Horrid Henry

It hasn't been a good week for football. It's been one to make you shut your eyes tight, press your fingers into your ears and hope that it will all be right again soon.

Today came the news from Germany that 200 matches across Europe are under investigation for match-fixing, and arrests have been made in several countries. It's an open secret that in Italy and some other places, results are arranged, and both there and in Germany referees have been embroiled in scandal. But no one really wants to talk about it, in case the can of worms is a bit bigger. It seems that there may be a whole canning factory out there.

As for the World Cup qualifiers this week, thousands of column inches and probably hundreds of blogs have commented on Thierry Henry's handball. Most things that could be said already have been, along with considerable helpings of piffle. The latter includes several Arsenal alumni commending Henry's previous saintliness, describing this incident as out of character. They can't have been watching his handball against Rangers in the Champions League a few years back, or the disgraceful attempt to get Carles Puyol sent off in the last World Cup. Few footballers are angels but Titi clearly has form.

Henry is not only an adept juggler, he's also great at throwing in empty gestures later than a Paul Scholes tackle. He admitted his handball to the Irish players - after the game had finished. He called for the game to be replayed - after FIFA said there was no chance. How sporting of him, what a gentleman. For better or worse though, football fans have long memories and this incident will define his career much as Maradona's brilliance is rarely mentioned without reference to the Hand of God goal.

The result will stand and Henry will not be punished because there are no rules in place to provide for either. Just like there were no rules in place that allowed FIFA to seed the qualification play-offs, until it looked as though both Germany and France might need some assistance reaching South Africa. And just like there were no rules by which UEFA could punish Eduardo for a blatant dive earlier in the season, as Arsenal's lawyers pointed out after he'd been banned for two games.

According to some observers, the Irish missing out on the World Cup was down to them missing chances to wrap up the tie. It's true that Henry's intervention need not have been decisive, and is not unique in the history of the game (even of that match) but does that mean it should be forgiven? Either he cheated or he didn't. In many things, black or white is too simple but in this case we don't need a shade of grey. Try the "Other people do it too" defence in a court of law...

As to whether video replays should be introduced to football, I don't understand why it's still an open issue. Tennis, rugby, cricket, baseball and even American football (despite seven arbiters) use technology to help officials make decisions during the game. Horse racing, F1 and cycling employ video footage for stewards' enquiries. If it's good enough for those sports, what makes football so superior that we can't benefit from it? In fact, footballers can be exonerated or banned on the basis of video evidence, at disciplinary committees. Yet somehow no one has had the balls to let a man with a monitor help with big decisions. The ref on Wednesday could not have seen Henry's offence, without the benefit of a mirror or X-ray vision. Maybe his assistant should have but he was 50 yards away and didn't even see two players in an offside position. The ref must have had an inkling something was wrong but he can't give what he didn't see. A 20-second view of the video would have caused the goal to be disallowed and Henry booked, and maybe the game would have gone to penalties.

Referees have an almost impossible job at times: there's a limit how much the human eye can record and the brain process, of events at high speed. We have the technology to help. Let's use it. And while we're at it, let's ban the divers.

I hold a lifelong love of Gillingham FC. I defy anyone to watch Arsenal or Barcelona at their best and not admire the pace, fluency, poetry, the sheer beauty of how the players move and work as a team. I defy anyone not to be astonished when Manchester United lose to Burnley, or go two goals down to a Russian nonentity in the Champions League. I defy anyone not to be intrigued by Rafa Benitez's transfer policy, Real Madrid's bottomless expenditure, Phil Brown's permatan. Yet football magnifies what's bad, rather than good, about the modern world. And I don't really want to see corruption, greed, ungraciousness every Saturday; the politicians and bankers are busy enough with it during the week. Fortunately today is Friday, so you'll have to excuse me because there's a League One match just about to finish and I want to know the result...

Road kill

The American car industry is in big trouble. After a few days here, I know why. Their cars are rubbish. Actually I knew that before I came to Houston: it's hardly a secret.

The strange thing is, Americans still live to drive. Cars remain a staple of TV advertising. This week I twice caught an ad for the Chevy Equinox, 32mpg on the highway. This was billed in green capitals as "The most fuel-efficient crossover on the road". In terms of being damned with faint praise it's right up there with "Slightly less ugly than the Ssangyong Rodius".

I thought fuel economy information might be mandatory in US adverts, but Range Rover studiously ignore it, preferring to venture into anorak territory with "best-in-class residual values". Chevrolet, undeterred, boasts that the Silverado truck (pickup) does 21mpg. There are thousands of trucks in Houston, even though the roads are smooth and no one needs to carry anything in the back, other than spare jerrycans, presumably.

The continuing popularity of American cars in America has shielded the US motor industry from an unpalatable truth: they are behind the times. Nowhere else in the world would 21mpg, or even 32mpg, be considered a selling point. Ford and GM have made some great cars for the global market; Chrysler made some really bad ones. But in the US market they took all the best features of their rivals' vehicles, ignored them and kept doing what they'd been doing for decades, churning out gas-guzzlers the size of Minnesota. Finally, as economic restrictions and high gasoline prices bite, Americans are realising that foreign cars are often more efficient, better designed, more reliable, better built, heck, even better looking. Japanese and European cars are gaining a foothold in the States even as American cars become more disdained and less bought in other parts of the world. It sounds just like the UK motor industry in the 70s.

I don't underestimate the human impact on cities like Detroit when huge companies run into trouble. But there's some comfort to be had from knowing it's happening because a proud nation is recognising it doesn't know best and needs to change its ways. The day that the Silverado, the Equinox and Ford's humungous F-Series become pariahs on the roads of the US, will be a sunny one for humanity.

Back in the land of the free (refill)

For the third July running, I am in Houston, Texas, which pretty much guarantees the reinstatement of any weight I may have lost recently. A few nights ago I saw on TV a man nearly as fat as a couple of days eating Texan makes me feel. His name is Prince Fielder and he offically weighs 268lb (and the rest). And here's the thing, he is a professional sportsman: a first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. 

He was on ESPN participating in the Home Run Derby in front of a full house in St Louis. This consisted of Fielder and several slenderer rivals slugging tame pitches as far as possible. Not exactly riveting even by baseball's low standard of thrills, but the fans were lapping it up. Whoever catches a home run ball gets to keep it and their value seemed not to diminish even as the zillionth plopped into the spare hand of a man wrestling with a burger and coke, or a boy in an outsized hat. I assumed this joust of the juggernauts was the warm-up for a league game but I was wrong. It was the final of a huge competition and Fielder won a trophy not for being the hugest, but for hitting the most home runs.

The football equivalent would be rewarding the player who can score most penalty kicks against a blindfolded goalkeeper. Then again, a footballer as huge as Prince Fielder wouldn't even be able to manage the run-up. But that's the thing about the USA: conventions are turned on their head. You don't need a brain to be president, you don't need to be fit to be a sportsman. It's a land of opportunity for all.

Chariots of fire

My list of athletic achievements is not extensive. I was never a particularly fast runner at school, although over longer distances I sometimes managed to outlast my more easily bored rivals. Although a regular member of the school football teams between the ages of 10 and 13, I was probably the worst goalkeeper ever to set foot on a pitch - and after that my lack of height meant opponents could lob the ball over me instead of relying on my butter fingers. As a cyclist, my enthusiasm has always exceeded my speed. And a lack of hand-eye coordination works against me when it comes to badminton and squash.

So it was with some trepidation that I entered the dads' race at sports day this week. I agreed to take part because Adam desperately wanted me to, even though I suspected his pride and confidence in me might not last beyond the first few strides of the race. It was also a slightly altruistic move, believing it was better that I finish last (as I inevitably would) than some dad who was ultra-competitive and might need counselling for the trauma. I didn't think I could last 60m, let alone race it. Forget dead last, anything other than dead would be a triumph.

It turned out that machismo and competitive urges generated a sizeable field of entrants, for such a small school. (It must be said this is a school with an abnormally high proportion of nuclear families.) There being too many to fit on the track at once, someone suggested the dads should be divided by age, 35 being the cut-off. As I looked around I questioned who would fall into the younger group and realised on age handicap alone I might have a chance. As it turned out the 15 or so dads were split according to who was keener, and I found myself in the second race. This put me up against Luke, who was a couple of years ahead of me at school and is as weedy as ever (although a lovely chap). Now here was someone I could beat - and who would cope with the shame of it. 

The whistle blew and we were off, in a blur of slow motion. After about 20m I was behind Luke, which by my reckoning meant I must be last and knew I would have to find another gear. I have to say, by the finish line I was in full flight. I was confident I hadn't come last, because as I turned around after almost hitting the boundary fence a dad was only just crossing the line. But suddenly one of the finish-line judges was slapping a sticker on me: 3rd!

It's fair to say this is one of the finest achievements of my recent life. Sarah listed the names of the people I'd beaten and in fact I wasn't that far behind the winner. I am choosing to overlook the likelihood that the first race was the faster of the two, so third of about eight might equate to 11th of 16. Adam was in fact quite proud of me. I believe it is time for me to retire gracefully, lest I fail to live up to raised expectations next year. In any case Sarah has promised to enter the mums' race...

Because it's there

Once a year, as summer's sweaty fug gives way to mornings of uncertain cloud, Wigmore Cycling Club holds an event at Hollingbourne Hill, just north of Maidstone. The official course record is three minutes 1.7 seconds. A couple of Saturdays ago I did it in under two minutes. Unfortunately I was going down the hill, while the Wigmore CC Open Hill Climb has its nature not at all concealed in the name. I happened to be passing through Hollingbourne and thought it a good idea to acquaint myself with the challenge; how hard could it be? The road snakes like a tarmac cobra on the side of the North Downs, a simile that sounds even worse once you get to the neck, upright and venomous. Six minutes of sweat and burning legs had me eventually at the farm gate that marks the summit, and I vehemently believed I was about to expire in a gory explosion of overwrought ventricles and taut sinews.

And that is one of several reasons why my ride from Land's End to John O'Groats next year may not happen. Hollingbourne Hill is one of the most severe climbs in Kent but at only 1400 yards long and 100m of ascent it doesn't compare to the monsters of Cornwall and the wild north. My hopes of coping with a sequence of those in ten successive 90-mile days are twofold, and one of them is Bob. If, however, my confidence suddenly grows by time October comes around, I might go back to Hollingbourne Hill and try again. Not under the eye of Wigmore's stopwatches, but in the company of someone with a handily placed calendar to record which day I start and finish.

I'm old and I know I am

I am completely out of touch with the yoof of today. This isn't surprising: I know very few teenagers and those I do, tend to be too monosyllabic to convey their thoughts. Sarah reckons I would like Kings of Leon yet hasn't seen fit to buy me an album and I can't remember hearing any of their music. One of my colleagues is Pixie Lott's cousin and provides frequent updates on her burgeoning career but again I've no idea what she sounds like. It's 20 years since I made crude tapes of the Top 40 with Bruno Brookes and then Mark Goodier, tried to predict who would be where, failed to understand why my peers bought Stock Aitken and Waterman songs, and longed for Erasure to be run over by a bus. At least with the current phase of reunion tours I recognise some of the names, although I doubt many of them have any credibility to those aged around 15. Music is only one aspect. I also don't understand why most boys' trousers fall down all the time and couldn't tell the difference between a goth and an emo, or why R-Patz is the hunk of the season rather than Zac Efron.

Thankfully my sons are a few years away from teenagehood, which gives me time to familiarise myself with current trends, before they pass me by in a blur.

There are times though when I'm glad not to understand the world of the young. The tragic story of Shakilus Townsend, whose killers were sentenced yesterday, was one example. Another day, another knife murder - but maybe not. Shakilus Townsend wasn't as innocent as some victims - he was a young offender - but he died because he had a crush on a gang leader's girlfriend. According to the BBC, she felt used by the gangster and led Shakilus on. He paid her attention and offered her gifts. He warned her she was in danger because her boyfriend was angry. And then this girl of 15, presented with a choice, sided with the villain and lured the nice guy into a trap which cost him his life. It's a strange world where being kind and friendly, without it seems any return, is valued less than a knife and an orange dress code.

I do worry at time what kind of a life my boys will grow up into. Knife crime isn't prevalent in Wigmore - or even in the Medway Towns in general - but who knows what the menace will be in 10 years' time. Today I read Shakilus's mother gave birth at 17, which probably seemed like a good idea at the time, with no idea of the "madness" that lay around the corner. What kind of a life did she anticipate her son would have? Certainly not one that ended as it did. 

Michael Jackson: Sad

The King of Pop is dead. I was shocked when I saw the headlines. I know he'd lost weight, but surely divorcing Jordan can't be fatal? Then I found out it wasn't Peter Andre who had died, it was the much-loved, much-loathed, much-mocked Wacko Jacko.

The newspapers have been full of tributes. I read a great quote by a so-called journalist who wrote "Everyone loves Michael Jackson's music." Everyone? I don't. Not that I count, seeing as I still think Then Jerico were underrated and T'Pau were one of the greatest bands ever. But I can't think of a Jackson track I really like. Even "Smooth Criminal" wouldn't make it onto my iPod, although the deliciously ironic "Black or White" never ceases to raise a smile.

Michael Jackson was, admittedly, the man who sold about five billion records in the 80s and released an album as recently as eight years ago. But if he hadn't become a walking freakshow he would long since be old news. It's fair to say I don't feel a great sense of personal loss at his passing. If there's any sadness it's for his children. But then I wonder how good a father he was to them - he claimed to love children yet dangled a baby off a balcony and made the others wear masks in public. And looking at the pictures of his older two children, Prince Michael and Michael Princess or whatever they're called, they are even whiter and less negroid than his recent persona, which causes me to doubt their father died this week.

Seems to me, Michael Jackson's life could be encompassed in a single word: sad. In both the conventional and colloquial senses of the word. From childhood exploitation and alleged physical abuse by his father, through years of disfiguring cosmetic surgery, trying to be best friends with sick children, spending money he didn't have on things he didn't need and couldn't value, deriving children from unconventional relationships, and settling lawsuits, it seemed his talent and success brought him nothing but chaos and misery. He was clearly deeply unhappy in his own skin - and whatever replaced it over the years. According to his autopsy he died chronically underweight, bald and with a stomach containing nothing but pills. (Kind of the opposite to Elvis.)

Try telling me he should be hailed as hero to a generation.

Halfway to double Dutch

Goedemorgen! That, I fear, is the extent of my Dutch and I know that only because I read it on the restaurant menu this morning. And boy do I feel guilty.

I'm on my fourth visit to the Hague and wish I could speak a decent amount of Dutch. There's no good reason for that wish. I'm at the headquarters of one of the world's biggest companies and English is the lingua franca even among those who aren't first-language anglophones. Besides, most Dutch speak English better than the average inhabitant of south-east England. But there's something philistinistic about going abroad and not being able to meet the locals on their own terms. In ages past, marauders forced submission through superior weaponry. Now, we English wander into foreign lands expecting that our hosts will comply with our wishes because they know our language. It's a big sharp sword of a different kind. Perhaps many Anglo-Saxons, descended from the pillagers of old, are quite happy to wield the power. I simply feel uncomfortable with it.

Dutch is, to the impartial observer, not a language with a great deal to recommend it. The only language to make German sound soothing, it's spoken by a couple of dozen million people in a windy corner of the world's smallest continent, by a few hundred thousand in considerably sunnier climes and understood by a minority in southern Africa. Most of these also speak at least one other language to a high standard. Pronunciation is baffling - witness commentators' attempts to pronounce the names of football luminaries like Cruyff, Kluivert, Kuyt and Guus Hiddink. Whereas I could make a decent stab at single words in several west European languages, Dutch defeats me. Even the name of this place is baffling: Den Haag is a corrupted, ostensibly illogical, short form of 's Gravenhage. Is there another country in the world that allows placenames to start with an apostrophe? 's Hertogenbosch as well - how on earth do you pronounce that? And Cruyff can be spelled Cruijff, because ij and y are interchangeable. Eh?

And yet. And yet. The Hague is reputed to be a dull place to live, unless you like trams and canals or contracting hypothermia or bacterial infections in the North Sea. But I was reassured yesterday when one of my colleagues, bemoaning the limited shopping, hinted the language barrier hasn't been entirely broken down. "You hear rumours that there are good shops around, but no one ever tells you exactly where," she said. Maybe Dutch is alive and well as a preserver of secrets from the expatriate multitude.

My my, how could I resist you? Er, quite easily.

Sarah has been pestering me for months to watch Mamma Mia! She went to the cinema with her friends, one at a time, in order to see it multiple times. She even took Adam. She bought the soundtrack the day it was released. She bought the DVD the day it was released. And finally at the weekend Daniel requested it as our family film time film - brainwashing taken to an extreme.

I should say at this point that I loved the stage show and not just because it was at the Prince Edward Theatre, which is by far my favourite West End venue. I also like some Abba songs and have enjoyed the soundtrack - or at least those sections repeated for singalongs in the car. But I didn't really get the film.

Part of the problem is that it tried to be real and yet wasn't. Perhaps that's my lack of familiarity with musical film tradition showing through, perhaps it's because I can remember what it looked like on stage. In the theatre you willingly play along with the conceit that this few hundred square feet of wood is really somewhere exotic and because it's all make-believe it doesn't seem so ridiculous that the characters should suddenly burst into song. Transport the action to a real Greek island with bona fide trees, genuine sunshine and stonework that would hurt if it fell on your toe, and it's more difficult to explain the uneasy transition between speech and what passes for singing. I think Chicago, which was much closer to a straight filming of the stage show (and which I also haven't seen live), made the transition more smoothly despite some unlikely casting.

And that brings me to the inhabitants, permanent and temporary, of the island. I rather liked Stellan Skarsgard and Colin Firth played his archetypal bumbling Englishman with the usual charm and an unexpected campness. The young lovebirds were fine - although we noted in the DVD extras that off screen Amanda Sayfried's skin is considerably less flawless than the Greek sun made it appear. Julie Walters was great and I didn't like Christine Baranski's Tanya, which I think was supposed to be the point.

Then there was Pierce Brosnan. He wasn't a terrible Bond, and might have been better if the scripts had been up to much. But the only films I've liked him in were The Fourth Protocol (over 20 years ago) and the Thomas Crown remake. In Mamma Mia! his singing has come in for criticism - and rightly so. It's better than mine, but not by much. Yet it was Pavarottiesque compared to his accent. He couldn't remember from one scene to the next whether his character was English, Irish or American.

And then there was Meryl Streep, last seen by me turning out a mesmerising performance in The Devil Wears Prada. This time though I just didn't understand the casting. At no point was she convincing as the mother of a 20-year-old - even less so as the mother of a 20-year-old conceived as the result of a summer of love. Irrespective of the timeline - which seems rather confused - surely Donna should be in her mid-4os. Dear Meryl is about 15 years too old and looks it. I'm full of admiration for her rendition of "The Winner Takes It All", probably my favourite Abba song, but her character is supposed to be tired because of worldweariness, not plain old age. 

And the ending, although true to the stage show (as I remember it), was too sickly for words. Even Dame Julie couldn't redeem that one.

Now, where's that classic work of cinematic genius, Torque?

A mystery solved

I have often wondered why people drove such rubbish cars in the late 80s and early 90s. The obvious answer is that all cars of that era were rubbish. It surely can't be true. One of these days Mssrs Clarkson, May and Hammond will do a Top Gear episode in which they find some classics from that era, as opposed to comedically decrepit Alfas or (recently) 1970s British and Soviet-Bloc junkheaps. Thinking back to the teachers' car park at my secondary school - which may not be the best benchmark for motoring taste but was the closest I came to a representative sample - I remember a black Lancia and an MG Midget. The latter purported to be a sports car but had the gearbox from a Morris Marina. Whatever the other teachers drove, made no impression on me.

A neighbour of ours had three Austin Maxis and I can remember pushing a friend's Allegro up their drive. My mum was driven to comment on the non-existent ride quality after a lift in a 2CV - the only time I've ever heard her voice an opinion on a car. In the early 80s my dad did up a Triumph 2000 (with overdrive - it was the future) and when he topped 100mph on the M6 it was the equivalent for us boys of a journey into space. I also remember a borrowed Peugeot 604 so huge and thirsty it needed a police escort in front and a petrol tanker close behind; and a Rover SD1 which looked great and had comfortable seats but exhibited typical British build quality for the time (i.e. none). He eventually progressed up the ladder of mediocrity to a couple of Vauxhall Carltons, which had central locking that actually worked most of the time.

Among all the cars listed above I don't think there's a single one whose departure from the roads was mourned. Worst of all, a university friend of mine owned a Lada Riva. Its "solid" construction was a useful asset given his erratic driving skills and that's the only good thing I could ever say about it. I once attempted a three-point turn and discovered it had no recognisable gears. His was last heard of parked in a field, which is its proper home - preferably squarely in the gunsight of a nearby tank. You may recall one was sliced in half by Bond's laser wheels in "The Living Daylights" and even if he'd cut it into a thousand pieces it would still have been too few.

But today I believe I found a clue as to why slow-moving rust buckets such as these were so popular. I decided to enliven yet another tedious journey to life-sapping Ikea with some classic rock and it so happened that Sarah had crammed The Joshua Tree into the glove box. I hadn't listened to its entirety for years although I have the big hits on my iPod. Part-way home, into the unfamiliar later tracks, I started to hear weird noises. Just for a moment I thought the car was breaking down. Then I realised it was U2 doing experimental things with their instruments. Therein lies the explanation.

From about 1988 onwards everyone was listening to this album in their cars and couldn't tell that the bearings were shot, the fan belt about to break and the wheelarches audibly rusting away, because "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Exit" hid the noise. Indeed they thought Bono and his cronies were geniuses to produce such an exciting range of sounds. The tingle up the spine wasn't because the music was great, but attributable to the draughtiness of cars at anything over 20mph. And when the vehicle burst into flames or expired in a cloud of acrid smoke, the idea for U2's stadium shows was born.

I am delighted to have been of assistance in solving such a long-standing mystery. I shall revel in the warm glow of success as I attempt to erase from memory my experiences as a passenger in a first-generation Fiat Panda.

Happy New Year...

...to my reader. If you're out there, please post a comment so I know I have an audience other than myself.

Christmas was so hectic that I haven't given much thought to writing. But Adam came out with two classics over the holiday which it's worth recounting.

Sarah's dad and stepmum, David and Alex, were with us for a couple of days and the levels of noise, excitement and activity were quite a shock to them, I think. But they seemed to enjoy themselves and over Christmas dinner Alex embarked upon a joke.

"Do you know why the fairy sits on top of the tree? One year Santa was overworked in the run-up to Christmas. The elves were flat out but it didn't look like the presents would be finished and by Christmas Eve, Santa was getting snappy. There had been too many interruptions already. Then the Christmas fairy put her head around the door. 'I've got the tree here. What do you want me to do with it?'"

There was abundant laughter among the adults. Adam looked puzzled, then enquired, "What did Santa tell her to do with it?"

And a couple of days ago, Sarah was contemplating taking the boys to the cinema but was concerned that Adam was too tired. "I won't take you if you're going to fall asleep." Adam replied: "It's in the future Mummy. I don't know if I'm going to fall asleep!"

Who'd have thought it - my son pointing out the obvious.