Showing posts with label Stanley Matthews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stanley Matthews. Show all posts

Wednesday, 11 February 2009

Thank Goodness For Football


You are looking at a girl who is dedicated to her cause.

Well reading her words anyway.

I'm playing away today.

Not in the sexual sense I might hastily add.

But as I write to you I am sitting in a seedy internet cafe in seedy Kings Cross in order to write this post, contemplating my return a little later to a seedy hotel room.

You think that's bad. The reason I am here is because I am on a two day finance course.

Aha! I knew that would get your sympathy.

It's not all doom and gloom though.

For a start I have just spent a wonderful 90 minutes in the British Library. In addition to such exhibts as original Beatle manuscripts (or rather scribbles on bits of scrappy paper as a number were) and a first edition of Darwin's "On The Origin of Species", I was treated to a recording of Stanley Matthews (the 'wizard of the dribble' so I gather) from 1954 (or rather Sir Stanley Matthews as he later became).

What I gleaned from that was that he was bonkers about football from as early as he could remember and took every opportunity to hone his skills as a boy. When he was about 10 he played in a team that won a match 18-1, Matthews scoring 9 of them. The next day at school he was summoned to see the headmaster, who gave him sixpence for his achievement.

As the interviewer on the recording said, he was a professional from that point on!

And that's not even the end of football delight for me today. After a meal in one of the local restaurants (should I go Italian or Indian?), I'm going to be snuggled up in my room, with a bottle of beer, a bag of nuts and the England match on the telly.

I'm missing my lover terribly of course.

So thank goodness for football.