A word of good cheer for the inevitably miserable, depressed, suicidal and gloomy Arsenal fans. Just when those poor devils thought that yet another season under the management of the depressing Frenchman was set to end, yet again, with absolutely nothing to show for it, other than how awful their team is, a little good news for them. Because on Thursday night, whilst they were absent from the Emirates, but somehow still counted among the “58,000” (which looked like about 25,000) slitting their wrists during the second horrendous humiliation by Manchester City in 4 days, elsewhere they were holding the ‘prestigious’ London Football Awards. And the great news for Gunners is that a. the award for ‘women’s player of the year’ went to one of their own, and b. it wasn’t given to Mezut Ozil but to an actual woman called Jordan Nobbs. So there we are; something else to put in their trophy cabinet to please the fans who aren’t actually going any more but appear, numerically, to be there anyway. Well done Arsenal!

And its cold out. Its amazingly, incredibly, horrendously fucking cold out. Today is ‘warmer’ by reaching a lofty 1.5 degrees ABOVE freezing. Poor Rachie in Berlin is enjoying -12. Lucky she comes from really tough and heroic stock or she’d be on the first flight to Barbados. But with the snow and ice comes a degree of difficulty. Which they manage to manage in Canada, gives them no problem in Sweden or Norway, is just a way-of-life in parts of China, but over here causes a simply amazing and incredible amount of absolute disasters. Ok, we’re not as familiar with snow as perhaps the Swiss or the French, but fuck me, we are just hopeless. And the worst thing of all is not what happens but how unbelievably slow the authorities are to act. In any meaningful way. Sending a bobby on a bike to a motorway pile up involving 63 cars is some way short of actually ‘solving’ the problem. Having 17 chin-stroking jobsworths in hi-vis jackets standing around drinking tea next to a train full of people that’s been stuck for 18 hours is not the same as any kind of ‘action’.

Its the same in ‘normal’, non-Arctic times. There’s an accident on a road. So the police shut off 2 of the 3 lanes for ‘elf’n’safety’ concerns, then stand around for 12 hours looking at the wreck whilst traffic builds up for 23 miles behind them.

Our people are simply great, possibly world leaders, at ‘stopping things’ when it gets a bit hairy. But everyone concerned, the people sitting in cars immobile for 15 hours in the New Forest, those stuck on trains in Weymouth, they’re concerned with getting off, getting out, getting warm and safe and dry and fed. They want to go home.

So yesterday, when a train stopped just outside Lewisham station in south London, after 2 hours, in the freezing cold, being told nothing and just watching yellow jackets walking back and forth outside, the passengers took it upon themselves to break a door open and ‘escape’ onto the tracks. Ok, which were live at the time, but fucking good luck to them. They walked the 200 yards to Lewisham even though the police were called to prevent this ‘decidedly unsafe action’ from occurring. But if the authorities consistently do nothing about the people involved in disasters, then quite frankly, fuck ’em. At least being electrocuted would be warmer than freezing to death. And certainly quicker.

Well done once more to Arsenal, and happy Saturday

A xxxx