Doors slowly closing

We live in a world of new media, and it’s interesting to see how our traditional, established outlets have reacted to the freshly-minted era of fully interactive news coverage. The balance of reportage has changed markedly in the last twenty years, where the reporter’s and photographer’s roles have atrophied and the reader’s contribution has increased, and we now have a situation where the media is no longer reporting current affairs to the populace, and instead is sourcing material from members of the public on the scene to feed back to those of us who weren’t so fortunate to be there.

There is change evident as well in the way that opinion pieces and features are written. Once, the journalist’s words would be almost gospel; his/her conjecture and subjectivity would go unchallenged save for a response or two published in the letters page later on in the week. Now, with their new found ability to comment on stories, readers (who might just happen to know more about the subject in question than the author of the piece) are now taking inaccuracies, fallacies and logical mis-steps to task in a way that’s never been done before. Even if the readers’ comments are inaccurate themselves, they will more often than not add to a tapestry of thriving debate and discourse that can shed more light on a topic than a reporter’s necessarily shallow and singular viewpoint.

I feel that newspapers have cottoned on and adapted to this fact recently, adopting a new style of journalism that relies less on imparting events and ideas on its readership and instead goads them, with bludgeoning, relentless repetition of mindless, sensationalistic nonsense, safe in the knowledge that the readers will comment and they won’t have to bother researching or writing a feature properly, and perhaps some online advertisments will get clicked as well into the bargain.

Do I honestly believe that, that a national newspaper would publish sub-standard tosh, styled as ‘blogs’ that are more badly written than anything in the blogosphere itself? I’m not convinced actually, but there must be some reason for how bad the Guardian’s Comment Is Free section is. One article, based on a false premise, was defended in the comment section by the author who claimed he didn’t have time to research the piece properly. I’m not sure what terrifies me more, the fact that journalists are now openly admitting lazy practice (something we all knew anyway) or the on-going black-and-white sensationalism of the world, something the likes of the Sun and Mirror always indulged in, but which, sadly, more and more broadsheets are putting their stock in while chasing falling circulations.

This somewhat lengthy, and ironically subjective (I am exempt from my own criticism as I’m not getting paid for this, and there’s certainly no-one actually reading it) introduction is a pre-cursor to my trying to come to terms with the human/football car crash that’s been ‘Boozegate’.

If you’re a fantastically lucky bastard, you’ll live in Australia, support Brazil as your football team and will never have heard of any of the players in this tawdry drama of next to fucking nothing. In a nutshell, a rather large nutshell, the story breaks down like this:

• On Saturday night last week, the Scottish international football team played the Netherlands in Amsterdam. The Scots lost 3-0.
• Between 2-4am on Sunday morning, the Scottish squad returned to their ‘luxury’ (the Sun’s words, not mine) accommodation on the banks of Loch Lomond, and apparently, with the approval of the team manager, a number of the players began drinking in an ill-advised team building exercise.
• The story that at least two of the players were still in the hotel bar at 11am when the rest of the squad woke up began to break on Tuesday night.
• By Wednesday evening, with the second match of the World Cup qualifying group looming, it had become apparent that goalkeeper Allan McGregor and midfielder, captain Barry Ferguson had been dropped from the starting line up.
• The two players in question were photographed on the sidelines, making thinly-veiled two finger gestures in the direction of the massed photographers.

Apparently, the story of two  men getting drunk after a bad day at the office held more import in Scotland than the crash of a helicopter in the North Sea and the G20 riots/President Obama’s visit to the U.K. It’s a sad indictment of the ‘best small country in the world’ that two of our foremost international professional athletes would think it acceptable to get utterly shit-faced between two relatively important football matches and that the fallout should consume just as many column inches as it has. Indeed, as of this afternoon, McGregor and Ferguson were both banned from representing Scotland for life, and were put on the transfer list by their club side, Rangers. So, in the space of just under a week, Barry Ferguson has gone from being captain of both his club and his country to being served his jotters. There’s a lot of shite has been published by the papers regarding the story this week, but I don’t think the full story is being covered. Or rather, it’s being forgotten amidst the hyperbolic, hypocritical, hysterical reaction from both the press and the Scotland support. I’d like to try and cut through the miasmic nonsense and get to the crux of the matter.

Firstly, if it is true that the players were allowed to commence drinking as a team-building exercise at 4am, having just played an international game and with another forthcoming, surely questions must be asked of the manager and the coaching staff? It can be argued that the players were given an inch and took a mile, that they needed to unwind and ameliorate the adrenaline coursing through theirsystems. They took a mile, but they were given a kilometre, not an inch. The manager should have ordered them to bed. Of course, that’s presuming the players respect the manager.

It’s also apparent that the manager found the two players in question in the bar at 11am. Following a heated exchange, the two were told to pack their bags and leave the squad. Some time later it’s alleged that five other players approached the manager and urged him to rethink his decision, revealing that they too had been in the bar, at least one of them left shortly before eleven, and that if two players were ejected from the squad, the would all walk. This is why McGregor and Ferguson were reinstated, at least to the substitutes bench.

Yes, while they were on the bench, they made rude gestures towards some photographers. This  was childish, but was clearly aimed at the media rather than the Scotland support as has been so self-righteously alleged. However, the fans are within their rights to take offence that their representatives were acting like little brats.

The other underlying issue here is an uneasy relationship between Rangers and Scotland, be it the fans, the management or the players. Scotland supporters think Rangers players don’t give their all and claim the fans all support England instead of their country of birth. Rangers fans think Scotland fans don’t appreciate the contribution of their players to the international scene and are distrustful of some of the more outre behaviour of the Tartan Army. The two have never been easy bed-fellows, not helped by the natural emnity between supporters of the smaller teams and both the large Glasgow clubs.

Barry Ferguson, or Mr. Marmite, has never been truly accepted by the Scotland support. To some, he’s an overly-cautious, limited, dirty, whining violent drunken ned that doesn’t care about the team and only passes the ball backwards. To others he’s one of Scotland’s few truly international class players, a metronome in midfield that retains possession by careful and economic use of the ball. And a whining ned. Five years ago, his talent was less in doubt than it is now but a succession of injuries have taken their toll on his frame. In short, the Scotland support, having never fully taken him to heart, were always likely to come down with great vengeance and furious anger should he make any kind of slip at all.

Goalkeeper McGregor is in a similar boat, if only because he has spent his brief international career playing second fiddle to the more highly regarded Craig Gordon. He was given his chance in Holland because he’s been playing regularly and Gordon’s played only one game in three months. Another issue raises its head here; the manager had a very public falling out with striker Kris Boyd last year where the latter was dropped because he wasn’t ‘playing regularly for his club side’. Having made this rod for his back, the manager then found himself having to choose between two very closely matched players using a criterion he himself had made an issue of. McGregor was subsequently blamed for the 3-0 defeat in Holland, despite the poor defending at the first goal, being obstructed by Dirk Kuyt at the second and the third being a penalty conceded by Christophe Berra. From Saturday night through to the breaking of ‘the story’, the wisdom of McGregor being selected for the Holland game was being hotly debated.

On my drive to play seven a side football tonight, I listened to a programme on Radio Scotland about ‘the story’. Stuart Cosgrove was on the panel, and he was making some points, some I disagreed with. But it wasn’t so much what Cosgrove was saying, it was the vitriol and bile towards Rangers players that I found objectionable.

Sometimes, non-Old Firm fans make me laugh. They denigrate Rangers and Celtic fans for their religious and political bickering, but they can be as reactionary, as shallow, as flat-out bigotted as any of any supporter of the gruesome twosome. I’ve heard twisted logic, ridiculous generalistations and advocation of violence from St. Mirren fans, who seem to think this is also acceptable. But on a casual level, there seems to be an inverterate hatred of Rangers and Celtic players and fans that I think has influenced the thinking of many Scotland fans when reflecting on this affair. That said, there is an argument that another Rangers and a Celtic player were involved and they haven’t copped any shite. But neither have the Derby, Hibs, or Tottenham players that going by the lack of a denial were also part of the session.

So what exactly is going on here? Has the manager lost the respect of the dressing room? Why have four players now quit/being banned from the international scene under his reign? Is the fact they all play for the same club a coincidence? Does the SFA chief executive trust his manager? Does the president of the SFA trust his chief executive? What exactly the fuck is going on here?

When the SFA banned the two players for life today, they reasoned it was for the benefit of the team, to minimise ‘distractions’ for the remainder of the qualifying campaign. I suspect our true handicap is the shambles of an organising body. We have an uncertain, seemingly weak-willed manager, a vain chief executive who will not tolerate any criticism, no matter how small, of his regime, and a president that just loves sticking his oar in. Ignoring the larger problems of Scottish football , this holy trinity I think will be responsible for a disastrous era of Scottish football, one that may even match Berti Vogts for plumbing the depths. I’m firmly of the opinion that all this mess, all this commotion, this media circus and the kangaroo court could all have been avoided if some kind of organisation had been in place from the start of the manager’s incumbency.

I think it’s worth keeping sight of what happened here. Seven men got drunk, and two of them got caught by their boss. Nothing more, nothing less. No, they really shouldn’t have been drinking, but spare us some of the moral indignation.

Motherfucking Time Vampire

I really do hate technology. I wonder if my technophobia derives from a similar root as my misanthropy; I can get rapidly and immensely pissed off with humanity simply because I don’t think we’re living up to our potential at times, and I feel much the same about early 21st century technology. Are we rushing things too much? Are our leading IT companies pumping out skimpily beta-tested products that are full of bugs just to keep up with, or slightly ahead of competitors? I only ask as around 75% of the last dozen or so software packages and hardware I’ve used haven’t worked properly.

I don’t want to back away from technology, and end up as an entrenched luddite, living in a wooden shack scribbling venomous invective to Bill Gates jr., but on reflection, I don’t think I need worry. I’ll surely die sometime in the next few years trying to configure Windows Media Player 12.

This post was brought to you by Windows Live Writer. If it works. Which I’m doubtful about.

I haven’t blogged in a while. I suspect it’s down to my processor running at too high a speed; I’m not doing particularly more than I have done in the past five years, but I’m doing enough to give my lazyitis palpitations…that’s a horrible metaphor, isn’t it?

I’m working full time, and studying an HNC full time, with another night class thrown in on top of that (first it was CAD, then music production, and shortly it’ll be German), and I generally feel that I don’t have enough time to feed and clothe myself, doodle aimless guitar riffs and vent my spleen inarticulately on the internet. I’m building up a list of tasks that I really should take a look at, but they’re growing by the week…I’ve contributed virtually nothing to the novel I intended to write this year, and my lack of desire to write in general is worrying me somewhat. I don’t feel as if I’m short of stimulus and ideas on what I could write about, I just lack the perspicacity and enthusiasm to corral it all into some form black and white. Still, the reasons for this might form the central spine of the next blog I put off writing…

That said, I have managed to crawl from my bed to get some things done. I’ve paid off the digital SLR camera I bought last year, and I’ve even used it to take some photographs (!), mostly of my new niece Kate, who was born last Thursday.

And in other news, I have become slightly obsessed with Tina Fey/Liz Lemon, although I’m not sure at all where the former ends and the latter starts.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

I got my haircut today, in a salon with exculsively female tunic-wearing staff. I may have gotten slightly aroused. It occured to me (when I caught the faint whiff of seven working hours’ sweat mingled with her perfume as she moved around me, running her hands through my hair) that getting your hair cut by a member of the opposite sex is a bit like getting a lap dance or sleeping with a prostitute; you’re paying to have your prick teased, and your ego massaged by someone that flatters to deceive for a living. It’s a somewhat odd situation. Other than the fleeting brush with enduring female sexualism, I don’t enjoy getting my hair cut much; I never know what I want as I sit myself in the seat, and I try to convey my vague notions to the hairdresser through a succession of references to obscure musicians, actors and footballers she’s never heard of, and I end up with a style that isn’t unentirely not what I didn’t ask for. This time wasn’t so bad; I managed to get across that I just wanted a trim as I’m trying to grow it longer; it’s not quite Shoreditch standard, but it’ll do.

Maybe my struggles with haircuts are symbolic of my struggles with life in general. I don’t know what I want or what suits me, I just want something that doesn’t cause me too much trilogy. I’ve come to the conclusion that I might not long for happiness after all, and that I’d rather settle for equilibrium. I find myself expressing an interest in golf and snowboarding and becoming determined to carry out some joinery work in my sister’s house. I’m saving up for a house and a car; I have a pension and have joined a union, but I’m also learning about music production and I still find the Guardian too right wing for comfort. In short, I haven’t the faintest idea who I am or who I’m becoming, which is mildly unsettling. Am I returning to the middle class stock I was born into, somewhat against my desire to remain (at least notionally) a socialist, working class proleterian?

I have become smitten with a song from the new Doves album, Kingdom Of Rust. Called ‘Jetstream’, it’s an imagined closing track to Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner, and I think it’s absolutely magnificent. It harks barks to Jimi Goodwin and the Williams twins’ days as dance act Sub Sub, merging subtle electronic flourishes and drum machines with Jez Williams’ always elegaic, atmospheric guitar playing create a dark, brooding and utterly wonderful track. Perhaps my appreciation of its merits can be guaged by looking at the Last FM play stats at the right hand side of this page; I listened to it about 24 times in a row last Friday night alone.

Now I am away to watch a DVD or perhaps play the Xbox. I might venture over to Edinburgh tomorrow and see if I can’t get into Murrayfield for the rugby.

Guitar hero

I appear to be reborn as a guitarist. What feel likes half a lifetime ago, I played lead/rhythm guitar in a post university band. We weren’t very good, but I always thought that had circumstance been a little more in our favour, we could have made a better fist of things. Since I left the band nearly four years ago, they’ve continued, changing their bass player but retaining the name and sound.

Since then, I’ve found myself drifting away from music a little, and certainly the guitar. I’ve dallied with the bass, piano, singing, drums, clarinet, accordian (and I long to buy a trumpet); I’ve familiarised myself with home recording techniques, and managed to record a few of my own songs, despite making things more difficult for myself than they needed to be, and I’m currently attending a night course in music technology. I cannot deny I’ve longed to perform music in public again, preferably as part of a band; however, I’m cautious about responding to adverts looking for musicians because I don’t think I have any talent whatsoever. I feel much more comfortable playing with people I already know and like, as I had with my previous band. Around six months ago, I found myself playing drums with two friends as we tried in vain to get some kind of band off the ground, and recruit a bass player. Presently the band would merge with another group of musicians I’d found myself in the company of, and now the six of us are trying to work out a sound and who should play what instrument. Although F is a better guitarist than me, he’s expressed a desire to play bass or drums, so after a few years of prodigal dabbling, I find myself the principal guitarist of our outfit.

I haven’t been completely neglecting my six stringed instruments however. I have been striving to get a few, fairly tricky songs down pat, to prove to mysefl that I’m not as bad a guitarist as I think I am. And, in the last few months, I have finally mastered ‘Sultans of Swing’ and ‘Breaking Into Heaven’. Well, 95%. I’ve also finally broken a couple of mental blocks with ‘This Charming Man’ and ‘A Design For Life’, which I put down to eventually realising I’d had my fingers in the wrong places.

Hopefully this latest attempt at forming a band comes off. I no longer possess the same dreams of writing the great British album that I used to hold so dear, but there’s something incredibly enjoyable about playing music with other people, in public.

I sometimes wonder if I do have depression. This isn’t some post-teenage angst however, it’s a reflection on the way I generally feel and the fact my sister, mother and father are all on some form of anti-depressant medication, but…

There’s something that’s always prevented me from pursuing the matter, from making an appointment with the doctor, to seek his opinion, mainly because I feel that if I’m fed up (and if it even is depression), then it’s a sign that something’s wrong in my life that needs to be resolved. If I was to start taking medication, would I then find myself oblivious to problems I should deal with? Then again, the pills my mother takes apparently have reinvigorative properties; that’s certainly something I could deal with.

I felt particularly fed up in Glasgow yesterday. This was perhaps instigated by it taking me 45 minutes, 15 miles and five petrol stations before I found one with a working air pump I could check the tyre pressures with. I shouldn’t go into the centre of one of Europe’s bigger cities when I’m exasperated with humans and their so called nature. There are a few bits and bobs I need/want to buy, and yet I’m struggling to find. For instance, I needed a new wallet, preferably a leather one with a coin section and a window for my driving licence (it took so much hassle to get it, I like to show it off), but I couldn’t find one anywhere other than Marks & Spencers. I wasn’t quite prepared to pay £22, despite the fact it was a nice wallet, and I don’t really want to hasten my descent into middle-aged, middle-class inertia by shopping at M&S anyway (apologies to M&S customers, it’s a personal thing). I finally found a wallet that fit my criteria in the very last shop I looked in, which is based in the ground floor of the car park I’d deposited the car in.

I nipped back home for a short while, but I was due back in Glasgow at 6 for a band ‘rehearsal’. A potted history: Kevin, Freddie and I had attempted to get a band off the ground for a while without much success. Meanwhile, Freddie recruited me to play bass for a backing group his friend had put together. After the talent show Andy (the friend) had entered, we all expressed an interest to do something else in the future. As both groups were struggling to get off the ground, we decided to see what merging them would do, and thus Kevin has joined Freddie, Andy, Dilane, Daniel and I as our de facto bass player, a somewhat cunning move on my part. I don’t particularly want to play bass, at least not full-time, and Kevin would be the first to admit he’s not a great guitarist.

The rehearsal was a little shambolic to be honest. We attempted a version of ‘High and Dry’ by Radiohead which we eventually managed to make sound almost passible. We also played ‘U Got it Bad’, the song Andy performed at the talent show, and the only one we can actually play from beginning to end. Otherwise, it was a complete shambles. Dilane (a very competent all round musician) got a little fed up, and I think some of the others were quite dispirited. I’m a little more optimistic however; I think we’re bound to sound awful during our initial practices, so we should look at the situation again after a few more sessions.

I gave Kevin a lift to the station from Concert Square; it took us fifteen minutes to exit the car park. Because there are roadworks on Cowcaddens Road, traffic exiting left from the car park is currently taking a good deal longer to get through the lights at the junction of Port Dundas Road/West Nile Street. Ideally, I would have liked to have turned left for West Nile street, but by turning right a few times, I could be on the same street in a fraction of the time it would have taken to sit in that left hand lane. It never fails to amaze me how human beings can be such unthinking, ovine drones, unable to think laterally or outside the group mentality.

I don’t think I have the same operating system as other human beings though. I’m normally aware of this, but perhaps not quite as acutely as I was yesterday. During the search for my new wallet, I ventured into Princes Square, something I haven’t done in years, mainly because the shops are too exclusive for my wallet. Strange irony there. Anyway, I was just about to step onto an escalator when a young couple passed in front of me, in that blissful, symbiotic ignorance that freshly minted lovers seem to share. My first impression of the male suggested he was a bookish, guache type fellow, but he was more familiar with the above noted feeling than I am, as a less bookish, guache type fellow. I’ve also noted it in the difference in writing styles of Kevin and I; I have a compulsive need to explain, document and analyse everything, while Kevin seems to deliberately obfusticate life. Which of the two of us do you think is the more comfortable in his own skin?

The success of the long term goal depends on the success of the short term goal

I haven’t blogged in a while, anywhere, which would have been unthinkable five or so years ago. My mind is increasingly drawn to that famous quote of Winston Churchill’s that “If a man is not a liberal at eighteen, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is thirty, he has no mind”. As I hurtle uncontrollably towards 30, I cannot help but accept that human beings quite often metamorphose into completely different people during their twenties. Churchill’s quote above about the passion and fire of youth cooling into the more mature and sanguine mindset of middle age.

I find myself recently on my own journey towards this ‘respectability’ over the last 18 months or so. There are subtle indications of me becoming a tweed-jacket wearing, Volvo-driving, boring old fart. I’ve recently expressed a desire to take up golf, and I’ve become obsessed with watches and loafers. However, the main sign of burgeoning ‘maturity’ has been not a shifting in the spectrum of my political beliefs (still as befuddled and apathetic Liberal Democrat/Labour voter as ever) to Conservative as much as to Communism.

No, that’s overly dramatic. In reality, I’ve started this year with a flurry of short term and long term plans to try and ease me through the next 15 years of my life. I have discovered in recent years that I function far better when I delineate the tasks I have to carry out each day, both in work and here, lest I end up getting swamped under or spending all evening playing the Xbox and getting absolutely nothing done. It’s this approach that’s led to me missing out on so many opportunities in the past just because I simply wasn’t prepared for them.

So, I aim to set myself a series of daily tasks, of things I really should achieve that day. In addition I have further three, six and nine month plans, two, five and ten year plans. It seems a horribly sanitized way to live, an abomination of free will, but I’m rather more upbeat about it. I have goals and aims I want to achieve in life, and specifically over the next 15 years, and I’ve put this framework in place to help me meet those goals. It’s like the maxim that one should work to live and not live to work; I’m planning to live. I’ve started on these long and medium term plans, and if all goes to plan, I should be in a far better place (mentally) by the summer of 2010.

Not that I’m hung in a bad place at the moment; I have quite a comfortable existence at the moment. I’m still three weeks away from my return to football, but my job’s going well-ish, I’ve completed a quarter of my day release course, I’m going to a night class in music production, I’m swimming twice a week and cycling to work twice a week and my framework of ambition has given me some faith in the future for the first time in a long time. I can actually see where I want to get to, and that’s infused me with a wonderful sense of calm.

I’ve said this before…I’ve said this so many times before, but I think I’m getting somewhere at last.

2008

It seems that each of the last five years I’ve made a tacit promise to myself that ‘this will be my year’, whatever that might mean. Sadly, I’ve constantly failed to deliver on this promise to myself. Until this year. I think.

I think I probably managed to make this year so enjoyable simply by not trying as hard as I have in the past. Or perhaps it was having some solid ground beneath my feet to start from. Just over a year ago I started my first full time job in some four years, and the boost in confidence (and cash) undoubtedly underpinned my failure to completely cock up the year for once.

It didn’t get off to an entirely auspicious start, with a filling, and aside from finally completing the first draft of my novel which had been some ten years in the writing (on and off). March was when my 2008 got off to its belated start. Having renewed my passport, I ended up (at somewhat short notice) at a house party in Dublin, the first time I’d been to the Irish republic. It was an enjoyable three times (save for the tedium of the LUAS), and I plan to go back in 2009, perhaps taking in Belfast as well.

A week later I was off to California for Ru and Matt’s wedding. I’m not going to go into the US trip in detail as I’ve already done so on this blog, but I might mention a couple of the moments that stick in my mind the most.

Walking underneath the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge amidst the fug of jetlag and finally realising I was in San Francisco.

Getting to the top of the Upper Yosemite Falls trail after what felt like a month of hiking.

Walking through Central Park on a Wednesday morning feeling as carefree as I’m ever likely to feel.

I spent three weeks in America in total, and by the time I returned near the end of April, my football team had almost thrown away the league, but had nearly reached the UEFA cup final, which was to be held in Manchester in May. Coincidentally, I’d arranged to meet up with some internet acquaintances in the same city three days later. I wasn’t to know how embarrassed I would be, and how I would spend two days in the city trying to hide my accent, at least until I got drunk. I left with my tail still somewhat between my legs, but six weeks later, I was back in Lancashire.

I’d actually forgotten I’d entered the ballot for tickets to see Paul McCartney play what was supposedly the last concert to be held at Anfield before the famous old ground was demolished and Liverpool moved to their fantastic, fish-and-finger-pie-in-the-sky new stadium in nearby Stanley Park, which as of December 2008 doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon. Anyway, the fact I’d applied for two tickets for my fellow Beatles/McCartney obsessive father and I had been misfiled by my brain amidst the excitement of America and the UEFA cup final. In fact, as I didn’t recognise anything on the envelope the tickets came in, I didn’t even bother opening it for a few days…

I had planned to take my father down to Liverpool, as part of our ongoing bonding through the music of James Paul McCartney, but he didn’t feel physically up for it, and at such short notice I was unable to find anyone to take save my mother, which wasn’t an ideal situation. While she could help with the driving, she’s far too proficient of making dramas out of molehills; the slightest thing these days will leave her wailing and panicking, and it’s not something I like to inflict on myself for extended periods of time. Fortunately, we made the gig and the journey back with the minimum of fuss, and it’s something I’ll always cherish.

In July I decided to finally bite the bullet and buy myself a new digital SLR camera. I’d been using an old Nikon D1 my dad had bought me some four years previously, and being fast assailed by Moore’s Law, it was almost obsolete. I couldn’t really continue to harbour pretence of aspiring to professional photography while using a camera that was so decrepit (or maybe I could; that’s a different argument for another day), and so I put my name down for a Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 18-70mm lens on a year’s interest free credit. I’ve been putting money aside monthly since the summer, so I should have it paid off before the credit period kicks in.

August saw me attend my first music festival in four years, the Connect festival in Inveraray. I had a bit of a soft spot for the town, having visited there with my friend Kris (whose mother lives and works there) some ten years previously, and learning the Manics, Elbow and Sigur Ros were playing convinced me to buy a ticket. While I’d been to two previous festivals, this would be my first looking after my own tent and I was a little apprehensive about it. Still, I got a decent deal on some camping equipment, and I survived the weekend’s binge drinking and wallet misplacing with no lasting ill effects to anything other than my bank balance (I got the wallet back with all monies intact). I also went to my first comedy show in August, seeing Lucy Porter at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival on the spur of the moment, something I really need to do more often.

In September I decided to take my new camera and new-found camping abilities to Mull during the September weekend for no other reason than I’d never been there before. This was something of a motif for my year, getting out into the world and taking opportunities I would otherwise let my self doubt destroy. As it was my niece’s birthday that weekend, it all ended up being a little more whistle stop than I had otherwise intended, but I still managed to make it to Fingal’s cave, which was the primary goal of the trip.

In November, I entered NaNoWriMo for the third time, and for the third year in a row, I hit the 50,000 word target. This year was by far the most difficult due to a number of other tasks I was undertaking at the same time (work, college…). I was also rehearsing a song by Usher of all people, who a friend of a friend was covering at a talent show. He wanted a real backing band instead singing to a track, and I was enrolled to play bass. Thus I managed to play in front of 250 odd paying customers in the Mitchell theatre, beating in terms of size and prestige anything I achieved with the last band I was in, a supposedly much more serious proposition. I also spent a dirty weekend in London with my dear friend Kevin and his lady friend, saw a play at the Rada theatre and attended my first English Premier League game.

However, I haven’t yet mentioned the most notable thing I did this year, which was start a college course in Architectural Technology. When I started working for my current employers, I had envisaged it being the latest in a litany of temporary jobs, but for whatever reason they decided to offer to pay my way through college, and that wasn’t an offer I was stupid enough to turn down. I’ve just finished the first quarter of a two year course that will allow me to work in the industry, and it should open a few more doors for me. I’ve enrolled in another course, starting in the new year, in music production.

In an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable year, I haven’t had much luck with music this year. Whether it’s to do with me getting a little older, or the music industry struggling to adapt to the digital ‘revolution’, I just haven’t heard a great deal that’s inspired me. I’ve bought a handful of albums this year, and I wouldn’t rate any of them particularly highly, although I could make a decent compilation from them. This apathy towards music seems to have been growing with each year, and I’m hoping it’s just a reaction to the prevalent fashions, and at some point in the next few years I’ll hear some stuff I really like. I’m not holding my breath though. Instead of listing my favourite albums of the year (because I honestly can’t think of one I really like), I’ll simply list my ten favourite songs in no particular order.

1. The Turning – Oasis
2. Friend Of Ours – Elbow
3. Love Is Noise – The Verve
4. The Shock of the Lightning – Oasis
5. Grounds for Divorce – Elbow
6. Clowns – Goldfrapp
7. The Day That Never Ends – Metallica (if just for the utterly unfashionable 80s dual guitar solo)
8. Echoes Around The Sun – Paul Weller
9. Fascination – Alphabeat
10. Gobbledigook – Sigur Ros

That was actually a struggle just to name ten songs released this year I liked. That really shouldn’t be the case he said, stating the obvious. I’m not sure what I can do to remedy this, because it might just be something within me dying. Aside from the session bass playing, I did manage to fit in three rehearsals with two friends with the aim of calling ourselves a band. I played drums, which was highly enjoyable and something I’d wanted to do for a while.

I remain more hopeful about the film industry, perhaps erroneously. I’ve seen at least two great films this year in ‘Persepolis’ and ‘Wall-E’, although some other releases were more of let down. I saw Indiana Jones and the Stupidly Long Title twice and I’m still non-plussed about it. Nuking the fridge indeed. In descending order of satisfaction, my cinema going year included the following;

1. Wall-E
2. Persepolis
3. The Dark Knight
4. Iron Man
5. Hancock
6. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
7. The Bank Job
8. Tropic Thunder

I thought I’d seen more films than that. I did see Indiana Jones twice though. There were films I intended to watch and then never got around to, but there was a lot of shite I’m glad I missed. Why I remain enthusiastic about film when my passion for music is waining is a bit of a mystery to me, but perhaps the combined efforts of all those people it takes to make a film keep the motion picture industry aiming for and hitting higher targets than four scallywags with Toni and Guy haircuts can manage.

I’ve continued my slow shipwreck of a footballing career this year with a fair number of five a side games. For most of the year we were unable to garner ten bodies for a Thursday lunchtime game, so we were only playing on Tuesday nights. Then, in the last few months, we’ve had a few new people start in the office, so the Thursday game has returned. Playing twice a week, plus the occasional game with Kevin and his friends resulted in the pain in my shins returning. I’ve been to the doctors and had an inconclusive X-Ray, so we seem to have agreed that I have stress fractures in both tibias. The only cure for this is rest, so I haven’t played at all for the last month. I’m hoping the three weeks off over Christmas will help me get back to full health. My waistline won’t stand for much more inactivity. My new year’s resolution (yes, ok) is to take more exercise. I’m planning to buy a cheap bike in order to cycle to work, I’m going to try and go swimming more often, and I may take up work’s offer of reduced gym memberships. I did buy a golf driver this year with the aim of taking up the game, but so far I haven’t been able to persuade John or my brother-in-law to take me to the driving range for some coaching. I don’t want to just run up and start hacking at a ball like a complete halfwit.

Ant that was more or less my year, a year in which I got to visit some places I’d always wanted to (Dublin, San Francisco, New York, Fingal’s Cave), saw three of my musical idols in close-ish quarters (Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and James Dean Bradfield). I took up the drums semi-seriously and played bass in public for the first time. I learned how to use Autocad and how to draw building cross-sections. I rode the New York subway at 2 in the morning (I don’t know what I was worried about) and responded in French to an actress during a play (she asked if I wanted a bon bon, I said non). I finished writing two novels, and while they might both be unreadable twaddle in their current form, they can at least be moulded into something better, theoretically. Essentially, I had a year that was more enjoyable than not, and it’s maybe a little sad that such a minor triumph can be so celebrated. There are things I’ve forgotten at the current moment, but they will come back to me.

I’m looking forward to next year, and I hope it’s as good as, if not better than this. I hope to travel to Europe in the summer, and I’ve got my music course starting next month, and there’s something else on the horizon; my sister’s due to give birth in March, so I’ll be an uncle for the second time. All is hopeful.

Cross Kris

So, four days after Kris Boyd announced he wouldn’t play for Scotland again under the stewardship of George Burley, the debate about whether he was right or wrong continues to annoy the hell out of me, frankly. While I’m not 100% sure Boyd’s done the right thing here, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that Burley, Gordon Smith and the rest of the stuffed shirts at the SFA are grade A, 100% morons.

Since Kris Boyd espoused his opinion that he would be better withdrawing his services from international football as it was clear George Burley doesn’t think him competent, the SFA have come out firing all cylinders, backing their selection as manager and chiding Boyd for his lack of patriotism and professionalism. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not convinced the Rangers striker has made the right choice here, but I don’t think the SFA have exactly covered themselves in glory either. In fact, given certain events during Burley’s reign, I’m getting more and more concerned about the direction of the national football team; progress we made under Walter Smith and Alex McLeish seems to be evaporating.

Kris Boyd has taken a fair amount of abuse this week, both aimed at his footballing ability and his personality. I can understand that Scotland fans will feel let down by the player, but I have found some of the points raised about Boyd’s goalscoring record witless at best. His international goalscoring record of seven goals in fifteen games has been dismissed because two of those goals came against the Faroe Islands; presumably this line of thinking doesn’t apply to James McFadden as well. He doesn’t score in competitive games? Four in nine. His goalscoring record, both at club and international level is simply not matched by another Scotsman currently playing football, but more on that later.

Burley has said he didn’t select Boyd because he’s not playing regularly for Rangers and he didn’t look enthusiastic in training during the week. I can’t comment on the latter point, but the first point is a little disingenuous. Darren Fletcher, Barry Robson, James McFadden; none of these three has ‘established themselves’ in their club’s first team this season. Fletcher has started five of Manchester United’s eleven games, while Barry Robson has started three of Celtic’s eleven (although admittedly he did miss three games due to a groin injury). Boyd meanwhile, has started six of Rangers’ eleven games, and featured as a substitute three more times.

Burley has stated that Boyd isn’t doing enough to justify his national team selection, so why call him up? Why name him among the substitutes and yet not play even when you have one substitution remaining in a home World cup qualifying game you really need to win? But Burley has previous here; in Burley’s first six internationals, Boyd has played just 28 minutes of football, excluding the Czech Republic game, when he pulled out with a hamstring injury. Clearly, Burley does not care for what Boyd brings to the table, and to a certain point, that’s fair enough.

The problem arises with some of the twaddle that has dribbled out of Hampden Park since Saturday. When Burley was asked why he played Iwelumo and the goal-shy Steven Fletcher ahead of Boyd, Burley muttered some nonsense about Boyd not being established in the Rangers team and implied he wouldn’t be picking him until he was. Clearly Boyd felt, like me, that he’s in a hopeless situation; he’s clearly being used in a squad rotation system, like Fletcher and Robson, and short of full body transplant, there’s little chance of him playing more often at club level. I believe Burley has engineered this situation to a certain extent; he doesn’t want to play Boyd, and now the striker has ensured the manager doesn’t even have to go through the charade of picking him any more.

And that’s where it should have ended; instead, Burley and Smith have continued to cast aspertions about Boyd’s personality and attitude, with the former announcing he only wants ‘committed’ players in his squad. Aside from ‘committed’ being such a woolly word, it woefully misinterprets the decision of an apparently patriotic young man who wants to play and score goals for country and who simply can’t swallow the explanation his manager has provided for not selecting him.

Today, Gordon Smith joined the circus, by mentioning in an interview that the SFA considered banning Boyd from the Scotland team for life, but decided to leave the door open to him in the future. This was an astonishing admission, bordering on lunacy; why Smith felt the urge to undermine his team’s manager by speculating there will be a time in the near future when he’s not manager is one thing, to openly contemplate exacting the harshest punishment available to the SFA on a player simply because he states he no longer wishes to work with the current manager is stuff and nonsense; has no-one pointed out to Smith and Burley that David Weir played for Scotland on Saturday? The same David Weir that declared his international retirement after a tete a tete with the then Scotland manager Berti Vogts, and who then returned under his successor, Walter Smith? Wake up, Gordon. You’re supposed to be the chief executive of an International Football Association. You used to work in the media. At least putting your foot on the clutch before you put your mouth in gear might be something worth thinking about.

In conclusion, I’m still not convinced I agree with Kris Boyd’s decision to retire from international football; he may have been petulant and hasty, but he is a 25 year old footballer, a species hardly known for their common sense. Burley (52) and Smith (53) are highly paid football administrators and should know better than to allow some of their childish, reactionary remarks about the situation to appear in the media. Mind you, Smith and Burley, again, have history in this department. Burley, famously, described one of the players he’d called up as being ‘technically limited’. Admittedly, he was trying to compliment Kirk Broadfoot, but the phrase ‘damning with faint praise’ was coined for a reason.

I wait with bated breath to see what arrant nonsense I shall read in the papers tomorrow. I didn’t set out to side with Boyd, but the unrelenting drivel coming from the SFA, Burley, Smith, those people that just hate Boyd, and the more lunatic fringe of the increasingly deluded Tartan Army (where were all these loyal, committed, determined fans four years ago when Scotland were struggling to sell out Hampden?) have swung the balance of the argument firmly in Boyd’s favour as far as I’m concerned. You may not agree, but I think he’s handled himself with far more dignity than the vitriol and hypocrisy displayed by those individuals and groups listed above.

The patrons of the pub threw their hands to the ceiling in celebration, only to clasp them to their heads in disbelief when they realised the ball had spun, incredibly, the wrong side of the post. None of us could believe it. My brother-in-law hurled abuse at the assistant referee thinking that he had flagged for offside; he hadn’t, and in fact he was making his way back to the halfway line, assuming like the rest of us that the ball would end up nestling in the net.

There are no words to describe how we felt. Well, there was one, but it has been rendered meaningless through years of mis- and over-use. I’ve long despaired at newspapers, websites and news reporters using the word ’stunning’ and its variants to describe football action when said action has come nowhere near adversely affecting my motor functions. Stunning has been applied to volleys, crosses, headers and saves with such witless profligacy that when it comes to describing the reaction of Scotland’s support to Chris Iwelumo’s miss against Norway, stunned just don’t cut it. I stood and stared, mouth agap at the TV, and I’m still not sure I believe that the ball didn’t end up in the net.

Iwelumo’s misfortune is beneficial to George Burley however, as it’ll detract some of the attention from the Scotland manager’s awful team selection and tactics. His allegedly adventurous 4-3-3 formation was in fact little different to the 4-5-1 favoured by his two predecessors, but didn’t reap the same kind of rewards. His choice of personnel didn’t match up to the formation either; asking James McFadden to play as a lone striker simply nullifies his impact, especially when you’re asking him to try and bring down long kick outs from the goalkeeper. The front ‘three’ of Morrison, Maloney and McFadden are all relatively short, and were always going to be on a hiding to nothing in the air.  The midfield were being bypassed, but even when they were brought into the game they offered little. Scott Brown is fast becoming an expensive luxury, his lack of club form transposed to international football, and a couple of inspired runs per game don’t justify his continued selection at right-midfield or bizarrely enough, in the holding role he played today. Darren Fletcher lacks the imagination to be a truly creative midfielder for Scotland, and seems happier when acting as a lieutenant rather than a captain. The best of our midfield three today, Barry Robson, was marginalised by spending most of the game on the right flank rather than his stronger left.

Charlie Nicholas, and most of the people around me in the pub, prescribed substitutions at half time; switching to 4-4-2 and introducing an second striker to support McFadden would give Scotland more potency in attack. Burley decided to stick with the same line up until the 56th minute when he introduced Steven Fletcher, and Chris Iwelumo for McFadden. The latter is a talisman for the Scotland support, and they didn’t take his withdrawal kindly, although he did seem to be suffering from some kind of injury to his hamstring or thigh. Iwelumo’s first touch, a few minutes later, was to be the horrifying miss I described in the opening passage. I say horrifying because it’s the kind of miss that fans won’t forget and that might affect the player in question’s confidence in the future. It remains to be seen if Iwelumo will bounce back from what was a really rather bad miss.

Some other Scotland fans around me however questioned the very decision to send on Iwelumo for his first cap, and Fletcher for his second when there was a proven international goalscorer sitting alongside them on the bench. Kris Boyd has seven goals from six international starts, and is the second highest goalscorer in the history of the Scottish Premier League, yet it seems to me that three years of solid press articles and features about his supposed lack of ability have ruined his credibility, to the point where George Burley will throw on two unproven strikers before him. With the absence of Kenny Miller, this seemingly means that Boyd is now fifth choice striker for his country, and quite frankly that flabbergasts me.

I think it’s too early to call for Burley’s head, but I am certainly starting to have concerns about where we’re going under his stewardship; it certainly doesn’t seem to be South Africa. We now face an uphill struggle to qualify with two games against Holland and an away fixture against Norway to come.

However, this all just appears to my symptomatic of a greater underlying malaise in Scottish football. I can’t think of another nation in the world that has upwards of four seperate governing bodies in somewhat conflicting control of the game in their country. I certainly can’t think of another nation that would call up its most ruthless striker and leave him sitting on the bench. If I had my way I’d make wholesale changes, but I don’t suspect I’ll ever get my way. Until such times we maximise our resources and play to our strengths, we’re always going to struggle for success and I suspect our traditional glorious failure might be beyond us before long.