Wednesday night. Spurs playing Arsenal at 8 o’clock. Lila and Joey having a sleepover due to… stuff. And Joey is currently football-mad. The ‘football’ bit because he loves the players, the stadia, the league table and its numbers, and the ‘mad’ because he loves Spurs and that can only lead to misery and insanity, long-term. And his bed time, ‘officially’, is about 7.00. Which means by the time he’s finished running round screaming and jumping on the bed, demanding snacks because he’s ‘starving’ and being chased round with a loaded toothbrush, 7.30. So a ‘deal’ was done. The negotiating team from Qatar was brought in with me, Joey and his mum. Joe Biden was involved by went to Kuwait by mistake. Donald Trumps boys made it. And we agreed that Joey could watch the first half. I would then be forced to watch the second half as my punishment. Lila just happy that she could stay up late playing.

I turned on the tv just before 8, put up Sky Sports 1 and… they were playing darts. Darts? Before a football match? That’s not the ‘Sky way’. Before any big match is at least one hour of ‘football bollocks’. Jamie Rednap, Micah Richards, possibly intellectual heavyweight Alan Shearer for some gravitas, maybe some old Spurs players, few Arsenal retirees, to discuss a match which no-one in the world can ever predict.

Anyway; it wasn’t on. I tried Sky Sports 2 to 19, nothing. Puzzling. I tried various other channels, ITV, BBC, Amazon Prime, Apple. I have so many fucking ‘apps’ that I’m going to need a wider tv to list them all. Joey found it. Ahhh, there it is, on Netflix. “Spurs vs Arsenal!!!!!”, massive banner headline. Great. Ah, it’s just an ad. You click on it and go to TNT and you can get that (fucking) app for just 30 quid a month. 30 quid!!! I’m a pensioner FFS!! I’ve lost my heating allowance! I thought this was a welfare state!

So we didn’t watch the football. Joey wasn’t overly bothered in that amazing facility kids have to just get over things in 3 seconds. And then spent the next 40 minutes asking, every 30 seconds, “what’s the score now”.

However, in retrospect, this side of the match, I’d like to thank TNT for being obnoxious, over-charging, life-ruining bastards and stealing football matches which I might have otherwise watched.

Unfortunately, Spurs match tomorrow is live on Sky.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Happy Saturday.