I conducted an English lesson at Lugansk’s Taras Shevchenko University last year. At the end a student asked: “We watch Little Britain, tell me, are there many Vicky Pollards in the United Kingdom?”
It was the second time I’d been asked the question in a week. Both the people who asked were shocked to hear that Vicky Pollards were not uncommon.
Memo to self: remember to pack earplugs in future.
Not because it’s too loud but because bands actually sound better now when I put my fingers in my ears. I pick up the full sound, with more treble, all songs sound cohesive and no instrument goes missing. Is this normal?
Anyway, good to see the Fab Furs back in carrot-crunch land, nearly two years after they played a great gig in Frome.
That night sax player Mars Williams stole the show with a supreme performance. Blew his pipe so hard he looked fit to pop, and the penny dropped – it pinpointed why the first two Furs albums stood out at the time – the sax gave them a different sonic texture. Hadn’t spotted that before!
Here, even though I was two yards from him at the front of the audience you couldn’t hear him well until you retreated towards the back. He wasn’t the centrepiece of the show this time due to the Fleece acoustics.
Still, it was a pleasure to see him, plenty of life in Mars – wikipedia states a strong influence is John Coiltrane so what’s not to like.
Richard Butler’s cracked croak still has a peculiar charm. He was wearing Frank Carson specs with bifocal lenses that made his eyes, close up, resemble those of an alligator, half-closed and watchful. But, fair dos, he still has the teeth and hair of a twentysomething. Brother Tim on bass looked like a beefy John Cale as leant over the front row.
Richard bobbed up and down like a toddler in a baby bouncer and delivered a cracked croon for the highpoint Imitation of Christ – 30-plus years old. Into You like a Train, So Run Down and Mr Jones provided early pep that somewhat lost its way once later stuff – which I’m not so keen on – was aired.
It all ended quite well with India, my favourite track, before I had to hotfoot it to the train station, missing the encores.
Please come to Wales next time.
WALES supporters bowed out in the last 16 stage of the Eurofans2012 tournament today.
Despite putting on a good showing after a very heavy night out, the team were beaten 3-1 by a useful Moldovan outfit who almost certainly got to bed a lot earlier than the Welsh side.
So for the fifth year in the row, the Welsh side left at an early stage but probably this was the best performance over the five years – both matches lost could have been won had chances been taken.
The Ukrainian-based competition in Lviv reaches its climax tomorrow with a final at 12.30pm before presentations in the city’s fan zone in the evening, and then the final of Euro 2012 in Kyiv.
About 30 Wales supporters are taking part in their fifth Eurofans tournament in Lviv.
After today’s matches, the squad visited a school in central Lviv to hand out football memorabilia, balls and clothes to youngsters. They also got a rendition of Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau.
Earlier in the day, the team played matches against Czech Republic fans and supporters of Slovakia in two 50-minute games.
Against the Czechs, the side lost 4-1, but came back strongly to defeat a poor Slovakia side 7-0, to earn a place in the last 16 of the tournament.
Swordfighting and football don’t mix – right? Well I’m not sure after witnessing the Folk Football festival in Kyiv which coincided with the staging of the quarter-finals.
Good on the Ukrainians for using the tournament to promote their own culture.
And I was certainly not prepared for a battle Royal between two acrobatic swordsmen, duelling spectacularly. In fact it was a lot more thrilling than the Italy v England game.
Sparks were flying off the metal blades as they hammered away at each other in a brilliantly choreographed duel. Errol Flynn eat your heart out. The sparks would have been enough for a council health and safety penpusher to step in and declare the event off back in the UK.
Organiser Georgian playwright Raguli Vlasidze, who looked like he was a rumbustious chunky central midfielder with a kick like a horse back in his youth when no doubt he played in Tiflis, organised it to raise money for good causes.
Money raised will promote education, culture and sport, develop Ukrainian cinema and theatre and ‘encourage national spirituality’.
Ceremonial maces were on sale, football games in a giant paddling pool were organised (‘Allowed: hand gestures and lots of smiling’, said the programme).
The big ball on display in the picture is adorned with the designs of the Pysanko – the traditional painted egg of Ukraine.
Interviewing him via an interpreter was difficult as the English version of what he was saying came out in less than perfect sentences. But there was no doubt of an obvious passion for football.
He said: “Football changes our lives so we want to change people, this festival is for this.”
In the programme, it says: “We believe that the time will soon come when football stadiums worldwide will be adorned with national ornamentation, subconsciously elevating the inherent sense of national spirituality.”
In Wales’s case, that could well be a pint glass I reckon.
Previous to its visit to Kyiv’s famous Andryivsky Street, where the famous writer Bulgakov lived, and which is the centrepiece of the city’s historic Podil area, the folk football bandwagon had been to Lviv and to Ivan0-Frankivsk.
So with its giant football pie, I couldn’t get why this particular item featured, it was a suitably surreal and typically Ukrainian weird concoctioN.
And apparently the Football Peace carpet will be blessed by the Pope himself when it reaches Rome.
The festival’s website is at www.bigball.eu
Really, this was like watching West Brom in an international tournament – lots of earnest, honest endeavour from both sides, incompetence in front of goal and a deathlessly dull 120 minutes. England copped a load of flak for their endeavours but it wasn’t as if Italy were breathtakingly adventurous – they couldn’t manage a goal despite monopolising the match.
The template for a 0-0 was set early on. After 21 minutes, all neutrals began the Mexican wave, which England fans admirably ignored. But you couldn’t blame the rest of us for taking part.
Locals cranked up ‘Oooh-cry-ina’ chants early, one guy even tried to get a ‘Rossiya’ (Russia) chant going but had no takers. Later on, the ‘Ooh-cry-ina’ morphed into ‘Italia’, as the hosts decided to back Italy because they were still miffed that England had edged them out of the championships.
In fact it was a shame Ukraine missed out on this match as it would have been immeasurably improved – they’d have been a more fluid attacking threat and, of course, everybody in the stadium would have gone absolutely bazonkas as per the crazed Swedish hordes who lit up the stadium in the 3-2 defeat nine days earlier. Instead, most people were moderately interested.
So we had a strangely subdued motley crew at the match – surprisingly quite a few Poles – many of whom were Ukrainians taking the first swig from international football’s champagne tournament.
England fans, again admirably, stoked up the heat with a strong second-half showing of support which felt at the time as though it could carry the team through. But there was to be no joy for Jon, Kiev resident and Stevenage Borough fan. Liked his comment: “It’s been interesting to be able to look the police in the eye in the course of the tournament.”
But, not being in the habit of watching England very often as Wales play at the same time, the parallels with Lisbon 2004 were uncanny – only that was a far better side.
Back then Sven, it seemed to me, played two back fours (I was up in the stand) and used a siege defence. Lo and behold, reading before the tournament, Sven copied a lot from Roy Hodgson’s Swedish success in the 70s.
So now England have Sven’s guru in the hot seat and the style is the same. Against decent sides, at any rate. Two back fours, clean sheet, bore the fans to death.
Though a friend Oxana called it ‘lingeringly suspenseful’, texted: “I watched in perfect comfort in McDonalds, not amidst crowds in the fanzone. And though it did seem interminable I was having a kind of private reverie, so I was not bored.”
So commiserations to England fans on another penalty fiasco. Painful, obviously. But if you want real anguish, pop over to Wales in September for the next qualifying campaign. That’ll be REAL pain.
A matryoshka doll is the classic one-inside-another souvenir you see everywhere way out east.
It struck me the more I thought about the day of Holland v Portugal that it had so many personal layers of meaning for me, and was such a wonderful occasion, that it was, however absurdly, something of a matryoshka match.
Kharkiv: Olga, early 20s is the most interesting restaurant car employee I ever met.
“I am studying Law at University in Kyiv but I don’t like it. Lawyers are like parasites of life. It’s so dry, so boring, you can’t read the stuff they give you. Then you have to learn it all.
“I have to do this job to help pay the bills. I love it, I would do it without payment – you meet so many interesting people here.”
The other restaurant staff – all young men – clearlyconsider her the top dog. One grabs her from behind – I hope he’s her boyfriend – and ‘tickles’ her high on the rib cage. It would count as an indecent assault back in the UK. She backs into the fridge so that no one else can surprise her.
Another customer, over for the football, chats with her and he’s quite taken too. He departs the carriage, saying cheerily: “Right, I’m over here.”
She slaps the counter like a kickass bargirl from a Western and snaps smartly: “And I’m RIGHT over here!”
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff.
National Theatre Wales, best known for Michael Sheen’s The
Passion in Port Talbot last Easter, likes to take imaginative leaps
and has drawn one of the UK’s top playwrights to his home city.
Bringing director Peter Gill back to Cardiff to
stage his 1960s play pays off refreshingly.
Gill draws on Russian writer Chekhov’s stories of life in a
provincial backwater. Is he also drawing parallels with the
Cardiff of his youth? Surely, he is. And the visible austerity
on view also seems to chime with the age.
Starchy, stiff-backed society is in chaos and polluted by class
hatred. The portrayal of Chekhov’s Russia is uncanny.
Having lived in that neck of the woods, Chekhov’s melancholy
mood of 1890s Russia has in no way changed for the masses.
Corruption is rife, drunkenness, duplicity and despair
are still scourges of society – there’s a sense that there’s a
bottomless void of unending pain. The famous Monty Python ‘We
had it hard when we were young’ sketch could still almost pass
for reality.
It’s all vividly and cannily re-created by an excellent cast
who give us prim, stuffed-shirt ‘pillars’ of society, dreamers
and kooky crackpots in glorious abundance.
If all that sounds a bit heavy, well hey it’s Russia, where
life’s never been a picnic (unless you’re an oligarch). And
it’s oddbod characters formed by that society who capture your
interest.
So while a melancholy mood is created, A Provincial Life casts
a magical, fascinating spell. There’s vroom in the gloom.
Gill concludes that even when life appears to be meaningless,
small, insignificant acts do make a difference.
So, it seems, if you live in Dullsville, whether it’s Russia or
the Rhondda, there’s always hope.
The ‘Welsh Bob Dylan’ at Clwb Ifor. More like a Welsh Johnny
Cash as he shuffled on, taking quite a while to find his guitar
amid the instruments stashed behind the speakers.
Black leather coat, black trilby, black trousers and then, just
before start-up, a flourish and out with the black sunglasses.
It’s 10.30pm in March in Wales. Eh? Maybe he’s got sensitive
eyes.
Backed by a bassist and drummer it all started fairly well and
it was good to see a largely young audience paying homage to a
creature of the Sixties, feted as one of folk rock’s biggest
talents.
Mr Stevens, no longer a young whippet, had to struggle to make
himself heard between songs and his singing voice was
understandably muted but still poignant. Well he’s a folkie so
he’s not going to belt it out.
Having missed him first time round in the 70s and only seen one
song by him on S4C it was the perfect chance to see him.
But there was a warm welcome, respect . . . and disrespect.
Were people there just to be seen, or what?
After halfan hour, the twittering twentysomethings were
chuntering on so loudly throughout the songs that it became a
pointless exercise. Dozens of wittering twits drowned out the
act. So is he a legend? I don’t know cos I couldn’t hear him.
Time to go.
Luxembourg City, November 1990
At about 2am, after we’d beaten Luxembourg 1-0 in a Euro 92 qualifier, through an Ian Rush goal, Clayton Blackmore being sent off early, fans and players bumped into each other at a nightclub.
Blackmore, wolfishly good-looking in his early 20s and apparently not too bothered by a dismissal which caused me to suffer a chronic stomach ache and what appeared to be early-onset Parkinson’s for the rest of the match, then spent the night dancing groin-to-groin with a local lassie as half the Welsh team celebrated a not-very-momentous win.
The club shut. A posse of fans sauntered drunkenly towards their beds. Gary Speed and Malcolm Allen somehow found themselves walking alongside us. I pulled out my vuvuzela, the first one ever seen in Wales and Luxembourg I wager, and blew it hard – the sound reverberated up and down the road. Seemed like a great idea at the time.
We passed it around and Gary Speed gave us a parp. Gary Speed, glassily smiling what became his trademark smile, blew my horn. Aged 20 at the time, there was no visible ego (unusual in footballers I’ve since learnt), no airs, no graces. He just seemed like a nice lad. Words that seem to have been uttered ever since by every who knew him.
I never met him again.
November 27, 2011
Gary Speed found dead. While shocked, for some reason this death spoke to me through the death of a very close friend who took his own life in a very similar manner in 2006. My thoughts were less of Gary Speed and more of my pal – the death rattled the senses and defied belief. A sense of being shaken violently stayed with me for a month back in 2006.
In the days that followed, amid the grief, quite clearly fans were enduring the same shock and having the same thought processes and experiencing a sense of bewilderment. The memory of it really does stay with you forever.
Leckwith Stadium, Cardiff. Feb 29, 2012, 4.30pm. Wales fans v Costa Rica fans
With 25 minutes to go the life support machine for a number three Wales kit, that’s me, came on. Geraint from Bala directed me to mark Senor M Vargas with the words: “He’s their biggest threat.” Not what you want to hear when you’re going to celebrate (wrong word) your 50th birthday later in the year. Sr Vargas started the psychological brain jamming immediately
Sr Vargas: You like lamb?
Me: Of course, with mint sauce. Where’ve you come from today?
Sr Vargas: Bournemouth, it’s lovely.
Me: De donde eres? (Where are you from?)
Sr Vargas: San Jose, Costa Rica.
Me: Nicer than Bournemouth?
Sr Vargas: Of course.
Luckily the Ticos omitted to feed Sr Vargas the ball for the entire 25 minutes so he never got to embarrass me. But a tense last few minutes ensued as one of his team-mates got clobbered by S4C’s Tim Hartley who swung and missed the ball in the box, clattering an attacker with a kick that would have felled a camel and then swore blind it wasn’t a penalty. From three yards away I felt it couldn’t have been a clearer spot-kick and Sr Vargas dispatched it to make it 2-1 to us.
We clung on for a deserved victory. Our female keeper had to go off injured in the second half injuring her foot in a brilliant stop and Greg from Aber, after a mad dash to the game, stepped into the breach to seal a not-very-heroic but strangely satisfying triumph.
The match was played for the John Hartson Foundation and Gol charities and, of course, with Gary Speed at the front of our minds. Donate here at http://www.justgiving.com/walesfansvcostarica
6.15pm, Gol Centre, Cardiff.
The charming Costa Rican Ambassador to Britain, Pilar Saborio de Rocafort, bought 20 quid’s worth of raffle tickets and enthused about what a wonderful occasion the day had been, bringing Costa Ricans together for a rare chance to see their side play and also spread goodwill.
Having met many of the Costa Ricans in Cardiff for the match, it has to be said they brought a welcome colour and humility to the day. Any chance of a return fixture please? Not in Bournemouth, but in San Jose.
7.45pm, Cardiff City Stadium
A three-month cloud hovered over what must be the most unanticipated match in Welsh football history. Usually, as fans, we’re mad for it. This time we were mad for it to be over.
That was the feeling beforehand anyway. But as the evening progressed there was plenty to savour and in every respect the tone of events was spot on.
What a great job the FAW did. The association’s handling of the last three months was respectful and considerate and deserves great credit.
And it says much for the FAW”s measured, appropriate responses that the match was all anyone could have asked for. There was no wallowing in mawkish recollections, just simple gestures genuinely felt and warmly expressed.
Nice touches everywhere – from the ‘Gary’ spelt out on the Canton Stand (those of us holding up coloured sheets were trying to figure out what we were showing), to the male voice choir, to the employment of a World Cup Final ref, Howard Webb, it all struck the right, respectful note.
The teenagers’ ‘Shoes off for Gary Speed’ in the Canton stand was welcome relief – why do they do this? – as were the opposition. Let’s face it, we were hoping for someone more illustrious but on reflection it was entirely fitting to end where Gary Speed had started.
Costa Rica turned up to give us a game, scoring at a time when perhaps Welsh players’ minds weren’t entirely focused. Why would they be? The Ticos were quite rugged, could have had a second goal and seemed more cohesive compared to us. In contrast we played too many lateral balls and without Aaron Ramsey and Gareth Bale, the team was shorn of direct attacking menace.
Craig Bellamy, distraught at a pal’s death and facing speculation about this being his last game for his country, quite frankly deserves a medal just for turning out.
The personal and psychological pressure on him must have been immense. He took it all on board and once again, unlike others who’ve turned their backs on their country, strode out to give his all.
Should he pack Wales in, his reasons are pretty much beyond question. Should he stay, then let’s just him appreciate his crazy energy and manic passion for the game for as long as it lasts. He’s the closest we’ll ever get to a Maradona character.
The Human Firework has been a positive force of nature ever since he headed the remarkable winner in Denmark in 1998 through to his goal against Italy in 2002 and his evident on-field leadership of the last couple of years. Not to mention his charity work in Africa.
It would be great if he clung on to see if Welsh football finally comes of age by qualifying for a tournament. If we do, it won’t be because of Gary Speed, who inherited the nucleus of a half-decent side, made good decisions after mediocre early results and appeared to have us on the right road.
It will be down to factors influenced by him, key players turning up, continuing to turn up and luck in games to come.
But whatever happens in the next two years, there is a guiding light and a strange sense of destiny hovering over the side. Whatever is achieved will be for Gary Speed.
Cadwch y ffydd
In Munich at the World Cup 2006, couldn’t work out why these Costa Rica fans paid homage to Ronaldo.
Miles from Nowhere 