It’s an Arsenal free weekend which, let’s face it, might not necessarily be a bad thing. I suspect we could all use a bit of time to regroup before the next game.
But what to do? How to pass the time? Here are some suggestions.
DIY
This stands for Do It Yourself. Which is a noble pursuit. Everyone’s got stuff they need to do around the house or the garden. For example, we have a hedge out the front that needs to be trimmed. Not exactly difficult work, you get the hedge trimmers, you buzz it back and forward, up and down, side to side, and the hedge – which is wild and fuzzy – becomes a more manageable shape.
You’re nearly finished and there’s a massive spark and then the hedge trimmers stop working and you think ‘What the hell? Maybe there’s been a power surge or a power cut or some other kind of electrical menace!’, and then you realise that as well as trimming the hedge you’ve trimmed the cable connecting the thing to the socket in half.
Good job these days the cables are insulated or some such. I didn’t feel a thing. The hedge remains 2.3% untrimmed, leaving just a little hedge mohawk at the top that was hard to reach anyway and now the thing is broken so it’ll just have to stay like that. You consider kitchen scissors but in the end you just leave it. It’s just a hedge after all.
This is why, for me, DIY is a bit of a non-runner. I feel like there should be a caveat to this particular acronym. It should be DIYUTSBTDTJ (Do It Yourself Unless There’s Someone Better To Do The Job). In my case, there is almost always someone better. Harry the Handyman. Greg Gardener. Pete Paintelsthwaite.
I have accepted my limitations, embraced them even. Once, we had some bunk beds to put together, and I found the whole thing so frustrating I had go lie down with a basset hound while Mrs Blogs and my mother constructed this onerous puzzle of furniture.
So why am I telling you to DIY? I don’t know. I’m sorry. I was trying to be helpful. I’m sure there are many of you out there who are green-fingered, hammer-thumbed, and capable of constructing all kinds of things. My brain doesn’t work like that. I had Lego as a kid and the only thing I could ever build was a wall. Just a long straight wall. No corners, or edges. I never had a job on a building site in the summer, but I did once spend two weeks power-washing marshmallow off conveyor belts in a biscuit factory, but that’s another story.
Watch another sport
This weekend is replete with sporting action given that it is a bank holiday in this part of the world (power to the working man and woman). You have lots of choices if you want to avoid football altogether.
The World Canoe Championships (Eurosport, 12 noon): Can last year’s runner-up Steve Paddle go one better against reigning champion Dave Citeh who has been sponsored by a sovereign wealth fund and has transformed from a 7 stone weakling into a muscle bound machine? Some say that beneath the surface he has a secret motor attached to his canoe which gives him an unfair advantage. The Canoe Council have levied 115 charges against him, but his expensive lawyers expect the thing to be tied up in the courts for years to come.
Live Skittles (Eurosport 4, 3.30): Contenders compete for the prestigious title of Top Skittler – who can consume the most multi-coloured sweets in 60 seconds. Bonus prizes if the sticky wad in their mouths reefs out a tooth.
Angriest Man on Twitter 2023 (Twitch/YouTube, 8.30): The most illustrious event of the online discourse world. Is it the football fan whose team have let him down? The person who is responding snarkily to someone who said something vaguely mean about their favourite billionaire? What about the guy furiously replying to the woman who suggests that we should try and make the world a better place by being more considerate and kind in general, as well as paying people properly, not to mention taxing mega-corporations and then using that money to properly fund public services and utilities?
This 12 hour extravaganza of online acrimony has no end of surprises and possibilities, and last year’s winner @IHatekittens844656670 will look to defend his title after his famous win last time around as he took umbrage with a Tweet that said, “I love my dog”.
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So plenty for you to get stuck into. Just sit back, relax, and let the weekend wash over you.
Till tomorrow.
