One of those good weekends unspoiled by obligations of any kind, apart from a faint plan to amble along to the pub to watch yesterday’s big match. Nothing to do but fiddle about with my new laptop and grin to myself. The nearest I got to work was a bit of leisurely cooking and some bread-making.
But let’s get the running bit out of the way before the serious business starts. I’d sort of pencilled in a longish one for Sunday, but just in time, I realised it might appear disrespectful to anyone preparing to run a marathon. Instead, I went out for a couple of short ‘uns (3.5 miles).
The first one, just after 5pm on Saturday, was needed to wash away the brief disappointment of the news from Molineaux, and the second, mid-afternoon on Sunday, cleared my head for the Manchester United v Arsenal match.
I don’t know why I fall for the Premiership hype time and again. It was a tedious, grumpy encounter full of languid, petulant foreigners, and pronounced upon by raspy commentators desperately trying to talk it up and shoehorn sponsors’ names into their descriptions – the sort of experience that makes me grateful that I can watch proper competitive football every fortnight. That said, I have to hope we get promoted to this farcical Premiership, because just one season up there (which is all we would last, I suspect) would pay off our £10m debts and still leave enough to resurrect the youth academy and subsidise the free ketchup sachets once more. All the excitement of the Old Trafford event happened in the players’ tunnel, away from the TV cameras, after the final whistle, where a variety of high velocity foodstuffs were distributed among the players and management, it seems.
But for those of us who had to settle for the bit on the pitch, watching this event was tough. The hype outweighed the actualité by about half a million tons.
My watery consolation was the sanctimonious pleasure I got from sitting in the pub soaking up orange juice while all around me slurred their way into hangover hell.
