football player' episode of Frost instead, which at least has some sense of Yorkshire Gothic.*

Joe

* If WM is reading this, I still have my script, thanks.