Well, Pele died over a week ago, and even with Spurs playing on Sunday, there’s still no contestants emerging to challenge for his ‘best player ever’ title. But scanning the papers I’d missed whilst away, I came across the Times’ obit supplement. Which is brilliant. Ok, they’ve had a long time to prepare it, he took a long time for the inevitable to seal the deal, but even so. And of all the brilliant quotes, this one from Eric Cantona is the one I like best. Better even that “Hello, I’m Ronald Regan, the president of the United States of America. You need no introduction, everyone knows who Pele is”. But the nutty Frenchman summed up my own feelings totally. Even reducing his normally very opaque style of saying anything to honour Pele. Not just the man. But ‘that pass’, for ‘that goal’, in that game in the that World Cup. A simple ‘lay off’, no pressure, nothing fancy, at the end of a move starting with the Brazil goalie and ending up with the ball slammed into Italy’s net by Brazil’s right back. For me it is the best goal ever, in the best world cup ever and despite what happened immediately beforehand and immediately after, ‘that pass’ defines the brilliance of Pele. And I think I speak for Eric Cantona here too. Because his English ain’t dat good.

During two exceptionally long flights I watched some films. Not about Pele. Oddly there was one about Maradona on offer but I declined it, being so close to Pele’s death. And because there’s a limit to how long I can spend with ear buds in. So I watched ‘Where the Crawdads sing’ because I loved the book. The film was ok. Not brilliant, but resoundingly ok. Such a great story they couldn’t go that far wrong. But then decided for the ‘mega-schmaltzy’ option at the end. So many people watching it they had to bale out the tears with buckets so the plane didn’t sink.

But then I watched ‘Bullet Train’. And that is brilliant, with no qualifying statements. Ok, its weird, its wacky, its bizarre and its very funny, but that’s all good. Its a bit Tarantino, but the violence is more heavily stylised; its a bit Guy Richie and its basically Brad Pitt being very very dry and silly. There’s others in it too, but no-one you know and they virtually all die by the end anyway. Everyone dies in this film. Not Pele, he did it on his own. I’d never heard of this film but if you can find it, watch it. You’ll thank me. Or hate me for wasting 2 hours of your life.

I watched the latest version of ‘Firestarter’ because that was the first Stephen King book I ever read and thus holds a place in my heart. Which Zac Efron couldn’t fill in this film. Could barely fill a hole in my shoe. The original movie (Drew Barrymore, no less) was fairly awful, this was only dire. I just like the idea of a 6 year old female human flame-thrower. Don’t we all?

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx