Ignore, ignore, ignore

Whenever I was annoyed my mum would always said “Ignore them and they’ll go away”. Whenever annoying twitter users tweet other people tweet “Ignore them, they’re only looking for attention”. The theory is sound but the practice is not easy.

The waves of retweets you can’t help but see continually cause small breaches in the dike I’ve erected around the polder of my calmness. I may have a padlocked twitter account and an air of quiet satisfaction that I’m not “like that” but it’s often not enough. I don’t want to know that there’s a “North Wales Loyal” Rangers Supporters’ Club or that they meet up in a pub down the round from where I’ve typed this but I’m aware of both of these facts.

There are also self-inflicted breaches. I often read things just to see if they are as bad as they seem, like the time I decided to read a deejay’s book. Suffice to say the book is joint top of “The worst books I’ve ever held” list with Lovejoy On Football (another case of academic research) and The Da Vinci Code. On this occasion I could offer the mitigation of giving three quid to a charity shop and then re-donating it so someone else could do likewise but I should have followed my Mum’s direction. I may have read the deejay’s words and felt superior but what does that matter now?

The trouble is that circumstance allows temptation to goad my strong will. For example I was walking through a branch of Smiths last Saturday and the New Statesman’s cover piqued my interest. There was a German theme and I have a deep love of Deutschland so I flicked through the pages. The German article certainly looked interesting, then I noticed that there was an exquisite article about “the fractured left”. I knew that it that would just the sort of annoying research that propels my joy “to the next level”.

Then I noticed the price was £4.50.

HOLD ON, FOUR POUNDS FIFTY PENCE TO READ THE WORDS OF THATCHERISM APPEASERS? FOUR POUNDS FIFTY PENCE TO READ HOW WE’RE DOING IT ALL WRONG? FOUR POUNDS FIFTY PENCE TO READ A WEEKLY PAEAN TO RESPECTABLE ACCOMMODATION WITH THE FORCES OF MARKET CAPITALISM? YOU CAN BUY A COUPLE OF IRVINE WELSH NOVELS FOR FIVE QUID IN FOPP AND THEY’RE MORE RELEVANT.

I don’t know how many of the working classes will stump up £4.50 a week for cultural re-education but it’s actually great that The New Statesman costs that much, and The Times and Telegraph hide behind pay walls, otherwise I’d be on a constant quest to be wound up by other peoples’ words.

Being priced out has become a most familiar feeling. The cost of attending football matches is extortionate, televised football is virtually controlled by Murdoch, the TV programmes that everyone raves about are found on subscription services and cinema tickets cost nearly as much a DVDs.

This could be a problem but my exclusion from the version of popular culture where everything seems to be fantastic or “must-see” is liberating, fate’s way of telling me to relax more. I’ve managed without the likes of Game Of Thrones and Murdoch’s premier league on my TV for years I doubt gaining access to stuff like this will enhance my life greatly now. I’m sure that looking at things in this way has helped me to deal with life’s little annoyances.

Take an example from a couple of weeks ago, the book writing deejay was annoyed about Wales’ ambition to win football matches by choosing the most skillful players at its disposal. I could have commented but I let it go. I didn’t send him a tweet.

I may have passively aggressively quoted his retweet with a snarky rejoinder, but I let it go like it was nothing. I let it go and moved on, yes I moved on straightaway. Twitter told me to look down on the deejay says but I wasn’t going to do that. Why would I do that? I had let it go. He’s had an opinion but don’t we all. I HAD LET IT GO, ALRIGHT!

Look down on the likes of these phone-in deejay types? Don’t be silly! I’d love to share a train journey with a phone in deejay type.

I see a journey from Warrington to Glasgow. I sit down opposite the phone in deejay type. I recognise him immediately thanks to twitter. I remove the reading material and bottle of water from my bag. I pick up the book, remove the old train ticket cum bookmark and begin to read.

The phone in deejay type scans me discreetly. He clocks my Denmark 1986 retro shirt, sees that I’m reading McIlvanney on Football and notices that I’ve placed this month’s copy of When Saturday Comes next to the bottle of water (I’ve only got thirty pages of the book left).

He listens when my friend phones me, he listens as I remind my friend that we have to pick up the tickets from Celtic Park, he listens as I tell my friend that we’re bound to have a good day and we’ll meet Jimmy and his mates again in that decent pub near Celtic. He hears my laughter, he can see the excitement in my eyes.

He looks at me and can clearly see what I’m all about. He’s waiting for me to finish my phone conversation, he’ll knows what to say, I’m part of his flock, his people. He can feel the milliseconds pass.

When the opportunity finally arises he looks into my eyes and says;

“Which match are you going to?“

Then I’ll reply with;

“I don’t really like football I’m afraid”.

Radiating waves of bewilderment, the best response he can manage will be;

“Eh?……I thought you liked football. Weren’t you on the phone about tickets?”

I’ll add;

“No!”

This conversation won’t go any further.

We sit in silent proximity for the rest of the journey, a mute acknowledgement of a metaphorical chasm.

I don’t react, I don’t justify.

I silently consumed the remaining twenty five pages of my book.

I was silently consuming my magazine.

There’s not a glance in his direction.

Words seem infinitely more interesting than a banter-fuelled loudmouth.

Needless to say I’ll have had the last laugh!

I’m sure that I’d become a subject on his show.

“I was on train yesterday and I was sat across from this fella, and he was wearing a old football kit, and he was reading a book about football, and had a football magazine in front of him, and he spoke to one of his mates about making sure he had tickets to a match.

So I said to him “Which match are you going to mate?” and I was expecting a bit of banter. But he says to me “I don’t really like football I’m afraid” and that was that, I mean what’s that all about?

I couldn’t get my head around it.

I mean how can someone not like footy in the first place but this guy said he didn’t like football and he was wearing one of those retro shirts, Denmark I think, he was reading a football book and had a football magazine, he had tickets to a match. How could he not be a football fan? It doesn’t make sense.

So he’s got a ticket for a match but doesn’t like football, it’ll be people like him that stop ordinary decent fans getting tickets. He’ll be the sort of person that eats Prawn Sandwiches and quaffs chardonnay while the likes of you eat luke warm pies and lumpy tea. These people are everything that wrong with football if you ask me.”

I reckon that I would probably call the next show he presents.

“Hi, first time caller, sometime listener when I’m stuck in the wrong taxi at the wrong time. I’m the guy from the train.

First of all I like to thank you for your grandiloquent character assassination, it made my day, week, month, year, and indeed, decade.

Your masterly emissions have echoed in my fuddled brain so violently I have been unable to sleep coherently since your eloquence. Kind sir, it is difficult to wonder where one starts your latest teatime oeuvre. One doesn’t know how to respond, one hopes the pedestrian cliché of “Bravo kind sir, bravo!” will suffice.

Picasso had paint, Mozart had notes, you embroider the ether with forthright opinions, your words are quite literally art.

We can try to pay tribute to the quality of your verbal art but its multi-faceted qualities present the most profound of problems. You are the very much the spoken word’s onion of genius football opinion, the confines of space and time do not allow us to lionise your multifarious layers of strength.

If we celebrate your perfumed words we may omit the profundity of your masterly soliloquy, if we laud the perspicacity of your intellectual ardour we may overlook your majestic turn of phrase. Suffice to say it was the most profound honour to be so ritually abused by sheer poetry.

Essentially what I am desperately groping to express is the idea that it’s nice to be recognised as an easy target for an attention seeking loudmouths lacking in grace and calmness.

I enjoy my use as fodder for another tirade that keeps the wheels of the banter fuelled horrorshow that’s now known as “football”.

Needless to say I have had the last laugh again, and I rest my case. Cheery bye the now.”

Football talk used to be fine in the right place at the right time with the right people but it’s irritating ubiquity has turned it into the mere rearrangement of words.

Pre-match analysis, pre-match interviews, half-time analysis, post-match interviews, post-match analysis. Endless words about nothing.

Opinions, opinions, opinions. Only the nouns change.

“My team lost…….He’s not trying……..It’s not fair”.

Football’s not fair, it’s not a moral investigation into the existential state of humanity. It’s two groups of eleven people trying to score more goals than the other.

Some teams win, some teams lose and there are some draws.

Shut up, you’re boring us all.