Well yesterday was the outdoor tennis player’s nightmare. Rain. More rain. Then more rain. The worst of all worst days. When it never even got properly light. I don’t suffer from SADS, but on days like that, I wish I did. Glad it’s over. So I can enjoy today. Which may be a bit limited… by the football.

So I shall enjoy tennis, now it’s stopped raining this morning. And I shall definitely enjoy lunch. Then the football’s on. The nakba. Usually. There again, I don’t usually speak Arabic. But when Spurs play Arsenal, my mind leads me to catastrophise. I try to think positive, try to imagine great outcomes, try to convince myself that ‘you never know with derby matches’. But you do know. About this one. When Stephen King wrote ‘Misery’, I thought it was a history of North London Derbies. I was wrong. As it happens, seriously wrong. Not the first time.

The north London derby creates ‘bragging rights’. And as Arsenal fans do ‘brag’ better than the Gallaghers after a sell-out concert, better than the Aussies after an Ashes win, better than Donald Trump after… well, anything he does, it bodes ill for the immediate future. And I’ve been to my fair share of Arsenal games. Some good, some wonderful (the 4-all game at the Emirates the day after Harry Rednapp joined us) and some so horrendous I needed therapy for a year afterwards.

So even though I do not ‘hate’ Arsenal (when they’re playing other teams), like I ‘hate’ Chelsea, West Ham, all the others, this is match I dread. Basically, if you offered me a draw now, I’d bite your hand off.

Went to see the movie Nuremberg last night. Whilst not exactly a ‘fun flick’ it’s good. Russel Crowe as Herman Goering is unrecognisably wonderful and exceedingly fat. And Remi Malik, as ‘the psychiatrist’ (a real life character, as they all are), looked like Freddie Mercury doing ‘shrink’. He always looks like Freddie Mercury. Or he just looks like another really odd-looking bloke. It’s actually distracting. But the movie was almost as good as the pizza we had ‘pre-match’, with ‘Lovely Lynda’ and ‘not-so-lovely-Jeff’. Certainly worth a view. If you’re not necessarily looking for ‘feel good’.

Happy (GOD HELP MEEEEE) Sunday

A xxxx