The Euros

Oh dear. On a refereeing forum I sometimes check in on I made the awful mistake of deciding to share my thoughts about the Euros: awful not because of any associated pain, but because, once I'd started, I didn't seem able to stop. And by that I mean: 2,642 words' worth of not being able to stop.

So what am I going to do? Bin it out of sheer embarrassment? Or post it here?

I think you know the answer to that. ;-)

In a nutshell, for the 100% who have no interest in reading the whole rotten thing: England weren't so bad; pundits are daft 'cos they judge teams on results rather than performances; results are often a consequence of rather arbitrary and random factors; and other things besides.

Cheers! :-)

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RORY'S CLOSING THOUGHTS ON EURO 2016 (AGED 40½)

What's really struck me at these Euros is how obvious it has come across that a team's performance has been rated based on the result. A team loses and there's all kinds of negative analysis, while the one that wins is heaped with praise. It seems absolutely clear and I'm amazed that very few are able to realise this.

England vs Iceland is not a good example, but if we look at something like England vs Russia or Slovakia, or Belgium vs Italy...

Italy were winning 1-0. Belgium should have scored an equaliser. Game should have finished 1-1. Italy scored a second on a breakaway when Belgium were committed up front.

The pundits praise Italy and slate Belgium. But I know for a fact, had Belgium got the draw, it would have all been about how they kept plugging away, didn't give up, etc, etc.

England drew against Russia. People like Phil McNulty criticised Roy substituting Rooney, as though that made a difference. But would he have even mentioned it had Russia not squeezed a last minute equaliser totally against the run of play? Or were England already two goals up, as their display merited?

I've seen this time and again. I've wondered what would happen if people were shown a game with the goals removed¹, without knowing the result. Imagine editing all that out. You get to see the chances but you don't know whether the keeper saved it, whether the shot crept across the line, whether the penalty went in. Then judge the performance. I think it would be a totally different picture.

But time and again performances have been judged on results, which are often not a fair representation of how well a team has played, and then we take it further by trying to find the underlying reason for the result, such as games played over the year, the way youth is developed, and even whether players are paid too much, too pampered, or have fancy toilets.

Wales were credited because they got decent results, even though we dominated them. Gareth Bale was credited because he hit two free kicks that went in purely because of goalkeeper error - not because of the quality of the strike, but because of how the strike 'resulted'. Time and again across this tournament I've seen it, and marvelled at the inability of the pundits and experts to separate performance from results.

Wales are a good case in point, too, when it comes to talking about England. How many of their players came through the exact same system the English players came through? How many of them play in England, have never played overseas? How many of them live similar lifestyles? Less similar, admittedly, given the number of Championship players they took, but their best player was Aaron Ramsey, of Arsenal.

Wales come home heroes, because they got good results. They were excellent against Belgium, and I understand they were great against Russia too². But they were poor against England, Northern Ireland, and arguably lucky to win against Slovakia - and without Ramsey they really struggled against a Portugal side who, though they won the whole thing - results, again - few would argue were even one of the top 5 sides in it, based on performance.

Fine lines. Gignac comes on and scuffs one against the post and suddenly all today's post-match analysis is totally different. Suddenly Portugal are transformed from a team who create nothing, who sit back and wait for a mistake, to a team who battle to the end, who never stop believing, who work hard as a unit greater than the sum of its parts.

Meanwhile, Ronaldo is lauded, even though he missed 80% of the final, and despite being a superstar player having a very average tournament, a couple of flashes of brilliance aside.

And what about England? Well, I thought we played really well in all three of our group games, and in another universe, on the other side of the fine line, could have won them all³.

I actually thought Wilshere was good when he came on against Russia. I don't see any reason to judge him on the lack of games he played over the course of the season, as everyone else seems to have done - Germany certainly weren't lambasted for using Schweinsteiger - and I much preferred his energy and desire to go forward than Rooney's ponderous, sideways ten yard passes, which nevertheless had the pundit's endlessly declaring him man-of-the-match, a midfield mastermind.

Rooney was good in 2004. Rooney has done some unbelievably quality things over the years, and had some great seasons - but whenever I see him, to me he's a player who gives the ball away far too often, has a very low pass completion percentage, gets out of position in his desire to get on the ball, has a really poor first touch, and rarely if ever does something I would describe as 'world class'.

Yes, I'm biased against Wayne Rooney - possibly chiefly because of how overhyped I feel he is - and also in direct proportion to how biased people like Phil McNulty are for him. When he was lauded as having been by far the best player on the park against Russia I felt we must have been watching a totally different game. Lallana was excellent. Kyle Walker probably our best player. But Wayne Rooney and his “midfield masterclass”?

By the time of the Iceland game I decided I was going to watch Rooney closely and make a note of what he actually did, instead of just saying, look, “he’s given the ball away again”, “look at that touch”. I got my notepad out. Unfortunately for my experiment, he was excellent the first twenty minutes – and scored the penalty – and so I gave up.

I wish I’d carried on. At about the half hour mark he made his first really bad misplaced pass. Then I think there were five in a row. Really, for the rest of the game he was awful. Woy should’ve pulled him off at half-time, if not sooner. How could we expect to win a game with a ball-hungry number ten who can’t make a pass or control it?

One of England’s biggest problems, for me – and long has it been the case – is picking players based on reputation. Players are picked because of who they play for (how many only enter the England set up once they sign for a big club?) and because of what they once were (Rooney, Owen). They’re even picked because of what people once thought they were going to be (Sterling).

It also seems like players are overlooked because they don’t play for the right teams, or don’t have the right reputation, such as Shawcross, Noble, Drinkwater, even Defoe (yes, there’s a random shout).

But here’s a novel thought: how about picking players on the things that really matter, such as form, and whether they’re the right man for the formation?

I think if Woy should face any criticism over selection decisions, it wasn’t so much the team that faced Slovakia, as so many of the pundits got up in arms about – again, I say, purely because of the result¹¹ – but for the selection against Iceland. The team he put out against Slovakia was a perfectly good selection, and well capable of earning a win. Plus, of the six changes he made, two were clamoured for (Sturridge and Vardy), two were like for like (Clyne was excellent, and though Bertrand had a bit of a stinker, it wasn’t to any great detriment), and the other two were understandable, and, had we taken even one of our many, many chances, would have been said to have come off.

Against Iceland, however, I couldn’t believe that Sterling was recalled, and can only imagine it was done as an attempt to boost his confidence – very dangerous thinking – while I was also disappointed to see Kane brought back. For me, Kane was not only off it during this tournament, but also in the month or so leading up to it. He looked tired, and I thought Rashford would have been a much better choice up front.

Again, pick the players in form, not the ones who were in form two months ago. Pundits like to say things like, “form is temporary, class is permanent” – but that sounds like bunkum to me. That’s the kind of thinking that took Michael Owen to the World Cup in 2006, simply hoping that something of his previous self would somehow miraculously emerge, with zero evidence to back that up.

A friend of mine, meanwhile, said we should have Fraser Forster in goal. I do think Forster’s probably now the better keeper, and arguably had a better season, but figured we’d be all right with Hart. He couldn’t possibly make two clangers in a week, right?

Still, I don’t think we can totally blame the selection for us losing the game, nor the players’ lifestyles, nor even how well Iceland played. For me, it was the age-old England problem: mentality.

You saw it in their faces the moment they went 2-1 down. The dread at contemplating what seemed to be unfolding. The weight of anxiety and expectation. They looked stressed out. They looked tense and panicked. Desperate. And desperation and tension and panic don’t often help footballers make smart decisions, nor play to their optimum level, nor, even, have the limbs working as they should.

Balls were misplaced, uncontrolled, passes going astray. Rooney went from an excellent opening half-hour to completely falling to pieces.

They had 70 minutes to get a goal back and they panicked. Compare that to when Wales conceded against Belgium: it didn’t phase them, they just carried on as before, and it worked. But something happened to England – to not just all the players but to the guys in the dugout too – as it so often does when the weight of expectation is too much.

Rabbits in the headlights. Paralysed by fear. Incapable of doing what we know they can do, and do on a weekly basis in the Premier League.

And if you think the Premier League is the problem, count the number of players from the other teams at the Euros who play in it. Or count the number of players from the 4 teams who made it to the semis, where, of the 92 players from those 4 squads, a full 38 currently play in the Premier League or other UK leagues (eg, Scottish or Championship) and a further 11 are former Premier League players¹².

It’s not lack of winter breaks, or lack of overseas experience, or not being good enough. It’s not rotating and resting a couple of players here and there, and not therefore sticking to the same 11, as Shearer likes to say. Yes, England were amazing against Holland in Euro ’96 – but then how does he explain the display that followed it against Spain, which we were extremely lucky to escape from, thanks to a couple of dodgy officials’ decisions and our one and only penalty shootout win?

He trumpets Euro ’96, but, again, it’s purely because of results, because of one great performance (and a further great goal), and because of how far we went. England were poor against Switzerland and fortunate against Spain. How well-loved would that team have been had Spain gone through instead, as they deserved?

Likewise, when Lineker harks back to Italia ’90, let’s not forget that we only beat Cameroon thanks to their insanity in the box, squeezed through against Belgium in the last minute of extra-time, and won just one of our three group games, thanks to a header from a set-piece that gave us a 1-0 win against Egypt.

In both of those tournaments there were some abject performances, some lucky wins, and maybe a total of three great displays. The only difference between then and now was that, by hook or by crook, they got results and this team didn’t. But to say those two teams performed any better than the current one would be stretching it, as far as I’m concerned.

I guess what I’m saying is it wasn’t that bad. To be honest, I think we could play Portugal next week – and give them a fit Ronaldo – and beat them convincingly. Denmark have won this tournament. Greece did it against a better Portugal team than this one. Winning, results, lifting the trophy – when it comes to knockouts and short-length competitions – isn’t necessarily an indicator of who was actually the better team, or how well a team has performed. Goals decide all that, and goals – or lack of them – are often the outcome of arbitrary, fortuitous, and unlikely happenstance. So why we are so quick to judge the performance of a team based on goals and the outcome of goals – the match result – is beyond me.

Goals and match results are what happens when the sum of a multitude of factors are taken into consideration, and two of the biggest factors are randomness and luck. Selection and performance are about the only things we can control. The rest of it is in the hands of fate.

Or, sometimes, in the hands of the referee, as the far superior German team might claim after their defeat against France in the semis.

Still, that doesn’t solve the problem of what exactly happened to those England heads when we went behind against an Iceland team who then had even more reason to “park the bus” than they had in their previous three games, and that’s what we need to address, because it’s an ongoing and endemic problem that I can only remember being overcome – when rather than panic and desperation, there was mental-strength and determination – by Beckham’s legendary display against Greece in 2001.

Maybe it’s not a bad thing that Roy’s gone. Maybe had we made the quarters or the semis – as a team we dominated went on to do, don’t forget – things that needed to be looked at wouldn’t be, and the cracks would have been painted over. Seeing Hodgson on the bench during those last fateful 70 minutes didn’t exactly fill me with confidence – he was no Conte, no Venables, no Ferguson – and if ever a team required a manager who could inspire them at half-time it was this one. But it seems like he wasn’t that guy. That the vision of tomorrow’s newspapers and Shearer’s scowling mug had already got the better of him. Paralysed into fear rather than motivated into action. Hopefully we can get somebody who can finally instil a winning mental attitude into the England football team, much as Ivan Lendl seems to have done for Andy Murray. Someone who can pick the right team for the right formation, superstars be damned. Someone who can look beyond a player’s reputation, beyond what he was in the past, and beyond an unfounded hope of what he might be in the future. And, above all, beyond any talk of pressure and tactics and selection and media, someone who can toss his bread in the air a half dozen times, and have it land butter-side up just often enough to make the difference between going down in infamy, and going down in history.

¹ I know that teams play differently depending on the score, which we could probably discern, but I think the point still stands.
² I didn’t see that one.
³ As well as very easily having drawn against Wales, and/or lost against Slovakia. Like I say, fine lines.
¹¹ I just watched the highlights again and it’s barely believable that we didn’t run away with that game the number of good chances we created.
¹² There may be a few more former Premier League players that I’m not aware of.

PS Here's mathematical proof that England were actually the best team there, given that we whupped Wales and Wales whupped Belgium; Belgium whupped Hungary, and Portugal could only scrape a draw against them; Portugal beat France and France beat Germany and Iceland - another team Portugal could only draw with - while Belgium whupped Ireland, who beat Italy, who beat Spain.

Basically, whichever way you look at it we absolutely dominated the team that dominated the team that put three goals past the team that won it.

Elementary algebra will show you that, had we faced Portugal in the final, it would have finished something 12-4 to England. And when you rank the teams using proper statistics, we see England were 1st, Wales 2nd, and the Republic of Ireland joint 4th!

Tip of the Day

If someone asks you if you're having a mid-life crisis and you feel you have to say "no" because saying "yes" will result in your being teased, laughed at and dismissed, kind of like you've just admitted to having 'man-flu' - DON'T.

Say "yes". Then go on and on about the futility of life. Then tell them you're thinking of putting an end to it all.

We'll see who's laughing by the end of it. :-D

A history lesson

So I'm telling a friend about a creationist guy I met who genuinely believed that Noah had dinosaurs on his ark and the reason he could safely carry T. Rex, et cetera was because he only took baby ones. Can you imagine! The madness!

But then she goes, but wait: I thought all the dinosaurs were killed in the Big Bang?

Oh my. You couldn't make it up.

Gary Speed

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE: SUICIDE

Gary Speed sat on the graveyard wall. Gary Speed was 42 years old and the manager of the Wales national football team. Gary Speed was thinking about killing himself.

In front of him was a gravestone; it read: Anthony Jenkins, 1887-1952; also Elizabeth Mary Jenkins, beloved wife of the above, 1901-1984, Reunited Forever. Then there followed the names of their children: Richard, Margaretta, Ernest, Ann; died 1944, 1919, 1973, and 1996 respectively.

Gary Speed shook his head. All this dying, all this being born. Two people presumably finding love, making babies, having happy times - 'cept one of the babies dies in infancy - and then the husband dies at a reasonable old age and Elizabeth lives her last 32 years alone.

The graveyard is full of these couples. Finding their soulmates. Remaining true. Doing everything they're supposed to do to earn their happy ever after. And from a still young 50 or 51 years old she - this Elizabeth, this Liza, this Liz - endures a whole three decades without her beloved.

Unheld, untouched, unfucked, unloved.

Mourning, and looking back.

Gary Speed thought about his own wife. She wasn't as pretty as she once had been, and if he was honest with himself, he knew he didn't fancy her anymore. This woman who had driven him crazy when they were first together...and now she drove him crazy in an altogether different way.

Probably they would get a divorce soon and some other man would tuck his children into bed at night, berate them over breakfast, help them with their homework.

Why had he ever brought them into this woe-filled world? What were their chances of escaping unscathed? Of not ending up where he was now?

A man who had done everything he ever wanted, achieved so much - and still could find no way to escape misery.

What hope would they have when glorious, carefree childhood came to an end, and teenage years and drugs and the encroaching ravages of a harsh and difficult world got its claws into them?

He hoped that they would grow up good, not fuck women over, not do horrible things or have horrible things happen to them. He hoped that they would find love, not think too much, and maybe find the contentment that had always eluded him. Live simple lives. Find some meaning. Be happy, like the happy people on TV.

******

He hoped that, but what he wished was that they had never been born. That he had known then what he knew now: that life was futile, and there was no escaping the horror of having to watch your own body shrivel and die before your eyes. Watching what was once strong and athletic and beautiful begin to crumble to dust. And for what?

******

safe from the storm, as he had promised - and then still left her alone.

The whole graveyard was full of them. Stories of shiny-faced, scabby-kneed youths playing in dirt, playing with dolls; and then grown handsome and full of cum; and then grown old, and withered, and glum.

Gary Speed lifted up his shirt and grabbed a handful of flesh. His belly seemed to be softening, expanding by the day.

What was happening to him? Wherefore now the sculpted, toned abs and thighs and arms of five years ago?

I should work out, thought Gary Speed, and get it back.

But then, how long would it last? How long would he have to keep it up? How long could he forestall the inevitable march of flab and sag and wrinkles and pain?

One day he would be an old man, unrecognisable in the mirror. Bald, maybe; certainly grey. An old man like his old granddad, bent and broken, incapable, doomed.

I am crumbling into dust, thought Gary Speed. 42 years of youth and fitness, a beautiful face and a beautiful body, and now it’s all being robbed away from me, the injustice of time and its one-way motion. The inevitable, painful, achingly-slow destruction of a human being.

Gary Speed didn’t like thinking like this, but these last few years he didn’t seem able not to.

Decisions, decisions... (probably my most popular blog post title)

Been offered a job teaching English at a very nice looking school in Cabo San Lucas. Supposed to give a reply soon. But not sure what to do.

I only just moved to Exeter, and I really like it here. It's great being somewhere sane, where people are happy and chill. Where I speak the same language. Where I can do all my things - work, health, hobbies, interactions - without the obstacles one finds in a foreign country.

I had thought, though, that I might end up back in the US at some point this summer. Lots of indicators that way. Though fading now, since I moved here.

Mexico could be good. I love Baja. Though I've little enthusiasm for Cabo as a city.

Still, San Jose del Cabo isn't too far away, and that's supposed to be a nicer place to live. Plus, there's my beloved hot springs, just up the road.

I imagine it'd be pretty sweet living somewhere sunny where it hardly ever rains. And I do love the desert.

Another benefit is maybe my US/Canadian friends would come see me, tempted by free accommodation near beautiful Mexican beaches. ;-)

Pros and cons whichever way you look at it; but that's just life. No guarantees. No assurances. Always a gamble.

No doubt the answer will come, in due course...

Trying to work it out

Only writing can save me now. Must get out of Yeadon. What am I doing in Yorkshire? When I love Exeter so much? What is the whole “get a job” thing – particularly when I already have a job for Matt?

What is going on with my teeth? Oh, how I wish I’d never gone to the dentist!

Being in Yeadon I can feel the gloom approaching again. The gloom that wasn’t there when I was down in Exeter. Thinking those darker thoughts about life as a whole when it’s just life here.

Again: why must I be in Yorkshire? Or has that time passed? I guess I will only find out when I go to Rothwell and sleep in Carl’s garage: more mad stuff.

Claire? My dad? He’s never going to die, is he?

Why can’t I live in Exeter? I love it there, and I’m healthier when I’m there. Must get out of Yeadon. Why is there even a question?

There isn’t. The question isn’t Yeadon – the answer’s obvious there – the question is Yorkshire.

Rothwell first. A night or two. See Claire. See how it feels, what arises.

I have a football game scheduled in Exeter for Saturday. What a fool! Why do I keep doing that?

Ed’s room? Living rough and free? I’m so tired of all of this…

God, you are such little help to me, really. How do I even know it’s you that’s communicating with me? So many mixed messages. Messages to live humbly and like everyone else. Messages of grandness. The triumph of the individual. The subversion of any kind of effort or standing out or separation from the masses. None of it makes any sense. From who come these dreams? From where my compulsion?

Where is the example of someone living how one should truly live?

Where the person I would look up to, and want to emulate?

Not among my friends – not Matt or Shawn or Shane or anyone.

Not among anyone I know about.

Only Amma – the craziest person I ever met, and the only non-crazy person I know. And how did she get to be how she is? By separating herself. By saying, no, I’m not doing what everyone else is doing. By journeying to the edge of madness and forgoing anything of this ‘normal’ life.

None of this makes any sense. And yet, here I am, hurtling towards old age and death, still none the wiser, with a foot in neither court.

I would marry someone if it were the right thing to do. But who?

Claire with her desire for babies, pointless chatter about trivial things, living on a boat in grim Yorkshire, pubs and beer drinkers and a life I despise?

No, I don’t think so. And yet…I would, if it were the right thing for me.

Sure, I love her, could love her. But not in the way she would want. Women demand. She doesn’t want me, and probably never did, just wants an idea of me, a me she thinks I could be with a bit of moulding.

Women. Amma and Mother Meera never showed any interest in any of that – so why should they tell me to walk down that path?

Because they’re different and know what’s best for me, and did what was best for them?

Prove it. Prove that by me. It’s just too much to take it on faith.

And Mother Meera. Always something there. I should go back and see her. I should take a trip somewhere…

Anyway. Do you hear me God? Are you out there? Are you real?

Sh, little Rory, you’re about to walk down paths you don’t need to, inspired by circumstances you could change in an instant. You don’t feel well in Yeadon; as though you were sitting in a noisy pub, simply remove yourself from it. That’s all.

You’re right.

And Exeter? I wanted to go there – I was all ready for it – but then what of the Leeds train station song and the Elise-related dream? What was that?

Was it that I should have stayed up here for something? For Kelly Burton?

No, not that.

Was it that by delaying my journey to Exeter things would have maybe worked out better with Elise?

Possibly. But that ship has sailed.

Was it that I was supposed to do something with Carl? But what? Can you really seeing me doing that job of his? It sounds so dreadful and vague and…I’m not sure I could do it anyway.

Helping him start a place where people can gamble? That’s hardly ‘right livelihood’, is it?

There’s only one purpose for his job: money.

And what of Mexico then? Is that “the job”? Should I really be making preparations for that? Is that where I was supposed to be a year ago? The end of my road? The place I imagined was promised to me after that whole weird America journey?

Or something a little closer to home? An Exeter PGCE? The whole old thing I wanted to do back in 2002 – except that too has been accomplished.

I don’t know. All I know is: I can go over to Rothwell today. I can check in with Exeter Ed. I can find out what’s going on with Mexico. I can write to someone in Exeter about a PGCE. I can look forward to a couple of weeks work on this thing with Matt. And sort out the weekend’s refereeing. And do a spot of laundry.

A to-do list. There’s not much more I can do than that. Alone in the world and with no help in sight, no one to turn to. No ‘Spiritual Father’ to whom I should confess my sins (what are my sins?) And no one, it seems, who knows the answers to these questions – except, maybe, for my ‘visions and dreams’, which may well be leading me to oblivion anyway.

Hey ho! It all ends in death when all’s said and done, and there’s no getting around that, no matter which road we take.

Weird old thing, this life…

Back in Yeadon

Well here I am once more in Yeadon. What a mad year it’s been! Up and down this country like a bloody yo-yo! I don’t know how many times I’ve made the journey north to south, south to north – and a bit of east to west and back again thrown in too. I guess I could find out by looking at my bank records – but let’s just say, it’s a lot.

And what happens next? Two and a bit weeks ago I moved to Exeter and loved it; but that didn’t last, for reasons beyond my control. Elise lost her marbles. And Yorkshire strangely called me – though really it had been calling me even before I left…

Beginning of April I’m finally free. Done my last bit of work for Ian. Elise ready to welcome me in. Train ticket booked down to London on the Monday. And then I’m at the station ready to go and…that song pops in my head – “if you leave me now…baby please don’t go” – and I’m thinking, no no, that can’t be right. But once down in London, on the morning of my Devon departure, there’s the weird awful dream of things going wrong with a good friend’s wife and…whaddya know, the whole thing came true. If it had been anything else, I would have heeded it, but I wanted Devon so bad. And it was so lovely there. But now…

But now I’m back in Leeds. Fulfilled my responsibilities with the Emmerdale charity tournament. Learned something there: next time someone asks me to do something four months in advance, tell them, maybe, but can you drop me a line a bit closer to the date? Like, one week before? I got myself into a hole. And then had to do all this to get out of it.

Weird, though, that there were those three things all arranged for the same four-day period, after a month-long blank in the calendar. I made it for two of them. Nothing much happened. And I’m pretty much right back where I was.

What happens next? Do I rejoin to Exeter? Move into Ed’s? Somewhere else? Just grab a tent and do my random hobo homeless thing, free from the shackles of possessions, comfort and commitment? Or pursue something with Carl, go live in his garage in Rothwell – is that where I should have gone the beginning of April? – and maybe look at this ‘work’ he wants me to do, even though I don’t much feel like doing it?

Claire lives just near there. But surely nothing more to do with her…

And then that dream yesterday morning, very vivid and real, Amma telling me in no uncertain terms, “go get a job. God likes people who work.” It’s so strong when I woke I felt in no doubt that that’s what I’m supposed to do. But what job? Where? If you want me to get one, then at least some clues. But, I mean, surely not Carl’s dubious internet business, with gambling and computers and too much work and nothing but money…

And once more I think about Exeter and a PGCE in RE…

Answers, please – ever answers. I suppose that’s always a possibility, much as I’ve gone off kids and teaching and education and stressy jobs. But a man’s got to do something. And, much like the ol’ MA, it is one of the few things I wanted to do but never did. And, I do like that university lifestyle…

But it’s not a job, it’s studying.

What job, Amma! What job?

I don’t much know what I’ve done this year. I left Leeds just after New Year with an idea that I’d visit friends in different places – Perlilly in Coventry, Matt and Easterly in Kent, Andrea in London, Bart and Elise in Exeter, David in Abingdon – and that turned into working for Matt (good for the finances and having at least a little something to do) and spending way too much time in London. I came mistakenly back to Yorkshire at the beginning of February when, probably, I should have stayed a bit longer down in Kent. And then mid-Feb I arranged the move in with Elise and have been pretty much kicking my heels since then. Planning too far in the future. Relying on others. Drifting in non-activity. A big chunk of February and March I ended up stuck in London, stuck at Andrea’s, going quietly mad. Chained to the work and to dentists. Chained to my own laziness and inertia and lack of direction. Chained to the whims of Bart and Elise. I knew I didn’t want to be floating through March, but I did it and it wasn’t good. Maybe I should have gone away – I got my passport – but all that passed me by too. Meanwhile, my dreams and signs seem intact, and seem to have guided me: away from Perlilly’s (I went, and it wasn’t good); away from Paul (didn’t go); away from Elise (went, not good); and back here to Yorkshire, to not knowing what to do next, to being told to get a job.

If dreams and signs are working…but nothing last night, and I don’t know what to do next, beyond go weirdly live in Carl’s garage for a day or two and see how that feels, meanwhile, probably, thinking all the time of Exeter, as I am now while I type this.

Man, I love it there! Feel good there. Smile and feel peace and run and meditate and talk to people, like to be out and about, look into getting into things.

So why back up here in Yorkshire? Why not allowed to be in the one place I feel good?

Or, having done that charity tournament, having sorted many things out, having dealt with most of my possessions, having picked up my letter, having (later today) sorted things with Carl, and maybe even Claire – does that mean I’m now free to go where I want, do what I want to do?

And what about the job in Mexico? That’s a job. That maybe makes perfect sense, in the grand scheme of things.

“Apply for everything, take what comes”?

Does that mean I should apply for PGCE in Exeter, apply for this and that, and see where the chips lay once done? But shouldn’t we be getting something on? It’s May, for God’s sake! How much more of this weird year of not really achieving anything am I to do?

And what of writing? What of publishing? What of the ideas that plague my head, follow me everywhere I go, but which I ignore, run away from, and know, ultimately, are just kind of fruitless? Just another nut in a sea of bonkers humans with weird ideas that come to naught.

Iboga clinic. Little place. Flotation tank. Growing mushrooms. And women like Abi and Abbie, Claire and Ali, Exeter unknowns, Bristol Bertie. Sara forever in my head, a full NINE YEARS on. And who knows what Mexico might bring?

It’s a mad world, a mad life. And me right in the middle of it, sort of completely mad and at the same time feeling more sane that almost anyone I know, no booze or ciggies or weird repressed anger or strange desires or slave to London – but, still, mostly just staring at screens and clicking and scrolling like the rest of them, embarrassed again to have been drawn into – ugh! – online chess (but hopefully now free) and pretty just thinking, not doing.

Point the way, oh Lord! If work is what it is, then fine. But give me some direction; it’s all I ask.

Point the way and let me walk the path. There must be an answer. You told me about when to go to Greece. You showed me that Canada, and even the US was the right thing. You…gave me the vision of concrete, consumerist England, and I’m here now eating that. Prepared to up sticks and return once more to America if need be. Freed of all things and ready to go at a moment’s notice. Or to wear a uniform in Mexico and teach sweet children how to say things in English. Or to dwell in my motherland and be whatever you want me to be. Or to type, or a mixture of all of the above. But I can’t figure this out on my own, I need help. I need direction. I need instructions. I need to know what my soul wants, what’s best for me and the world in a real, true way. Not just fripperies. Not just lining my pocket. Something a little grander than that. But what?

Have you a plan for me? I always thought you did, that Mother Meera was somehow guiding my life. But what plan? Other than to take me to the edge of madness with nothing left to try, and on my knees like Neale Donald Walsch to finally receive one’s beyond-middle age reward.

Is that what all this is about? Yet – either way, there must be a next step. So all I ask is that you help me to see it, and grant me the guts to take it, and hope that I can persevere.

C’mon, dear Lord – leader of my soul, orchestrator of this mad, merry dance – just show me the way to where we shall wander next. I know it’s not Yeadon. But where it is, I haven’t a clue. Or rather, I’ve lots of clues – too many, perhaps – so need your guiding hand to point me the way.

You get the message. I seek. I ask. I hope and pray that I will receive, and find.

Amen.

Your loving son,

Rory x