Crinklybee

From Albert Square to Stockport Road, via a windswept Scottish cliff

You may have been wondering what fat Barry from Eastenders has been up to, since the fateful day when he was pushed off a cliff somewhere in the Scottish Highlands by his crazed girlfriend Janine and plunged to his certain death on the wave-crashed rocks 100 feet below. Well, I can exclusively reveal that he has been far from idle; he has in fact been posthumously travelling the length and breadth of the country lending his weighty presence to the unveiling of renovated branches of KwikSave. The tour has taken him to Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and also to somewhere near Blackpool. But Wednesday was a red letter day indeed- the day that Barry from Eastenders came to Levenshulme.

This event was greatly heralded on our one mile stretch of the A6, with adverts on the bus stops and, in the store itself, flyers at the checkouts featuring The Great Man's big, daft, unmistakeable face. So when the day came, I really really wanted to be there- but it was a work day, and (entirely unreasonably in my view) the civic authorities had not seen fit to grant each and every working person resident in Manchester M19 a day off work so that they could tell their grandsons they were present the day a famous soap star cut the ribbon at the newly revamped supermarket. And Charlotte couldn't be there either, because- well, she wasn't really that bothered, and in any case the unveiling was scheduled for 9:30AM, which is young Frankie's time for screaming the house down before having his morning nap. So we will just have to make do with a second-hand account delivered by one of the checkout girls to Charlotte when she and Frankie did manage to make it down there later in the day.

According to our eyewitness, Barry from Eastenders completed his duties with great aplomb and no little verve, as might be expected of an experienced TV star with previous form in such diverse locations as Bridgnorth and Blackpool. The Great Man addressed a few well-chosen words to the sparse gathering of blue-rinsed soap fanatics who had braved the torrential rain for the chance to wheel their shopping trolleys to within feet of Albert Square's most hapless ever second-hand car salesman, and then cut the ribbon to let his audience loose on the store's lusciously-restocked aisles.

At which point, I would say, the rain-defiant, tartan-trolley-wielding pensioners must have got quite a shock. Because while Barry may have been a useless car salesman, and (to judge from the nature of his untimely demise) an even worse judge of female character, he is clearly in no mood to mess about in his posthumous career as a redesigner of neighbourhood supermarkets. In a belated visit to the store tonight, I found that not only were there upmarket items like prawns, olive oil, and three different kinds of Alpen on sale, but that the rather quaint section featuring Irish groceries has been spirited away and replaced by an aisle full of expensive colour tellies and DVD players. In short, Levenshulme Kwik Save has been gentrified good and proper, and things round here will never be the same again.

The gentrification of Levenshulme, mind you, is a process that started a couple of years ago, when the Commonwealth Games were due to be held in the city, and the civic authorities realised that in order to get from the airport to the vast new stadium whose construction they had financed on the East side, the visiting athletes and dignitaries from all corners of our once-great Empire would need to travel down Stockport Road, and straight through the middle of a run-down district whose very existence they had more or less forgotten about. Within minutes of this realisation, teams of builders were dispatched up the A6, and almost overnight the area was transformed, with stylish Victorian-style streetlights and black metal railings everywhere, and on the corner opposite the Horseshoe pub, a European-style square we Christened 'the Piazza', from where the authorities had removed (possibly using a large municipal hook) the neighbourhood's former population of unsightly old Irish blokes in bad cardigans, and replaced them with photogenic boules-playing olive-skinned septuagenarians they had borrowed from a margarine advert.

And now they are selling avocados in Kwiksave. It is all quite incredible and you have to wonder where it will end. Is it only a matter of time before the shoe-repair shop reopens as a juicebar, The Regal Dry Cleaners as a high-class Gentleman's Tailor, and the 'Nip into Noreen's' Cafe as a sushi joint? Well, maybe, but I think these days are still some way off. For one thing, the drinking joints are still defiantly 'old Levenshulme' in character, and there are still plenty of old-style boozers where old Irish men in bad cardigans happily sup pints of Guinness, apparently unconcerned by the threat of the giant municipal hook, while their nephews play out small neighbourhood dramas at the snug tables.

The typical A6 boozer is a little bit like the Queen Vic in Albert Square, Walford, in fact. So I should imagine our illustrious ribbon-cutting visitor from Wednesday will have felt quite at home, and I shouldn't wonder if Barry called in somewhere for a swift half before catching the train back south. Well, I suppose once you have been shoved to your death off a windswept Scottish cliff, you probably think you can survive anything, even a lunchtime visit to Hennigans on Stockport Road. I tell you what, he is a brave character, our Barry- and I wish him all the best in his exciting, post-death career.

Beards- From George Michael to ZZ Top (via Garry Birtles) in five easy stages

Last year we went on holiday to France, and I came back with an unusual souvenir, in the form of a beard. At first it was an almost imperceptible, stubbly affair which was surprisingly well received by people back home, one of whom called my new hirsute appearance 'the European college lecturer look'. This compliment (if indeed it was meant as one) greatly pleased me, and I was only slightly less enamoured a week or so later to be likened to the one-time Manchester United forward Garry Birtles. But as the weeks without shaving went by, the comparisons became less favourable, and when my mate Dan gave me the epithet 'Sutty' in reference to Peter Sutcliffe, AKA the Yorkshire Ripper, I knew the time for action had come. One visit to the electrical grooming section of Boots the Chemist later, and for the outlay of £24.99, I was the proud owner of a battery-powered Babyliss beard trimming device.

I say 'the proud owner', but in fact the Babyliss thing proved to be a bit on the useless side. For a start, it advertised having five settings for length of beard, but what it didn't tell you was that they could have been called:

1- George Michael
2- Jimmy Hill
3- David Bellamy
4- Fidel Castro
5- the really mad-looking one out of ZZ Top.

Posessing neither facial hair down to my ankles nor a bright red guitar in the shape of an axe, setting five was pretty much useless to me- in fact I was looking at George Michael or nothing. I could live with this, but then the Babyliss beard machine started to get temperamental, and would threaten to pack up altogether on you mid-session, leaving you with the sort of comically uneven look not seen since that episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye decides to shave the other one's moustache off in his sleep for a laugh. Unless it was Hawkeye who had the moustache, I can't remember. Whatever, it was the type of appearance you can get away with, maybe, if you are a hard-working, hard-partying, and above all fictional frontline military medic in the Korean War, but is less likely to go down well in a departmental meeting in a present-day central Manchester sales office. And the alternative- banging the infernal machine repeatedly against something hard in order to rouse the sullen batteries up enough to provide your face with the clumpily-hacked-at look of a hurriedly-mown lawn, wasn't exactly satisfactory either. Quite frankly, it was getting to the stage where I was going to start being compared unfavourably to badly-groomed serial killers again- so today I made a repeat visit to Boots, and came back with a replacement beard machine, this time manufactured by the good people at Phillips.

The Philishave machine, I was assured by the nice lady behind the counter (who rather worryingly appeared to have no beard at all but did have a very persuasive sales manner) benefitted from no less than nine settings, and even the ninth would have me looking no shaggier than a circa-1976 Jimmy Hill. And she was as good as her word- I have just completed my first shave with my new machine, and, if I say so myself, I am looking just a little European college-lectureresque again. It is all you will be able to do, in fact, to stop me striking up a Gauloise and holding forth at length on the nature of Existentialism to the first group of nineteen-year-olds I can muster.

Now, if I can just remember to get the machine out again before the onset of Garry Birtles (or Heaven forfend, Peter Sutcliffe) I think I may just have got this beard thing worked out at last. But I do think that next time I go to France I will come back with a normal souvenir from an Hypermarche, instead of one stuck to my face. These continental 'beard' affairs are all very well for Johnny Foreigner you know, but bring them back to Blighty, and they can be a bit more damned trouble than they're worth.

There's a bloke works down the chip shop swears you're Elvis

This lunchtime I went to get a sandwich at the Deansgate Hot Food Bar and found there a girl from work, engaged in a similar mission. Our lunches were both served at the same time, so we left the establishment together, and as we did so the proprietor- a big bloke of possibly Greek extraction named Mo- shouted out 'see you later Jenny!'. When we emerged into the street the girl from work, whose name is Heather, said 'did that bloke just call me Jenny?'

I confirmed that he did indeed, and explained my theory as to how big Mo has achieved his aim of being on first-name terms with most of his regular customers, even though there are hundreds of them, the Deansgate Hot Food Bar being a very busy fish and chip- cum- sandwich shop situated slap-bang next to the Manchester city centre train station of the same name. Mo's method is very subtle, and you can only work it out once you have been in there several times with different people: what he does is call new people by a name he thinks suits them, in the hope that he will either strike lucky and they will greet him back (while thinking 'how does that big man of possibly Greek extraction know my name?'), or (as is more likely) they will correct his erroneous greeting and supply him with their real name ('Aye I'm fine Mo- but it's not Jeff, it's Fred'), which he will then commit to memory and never forget, ever, because he has an amazing memory.

Or maybe he has a very bad memory, and relies on a secret log-book behind the counter listing the sneakily-found-out first names of all of his customers, along with clandestine snapshots of each of us, taken by a digital camera hidden inside a steak and kidney pie in the display cabinet. But whatever the method, we can be sure that it works. At lunchtimes, there are people queuing out of the door of the Deansgate Hot Food Bar , and I should imagine a good amount of them are attracted by the friendly, neighbourhood feel of the city-centre chip shop where the bloke behind the counter- quite unaccountably- knows their name.

Of course, Mo only knows their name because he called them something else first. But he pulls off this ruse so subtly that most people don't remember the time they first came in and were addressed by their Hot Food Bar name; the one which our man, using infallible, God-given instincts for weighing up a person's innate levels of such factors as Colinness, Malcomality and Thomasitude, decided they looked like they should be called. As we saw this lunchtime, Heather wasn't sure whether she had really been addressed as Jenny- and when I checked with my friend Chris this afternoon, he had forgotten that he was once provisionally christened Scott. My other friend Warren is not sure he had ever had a chip shop name at all- but I am willing to bet he did, and that it was probably Clive.

Because Warren would make an excellent Clive, in the same way that Heather, hailing not from the Scottish Highlands but from the valleys of South Wales, must know she has no right being a Heather at all and should in all decency adopt her chip shop name of Jenny without delay. By making clear the advisability of this course of action Mo is providing an invaluable public service which Heather/ Jenny should be grateful for, and this goes for all those customers who over the years have called in for a cornish pasty and been furnished, at no extra cost, with a forename more in keeping with their bearing and demeamour than the hideously ill-fitting one their parents saddled them with. Perhaps it would help if the service was properly advertised. Then all those people who have never felt comfortable being Jimmys and Louises could call in to the Deansgate Hot Food Bar and, for the price of a fishcake and chips, find out that all these years, unbeknown to themselves and their family and friends, they have really been Horaces and Madelaines.

And me? Well I am afraid I can't remember what my original Deansgate Hot Food Bar name was. It was too long ago when I first started to call in, and at that time I was young and naive and had not yet come up with any crackpot theories involving secret log books and cameras hidden inside of steak and kidney pies. But if you really want to know, I suspect I might have been one of the ones Mo called by their actual name first time. So for all my occasional longings to be called something exotic like Archibald, or Zephania, I have really, all this time, just been a plain old John. Oh well, I suppose it is as well to find out the unexciting truth- and for the price of a pineapple fritter in a white barm, I can hardly complain.

Teeth

According to family legend, my grandad's only ever visit to the dentist took place sometime before the Second World War, when he was in his early twenties. Appalled to discover that it would cost one shilling ninepence to have a decayed molar removed, he enquired the price to 'have the lot out and be done with it'. Judging this wholesale option to be cheaper in the long run than the orthodox practice of having teeth removed one at a time as and when necessary, the canny young fellow gave the nod for a complete mouthspace clearance and installation of a full set of dentures, which he has proudly sported ever since.

According to other family legends (mostly propagated by the old man himself) my grandad was the first man in his village to drive a car, met and conversed at length with Winston Churchull during the war, and had an uncle who was a founding member of Tottenham Hotspur FC. After he has recounted one of these tales (and he recounts at least one of them at any family gathering, usually with a couple of newly-added flourishes) those present generally say something along the lines of, 'Wow grandad, is that really true?', to which he will reply 'Aye it's true all right- as true as I'm riding this bike.'

You will see why we tend to take our grandad's stories with a pinch of salt. But the dentist one I can believe, for these three reasons:

1- I have never heard my grandad himself tell it- it usually comes from someone less given to romance, invention, and generally making things up for the sheer hell of it.
2- My grandad has always had, to put it gently, a keen eye for a bargain. To put it less gently, it is certainly quite feasible that he would have all his teeth removed- if necessary by a blunt hammer and without anasthetic- if he thought it would save him a few bob.
3- Going to the dentist is, after all, a quite scary experience. I think if someone gave me a way of having to go once and then never again, I would be quite tempted to take them up on it- although unlike my grandad, I quite like the idea of keeping my teeth as well.

It was on this third point that I was ruminating late this morning as I sat in a sweltering upstairs waiting room in Rusholme along with several other prospective patients of one Dr Umar, dental surgeon- new NHS patients welcome. There were people in the room aged from 8 to 80, and we all looked as nervous as hell. What is it about a visit to the dentist that inspires such panic? Maybe it is the thought of letting a quite possibly sadistic masked stranger render you unconscious and then rip your mouth to shreds with sharp implements. This would appear to be the common fear, and in my particular case I was also- as I always do- fully expecting the dentist to give me a good telling-off for my infrequent attendance at his surgery and lack of attendance to day-to-day oral hygiene, and decide to punish me by laying into my molars with a rusty breadknife while intoning 'now this might hurt a wee bit but it's for your own good, you slovenly little bastard'.

So I was just a little nervous and in fact was thinking maybe my grandad had the right idea, and in my near-delirious state was almost prepared to give credence to the Tottenham Hotspur story as well. And so when the assistant came into the sweltering waiting room and called my name I momentarily considered jumping out of the first-floor window, but I didn't really want to cause a scene so bravely entered the room with the giant reclining chair in, and the man with the mask, ready to face the worst.

Twenty minutes later the worst was all over. And I still had all my teeth. All that had been needed was a quick running repair to one of the hard-to-reach wisdom fellows at the back, the one that had become suddenly quite alarmingly painful while tackling a blueberry muffin in Starbucks a couple of weeks ago. Apart from that everything was fine, and in fact the very amiable and not-at-all-sadistic Dr Umar went as far as to compliment me on my finely looked-after set of gnashers. By the end I was relieved, and relaxed, enough to make general enquiries as to the advisability of electric brushes- which according to the good doctor are a terrible new fangled monstrosity (what he in fact said was, 'Stone age man didn't have electric toothbrushes, and he had all of his teeth, didn't he')

Well, from my knowledge of prehistoric human society (which admittedly is largely based on repeated viewings of The Flintstones) your average Neolithic cave-dweller spent a good deal more time on such pursuits as daubing primitive images of bison onto his interior walls and fending off hugry pterydactyl than he did on oral hygiene, electric toothbrush or no electric toothbrush. But I was not about to argue with Dr Umar. It pays not to argue with a man who has the power to send you to sleep then knock your teeth out with a hammer. Just ask my grandad. He'll be happy to tell you- and if you're lucky, he might also tell you about that time he met Winston Churchill and they had a nice chat about the best places to get fish and chips at Seahouses. It's all true you know- as true as I'm riding this bike.

Edgy in Edgeley

Saturday afternoon, and I am leaning on the bar of a thinly-populated pub on the A6 in Stockport when a slight commotion to my side causes my half-drunk pint of Robinson’s Best Mild to teeter slightly. Grabbing hold of the pint I turn to find a bar stool on its side, and under it, a wailing child about seven years old, collapsed in a heap. ‘Are you all right, mate?’, enquires his dad, and after a moment I realise he is talking to me. He is concerned that the careless boy, while toppling from his lofty perch, may have committed the cardinal bar-room sin of spilling a man’s pint. ‘Aye, I’m OK- is he OK?, I reply. The man, clearly relieved that no major breach of etiquette has taken place vis-à-vis the pint of mild, turns to help the youngster to his feet, but while doing so delivers a warning: ‘that’ll teach you to wobble about son- now any more of that and you won’t be going to County’.

County is the local football team, who are due in less than an hour to kick off their season at home to nearly-local rivals Huddersfield Town. In ten minutes’ time the already thinly-populated pub will suddenly empty, as the vast majority of the clientele, as if responding to an invisible signal, will down what remain of their pints of mild (or in the case of the careless boy, pint of coke) and march across the A6 and through the railway station underpass into Edgeley, a quite unassuming district of Stockport which appears at first sight to offer nothing more than a stretch of neighbourhood shops and a drab-looking pub or two, until you turn the corner by the Ladbrokes betting office and find yourself facing the main stand and towering floodlights of Edgeley Park, 11000-capacity home of Stockport County FC.

The route from the A6 to Edgely Park, I should point out, is more familiar to the patrons of the soon-to-be-deserted pub than it is to me. I am not really a County fan- as you may know, I am a Newcastle United supporter exiled in south Manchester. Being unable to see my own team with any regularity, I have taken over the past few years to touring the grounds of greater Manchester looking for a place to get my weekend footballing fix. Some Saturday afternoons last year saw me at Maine Road watching Premiership Manchester City, while others were spent in the humbler, more windswept surroundings of non-league Ashton United. But the nearest team to my house is Stockport County, so this year I have decided to give them a go.

And it is a lovely time, this ten minutes of anticipation in the build-up to the first game of the season, as you lean on a bar with your second pint of mild, wondering whether there is just time for a third before ambling up to the ticket office, sorting yourself out with a seat and a pre-match hot-dog, and taking your place in the stand in time for the teams coming out. I am quite giddy with anticipation, in fact. So when the bloke beside me at the bar (we have become quite friendly since his infant son narrowly escaped colliding with my pint) casually informs me that Huddersfield have brought so many fans the game is a near sell-out, I become quite flustered, and- pausing only to down what remains of my pint of mild in one gulp- run out of the bar and over the A6, narrowly avoiding getting run over by a 192 bus in the process, and cover the half mile to the main stand ticket office in two minutes flat.

The man whose kid fell off the bar stool, of course, was talking rubbish. There are plenty of tickets left, and after a short queue I have one for the main stand. There are still 15 minutes to kick-off and I am feeling a little thirsty after my record-breaking half-mile run, so I retire to the Sir Robert Peel, one of the drab-looking pubs dotted among the row of neighbourhood shops, which is enjoying a bumper day’s business having been descended upon by what looks like half the population of Huddersfield, most of whom are drinking Stella and singing at the top of their voices. A pint of Stella seems a capital idea.

So to the match itself, which starts out less eventfully than the build-up. With half-time approaching the County regulars have started to turn to each other and bemoan some of the passing on display. ‘This is bloody ordinary, Stockport!’ one of them splutters, with what counts in the polite environs of the main stand at Edgeley Park as fearsome anger. Finding that I agree with him, I leave my seat to start queueing for the second of the afternoon’s brace of overpriced-but-delicious hot dogs. Moments later, there is a commotion, and I turn towards it just in time to see a Huddersfield player smash a free-kick from 35 yards into the top corner of the net. The main stand falls silent, but the travelling, Stella-fuelled cross-Pennine contingent (and there probably are 3000 of them as well, they have taken up two of the four stands) go absolutely crazy.

The opeing goal of the season seems to wake everyone up, and the second half, in contrast to most of the first, is a thrilling affair, in which Stockport, while never really looking the better team, somehow manage to take a 2-1 lead before proving they have not lost the fine art of clutching defeat from the jaws of victory by conceding two goals in the last five minutes to go down 3-2 and send the travelling masses into somersaults of delight. As the final whistle goes, the Stockport fans around me seem a little deflated, and I don’t blame them. Maybe when I have been back a few times I will join them in a show of annoyance, or at least in sighing resignedly while trudging towards the exits (that is one of the things I like about Stockport fans, they are a fatalistic lot, as you would have to be to support Stockport County when you have Manchester United on your doorstep). But for now I feel unable to trudge convincingly, so march down the steps and back towards the A6 with almost a spring in my step.

As I am leave the ground the Huddersfield fans, dizzy with the effects of Stella (and last-minute-first-game-of-the-season winning goals) are reeling dangerously around in the roadway while members of the Stockport faithful, dissapproving but resolutely civilised, tut at them pointedly. In the sidestreets you can still hear the stadium announcer, who is announcing that the next home game is in two Saturdays’ time, when the visitors will be Bradford City.

‘That could be a good one', I find myself thinking. And you know what? It might not be Newcastle United, but it sure as hell is football. I might well be back to enjoy more Edgy afternoons in Edgely as the season draws on.

The Giro de South Manchester, stage 453

I am cycling through the university precinct when I notice a bearded, studious-looking gentleman of advanced middle age travelling along the same route. He is employing the pedalling-so-slowly-it-looks-like-he-should-fall-off method beloved of bearded, studious-looking gentlemen the world over, and looks as if at any moment he may pull out a pipe from his back pocket. Despite this laid-back approach, the fellow is travelling at a fair pace: as we reach Wilmslow Road he pulls effortlessly out of sight and I don’t catch him up until we both have to stop at the lights after Whitworth Park. When they turn green he is off again, just as languidly as before, absent-mindedly turning the pedals once every minute or so and possibly even humming softly to himself as he goes, but maintaining a breakneck speed through the leafy streets of Victoria Park, with me travelling breathlessly in his wake.

I resolve to make a better effort to keep up (we appear to be both heading for the same part of town) and begin pedalling just a little faster, then with more determination, and finally absolutely furiously in the style of a Tour de France time triallist. This frantic exertion is just enough to keep my opponent within sight, but just I am marshalling my energies for a last desperate onslaught through the punishing one-in-forty degree ascent through Birchfields Park the bearded man, apparently quite oblivious to the fact he has been involved in a hotly-contested ‘etage’ of the Giro de South Manchester for the last 15 minutes, takes a right turn where I need to take a left. I catch a last glimpse of him as he dissappears, languidly and at 45mph, into one of the more genteel corners of Rusholme. He is wearing a pair of grey slacks and a sensible checked shirt, and neither is touched by even a bead of sweat.

Who was this mysteriously fast bearded man? As I struggle, defeated and bedraggled, through the last stretch of my route to Levenshulme (in the absence of competing cyclists it has stopped being an ‘etage’ of the Giro de South Manchester and has returned to being just the dreary, everyday ride home through the Birchfields council estate) I come up with a theory for his effortless superiority. Clearly it was the innocent-looking grey slacks; they must in fact be cycling superpants designed in a top-secret Belgian laboratory, and impregnated with a banned steroid capable of entering the bloodstream though the leg-pores of middle-aged college lecturers and transforming them into world-beating pedalling machines capable of demolishing the Alpe d’Huez as if it was a particularly flat part of suburban Rotterdam.

Yes, that is it! (I exclaim out loud to the bemusement of an elderly lady walking her dog). Clearly, the bearded man was a doped-up-drug-cheat-cycling-commuter-scoundrel of the worst kind. Well, it is either that (I hear you say), or the bearded man has gears on his bike and is not afraid to use them, while I may look the part, with my expensive gleaming mountain bike and my lycra 'Credit Agricole' team jersey bought off the internet and my snazzy black and yellow tracksuit bottoms, but that will be to no avail if I insist on avoiding the 'big' third wheel for reasons known only to myself (but probably related to some kind of childhood psychological trauma involving a chopper bike and the number 12 bus to Two Ball Lonnen), and instead continue to pedal furiously along to no great effect in the small gears while being routinely overtaken by pensioners and old ladies walking their dogs.

Well! You are entitled to your opinion. But I like using the small gears if it is all the same to you, and anyway I am sticking to my Belgian legwear theory, thank you very much. Now then, where do I get a hold of some of those doped-up grey slacks?

A perfect ten?

They say the ability to multi-task is vital in today's busy workplace, and I must say that I have been impressed with the effortless way Sven Goran Eriksson has fitted in managing the England football team in between carrying on sordid affairs with members of the FA backroom staff and Swedish B-list celebrity gameshow guests. But not that impressed. I think Sven should try managing my football team.

I say football team, but really it is five-a-side game between friends which takes place every Tuesday night at a local sports centre. My job is to make sure we have exactly 10 players every week. You might think this is easy, and in fact some weeks it is- I just send an email to the 10 regular players and they all write back to say they can play. But this hardly ever happens. More usuallly there are one or two injured or otherwise unavailable (apparently there are people with more important or unavoidable things to do on a Tuesday night than put on a replica football shirt and pretend to be Zinedine Zidane for an hour, although I find this hard to believe), so you have to start calling up the reserves, who (again unbelievably) seem in some cases to have lives and do not spend Monday and Tuesday sitting by their phones desperately awaiting the call-up. It is on weeks like this that arranging Tuesday football becomes a full-time job- which of course is a bit tricky if you already have a full-time job, albeit one which seems to allow you ample time to write about your day-to-day life on the internet for the entertainment of people like yourselves.

Take this week for example. It was looking like one of the easy weeks. There were nine players confirmed overnight, and I came in this morning to find that star midfielder Mike had enrolled a mate of his called Darren (a tricky winger with a loping stride reminiscent of Chris Waddle in his pomp) into the fold. So we had ten and I could relax. Except there was another email in my inbox, and it was from arch goalpoacher Damo, advising that he had left his kit at home. This email was quickly followed by another, from languid defensive lynchpin Gareth (once of Cheadle Town reserves, which makes him in our rather limited company look like Franz Beckenbauer), saying he had suddenly remembered he was injured.

Pausing only to ask myself bitterly whether Sven ever has these problems, I launched into a round of frantic, cajoling 'phone calls, at the end of which I had secured the services of precisely one more player - a veteran called Matt who works with midfield dynamo Harry and who doesn't get called up that often on account of his disgraceful habit of turning up in a Manchester United shirt. But beggars can't be choosers, so Matt was in, making nine players. The search for a tenth proved fruitless, so I despatched that forgetful lad Damo back to Huddersfield for his contact lenses. Well that will teach him, I thought, adopting the stern demeanour of a disciplanarian 1970s manager of the Don Revie mould. Maybe I will fine Damo two weeks wages for good measure.

So now we have 10 players again, or at least 10 more-or-less able-bodied people saying they will turn up. So while Sven hides away in his luxury Chelsea pad from the tabloid reporters camping on his doorstep, I can get on with the serious business of looking forward to tonight's game. It has been another fraught morning in the life of this player-manager-office-worker. But you know what- when I pull on my Real Betis replica shirt and run out onto the miniature pitch at 8:30, I will know it has all been worthwhile. Sven can keep his £4 million per year- I'll keep my job, thanks very much all the same.