Rocks Around And Thinks That He's The Toughest

This is not a football blog and so I apologise for referring to it again but it's an important time of the year for those of us who are addicted.

First of all, last night it was the European Champions League final, for the first time ever contested by two English teams. And played in Moscow. Anyway....the game actually turned out to be a great one, unusually for games when there is so much at stake. But a lot of my pleasure derived from people-watching during the game. I watched it with about seven other people and enjoyed basking in the glow of their irrational hatreds which made me feel better about my own. I also enjoyed how my two Serbian friends occasionally reverted to Serbian when talking about certain players. They obviously could find no English language sufficiently harsh to vent their bile.

And tonight (I am deliberately writing this before the games, so I am in a state of unease) my team play and if they win they will almost certainly win the league, barring something weird and illegal going on at Pittodrie when Aberdeen host the forces of darkness. Those wishing to guage my mood later on, would do well to look at the football scores.

Finally, I went to visit my son on Tuesday. He was telling me that he's started going to mass. I asked him about it and what aspects of it he enjoyed. He said he liked the hymns but that he'd never heard any of them before so when he was handed the hymnsheet with their words he just made up his own tunes, which hung dischordantly in the air, at odds with the tunes everyone else was singing. But then he said something which I thought was the very essence of a Christian outlook on life:

"I don't sing any more. I was fucking up the vibe."

Posted by: papmeister at 18:22 | link | comments (1)

So, yeah. Things I did while I was missing in action.

Well, I wrote a lot.

And I made a few good friends along the way.

I chose not to grow a beard.

 

Posted by: papmeister at 23:40 | link | comments (5)

You all know me as a fun, laid-back, peaceloving beatnik. "Hey, there goes Paps! Probably on his way to plant some flowers in the barrels of rifles. Or maybe hug a tree." I know that a lot of you picture me composing these few simple words bedecked in a tie-dyed kaftan, chanting "om" and reeking of incense. So it will come as something of a shock to hear that I have my bete-noire, something that I hate with a violent passion that makes me froth at the mouth, direct vitriol at passers-by, scowl at babies and mutter obscenities at little old ladies on their way to church.

What could possibly do this to me?

I'll tell you. It is ostensibly a football club. But really it is the worldwide headquarters for the forces of darkness, of negativity, of anti-football, of anti-joy, of anti-life. So heinous are these "people" that I was unable to watch them on my television for fear that, heaven forfend, they would be victorious and therefore damn us all. I did, however, place several Friends of Paps (FOPs) on standby to text me if it looked as though they were going to lose and it was safe to turn on my television.

And therefore I would like to say a massive thank you to Zenit St Petersburg for restoring order to the universe last evening.  At least to my part of it.

Posted by: papmeister at 19:18 | link | comments (2)

Paplings. Loose in the countryside! Lock your doors!

Posted by: papmeister at 01:28 | link | comments (2)

The weather here has been unusually good for just over a week. Bruce Springsteen would be singing about girls dressed in their summer clothes if he were here. He isn't though.

Those of you who know me will know that I am the proverbial "all-night drug-prowling wolf, who looks so sick in the sun" (albeit minus the drugs these days) and would be surprised to hear that I was on a beach recently. And not because I had been washed up like so much flotsam and jetsam. No. I was on a beach, with Thing 1 and Thing 2. Kicking a ball around. And the like.

I looked in the mirror this morning. I am now a slightly "off-white" colour. It won't last.

 

Posted by: papmeister at 15:55 | link | comments (3)

I have been away for a week. Although, as someone pointed out, I have also been away for 500 days.

A week. It's not long, is it?

But I saw the sea, and I smelt the sea, and I tasted the sea and when I slept I dreamt the sea, like I do so often. And this time I dreamt of sailing above it instead of willingly sinking below its welcoming mass.

Don't tell anyone but I think I may have rejoined the human race.

Posted by: papmeister at 20:33 | link | comments

In which Paps.....

Suffers, gets ill, suffers, gets better.

I wouldn't know where to begin really. I wouldn't.

There are things that happen to other people, and we read about them in the newspaper and think "How awful!"....and then we turn the page. But when it happens to you then that page takes on the weight of mountains and you start to wonder whether instead of turning the page you should just throw the damn book on the fire.

And so, the very bad things happened and I went A.W.O.L. from my mind for a few months. And I damaged myself, and hurt myself, and tortured myself because, who knows, maybe I thought that that was all that I deserved. And I really just wanted to sleep. To close my eyes and sleep. But people who loved me wouldn't let me, and loves of all different kinds shook the tree until all the leaves that had obscured my view fell off off the branches. And I could see again.

And I knew that I couldn't deal with the magnitude of the events that had befallen me unless I got....clean.

Which brings us to today. Paps is clean as 5a.m. snow.

 

 

Posted by: papmeister at 17:19 | link | comments (2)

Not kicking your back doors in...more like sneaking in through a window somewhere. Just prising it open a little and hoping it doesn't creak too loud.

So ok, here are the facts of the matter to be put before the jury:

1.) I went missing. In fact, I was so missing that for a long time I lost myself. I really did.

2.) A lot has happened. Sometimes too much.

3.) I am changed.

And yet...and yet....a lot remains the same. I managed not to lose any friends. I even made some new ones. And rediscovered old ones. That was sometimes the best of it. Yes.

So...did I miss anything?

 

Posted by: papmeister at 19:58 | link | comments (2)