I have lived in Harpenden for four months now and you'd expect that the people here would have taken me to their hearts and have been excited that I was doing a gig in my new (temporary) home town and rushed to buy tickets. But something stopped them doing this. Only about 20 people showed up, making this the smallest gig I have done for a while. I wonder what could have distracted them.
It will remain a mystery forever.
My wife was on first, so I took the opportunity to go to a nearby pub and watch the first half of the football. I haven't been able to watch many of the games this year and this was the first time I had seen any of it with another person in the room and it was fun to be amongst all the proper football-shirted men as we ooohed an aaahed together at near misses and then laughed when Italians made mistakes. I enjoy the way that all football fans seem to feel the need to explain what is going wrong and how they would have played or managed the team better. As if they had been fortunate enough to get the call up they would have been able to play this match without making a mistake. I thought England played pretty well (and I only saw the first half) and though they have had a little good fortune in the tournament have defended very well. They have rarely been clearly the better side, but they leave the tournament having actually won two and drawn two, which isn't bad. The problem is the game of football itself: there is too much luck involved and it only gives points for one tiny aspect of the whole. I think it's time for an overhaul of the rules of the game and to start awarding points for everything. Ten uninterrupted passes in a row gets you one point, a goalkeeper saving a shot gives you one point, someone committing a foul loses you five points, every second you can keep the ball still on the centre spot one point, if you can do 30 seconds of keepie-uppies you get 500 points. That kind of thing. I haven"t worked out all the details yet. There'd be loads of incentive to score points in other ways and the best overall team would win every time. Admittedly the focus of the game would change and people probably wouldn't risk shooting at goal any more as they'd be more likely to lose points, than get one. You could work this out over the course of a few seasons though. Maybe you get a thousand points for a goal.
Alternatively make it like Eurovision and each nation does a phone vote to decide which team was the best in each game. But everyone has to promise to be honest and not vote for their friends.
As it stands the game is unfair and ridiculous and my ideas will certainly liven it up. I didn't suggest this to any of the blokes who were saying how rubbish such and such a player was being. I thought they might not agree. And it seemed you had to say things that were quite pithy and short and not extrapolate on a whole subject giving a spoken essay.
Maybe I could have joined in by saying, "That was rubbish. If I was there I would kick the ball in the goal" or "Why can't every single thing each player does be perfect?" and the scary men would have probably liked me. But I didn't.
Luckily I managed to miss the second half and extra time as I was on stage. Maybe I should have just cut my losses and done the show in the pub. Though I am not sure I could have taken all those men's incisive comments on how I had no idea how to tell a cock joke or how they would have gone from feedline to punchline.
At least it wasn't far to go home and I was back in time to see England go 2-1 up in the penalties. And then go 4-2 down. It's such a random and ridiculous way to decide the victors of a sporting competition. And one which makes it easier for the worst team to progress. And yet you were all probably laughing at my point based idea earlier.
Though to be fair, by the sounds of it, if that had been in operation today then the result would have been the same.
