Monday
When I was a teenager, the FA Cup final was always a red letter day in the football calendar. The TV coverage would start in the morning with loads of chat and clips of the teams leaving their London hotels by bus and I would be watching every minute of it. Even my Dad, who had no interest in football whatsoever, would come inside at 3pm to watch the entire match. Sometimes he even managed to stay awake for the entire 90 minutes. Yet for the past 25 years or so, I’ve never bothered to watch the final on TV. Partly because Spurs have not featured since 1991, but mostly because I’ve just lost interest in the competition. This year was no exception. The weather was nice and a game between Tottenham’s two main rivals – Arsenal and Chelsea – seemed entirely missable. So it was only on the following day that I discovered there had been rather more riding on the match than I had thought. By winning and claiming automatic qualification, Arsenal had condemned Spurs to play at least three extra preliminary matches for the Europa League, a competition I had been rather hoping to avoid even before this new form of hell. Tottenham’s possible opponents hardly read like a roll call of Europe’s finest. In no particular order, they are Kesla FK from Azerbaijan, Torshavn from the Faroe Islands, Neftchi Baku also from Azerbaijan, Kaysar Kyzylorda and Ordabasy Shymkent both from Kazakhstan, Sutjeska Niksic of Montenegro, OFI Heraklion from Crete, and Lithuania’s FK Riteriai. These are all games that both Spurs and I would pay money to avoid, as their only real function is to make sure the players are exhausted by November. I’m just praying that further travel bans have been put in place by September and that Tottenham are forced out of the competition by the Foreign Office.
Tuesday
If you thought that most European countries still liked the UK, then think again, as a new YouGov poll published this week tells a rather different story. Asked to imagine that a country had suffered some kind of major crisis and was looking for help from others, those polled from 14 EU countries were asked to consider whether their country should be willing to offer financial help. Out of a list of 35 different countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world, the UK came 33rd out of 35. Only Tunisia and Colombia polled worse. In fact, there were only four countries – Poland, Denmark, Romania and Sweden – where a greater percentage of respondents were prepared to help out the UK. And even that was done grudgingly. In Romania, a country that was so well disposed to giving aid that there wasn’t a single country it would turn down, only 6% more people were prepared to offer help to the UK than not do so. Meanwhile, Greece, France and Finland would actively go out of their way not to provide us with help. Their scores were -35, -25 and -30 respectively. Even the Spanish, who would come to the aid of everyone but us – Portugal weighed in with +64 while even Tunisia and Colombia got a healthy +20 – couldn’t bring themselves to give a penny to the UK. Our polling with Spain was a dismal -14. Nor, as YouGov points out, was this merely the case that the UK was perceived as a rich country and so people wouldn’t donate on the basis that the UK could look after itself. People were far more willing to provide assistance to other wealthy European countries, such as Germany and France. Global Britain is proving a tougher sell than anticipated. And that trade deal with the EU looks more and more of a long shot unless Boris Johnson backs down on his red lines.
Wednesday
Late in the afternoon, I received text messages from two friends saying how surprised they had been to see me talking about cricket on the TV during a rain break in the first Test match against Pakistan. Though not nearly as surprised as me, as to the best of my knowledge I had been sitting in south London writing the political sketch. The best explanation I could come up with was that Sky had replayed a programme on Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis to which I had contributed a few minutes as a talking head, based on the book I had written about the two fast bowlers back in 1992. Wasim and Waqar instilled in me a love for Pakistani cricket that survives to this day; not least because, thanks to them, I briefly became – if not a team insider – then at least a trusted camp follower. As part of my research for the book, I had undertaken to spend six weeks travelling across Australia and New Zealand in pursuit of the Pakistan team during their cricket World Cup campaign, conducting interviews with Wasim – Waqar missed the tournament with a back injury – and anyone else I could persuade to talk to me. At first I was regarded with some suspicion – who was this Englishman turning up to watch net practice in Hobart prior to the game against Zimbabwe? – but gradually I became an accepted part of the scenery. So much so that in Perth and Auckland, I was invited to join in and bowl in the nets. Come the final, I must have been the only English person willing Pakistan to win and I was so touched when I was invited in to the dressing room at the end of the game to join in the celebrations. Wasim even gave me the short-sleeved sweater he had worn in his man-of-the-match performance. It was a level of access no journalist would now be allowed and it still ranks as a career highlight. Which is why even nearly 30 years on, I’m not entirely sure I would pass the Tebbit test for the current series.
Thursday
A report from the broadcasting regulator Ofcom has found that the average Brit spent 40% of their waking life – or six hours and 25 minutes each day – watching TV during lockdown in April. My initial response was one of smugness as I was sure I couldn’t possibly have watched so much television. But then I added in the daily Downing Street press conferences, the two or more hours watching proceedings in parliament, the lunchtime news bulletins and Newsnight to regular evening drama series on terrestrial TV, Walter Presents, Netflix and Amazon Prime and realised that, if anything, I might have pushed the national average up a bit. It’s all rather dispiriting as I had entered lockdown with great plans to get all those jobs around the house I never get round to done. And I did start off quite promisingly, spending the best part of a week using my spare time to catalogue all my books. But then things rather tailed off. I meant to move on to cataloguing all our ceramics but gave up on the first day as our printer is so temperamental – aka useless – that it can’t be trusted to produce even halfway usable photographs. So the whole thing would have looked a mess. I also meant to use the extra time at home to do more reading, but my concentration levels have been so poor I struggle to manage more than a couple of pages at a time, which is worse than useless, as I have invariably forgotten what I have read and have to go back to the start again. On the plus side, work apart, I have kept up a fairly intense exercise regime. There’s nothing like cycling for an hour and a quarter on a stationary bike to get in touch with high levels of endorphins and existential futility. So rather than wondering why I’ve watched so much TV, I’m more inclined to ask why I have watched so little. What have I been doing when I haven’t been working or exercising? My best guess is that I have been lying on the bed, doing nothing very much, while staring out the window in a state of mild to extreme anxiety and depression.
Friday
Earlier this week, my wife told me she had been counting down the days till our summer holiday. So have I, I replied, I’m knackered. She then made it clear that it wasn’t just the not working she was looking forward to, but the not being stranded in the house with just me for company for the past five months. According to her, I have been something of a nightmare to live with. Actually, I can see her point. I’ve also found me extremely difficult to live with. Anyway, as from tomorrow we are on holiday: if not exactly the one we had in mind when lockdown began. Back then, we still had hopes of visiting our daughter and her husband in Minneapolis with our son and his girlfriend, but it soon became clear that wasn’t going to happen and we started making other arrangements. As of today there are no travel restrictions to Norfolk so we will still get to stay with our friends Debby and Tom for a week. Debby works as a therapist, so I suspect this could turn into a busman’s holiday for her. I’ll do my best not to be too needy so she isn’t that keen to see the back of us after a week. As for the second week, when we were meant to be in Spain seeing our friends Olivia and Simon, before the travel ban and quarantine were imposed, my wife has been busy fixing up day outings to see friends and family. Mainly because it will be lovely to see them, but with the added bonus of spending less time alone with me. One of my own goals for the holiday is to try to switch off from the news for two weeks. To not listen open-mouthed as Boris Johnson tells everyone to go back to work in their office while he has decamped to his Chequers country house; to avoid hearing Iain Duncan Smith complaining that there were details in the Brexit withdrawal bill that he hadn’t read before voting for it; to not having to feign surprise that it was Liam Fox who had all the details of the US-UK trade talks hacked from a personal email account; to not being lectured to on planning regulations by Robert ‘Honest Bob’ Jenrick. And that’s just been the past week. So stay safe and stay well. And see you on the other side.
Digested week digested: Where’s my peerage?
