My Favourite Game: Reading 3 Hull City 1, November 19, 2005

"Enjoy this. Because you'll probably never see anything like it again."

With every year that passes, my dad's words to me during one game in Reading's record-breaking 2005/06 season become more and more accurate.

It is somewhat disheartening knowing, at that time, deep deep down, as a 15-year-old you are likely seeing something that your club will never better. Better than any generation of your family so far has seen and better than any future generations might see. Indeed, that, coupled with all the other baggage that comes with supporting a football club these days, has probably left me with a growing amount of ennui. 

But, much like every night out beginning with the remote and vague but possible of recreating that one perfect piss-up from so many moons ago, it's the hope that keeps you coming back. 

There are so many glorious matches to pick out from that season - the Crystal Palace five-goal thriller, the top-of-the-table victory over a Neil Warnock-led Sheffield United, 13 goals in eight days over Christmas, countless pummellings, and the trio of glories of promotion at Leicester, securing the title at home to Derby and the points record at home to QPR 

But my favourite game is none of these. It isn't even what I would argue was the best performance of the season - the late-January 4-0 eviseration of a decent Norwich side who were barely allowed a forward step, let alone being able to lay a glove. 

No, my favourite is what looks, on-paper, a routine 3-1 win at home to Hull City on November 19. It is the fact it was routine is what makes it do astounding.

As any fan of an average football club knows, disaster is around the corner - dominance only creates foreboding.

But, this game, proved the 05/06 season was different. 

Reading took the lead early through Bobby Convey before Nicky Barmby equalised ten minutes into the second half, completely against the run of play. 

What followed was like a giant being jabbed sharply in the chest. Hull were dotted aside with two goals in a minute (one a glorious Kevin Doyle overhead kick from 16 yards out). It was like a boxer wearing one on their chin, stirring themselves and quickly restoring some order. 

The unbeaten record was stretched to 18 games.

Though strangely we were still a point behind leaders Sheffield United, it was not even the end of November and promotion already felt inevitable. The rest of the season was now something to savour. 

I cannot remember now after which game my dad said the above words to me. But this one feels appropriate. 

As always, it's the hope that gets you

Hope. Hope is what brings you to that stadium match after match after match, often despite your better judgement. Hope is what makes you think your lumbering striker, floundering goalkeeper or error-prone centre back will confound the critics today.

Hope is what gives you the idea that this year is different, this year might be the year your play off duck is broken.

Hope dashed. Hope dashed is what makes you question why you come back to that stadium time and again. Hope dashed is what makes you think why the manager keeps sticking with that lumbering striker, floundering goalkeeper and error-prone centre back.

Hope dashed was Monday.

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What provided the hope this time around was how the team had gone about its business this season – tactical versatility to counter different teams (both Fulham games a case in point), a steely resolve to see out games (note the countless single goal margin wins) and a strong sense of spirit and purpose (see 3-2 away wins at Bristol City and Blackburn).

Time and time again this season (now last season I guess), we saw things a lot of Reading teams couldn’t do, or very rarely did, in the past – play with three at the back, play a proper 4-3-3, see out one goal leads, make comebacks…and also collapse in spectacular fashion away from home.

This gave hope that we had the skillsets to compete and overcome on Monday. We didn’t.

It felt either as if we froze somewhat or more played the occasion rather than the opponent. Or Huddersfield just sussed us out.

Regardless, the nagging feeling is we didn’t play to our potential. That perhaps is another factor of what made it such a galling day.

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It was fitting our best performer was Danny Williams in a season when his value to this team and his quality was finally recognised.

All year, in either a two-man or three-man midfield, the American offered something none of our other midfield options could – a balance between strength, mobility and passing quality. For all of our decent midfielders this year, none could do what Williams consistently did.

In a game where precious few Reading players excelled, Williams was probably our stand-out. In a similar vein to Steve Sidwell in the 06/07 season, Williams has never shirked a challenge this season despite knowing it could be his last with the club.

His devastatingly tearful reaction at the end suggested to me this will be the end of his Reading career – if we had gone up, I think he would have signed a new deal but he is 28 now and has the quality to player in the top tier; it is most likely now or never for him.

If he does move on, he absolutely deserves his chance and not one Reading fan should begrudge him that. He gave everything and more on Monday.

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The most painful of losing a play-off final isn’t the not getting promoted. The ambivalence toward being a part of the bottom-half Premier League football is growing – without wishing to sound like sour grapes, what really is the point of hoping to survive each year with nought much else to look forward to?

If you haven’t experienced the top tier already, that feeling is less prevalent and understandably so – I was very much looking forward to being part of the Premier League circus back in 2006 and I do sincerely hope Huddersfield enjoy it.

But there is an increasing ‘what’s the point to it?’ when you’ve been there, done that, got the overpriced T-shirt.

No, the reason why losing a play-off final aches to the very soul is your team has missed out after 48 matches and nine months of blood, spit, sweat, tears, fears, beers, joys, disappointments, exhilarations and more. 

It hurts all the more so after a penalty shoot out when you haven’t actually lost the game.

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Nothing in your football watching life prepares you for the intensity of penalty shoot-out in a final.

That said, watching Reading fully prepares you to expect to lose a penalty shoot-out in a final. My celebrations for each successful penalty were barely more than a look to the sky – for Al-Habsi’s penalty save, it was nothing than a single fist pump. It just felt as if things could go wrong.

After play-off final losses via being 2-0 up with a penalty, a freak own goal and a comeback thwarted by less than the width of a post, a penalty shoot-out loss felt likely to be added to the roll call.

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It is now three full days on from the final whistle. Only today have I felt anything like normal.

Tuesday was a day of nothing but mental and emotional exhaustion – a drained out hollow shell trying to make it through the day without reading any match reports or opinion pieces, glancing at Twitter and switching the channel over every time you heard the words “£170m match”.

Wednesday was the hangover from this – the mood slightly lifted but the baggage still being dragged along, the disappointment etched still on your face and the engagement with the rest of the human race still not quite fulsome.

The disappointment will probably last a little while yet, especially as the fallout from the result becomes clear – what happens with Stam? How do the new owners fit in? Which players will leave and who will we sign?

However, the talk has already begun of looking to next year’s fixture list, what away days to do, pre-season tours…

That’s the thing with football there is always next year, there is always hope.

Joining the Sky Blue army at Wembley

On Sunday afternoon, I’ll be at Wembley watching a team which play in blue and white for the third occasion.
On the previous two occasions, I didn’t really care for the result – Reading were underdogs in both games so it was more about enjoying the day. Though it being Reading, on both days they still managed to draw me in to caring, deeply, via a stirring but futile comeback and coming within one decent pass of an unlikely upset, respectively. Cue days of sulking afterwards.
But this Sunday has a bit of a different feeling about it as I’m to watch Coventry City play Oxford United in the EFL Trophy final – the first time I’ve been to a game involving two English league sides, one of whom isn’t Reading.
I’m going as my girlfriend’s family are Coventry fans and it sounded like some fun, going to a final at Wembley without my mood for the next week dependant on the outcome of the game.
However, I am emphatically an advocate of the idea that you can’t really enjoy a game of football in the flesh without having some kind of vested interest – your team is playing, you’ve got a bet on, it’s an overseas team who you have always liked but not supported. That kind of thing.
But I now find myself rather looking forward to Sunday hoping more and more that Coventry win.
I suspect this is because I’ve invented reasons for me to have a vested interest:
· Cov are playing Oxford, which gets my Royal blue and white blood pumping that little bit faster.
· Ex-Reading cup hero Yakubu (still only 29-years-old…) is on Cov’s books, as is Stuart Beavon, son of his namesake father who played 400 odd times for Reading before I was even born and we share a Jay Tabb in common.
· All of the issues Cov fans have had to put up with over the past decade with their ownership, stadium situation and so on (added to the fact they’ve not finished in the top six of any league for 47 years) plus the way their season is going this year, makes me think they deserve this.
· Maybe I’ve missed backing a desperately poor team, it being close to 20 years since Reading occupied the same relegation zone Coventry occupy now.
· The original individual shaping a club - Jimmy Hill.
· Dion Dublin, Darren Huckerby and Noel Whelan in the mid-to-late 1990s.
· The exciting adventures of Steve Ogrizovic (taker of the wickets of Viv Richards, Chris Broad and Alvin Kallcharran while playing for Shropshire, hoax Kazakhstan kidnapping, goal scorer and all that)
· Brian Kilcline. Just Brian Kilcline, nothing further to add.
· A Cov win will make for a far more enjoyable train journey home.
So yeah, let’s all sing together, play up, Sky Blues.

A new flavour of promotion push

Tuesday night’s classic come from behind win against Brentford got me thinking about how our successful Championship level teams have worked.

The shape this season is taking is markedly different to any of our other previously successful seasons at this level – successful meaning we won the league or got to the play offs and excluding 94/95 (I was five at the time so am not in a position to comment).

This isn’t the 05/06 season, for obvious reasons, it isn’t 2010/11 where we benefitted from one player being in the form of his life (Shane Long) and it isn’t 08/09 when we convinced and then spectacularly collapsed.

This year is more like the 02/03 and 11/12 seasons where the sum of the parts was the key reason for success (obviously 05/06 had that same factor but the quality of player was far greater).

But in 02/03, we had a system which worked a treat but when Nicky Forster was injured, we  struggled to cope, and the 11/12 season saw us wedded to the Plan A of four-four-fucking-two which, in the season after, showed up the limitations of that side.

We’ve gone through all manner of formational tweaks this season – three, four or five at the back, wing-backs, no strikers, four centre midfielders – which is a significant difference to the 11/12 season and an ability likely to be of use in the Premier League. That said I think most fans still believe the team would struggle next year if we were to be promoted come May.

This is a strange kind of team – its limitations can be seen from the fact we haven’t really dicked anyone this year and we have, in turn, been thoroughly dicked ourselves on occasion. But the team spirit and the tactics (both Stam’s ideas and the team’s embracing of those ideas) alleviate this.

It is arguable this is something Reading fans haven’t experienced before, certainly in my lifetime; a team which shifts and evolves game-to-game and even mid-game rather than having a set system which works and sticking to it.

And this is all down to Stam and Tevreden.

Further, it shouldn’t be forgotten that this has been a revolutionary past year – a dozen new signings, a new manager and a new director of football in the summer, an extra five signings in January and the constant ownership uncertainty between and lingering.

To be keeping pace with the top two at this stage of the season is nothing short of remarkable and to reach the play-offs this year would be a stunning achievement.

These are points needed to secure 6th place in the last ten seasons - 74, 78, 72, 68, 75, 75, 70, 74, 70, 75 – an average of 73.

Put another way, that’s four more wins from our remaining 14 games. To compare, Fulham have to win more than half of their remaining games (8 of 15) to reach the 73 point mark.

But whatever happens from this point on, this season should be marked as a success.

A trip to Dortmund; how perception and self awareness is holding back stadium atmospheres in England

At the start of last month, I followed the now very well-travelled route to Dortmund and a pilgrimage to the Westfalendstadion.
And, lets get it out of the way, yes, it was as awe-inspiring as everyone says; fantastic football, a goosebump-inducing atmosphere (admittedly aided by a 4-1 scoreline), a visually striking stadium, knowledgeable, friendly and generous fans – the complete package really.
But what really struck was how much of what was going on, if it had been taking place in and around an English football stadium, would be castigated as ‘plastic’ by a lot of English football fans:
-Club song played loudly over the speakers so an ‘organic atmosphere cannot be created’? Check.
-Flag-waving on the pitch? Check.
-Stadium announcer? Check.
-Supporters buying overpriced food and drink? Check.
-Every piece of branded tat imaginable (and a BVB version of Cluedo) in the club shop? Check.
But despite these perceived impingements on ‘real’ football culture, the revered BVB atmosphere remains (maybe it really is the right to drink booze in the ground...). It was all about working through a catalogue of songs and waving flags a lot no matter what was going on the pitch. Go 1-0 down? Keep singing. Striker miss a sitter? Restart the song where you left off.
Which I found rather unusual. For me it served to highlight, in an English football ground, the remaining need nearly always for if not an air of violence but certainly an antagonism and schadenfreude towards the ‘other’ (team or referee) to create an atmosphere.
This was particularly highlighted for me on Monday at the Bristol City – Reading game at the impressively refurbished Ashton Gate. Both of Bristol City’s goals were marked by many of their fans giving the big one to those in the away end and, subsequently, Reading’s comeback of three goals in 18 minutes to snatch a win also featured plenty of Vs flicked and wrists waved, though I’d say joy was probably the overriding emotion (as it should be with a last-minute winner).
In England, the noise from away followings is often similar to that of BVB fans in Dortmund; more or less detached to what is happening on the pitch (as away fans are usually the ‘hardcore’, there to make noise and enjoy the day regardless of the result).
It is the atmosphere created by home fans which is, with some honourable exceptions, anodyne, as you might have heard once or twice before. It is the stadiums and fans which have ‘plastic’ elements (Leicester’s happy clappy things, Crystal Palace’s flag culture) which generally are far noisier and atmospheric.
A lot has been said about what English football can learn from the culture of German cousins. Perhaps a precious attitude over who or what is allowed to make an atmosphere is something different to be taken on board.

The Dustbin Lid Challenge (that was its actual name)

Way back in March, before the uncertainty caused by Brexit, Trump and all that, it seemed perfectly OK to try an eating challenge as, unlike now, there was no danger of impending economic doom making food a scarce resource in the UK.
To be clear, I do find eating challenges morally dubious but we’re all hypocrites so pass the bib.
I and a couple of friends opted for a Flaming Grill pub in Reading (to give a venue where the toilet was flooded the title of a restaurant would be a stretch) and took on its Dustbin Lid Challenge.
It appears the Dustbin Lid Challenge is no longer served at Flaming Grill pubs, as far as I can see, so I cannot recall precisely what meat-based cholesterol enhancer was laid out before us. But, from memory, it was:
- a beef patty, chicken breast and a piece of gammon, each weighing some pounds, with various pieces of concessionary salad wrapped up a bun
-a set of beef ribs, presumably belonging to the cow equivalent of The Big Show
- strips of fried chicken
- onion rings
- a double portion of French fries
- a small bowl of disconcertingly cold pulled pork accompanied by cheesy nachos
- corn on the cob
- a portion of baked beans
Now, the fact it came served in a dustbin lid screamed that this was a bad idea. I mean, the only respectable individual to serve a meal on a dustbin lid was probably Top Cat, and he is a) fictional and b) would serve up something distinctly unappetising like a fish skeleton, immediately setting off imagery association issues in one’s head.
Regardless, we got underway. Now, I’ve watched enough Man Vs Food back in the day to know some consumption challenges tactics – leaves the starchy items to the end, choose a light drink to accompany your meal, keep everything moist to help force it down your oesophagus etc.
I promptly ignored all of these theories. Already I had bought  a pint of moderately-priced lager first up for the simple reason my friend had and so male ego was in play and I dived in to the chips first up (I mean, there’s nothing worse cold chips, right?).
And progress was surprisingly smooth – down went the chips, the ribs, the onion rings, the pulled pork with nachos, the corn and the beans within 20 minutes or so and all was well with the world despite knowing our fellow diners were glancing over with feelings of equal part disgust and pity, looks usually reserved for pets that eat their own vomit.
But, looming, always unnerving in the consciousness like that chronic back pain you try to ignore, was the monstrosity of a beef, chicken and gammon burger. The increasingly room-temperature mountain of meat sat on the corner of my dustbin lid.
Steely-eyed, the time came to tackle this unnatural abomination. Break through the wall.
Two mouthfuls of eating this like a conventional burger simply did not work – richness erupted on the taste buds, beyond that which is pleasurable, as three types of meat fought for supremacy. There is a now obvious a reason why you get four-bird roasts and pigs in blankets but not hybrid cow/ pig/ chicken mixtures.
How about taking the deconstructing approach? The way to eat an elephant, after all, is one mouthful at a time.
We were getting somewhere; the chicken’s gone, so has the top half of the bun and the piece of lettuce and tomato slice which was buried in the meat mountain.
Leaving the doorstops of dense beef and gammon, the densest of all the foodstuffs on this offering. Easy. Or, with a brain slowly switching itself off from over-stimulation and a distinctly unhappy set of internal organs in my midriff, perhaps not.
And it came just like that. No mas. White flag raised. Its over.
A distinct self-loathing bubbling – at an inability to finish or to even try it in the first place, who knows. Time to pay the bill and slink off.

The postscript to all this is I barely slept that evening due to meat sweats, didn’t eat for around 36 hours after the effort and my colon was more packed than a London-bound train at 8am. It probably took a couple of hours off my life expectancy too so, at the very least, the whole experience is not a one-night only kind of deal.

The strange survival of the working man's club

Even of my generation, working men’s clubs conjure up images of pipe smoke-filled rooms, warm real ale, meat raffles, bearded men with more empties in front of them than teeth in their mouths, stained billiard tables and more wonderfully English things like these.
The kind of thing which now of course has to be seen as an anachronism – if there’s no such thing as a working class anymore, why would such an entity need their own club?
Recently, I’ve been going to a working man’s club - curiously retained in quite a leafy, well-to-do village - to spend a couple of hours getting progressively more pissed off at not being able to play snooker well (the loss of dedicated snooker clubs is less mourned than the decline of much else in this country. Now so many of the (chain-owned) remaining clubs rely on booze shifted during the showings of early hours of the morning boxing title fights to bring in the revenue; it makes it feel more like a last destination of the night bar than a snooker club).
Digression over. To return to my tracks, the working man’s club has been an interesting experience.
There is still some remnants of that old school vibe; the opportunity to go home victoriously clutching some sausages or a chicken carcass which by the time you leave have been sat at room temperature for a while, pints sold for less than £3 a pop, snooker cues which pre-date Windows’ 95, the only food being pork scratchings and a few regulars whose speaking voice is completely unintelligible (there was one bloke the other night who it took four “Sorry, what?”s to realise he was saying their was an overhead light for the pool table).
But, when all is said and done, it’s more or less a pub; empty on a Wednesday night but full on a Friday, a limited selection of quality-limited drinks (Fosters and Strongbow staples), the fruity sucking down cash in the corner and worn, worn carpets.
However, unlike your average underfunded, identikit pub, it’s friendly. The volume on the TV (unusually showing VH1 or some such rather than Sky Sports News) is down low, people talk to each other across tables and at the bar, there’s no scary looking fuckers who look like they’d rabbit punch you for glancing at their tattooed faces. The young people are tolerated, knowing the older clientele are the chiefs around these parts. Bar staff interact. The books and board games littered about the place are meant to be there, not a concession to artificial character or an ironic nod.
And when a place and its people are full of character, you don’t mind the rough edges or being charged a quid for guest entry (hell, when they forget to charge you, you give them the pound as you feel like you’re cheating someone as opposed to a business).
It’s fantastic.

Would public apathy be a good thing for the England football team?

There was a lot of talk on Five Live last night about whether there is broadening sense of apathy toward the England football team from the general public.

While Wembley crowd numbers remain ridiculously strong, viewing figures for the Slovenia game were less than half of that for the Great British Bake Off the evening after, and it was was the same story with the figures for the Malta match versus The X Factor.

Paired with this was anecdotal evidence from texters to the radio show, saying they didn’t watch the Slovenia game, their little sons didn’t want to watch the game or ask for the score and so on. Thinking about it, I had the first half on while I was doing other things around the house, turned it off to read instead(!) and then watched the last quarter of an hour.

All of this seems to add up to a lower level of public interest. Putting this in to context though, about 5m people still watched the Slovenia game which is roughly a tenth of England’s population. And I can always recall there being a level of disconnect between England’s fans and its football team in the aftermath of disappointing major championship exits.

But this feels on another level – losing to Iceland rather than a Portugal or Germany at a major championship, the Sam Allardyce fiasco and seemingly never-ending listless performances all contributing.

Ignorant booing and social media abuse of Wayne Rooney aside, the passion seems dimmed.

However, is this truly a bad thing?

Many reasons have been put forward for England’s underachievement at international level – indulged players, lack of English footballers in the Premier League, those English players in the Premier League being made to look good by their foreign counterparts, managers aren’t good enough, tactically inflexible, youth systems aren’t producing and so on and on and on and on.

Another theory is the amount of pressure and expectation on England to not only win but also win playing in an attractive manner, especially against ‘smaller’ footballing nations. This comes from both the media and the public, especially with the all-consuming power of social media, with where it all starts rather unclear (though I suspect it is more social media-led now).

It appears to be self-perpetuating as the longer England go without winning a major tournament, the greater the burden – 30 years of hurt has quickly become 50. Nowhere could this been seen more than that night in Nice when English players seemed incapable of passing the ball 10 yards without it winding up at the feet of an Icelander.

But what if continued and enhanced public apathy towards the England national football team gradually reduces the pressure to the extent players do not wilt when wearing the England shirt? What if they feel unshackled and can play their natural games?

There was an element of this in the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign under Roy Hodgson where wins were picked like ripe fruit and no-one really had much expectation for the most part (partly due to Hodgson playing everything down).

Right up until the moment England won 3-2 away in Germany and the weight of expectation returned.

 But maybe, just maybe, extreme levels of apathy might just be crazy enough to work.

Conflicted over Lewis

I’m conflicted about Lewis Hamilton and I’m sure that fact is keeping him up at night.
Hamilton has been the most exciting out-and-out racer in Formula One over the past decade or so, probably the best wheel-to-wheel racer in that time and comfortably is in the best three drivers currently featuring.
All in all, three world championships speaks for itself.
Beyond that, he is testament to the fact hard work can pull oneself out from a non-privileged background and (tax matters notwithstanding), I absolutely cannot begrudge a self-made man living his life.
He also transcends his sport by his association with a plethora of celebrities which has in turn opened up the sport to different markets. The latter is a foul word but we all know what kind of world we live in. People criticise him for this but a dash of the rich and famous has always been associated with Formula One – its what rich and famous is that has changed, not the sport.
It is not far from an exaggeration to say the sport needs Hamilton more than he needs it, certainly with regard to their respective futures.
But, on the flip side, he’s SO ANNOYING. I refer to a piece on The Telegraph website posted last year and his interview on Channel 4 on Sunday pre-race.
The telling people about all the parties he goes to but one being a works do and another a family get-together and the toe-curling cringe of the “guess how many hours sleep I get” line (more than notorious, riotous party animal Margaret Thatcher was said to get, it turns out).
With the incessant need to tell everyone about how much fun he is having – craving recognition - Hamilton might well be the first person to speak like an Instagram posts.
He’s literally like the guy at uni who has discovered alcohol after moving away from the stern family home and wants everyone to know how drunk he is.
Sure selling the exciting (and indeed not exciting) aspect of one’s life is how a lot of people earn a living these days but those people are usually the ‘famous for being famous’ sort unlike the talented Hamilton.
But the complexity of this comes in that the very fact he does party, mingle with celebrity friends, tries his hand at music, films himself doing extreme sports and so on makes him so different from everyone else on the F1 grid. They may well do similar, but we don’t know about it as it everything is so media-managed where for whatever reason Hamilton is comfortable flaunting it.
In turn, why does it have to be celebrity brashness that makes someone appreciated as different? Why not celebrate Max Verstappen’s balls-out precociousness, Sebastian Vettel’s nuanced, very German take on British humour and Kimi Raikkonen’s refusal to give a shit about anything? These aren’t the most interesting things in the world but again, this goes back to the media-management issue. When Raikkonen lived in strip clubs (as that’s how it felt given how much coverage was dedicated to it), he was feted as the maverick king of F1, the crown Hamilton now holds.
And someone in there features that very British thing to be mistrustful of success by one of our own, particularly when we do not feel that success has been earned by anything other than 24/7 dedication to the craft and hard work.
Usually when writing things down, you get a feeling for what side of the fence you ultimately fall on. After putting this down, I still feel divided over Lewis Hamilton. But I doubt I’m alone.

Being cultural and seeing a proper play at a West End theatre

As the kind of person who’s only visits to the theatre up until the age of 19 were for pantomimes and snooker matches, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on and review plays. Well, uniquely placed anyway. Uniquely meaning poorly, in this context.
So, being poorly placed to comment on and review plays, I nonetheless proudly present to you some words after I saw the Sir Kenneth Branagh production of Romeo & Juliet at the Garrick Theatre on Monday last week.
Even a local authority-run school alumni such as myself knows not just the plot but also the ins and outs of the themes of Rome & Juliet (thank ingyou GCSE English), so that saves us an awful lot of time here.
What I want to talk about is the language–the rhythmic, loping, bouncing language of Shakespeare which we all know but never appreciate. To go back to Year 10, reading Rome & Juliet off the page was a bore because not many 15-year-olds from Reading, generally speaking, have the ability to read 400-year-old soliloquies lyrically. Most struggle with reading Tweets.
In this production, the language of Shakespeare is so wonderfully retained but so perfectly boiled down to still challenge the listening audience to interpret the spoken word but also to ensure the production remains accessible to a wide ranging audience.
And the cast of this production is why there is a wider social spectrum in the audience. Or in the audience on Monday night anyway.
Richard Madden and Lily James play the star-crossed lovers and their TV back catalogue rakes in the younger audience.
Madden’s puppy-ish, devoted Romeo often dominates his swaggering teenager ego, not always a bad thing though as his lovestruck, brooding young man performance is strong but too much and it becomes mopey.
But James’ portrayal of Juliet is what keeps its all going – whether it be the champagne drunk on a balcony scene when she properly meets her Romeo, the on-the-cusp-of-orgasmic anticipation at seeing Romeo again after their secret marriage or the heart-rending dénouement, all are innocently lovely – wonderfully, recognisably teenager. Which is what this is all about of course, love and lust at a vulnerable time of our lives.
Elsewhere, Derek Jacobi’s Mercutio is wonderful – an unusual ‘fun, lecherous but non-threatening’ uncle approach to the role meant to be an age contemporary with Romeo which just works if not perfectly, then perfectly suited to the audience.
To go back to language, no-one does knob gags quite like Shakespeare and it is a joy the way Jacobi delivers them (and great when one works out the more complex knob gags. Complex knob gags indeed.)
However, as a result of this style, his death was sadly interpreted by some members of the audience as an exaggerated piece of physical comedy, beyond the moment he is stabbed and right up until the moment he is no longer speaking before the penny drops.
In a similar vein, Meera Syal’s Nurse was also a far more knowing, mischievously devious and encouraging confidante for Juliet than anticipated – playful but still deeply caring of her surrogate daughter.
All of this is set in a 1950s-style Venice filled with café culture, suits, sunglasses and a time equally as recognisable as male-dominated as the original play.
Without having much else to compare it to given limited  theatre experience, it would be foolish to sum up this play in any other way than to say I quite liked it so…yeah…see it if its your thing. Or don’t, if you don’t want to. Its your choice really. Unless tickets are sold out, in which case you have no choice. That’s how it goes, I suppose.

Desensitisation, The Island and a sharp jab of reality

Desensitisation is one of those things you learn as you grow up – either consciously like how to make an omelette or undo a bra or subconsciously like how to talk to old people or how to pretend that troubling growth isn’t really there.
The proliferation of the screen is the big driver here, insulating ourselves from the real world.
While we are now sickened by the sight of some roadkill, if we see that roadkill through the medium of TV or the internet, all fine, bring on the goo. While the sight of some of ISIS’ atrocities would provoke physical sickness if most of us saw it in front of our very eyes, seeing them via a mobile phone clip gives it the effect of not being quite real; an Xbox game cinematic perhaps.
All in all, the effect of impact advertising and shock TV is diminished now to the extent that we could all probably eat our way through Ant barbarically killing Dec, broadcast in graphic, gory detail, provided we were given forewarning.
This is why charities have had to amend their advert MOs incidentally, most successfully done by Cancer Research UK, in my humble one.
But now and then, you see something through which cuts through all that mental conditioning to devastating effect.
The Island, if you don’t know (if you have been living on an island for the past few years for example) is a reality (critics argue constructed reality) show in which everyday British folk are dumped on a Pacific island by unpleasant situation enthusiast Bear Grylls to see how they survive.
A Lord of the Flies meets The X Factor kind of show, a brittle society emerges and the people who started out very annoying end up having some kind of epiphany about how they want to live their lives after stabbing a crocodile in the gut or wrestling a shark.
For the first few shows while everything settles down, most of the victims of this social experiment (which, to be fair, it usually is as there is a valid sociological aspect to it all beyond contemporary Big Brother-esque voyeurism) take on Jack Skellington-style body shapes due to a lack of calorific intake.
As an example of desensitisation, I am usually munching on some neatly-packaged item of food while watching this, without so much of a second thought.
However, in the most recent episode of the current series of The Island, a huge storm triggered flashbacks for Army veteran Hannah and subsequently an onset of phantom limb pain; she lost the bottom half of her right leg in a mortar blast during the Iraq conflict.
The emotions on her face during the storm and her indescribable and unimaginable experience with the bout of phantom limb pain was shockingly upsetting and uncomfortable to watch, scything through the desensitisation fog.
And that is the point here – this did not strike me as shock TV for the sake of shock TV. In the first episodes, great care was made to show Hannah wanted to take on the challenge of the show to push herself to survive in that harsh environment.
How difficult not just living with the physical aspects of trauma bought on by modern day warfare and being an amputee but also the mental aspects is a point which should be understood by us all given the sacrifices our Armed Forces make.
Messages delivered in a challenging and uncomfortable manner do hit home harder and bring that across through the prism of reality TV, when done right as The Island appears to this observer to have done, is an achievement.
One person’s anguish can help bring about a wider understanding of a complex issue.

Another 750 words on Trump

I love but could never live with American-style politics.
It is a swirling, impossible to keep track with vortex of ludicrous storylines, subplots and tangents which neither satirist nor screenwriter would dream to write for fear of being classed as a loon. House of Cards started out so well as Frank Underwood’s actions were so outrageous but also faintly believable but when real-life pushes the envelope so more, what chance do TV producers have
I am not saying Donald Trump has pushed a reporter under a train, but a different kind of boundary is being pushed.
At the best of times, American politics is bizarre due to its focus on leadership politicians rather than policy but with the new wave of Republicanism, not only due to the odd world of Trump but the startlingly right-wing policies of Ted Cruz, it is entering frightening and dangerous territory.
But it remains what it has always been; interesting in a perverse, curtain-twitching kind of way.
A campaign official being charged with battery on a reporter would be enough for any British MP or leadership candidate to meekly resign, and that’s before even coming close to touching all the tubthumping vitriol Trump (whose few policies he has spoken about reveal education and healthcare as key pillars of government, rather un-right wing Republican as it happens) has spouted.
But no, the circus just carries on.
Same with Clinton’s links to Wall Street and email-gate, the attack ads on Trump’s wife by the Cruz campaign and more and more.
That’s why Brits find it so interesting, the discreetly hidden voyeur in us all. It is compelling as it is so different to our system where politicians hide their backers and who they are influenced by and any hint of controversy which could damage the all-important political party is swiftly dealt with.
As a result, most are robots with the same hair and suits and smiles and mannerisms like there is a factory somewhere mass producing them (there is, it’s called Eton, honk! Honk! Honk I say!).
Our answer to Trump or Sanders is the likes of Farage on the right or Corbyn on the left who both share that air of own brand about them and are both very British ways of interpreting the further outreaches of the political spectrum (ie, not in a particularly firebrand kind of way whatsoever.)
But still, can you imagine living with the never-ending cycle of coverage about the size of Trump’s hands and how Sanders is a communist insurgency leader?
Sure it gets people interested in politics but at the cost of turning them in to fanatical zealots it would seem, incapable of taking on board reasoned arguments against their chosen leader.
The ground swell of Corbynistas was an interesting counterpoint to post Milliband-Labour but it appears to have withered on the vine due to our fusty political system – would a similar thing happen to #feelthebern ?
It is all fascinating to watch the operations of Trump and Sanders and how traditional politicians like Clinton and Cruz cope, but only from the other side of the pond.
But it will soon affect us, it is happening in the most powerful country in the world after all

I got 99 worries and my used car is one

There is no worry like a post purchase of a used car worry, except that intense split-second worry about what to say to someone you have already said “Morning” to that day as you again approach one another in the corridor.
Top tip, “Hello again” is a good one. Or, if you’re really lucky and enough time in the day has passed, you can say “Afternoon”. A tut and “We must stop meeting like this” is useful for a third awkward encounter. “You again” followed by a hearty laugh works for a fourth time. You’re on your own with a fifth meeting, maybe roll your eyes or stare at the floor intently or jump out of a window or fake a heart attack or never leave your desk ever again.
Anyway, where were we… Cat GIFs? Cleavage shorts? Cute dog pictures? Oh right, yeah, used cars. I’m not very adept at this driving web traffic thing.
A used car is the ultimate example of once bitten, forever shy. All the early confidence that cars are indestructible gradually evaporates as an increasingly varied amount of stuff goes wrong. Much like how your body refuses to do now the things it used to be able to do with consummate ease, only it’s a metal box incapable of thought and moods.
First car I ever bought - £600 on a 1998 Renault Clio which worked perfectly at the start and I assumed would work perfectly forevermore with very little or indeed no input from me, right up to the point two of the engine cylinders imploded due to a lack of oil. It is now shaped like a cube or is part of a new washer/dryer combo or something.
Second car - £900 on a 2003 Renault Clio which, in the course of nine months, needed a new cambelt, new clutch, one tyre, a new tesseract power source, new shock absorber and coil and various other bits and bobs which probably all added up to more than the initial outlay on the bloody thing. It is now with a new owner who will enjoy all of these fixes as I developed ‘the fear’ and hated the damn car despite it working properly by the end of it all.
‘The fear’ now remains despite buying a low-mileage used car with a new clutch and a clear MOT.
‘The fear’ means every cough, squeak and judder is an impending sign of vehicular doom, possibly with fire and lopped off limbs involved at some stage.
Oh, the accelerator pedal is vibrating a bit. Wait, what was that noise? Hmm, the engine wouldn’t start first time round. Oh crap, the car shook a bit while stationary. Is that smoke from the exhaust of the car in front?
Even a vehicle health check at the garage which resulted in only new windscreen wipers being slapped on merely acted as a temporary boost. The worry something terrible is likely to occur in the not too distant future remains.
There has been one positive though in the whole vehicle buying process – the car’s number plate as the last three letters of it are ‘FML’.

Already it has bought a smile to the faces of the good folk at Direct Line, the AA and my local garage and presumably anybody who has been stuck behind me in a traffic jam. My car cheers people up wherever it goes.
But it goes back to ‘the fear’. I firmly believe there is now a very real possibility of me at the side of the road, slumped over the roof, head cradled in my arms, in the pouring rain with that number plate firmly in frame being taken captured and instantly becoming a meme.
Fuck my life indeed.

March 25, 2006, at the Walkers Stadium, a decade on

From the most extreme emotional experiences, there tends to be a handful of freeze-frame moments which remain with you.
These are probably the moments that are said to flash before your eyes when you are about to meet your maker.
One of those experiences for me came ten years ago today – football is the most relevant irrelevance so there is no harm in a day as visceral, intense and joyous as March 25, 2006, at the Walkers Stadium, Leicester, being classed as an extreme emotional experience. Plus, I’m male so emotionally stunted; sport being one of the elements allowed to pierce that.
The key thing on the day was context – Reading did not need to win to guarantee promotion to the top flight for the first time. It was going to happen that season, in the coming games, regardless.
On the face of it, there was no need for emotional engagement with the day. No jeopardy; no risk; the only failure being losing a game and even that could have seen us promoted. Why the stress?
But, the context. Going for our first ever promotion to the top flight, residual resentment over the events of 1994/95 (I was four at the time but the one promotion place, 2-0 with a penalty and bloody Fabian de Freitas was ingrained) and that nagging, nagging feeling all football fans have that it just cannot be true.

Moment one

It shouldn’t feel strange to fall behind in a game of football but that was the kind of season we were having. Leicester City away was our 40th of game of the season and this was only the 12th time we had fallen behind in a game. 12!
Nothing of Iain Hume’s goal sticks in the mind’s eye but what does is a feeling of slight confusion and disbelief at half time to be 1-0 down. This was our day to party in what was becoming a perfect season and someone had taken a piss in the punch. We couldn’t lose and get promoted, not after how we had performed all year.
We were probably going to go up anyway but it didn’t feel like it – it wasn’t anger or annoyance, it was quiet and nervous.
A regular enough feeling but in the wider context of the day, enhanced.

Moment two

The equaliser.
Even the very best goals you ever see tend to be lost in the mists of time and you end up remembering them how you saw it on TV. But not Kevin Doyle’s that day.
I remember thinking we won’t score from a right-footed inswinger of a corner. James Harper rarely took corners that season – the oft masterful left-footed deliveries of Bobby Convey and Nicky Shorey were the usual set piece routines that season.
I remember the mesh of bodies in the box and thinking for a split second the ball will just get lost in there before it bounced through a man in a white shirt (I had no idea who) got his head behind it. Time slows.
The middle of the net ripples.
The rest, a blank.

Moment three

Two or three minutes previous, the message had come over the PA system that Watford and Leeds had dropped points. We had done enough to win promotion.
Two or three minutes of forgettable but unforgettable jumping around, shouting, singing, hugging the complete strangers in front, to my right and behind.
Two or three minutes of enjoying the loss of control that football brings.
Two or three minutes before feeling I had a lot of space on my left-hand side. I look down. I see my father sat with his head in his hands; not in a despairing way but simply to take some time to himself and remember all the years that had led up to that moment.
Context. Then, release, he joined in with the rest of the incoherent, unconfined joy.

Plenty more happened that day but it often takes the fan videos (still stored on my laptop from the wonderful webpage of resources which emerged after March 25) and the season’s DVD to recall them.It was a delight to discover one of the fan videos was taken from three seats to my right, a keen refresher to fill in the joy-caused blanks.
These are my memories from where I was stood that day – their value only sentimental to me but to others, I would hope they bring back their own freeze-frame moments from that unrepeatable day.

A March day in Leicester

If I may start with what I know may seem a controversial view but…football is tribal.
And, to add another controversial conversational starter to the meal that is this stream of consciousness, Leicester City are winning the hearts and souls of millions with their story this season, rightly or wrongly.
Now those two points are thrown out there, I’m going to sew them together.
Like I assume a lot of Reading fans, for me the next four weeks or so are a time of nostalgia, reflection and reminiscence as we approach 10 years on from not only our greatest season ever, but one of the greatest seasons in English football history.
The numbers and their associated records are ingrained forevermore – 106 (points), two (defeats all season), 33 (league games unbeaten), zero (previous promotions to the top flight), 99 (the number of league goals scored, Reading’s equivalent of Bradman’s 99.94 career average in the pursuit of perfection) and one (the number of sex tapes Leroy Lita featured in that season).
Memories flood from that season; James Harper’s 18-yard header against Milwall, Lita’s overhead kick versus Crystal Palace, Glen Little’s one trick beating left backs every game, dominating Wolves for 90 minutes over Christmas, Bobby Convey being chased down the pitch for 75 yards by Andy Hughes before scoring in a 4-0 evisceration of Norwich, Kevin Doyle being Kevin Doyle, Ibrahima Sonko saving a goal bound shot by getting his face in the way at home to Ipswich, 5-0 to win the title at home to Derby, Graeme Murty’s penalty against QPR, John Madejski on a taxi outside Purple Turtle and so many, many more.
But the most important and everlasting memory came on Saturday, 25 March, 2006, at what was then called The Walkers Stadium, Leicester.
A 1-1 draw on a drab day in the Midlands isn’t quite how you can imagine it (your first time never is of course), but the 4,000 or so Reading fans who were there will remember the cycle of faint hope (knowing only a win would guarantee promotion), fainter hope (Iain Hume’s opening goal), resignation (half time when promotion on the day looked doubtful), relief (Doyle’s equaliser), anxiety (when the full time whistle went) and pure joy (when the results came through).
I intend to write more about the day as a whole later in the month but suffice to say, there will never be an experience quite like it.
Tempered within all of this was the welcome given to Reading by Leicester’s fans and the club as a whole.
From their announcer confirming Reading’s promotion with a bawdy shout over the PA system to the club allowing the fans to stay inside the ground and celebrate with the team for at least 90 minutes after the final whistle, it was all a bit unusual but very welcome.
Even allowing Reading fans in the home end to shuffle up to the barriers separating the away fans during the celebrations struck of terrific common sense and empathy.
But the lasting memory is leaving the ground at around 6pm to be greeted by a handful of Leicester fans who wanted to shake your hand and congratulate your team followed up by a similar group of a similar nature at a nearby pub.
What would I do in that situation? Say balls to tribalism and share a moment with a fellow football fan? I am fairly certain I would have buggered off home straight after the full time whistle went, especially seeing as Leicester were having an average season and, if memory serves, the draw that day basically ended their playoff chances.
I was 15 back in the 106-point season and was told to savour every minute of it as Reading will never have it so good ever again, something difficult to comprehend as a teenager. But in the last decade, we haven’t had it as good and I’ve made peace with the fact we won’t ever again.
And a portion of how special that how season was is all that happened immediately after leaving The Walkers Stadium on that soggy March day.
And there is a retained memory which adds another element to me enjoying Leicester’s season this year.

The case for sloped shoulders – the EU, the referendum and you

Has there ever been a subject on which more has been spoken and less has been known than the European Union referendum?
While everyone is talking about it, which for political issues is as rare as dodo’s teeth let alone hen’s teeth, the swirl of incorrect information, incorrectly-heard information and straight-up lies makes it hardly worth the conversations.
Media organisations with an agenda (mostly for the out option) and Brexit and Bremain campaigners throw information out there and see what sticks – the worst being the Daily Express’s poll saying same 80% of 100,000 voters back Brexit. A poll on the Daily Express website reporting the vast majority readers back the UK to leave the EU?! Grab the smelling salts.
There are sources out there which gives people a lot of basic and down-the-middle information about the EU – like these items on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zgjwtyc - but very few people have the time nor inclination to read up on a subject so convoluted as the European Union, let alone the European Commission and European Court of Human Rights which so many see their respective responsibilities as basically interchangeable.
It was probably the same for the Scots last year; this weird mixture of scaremongering, patriotism, conjecture and paucity of facts but at least that campaign had an element of positive campaigning in it (from the pro-independence lads and lasses. I didn’t and don’t agree with them but they generally went about it the right way).
And all this goes back to what I think is the huge elephant in the room with the referendum – why are we having it in the first place?
We live in a representative democracy where, for better or for worse, we elect people to make complex, complicated decisions for us. That’s their jobs and they get paid (not enough) for it.
The EU could well be the most complex, complicated thing going (and I include returning a damaged mail order product to a catalogue company in that) so this is surely the kind of situation elected representative democracy was designed for?
I would consider myself to be relatively well-educated – although the half of my degree I was not particularly skilled at was international relations – and with a strong interest in political issues and I feel as if I do not have the facts to make an informed decision.
So why are we having a referendum?
I feel it is because the Conservatives are terrified of what a parliamentary vote would do for the long-term future of their party with the divide between the UKIP-friendly MPs and the others coming very much to the fore.
Bust out the sloped shoulder, throw the decision to the people, no matter how ill-informed they are, and that perceived democratic mandate saves them the implosion.
“Taking democracy back to the people” is all well and good but if that’s your angle, at least have the decency to trust those same people with the correct information, not pseudo-facts and shouting to back up your viewpoint.
So, here we are heading to a referendum where none of us truly know the benefits or drawbacks of being an EU member so how can we possibly be allowed to vote? I don’t sign up to a mortgage provider without weighing up the options properly, why are we being allowed to shape the future of our country without being completely clued up?
The inevitable shitstorm that would go down if a politician were to say “I don’t trust the British public to make the right decision for themselves on this” means no-one in authority would make such an on the record statement but may I be the first to slope my shoulders and say “I don’t trust me to make the right decision for myself on this, you do it”.

Too much Butterbeer and larking about in Leavesden - fun times at Harry Potter World

I have a theory that my generation – through the combined effects of Playstation exposure, sugar intake and primary colour-heavy cartoons – is immeasurably more immature and youthful minded (for better or for worse) than those which came before it.

I and many people I know have very grown-up jobs, wearing a tie and everything, but to relax we like nothing more than cracking open a fizzy drink, busting out the Dual Shock 4 and, in between, snort laughing at memes involving cats or scenes from childhood culture.

Maybe it is a lot more socially acceptable to, in your downtime, have the mindset of a nine-year-old and live almost exclusively in the sepia-toned 1990s. Maybe it is simply you are not a fully-fledged adult just because you are in your 20s.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying, and attempting to justify, that I went to Harry Potter World on Monday and absolutely loved every single second of it.

There is no shame in saying I was giddy with excitement all the way through, whether it be walking through one of the carriages of the Hogwarts Express; wandering about The Great Hall; larking around in Diagon Alley; or simply nerding out looking at props, costumes and sets which are sealed in my memory vault forevermore.

There may even have been a stage where I got a tad too giddy after drinking Butterbeer and eating Butterbeer ice cream and then subsequently pretending to be a conductor on the Knight Bus and doing a high-pitched screaming Ron impression in one of the Ford Anglias.

As an aside, new-found extra kudos to Emma Watson, specifically for, in The Half Blood Prince, downing most of a stein of Butterbeer, the sweet sweet taste of which left me wanting to lick some soil to take the substantial edge off.

But I also enjoyed Harry Potter World in a more grown-up way – it’s essentially akin to visiting a museum about something you’re really, really interested in (rather than stumbling on something at a museum you then discover an interest in; also a lovely phenomenon).

The attraction gave me personally a more adult appreciation of the whole enterprise of creating the Harry Potter films from the size of some of the sets to the scale and diverse sectors of expert staffing required.

Something as simple as the stool which the Sorting Hat sits on was so lovingly and intricately carved – good quality wooden furniture has less craftsmanship and that gets seen every day.

Seeing how the special effects, visual effects, make-up teams, designers and so on went about their business was interesting but taking into account all of them working together with one end in mind brings in to stark relief just how huge film productions actually are, quite a realisation for a film industry layman such as myself.

Walking through the corridor to see the penultimate stop was off-the-scale – I won’t say what it is here but I do believe I gasped which usually only happens these days when it is really, really cold outside.

And best of all, Harry Potter World wasn’t really theme park-esque. It was well-presented, not over-the-top and respectful, letting the subject matter rightly be the attraction, not gimmicks.

That said, the gift shop was theme park-style; an array of the usual overpriced tat, a contemporary British approach which I love as it passes on the traditional fleecing of British people like me to a global audience. Thumbs up. (For what it’s worth, we bought a Harry Potter luggage-themed frame at £18.95 for what it’s worth plus 5p for a Harry Potter World bag which one suspects the attraction could have charged for before it became statutory.)

We spent around four hours there and not a single moment was not thoroughly enjoyed on an array of levels.

So, yeah, I’ve not really got a funny or particularly engaging sign off paragraph. It was good, I’d recommend a visit. That’s all I got…You can go now…

Ha, joking, here is something a bit thoughtful. Take childhood loves and revisit them as an adult – there is a whole new world of appreciation for them to explore.