Chaos theory

It's raining cats, dogs and an assortment of other furry animals but I needed a walk. Partly because I actually needed a walk, and partly because one of the more sensible options available to me had I not gone out was one of the many house cleansing projects lurking in the hinterland of my mind. They were on a list, then submitted to memory and finally pushed back, by a strangely effortless process of denial into the dark and dusty area of the subconscious usually reserved for guilt, dead bunnies and lost mental property. The fact that the idea even arose was because my friend S wrote on her blog about the chaos of her parent’s garage, a chaos in every way matched by the chaos in my mothers house where, for a little while at least, I reside.

In a fashion similar to that of my friend’s parents befuddlement regarding their Christmas decorations, we barely found ours this year. Easter decorations even less so, I let Easter pass me by wilfully. The mother was in Germany. The internet was down. I went to the pub to watch football with F and didn’t even eat an egg until internet and mum were both restored to me. So, wherever the Easter decorations are (and honestly, Easter decorations are just scary anyway) they are probably not located in the “cupboard under the stairs”, a place so crammed with… well, nobody knows… that it couldn’t even house a small wizard. Regardless of whether his trunk was a magic one or not. Chaos prevails in the nether regions of this house, and despite some honest efforts at reducing the… stuff!... that occupies most of the space, the cupboard under the stairs remains unmapped territory.

I am not the only one bothered and bewildered by this mysterious place: mum also has no idea. Its contents have not been exposed to daylight for a couple of decades and the man who knew, who in fact put the stuff there to be stored in the first place, has passed away. Without leaving a map. It is thought to contain toys, but even by the most liberal of estimations that would only account for half of the space. A lost treasure? Junk? Jimmy Hoffa? Clues to a childhood I have forgotten about? I will have to deal with it at some point, but until then I will continue to come up with creative excuses – right now I’m working on one which takes its point of departure in an anthropological stance. Quite simply: if we leave it there for long enough it stops being junk and becomes history. And I wouldn’t have to touch it for 200 years.

Now, the reason I needed a walk in the first place was the fact that I had spent an entire day in eager pursuit of employment. For eager read ambivalent and for pursuit read… surfing? It’s an employer’s market out there at the moment and the need to come up with ever more creative ways of selling myself to whoever might be persuaded to give me the honour of working for them makes me feel increasingly prostitutionalised. It’s a new word. I just made it up. And compared with looking for work the notion of clearing out the cellar seems positively uplifting.

Obsessions, Noses and the Wisdom of Roy Keane

I realised recently that I have been watching far too much football, been thinking far too much about football and certainly been writing too much about football. My other blogs have been neglected – an indication that life has been somewhat narrow lately…

Just before Easter I handed in my “gorilla” (code in certain circles for dissertation) for supervision; soon it will be groomed and put in a cage. While struggling with it, hiding from the world and basically just going for walks and smelling the world in my spare time, football, as ever, nicely filled up what remained of the days. I suppose it is an obsessive compulsive disorder, but a nice one. When I have had time for nothing else I’ve always kept in touch with the news and the progression of “my boys”, as I always will. It’s about a special brand of love.

But when, as of late, “spare time” is filled with little else proportions start getting muddled. I am a football fan of the nerdy, analytical variety – I love my team and I will analyse what happens, regardless of result. I can feel pride and joy about a display of nice football, even when the team is defeated. A win makes me deliriously happy while a defeat usually just brings out the analytical mind. Some sadness, never anger. On Thursday, however, the defeat really did get me down. As ever, I felt sorry for the lads rather than angry with them for not winning, but it made me genuinely sad. And I realised that I needed my proportions back, just as I realised, again, that people who live only for this can’t do that. They will grieve the loss of the UEFA cup longer than I will.

The sun is shining, and Friday was a great day – I cycled around for an hour before meeting a dear friend. We sat in outside in the sun, drank copious amounts of orange juice and talked about life; life as in all the rest of it. She has no interest in sport and I love that. Spring, we came to realise, is a state of mind as well as a season – and what a nice one it is. Sitting as we did on the main square of this little city, we observed people in a spring state of
mind, milling around and happily taking in the blessing that is a Friday afternoon in sunny April. Where did all these beautiful people come from? wondered she; I suppose we are all more beautiful in the spring. Because we smile more?

Later on I indulged in another favourite pastime with some other dear friends: whisky and beer tasting. Yes, it is quite possible to be very nerdy about alcohol as well. And my nose, one of the main characters in this blog, is of course delighted with the worlds that a glass of whisky has on offer. One will smell like a beach on a windy day, another like a stable full of old leather – my unfettered nose can find a narrative in the glass, along with the taste notes.

So in the end, I got my proportions right back. Still a bit sad, but hardly devastated. After all, if the result in a football game is the only thing that makes you sad you’re doing quite well. And if Roy Keane can say “It’s just a game of football”, then so can I. And of course mean it every bit as much as he does.