It's still not over, but the large diva has gargled and his practising her scales to warm up her vocal chords for the performance.
This was a game I didn't want to be at, as my son Joel remarked on, right at the beginning (and he was the only member of my family to be there, Jess and Connor visiting my new granddaughter, Merryn, and Jack 'doing couple things' with Jessie Rose - all three were better off).
In the morning The Controller and I had returned from four days in Norfolk. That was meant to be a break from the high-level stress surrounding a certain/probable/possible/unlikely/failed move which has spent weeks oscillating up and down that nerve-shredding continuum. It was also a distraction from the continuing decline of my mum's Alzheimer's condition and the running engagement with Social Services over the "care" package, which is due to be reviewed this week (a process akin to mud-wrestling crossed with blackmail and a soupcon of Hippocratic hypocrisy). And it was four days away from a job that is about trying to control wanton destruction of public services wrapped in pieties about 'fairness' and 'necessity'.
Up to a point it worked, although there was regular contact with the estate agents to chart the rise and fall of optimism, the social worker left a message on my phone to suggest a later meeting when Joel and I have both arranged time off work specifically around the time social services scheduled only the week before, and work will still be there.
And I celebrated my Beatles Birthday.
Football is supposed to be the great distractor from all of that, The objective correlative that all my gloom can be focused on, if the team is doing badly (the default position), or the shining light of inspiration and joy, if the team does well (the Halley's Comet frequency option).
But it's not working. I expect failure and my expectations are met. I don't expect a high level of organisation, because that's been absent all season. I don't expect awe-inspiring displays of skill, because that's been absent since, well, the last time we were relegated. I hoped for, but didn't expect, fight and effort, and my hopes were disappointed.
Villa were better by far. But so are almost every other team in the division and the players seem to have a fatalistic acceptance that they're going to be relegated. Without Super Scott, knackered by his season-long efforts to carry the team, there was no spirit, so losing to an injury time goal was no surprise at all. Although Rob Green would have been within his rights for punching Mark Noble for Villa's first goal.
There are two more home games to go. Joel has predicted we'll stay up by winning our last three games, even though he expected us to lose to Villa (and to Chelsea and Man City), but that's the optimism of youth (aka pissing in the wind).
Right now, I think I've had it, like the 'team'. Most of them won't be there next year, anyway, and nor, I should think, will Avram. But The Pornographers (purchasers of and dispensers of Big Benni - now that's how to waste money. And where are stunning new buys Winston Reid and Pablo Barrera? Will they shine in The Championship?) may stick around. And the move to the Olympic Stadium so beloved of Lord Sugar's suck-up will still be 'progressing'.
Me? Probably not - if we move, money will be tight and why spend it on something that so patently makes me unhappy? The only thing to do is wait and see at the end of the season, and then do as The Controller says.
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