Well we’re not going to talk about football. We’re just not. I’ll change the subject. It was bad enough that my invite for Tuesday night’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show, held in London for the first time, failed to arrive, then we had to go to Chelsea. And, as Elvis Costello prophetically sang: I don’t want to go to Chelsea. Even though Harry Kane really does not look like Elsie. And we hadn’t beaten Chelsea at Stamford Bridge since 1990, and we still haven’t. Hardly likely to with the blues sweeping aside all who dare come before them. Bastards. And we were on a ‘roll’. 2 wins running. That counts as a ‘roll’ where I come from. But we’re not going to mention it, ok? Its depressing. Arsenal won, West Ham won, even bloody Liverpool won, and we lost. Bastards.

So to divert my attention away from the football or, at least, to delay the inevitable depression, we went to see a movie. At the Everyman. Where you snuggle up on little 2-seater sofas, get your coffee delivered to you, or beer, wine, champaigne or a little box of sweets for a bleedin’ tenner, and enjoy the fact that what you’re watching is not your team losing. Even though my mate The Judge, the film buffs film buff, reckons the Everyman is for tarts, thinks its Starbucks with an incidental screen somewhere in the corner, we just love it there. Its like having a home cinema but with someone else clearing up after you.

We saw The Imitation Game. What a superb film. The best I’ve ever seen Benedict Cumberbatch. Even though I’ve never previously seen him in a movie. He plays none other than Alan Turing, the code-breaker and computer pioneer. And he plays him superbly. Everything about the film is superb; the acting, the costumes, the atmosphere, the script. But what elevates it to the utterly brilliant is the story itself. A true one about Bletchley Park during the war where they broke the German’s Enigma code. And Turing, as a perfectly normal, run-of-the-mill semi-autistic gay mathematical genius, beat the Krauts. Virtually on his own, other than a little help from Kiera Knightly. Who was very good too. Other than that smile. The most scary thing since Freddie Kruger first appeared on our screens.

But that aside, the film is a fantastic tale of its time. Both the good and bad of that time. Because back in the 1940s homophobia was not merely institutionalised but actually legislative. Being gay was illegal. And thus Turing, fantastic hero that he was, suffered persecution from the authorities.

I laughed, I cried, I did some maths. Then I came home, checked the scores, worked out that 3 is a bigger number than 0 and thus we’d lost to Chelsea. I checked the sums again using a calculator; still lost. Fuck.

Happy Thursday; go see that film.

A xxxx