It begins. After so long. The wait is over. The wilderness weeks of some golfer hitting a ball into a forest, of women’s netball, of trying to get really exited because Lewis Hamilton drove round a corner really really fast, of even being reduced to looking for cricket!!! It’s over. Today is the first day of the rest of our lives. And being thus must begin with a monumental moment to make us aware that life moves on and, more importantly, football comes back.

It’s the charity shield, the community shield, whatever they all the traditional season opener in which the league champions and the FA Cup winners of last year play at Wembley to remind everyone why we all hated them both so much last year. And it means that football proper starts next week. I know, the ‘football league’ started this weekend, but for Premiership snobs like me and princesses like Mezut Ozil, ‘football’ starts next weekend. Though I must admit that even though I’m a total meritocratic capitalist (bastard) believing that the Premiership warrants its totally ridiculous income, pay and obscene monetary structure, because its what people pay to watch, it would be worth remembering that the league is in fact related quite closely to it. And the sad and sorry fact is that the league is becoming unsustainable due to lack of income, lack of funding. Basically, one month’s salary of any Manchester City would keep Bolton Wanderers afloat for 3 years. And dat ain’t right. Just not sure what I can do about it, influential and powerful as I obviously am.

Fortunately, Spurs have already put some silverware in their cabinet in the shape of the Audi Cup. Which celebrates emissions figures that don’t add up, cheating generally and four-wheel drive. Football doesn’t get any better than that.

Meanwhile, over in El Paso, Texas, there’s been another ‘mass shooting’. That fine nation’s 246th such event of the year. Putting it, apparently, about 244 ahead of all other competitors. For which it must be really proud. However, I must stress, that these almost meaningless figures say NOTHING about gun control, ease of ownership, the ease with which psychopaths can buy machine guns, bullets or anything else to do with guns. Which are the inalienable right of every nutty fucking killer to own. I just want to stress that in case Donald Trump’s reading this. Or any other totally blinkered moron.

Happy Sunday

A xxxx