I AM disturbed. Let me finish. I am disturbed by the state people get themselves into at the football. What is it getting out of, readers? Correct: hand.

In the World Cup, we see fans – fanatics, remember – crying at their national anthems or when they lose. The loss of self-control is disturbing. It might be understandable at a meaningful song like Sunshine on Leith, but for some old-fashioned dirge about being top country vanquishing all foes? It’s disgraceful.

We see kids with their faces twisted into ferocious expressions, their puny fists pumping the air aggressively. It’s deplorable that they behave with such pent-up violence. They should be beaten soundly for it.

Football provides an outlet for warlike feelings, which are natural to the monstrous human condition. People say that, were it not for football, men would engage in domestic violence or serial killing. It’s a mercy, then, that more women are taking an interest. But, like me, least manly of men, I think for the most part they just sit there quietly.

Spectators get incredibly angry at games. Around me, they rise en masse in fury at some incident. As the only one still seated, I think: “Well, I’d better stand up with the other chaps.” So I stand up just as everyone else sits down, and the referee, or other object of the insults, looks over and just sees me standing there.

I wave weakly or give a surreptitious thumbs-up but they just roll their eyes and get on with spoiling the game. It’s the singing, though, that brings the tears, as shown on TV at many games now. Why don’t people go to church if they want to sing?

Another appalling musical aspect of the modern game is the blasting out of deafening pop. Even in Qatar, a supposedly backward puritanical society, degenerate-sounding disco ditties sung by lassies with helium-filled voices wallop the earlobes.

I spend too much time watching football, and wish I’d never got interested in it. I wish as a boy I’d read poetry or become proficient at Meccano, that early harbinger of my poor adult DIY skills.

Football is immersed in inanity. Managers, players, TV commentators: imbeciles all. The poor syntax and limited lexicon of Scottish players makes me cry. But then I remember it’s just a game. It’s nothing to get upset about.

 

Know your limits

YAY, yay and thrice yay. At last, scientists have said the demand to drink two litres – about eight glasses – of water a day is mental. Not quite the way they put it, but you get the gist.

Turns out methodology for the two-litre insanity was deeply dubious, based on small samples of folk self-reporting. The new science was conducted on a huge scale, across many countries, and taking into account different demographics and even topography.

Seriously, who drinks two litres of water a day? Apart from anything else, there’s water in your food, never mind from cups of tea and whatever amount you add to your whisky.

It makes you wonder about “guidelines”. Take the current ones on booze: to wit, two eyedrops of wine a week or a homeopathic tincture of spirits.

I’m well aware drink is bad for you, and have myself been on the wagon for over a day. But how do they equate the risk with specific amounts, and for different folks? Qualified alcoholics say to the guideline gurus: show us your working. Why are the levels in Britland lower than elsewhere? Are we a different species?

Before scientific guidelines, we had anecdotes, one being that, when the country’s top physicians went round the table, asking each member (male; this was back in the 1960s) how much they quaffed, the informal finding was that a bottle of wine a night was just right.

In 1987, the UK Government drew up proper guidelines based on a report called The Medical Consequences of Alcohol Abuse; A Great and Growing Evil. Crivvens! The guidelines stipulated a maximum 21 units a week for men and 14 for not-men, or whatever they’re called now. In 1995, civil servants reviewed these guidelines following evidence – ken? – that drink protects against heart disease. Their “Sensible Drinking” report substituted the weekly limit with a daily guideline of four units, which could mean 28 a week, prompting apoplexy among those and such as those.

In 2016, the guidelines were tweaked again to the current limit of one thimbleful of Buckfast a fortnight. Militant soaks again asked to see the science, claiming the limits had been influenced by temperance activists and academics who got sick after a glass of sherry.

I don’t know if that is correct. What I do know is that, when guidelines for water and booze are widely perceived as spurious, ideology-based, or opening gambits set unrealistically high or low, no-one takes them seriously and you end up with no practicable guidelines at all.

On current guidelines, both the late Queen and her Maw, bless ’em, were over the limit by lunchtime. Can no-one provide us with sensible, realistic guidelines, tailored to different folk by weight, hairstyle, football team and record collection?

 

Time for the tattie diet?

Now they’re telling us to eat tatties to lose weight. Five minutes ago, we were telt tatties made us fat. The latest voodoo is that, by filling us up, tatties stop us piling more calorific foodstuffs on our plates. What, like chips (Dundee salad)? Custard? I’m guessing they mean meat or pies. It’s very confusing.

Fabs’ fry-up

How lovely to read that, back in the day, the Beatles went into an upmarket restaurant in yonder Notting Hill and ordered bacon and eggs. Prue Leith, owner of the restaurant, expressed herself “disappointed” and reported Ringo saying: “And don’t make it fancy with chopped herbs and stuff on the top.” True greatness.

Noise annoys

Like most decent ratepayers, I have tried “white noise” to try and sleep/relax/find God. It’s like radio interference and, as with most things in the world, it doesn’t work. Now we learn of new variants: pink noise and brown noise. Tried ’em both. They don’t work. The clue is in the name: noise.

Bad sign

Here at Five Towers, we deplore astrology. “Playful and sociable, those born under the sign of the Twins enjoy a night out, sometimes hopping from a party to a party, to an afterparty.” This errs in every aspect, including best drink: Pornstar Martini. Unhand me, madam! We’ll have simple whisky, untainted by lascivious associations.

Disgraceful

As an impressionable teenager, I became obsessed with Colditz, the PoW castle in yonder Germany. The inmates’ stoical recalcitrance ostensibly represented the best of British pluck. Recently, alas, we’ve learned of bullying, class distinction, lewd and libidinous hanky-panky, and now drunkenness on home-made hootch. Typical Brits, I suppose.

 

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