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Oh Genie, I wish that I would score a hat-trick in the World Cup Final.
Your wish is my command - in fact I will make it so you score four times.
That’ll be the greatest achievement in football ever…. Hold on, is there a twist?
No… no… no twist.
Why are you sniggering?
No reason.
What a match. And like all England fans I was pretty relieved that we weren’t taking part. We’ll take our fifth place. And be proud that our players are some of the nicest ones. Which is more important than being GOAT.
The most disappointing aspect of 2022 for me has been my failure to keep off the weight I lost in 2021 (not just from the ball removal) and in spite of a couple of attempts to kickstart it again I have failed. I have past the point where my back starts to hurt and am not at the weight where my snoring at night becomes too much for my wife to put up with. But is the 18th December a good time to start a diet?
I have to remember the reasons I was so determined to get my weight down in 2021 and how good I felt and looked when I managed it. And my ambition has to be to fit into my nice suits again. But it might be more of a 2023 thing. My yo-yo weight usually works on a year on and year off, so I am hopeful I can turn things around. Otherwise Catie is likely to murder me in my sleep. I forgive her if she does so and hope the authorities will understand and just give her a slap on the wrists. She’s not a bad person and I think we should all be allowed one murder. But knowing that my death at her hands is imminent might make me a bit more likely to get back on the diet. Having said that, I’ve just eaten my son’s Santa shaped ginger biscuit (that I am hoping he’s forgotten about).
I got the news that the dad of one of my schoolfriends died today. He was a good guy who did a lot of driving us around as teenagers and put up with our antics cheerfully. We were horrible little idiots, but I remember him always reacting with good humour. It feels shocking to lose a pal’s dad, until I remember that we’re both in our mid-fifties and that that probably means it’s more likely that we’ll have lost one or both parents than they’d still be hale and hearty. I am not totally up to date with the whereabouts of all my pals, let alone their parents and know that at least one of them has lost both parents. But I suppose the last time I saw any of these adults on a regular basis, I was really just a kid and they were probably in their forties or fifties. So it feels crueller that they are gone.
So I am lucky to have both my parents still around, but know that, unless I am lucky enough to predecease them, that at some point in the next twenty years I will be coping with the loss. And I am upset enough about my mate’s dad.
I am pretty sure we never properly thanked any of our parents for the stuff they did for us back then (and I am certainly not going to start now by thanking my own mum and dad), but they were exceptionally kind and patient with us. We weren’t bad lads. But we weren’t very good lads either.
On we trudge to our own demise. I am sure my own kids and their friends will be as ungrateful as we were and that they’ll abuse our homes in the same way as we did when those parents were out.
RIP anyway and sorry for drawing cocks behind the pictures on your hallway wall. God’s probably told you that was us now, if you never worked it out.
You can find out what I've achieved in 2022
in the history section. It's mainly just a load of podcasts if you can't be bothered.
