Balls!!!

The World Cup. My male keeper is a football fan. His beloved Liverpool are [in his opinion] being destroyed from within by owners concerned only with profit.  

Cats would never beat up their ladies if they O'D on cat nip or other substances.

Even if you have no interest in football he says, who would 1) Hire the head of your biggest rival [Chelsea] to oversee the sale of your company, and 2) Sack one of the best managers the club has ever had? The fox is in charge of the hen house.

Liverpool is a fascinating place. Renowned for fighting injustice, creating great music [and the greatest ever group], the wit of its people and the slave trade to name just a few. Indeed wealth extracted by the slave trade made Liverpool what it is today.

So, we have the World Cup on the historic continent of slavery, Africa.

I hear that England football games coincide with a massive increase in males of your species beating up your females. Many ‘fans’ drink to excess to either congratulate themselves or commiserate with each other and this over imbibing often leads to spousal abuse.

Apparently in 2004, in Barcelona [home of the world’s best football club side], a preacher was jailed for writing a manual about how to beat up your wife without leaving ‘evidence’ on their bodies. I live with three females, four if you count my female keeper. I deliberately chase Milo to get one of my keepers out of bed in the morning to feed me, and if I get irritated over nothing [an empty dish] I’ll do the same during the day.

Daisy is my favourite, and I’ll wash her if I’m feeling generous.

Mind you, they have taken away my ‘urges’, so I can’t be fully objective in this debate, but I can’t see any point in beating up female cats.  Cats would never beat up their ladies if they O’D on cat nip or other substances.

What would I be trying to prove? I’m bigger and stronger than them? It’s obvious to anyone. To get my own way? My keepers are the best source of influence, and besides, Daisy, Milo and Holly have nothing whatsoever to do with filling my dish.

I’ve heard that football arouses strong passions. Maybe. But it’s also a wonderful tool to distract billions from what’s going on in the world. Isn’t South Africa a poor country? They have spent huge amounts on this event. And street kids have been ‘cleared’ from around the new stadia.

I know if Liverpool win, my male keeper seems slightly happier. But I’ve overheard him say he stopped going to their home ground years ago, because they lost once and it depressed him for a weekend. So he decided at 13 he wasn’t going to let something over which he had no control run his life.

Your media and politicians love the word ‘passion.’ People who are passionate are OK. In football it can mean aggression, cheating and violence. ‘Yes, it’s bad, but he plays with passion.’ Certain races are portrayed as passionate [‘the Latins’], others cold and even boring [‘the Scandinavians’].

The media version of passion in this country is about having a big mouth, an aggressive stance and ‘will to win.’ Was Blair passionate about invading Iraq? Well I’ve spent most of my life facing other cats down [I’m retired now]. What a waste of time.

I know a good game of football can be likened to ballet, especially if the Brazilians are playing. However these days, more time is spent speculating before a game, ‘analysis’ after a game, than the time taken by the game itself.

If you want to ‘win’ badly enough, then it seems anything goes. So every four years, one of a handful of teams win the World Cup [and it isn’t England] and those who don’t are plunged into national grieving, more women get beaten up and billions conclude life isn’t fair.

If I ruled the world through doom and gloom, I’d be very pleased at the return on my investment.

Unless South Africa won.

In which case, I might let Milo off for once. Remember Greece winning at the European Championships in 2004?

Let us all dream. A better world awaits.

Love and light

Dimitris aka Jimmy