I’m taking down all my posters from the bedroom wall. The 55 year-old one of 20 year-old Olivia Newton-John with flick-up hair, Charlie’s Angels, with more flick-up hair (I like flick-up hair), Kylie Minogue in hot-pants, Gal Gadot in Wonderwoman and the Wonderbra ad. All coming down. Mel doesn’t mind, long as it doesn’t leave marks on the wallpaper. And it’s because I have new crush. This one. Jude Bellingham. Not in a sexual way, obviously, as I’ve always identified as a lesbian, but just because he’s so beautiful. Big. Strong. And wonderful. I can almost even forgive that unforgivable Brummy accent because he speaks so nicely and is witty and charming. He is possibly the most totally perfect man since… well, since me. No faint praise.

Despite telling you how uninterested I am in the Euro football tournament, I was an unwitting victim of place and time. My birthday party guests had left (Lila and Joey, couple’a daughters, Tory Boy) so we cleared up the destruction and devastation, which only took 3 or 4 hours, and I just found myself sitting with the Sunday papers quite near a tv at 8 o’clock. What can you do?

I watched, but only the first half. Then, because it was my birthday I took a bath. So now I’m clean for another year. Plus, I can’t watch Gary Linneker without wanting to damage the tv and Cesc Fabregas’s teeth were distractingly bright. Apparently the second half wasn’t much anyway. But that first half was: The Jude Bellingham Show.

Never mind his goal, which was absolutely brilliantly taken, it was his overall total control of the game that had me hooked. He moves majestically, he’s tough, he tackles. Those horrible Serbian hooligans tried to push him around, he just pushed back. He goes down; he just gets up again. Thus was the main cause of the Serb’s 19 fouls. But they couldn’t stop him. For someone so big and strong he’s remarkably agile, quick and graceful. And that’s such a rare combination that I haven’t seen in any player since Zidane. A previous incumbent of the number 5 shirt at Real Madrid. And if you’re being compared to ZZ when you’re 20, you’re not doing badly.

So that’s it, my new man-crush. Poster going up today. Because Mel thinks he’s gorgeous too. She loves big(?), strong, dark(ish), rugged types.

Happy Monday

A xxxx