Before I get started on the football, in which I intend to focus on every single second of Spurs remarkable and outstanding victory at Crystal Palace, I just want to offer my words of support and…. in fact, adoration, for Alaa Abdel Fattah, and welcome him back to HIS home nation. Where he belongs. Among his brethren. Both conceptual brethren and by virtue of his British mother, brethren. He became a British citizen in 2021, arriving symbolically at the same time as the second wave of covid, and then was in prison in his other favourite nation, Egypt. Where he’s languished for a decade. But ‘we’ got him released and freed and managed to return him to… the nation he… well, there’s the question.

Kier Starmer, the bandwagon-jumper’s, bandwagon jumper, jumped in before even one of his 724 advisors, researchers, helpers, image consultants, hair-dressers, rabbis (for when he’s ‘Jewish’) or lawyers, had the chance to stop him, to consider his words, to edit him, and basically declared that if he (Starmer) was gay, then Alaa would be chosen to father his children. The was simply no level of praise too strong, to passionate and too uninformed for our PM to gush with over our returning ‘hero’. And he is a hero. Fighting for gay rights in Egypt is never going to endear you to the authorities, but he did that. And fought for democracy. Great guy. Right.

So the posts Alaa made in 2010, 11 and 12, stating that he’d like all zionists murdered, that all ‘colonialists’ should die (interpret his definition of ‘colonialist’ how you wish) and that he’s a racist who ‘hates white people’, they got somehow missed by Starmer’s dedicated team designated: ‘we must try absolutely ANYTHING to try and make this pathetic man appear good or desirable in any possible way’.

But it’s ok! Starmer’s saved!! Because Alaa has said that his posts were ‘taken out of context’ and he apologises unequivocally for them. Oh. So that’s ok then. Phew. The PM dodged one there.

Whereas Crystal Palace dodged 2. Spurs won the game 3 nil. But the actual score was: Palace 0, Spurs 1, VAR 2. As once again those total bastard scumbags in VAR central conspired to rob us of 2 perfectly good goals. Other than the offsidey bits. Yet my team came through anyway. Worthy victors of a rather odd game. Very open, very flowing, but both sides faltering in the final third. Where VAR comes into its own.

It was a brilliant victory. Because it was a victory. And we are soooooo short on those this season that we can only see this as ‘the turning point’. We’ve so far had 17 ‘turning points’ this season, all of which proved to either not ‘turn’ enough, or to carry on turning until they come back full circle. Thus not turning at all. But we remain confident. Positive. Forward-thinking. And probably deluded. It’s how we cope.

Happy, post-victorious, Monday

A xxxx

And this photo: could they be related???