So we arrived back this morning. Landed 6am. At (fucking) Gatwick. An airport designed to be as inconvenient and inaccessible as possible for me. There’s no easy way to get there; there’s no quick way to get there. There’s not even a relatively shitty way to get there. But heh? Small (ish) price to pay for such a wonderful holiday.

Which we booked last January. We like to book ‘next Christmas’ as early as possible. So we did.

Then, in July I had an email from my bestest and oldest mate, the one who lives in Montpellier, whose son was engaged a little earlier. ‘Jonathan’s getting married’. Yippee. ‘In January’. Oh. ‘Early January’. Ohhhhhh. ‘In Israel’. Oyyyyyyyy. But fortunately it was well doable. Because the wedding’s not til the 7th and as we were arriving back today, the 5th, that was never going to be a problem. Loads of time. Almost 30 hours between landing at Gatwick and taking off from Luton. Or, 26 washing machine cycles, as we call it. Ok, as Mel calls it. I’m happy to take dirty stuff with. Israel’s dead casual.

And on that long, seemingly never-ending drag round the M25, all the talk on the radio was of the Jihadi-Babi. The four year old kid being used in the latest ISIS video. A new low for the lowest group of people the world has ever known. This poor kid was born, in Britain, unlucky enough to have a jihadi-daddi who married an utter-nutter; a white Christian who converted to Islam, had four kids and took them all to Syria with her in 2012. For… a better life? For a land flowing with golden opportunities? Even though it looks like rubble? No, she took them there so that she could bring them up, in between making recruitment videos herself, in an atmosphere so toxic, so violent and so revolting to any evolved human being that these poor kids have no hope in life. They stay there and get killed. Or they come home and forever resent being taken from mummy and daddy.

They may even resent Rafa Benitez. Though all he did was fail to win anything at Real Madrid in the last 6 months, so he’s gone. Possibly opening the door for Gareth Bale, a big Rafa fan, to leave? Wow. Queue here. All you need is the probable £150mil they’ll want for him. Oh, and another 15 mil in yearly wages.

Be interesting to see how Zizou fares as a manager. His first proper job in that sphere. So why not use the biggest club on the planet for practice. Good luck Zinedine. They love you in Madrid. For the moment.

Happy fucked-if-I-know-what-day-or-time-it-is… day.

A xxxx