WORLD CUP CHICKEN

It’s staying home, it’s staying, chicken’s staying home…

We’re not a competitive family. Well, not that much. Let’s just say there’s a strong desire in all of us to be winners, not losers so whenever there’s any kind of competition, pub quiz, sporting event, etc then naturally everyone goes all out to be top of the heap.

The World Cup tournament is no exception. When it comes to footie, there are long-standing family traditions to abide by namely the winning of the World Cup Chicken.

Three wings on a shirt, Chicken cup still gleaming…

The World Cup Chicken Trophy

This trophy almost as prestigious as the real one resides at the front of our cocktail cabinet, emerging every four years for the family footie sweepstake.

I can’t even recall how I acquired the thing – probably scooped up on some bygone charity shop shopping trip but even with its badly hand-painted exterior, beady eyes and random gold spots, it is a thing of beauty. It’s also the perfect repository for our pound coins, entry fee and prize money for our sweepstake. Due to inflation, each coin now acts as a token fiver as that’s what the winner receives from each participating family member.

Place your bets

Teams are drawn totally at random, names written on scraps of paper pulled from a Tupperware container that’s ceremoniously passed round in a flurry of laughing and much larking around. Even at this stage, competitive banter abounds as teams as loudly cheered or booed before being hastily jotted down then officially circulated on a spreadsheet to prevent any allegations of cheating or corruption.

The draw

Once drawn, that’s your footballing lot. No selling or swapping of teams with other family members is permitted. Your destiny or path to lifting the Chicken is completely in the lap of the Gods or rather the numpties on the pitch.

But it doesn’t end there as someone’s got to update the spreadsheet. Guess who? It’s the person with the least interest in football but who loves tinkering with spreadsheets and has nothing better to do since leaving the rat race. I’ll have you know, I take this job very seriously. I may not watch any of the games but believe me, rigorous checking of results follows.

To keep up the family fun, I email the spreadsheet round after each major stage in the tournament accompanied by some frivolous punditry, banter and other tongue-in-cheek remarks designed to gee up everyone.

As teams get knocked out, things get quite high-spirited as anyone still left in at this stage is mentally drawing up a list of things they’ll spend that prize money on (all of £36) and hoping they’ll be the one who gets to keep the Chicken for the next four years.

If Spain reach the final in any given World Cup year, there’s a family pilgrimage to the Ancient Mariners house to watch ‘El Partido’ (the match), sink a few beers and be proud of our Spanish heritage. Faces painted in red and yellow and wearing a motley assortment of footie kits, red T-shirts or random Hispanic themed garments to cheer on our team. Vamos! It’s such a hoot!

A tense finale to this year’s tournament between Argentina (daughter) and Spain (other half), with the best team giving those barging Argies a deserved thrashing. GOL!!!!!!

Spain lifts the trophy

World Champions 2026 - Spain

Having lifted the Chicken, scooped up his winnings, the other half has proudly hung his Spanish football shirt out of the bedroom window so that all the neighbourhood can see that in this household, it’s Viva Espana and not Three Lions.

What will the neighbours think?

BURN 'EM!

I don’t like Mondays, least of all those Mondays where a new Prime Minister is being ushered in to No 10.

The question in our household is not what policies will be proposed by this new incumbent but how long he’ll last in the hot seat. There’s another 3 years until the next general election and at today’s current PM replacement rate then we could easily see one, possible two more in power before we hit the polling stations.

Any other disappointed Muse fans reading this post? Well, weep no more at the lack of decently-priced tickets for their gigs for I have discovered the antidote to this dynamic pricing snake bite which I’m going to share with the world at large. It's Cydonia Knights.

A brilliant tribute to Muse

Cydonia Knights are billed as the UK’s premier Muse tribute band and having checked out their grooves last Friday night at The Brook, Southampton, I can honestly say that unlike Ticketmaster, they didn’t disappoint. Great gig!

They may have lacked pyros or the over-the-top visual stage show that usually accompanies well established bands but musically, I shut my eyes and was instantly transported back to my favourite Muse album – The Resistance.

‘You’re beginning to sound like Jeremy Corbyn’s sister’ groaned the other half as from my bar stool I began to spout forth on how the dynamic ticketing menace could be quashed once and for all if every gig-going punter voted with their feet en masse and just stopped buying tickets. 

Hype. Demand. Price Hike. That’s the formula used to manipulate fans into coughing up more than is decent to watch musical acts but if there were no audiences then surely things would have to change? Up the revolution! That’s what I say (fist pump).

Tribute bands – the closest you’ll get to your heroes at a fraction of the price. These are the unsung stalwarts of the music world. And just to give you an idea of how cost effective it is to follow these bands then here’s a numerical example to put things into perspective:

Cheapest single ticket for Muse at the O2 London on Ticketmaster = £113

Single ticket for Cydonia Knights at The Brook = £15

Seven fans can go to see a Muse tribute band for the same price as one Ticketmaster seated ticket.

Another thing about tribute bands is that whilst many of them may not physically resemble those that they are paying homage to like The Devout (Depeche Mode tribute); they often give fans a better listening experience usually playing longer sets so you get more bang for your buck.

These humble bands are not hampered by having to promote a new album so can deliver all those popular favourite tracks beloved by fans plus throw a few obscurer album tracks into the mix. Tracks that many real bands rarely play live. Yeah, Radiohead. I still remember your gig at the O2 where you failed to play ‘Creep’ – the track your fans were most desperate to hear on the night.

And so, this brings me neatly back to our new PM. Is he the real PM thing or just a bad tribute to a band of manipulative, cowardly, Labour party reprobates who will throw him under the political bus as soon as he shows he’s got a mind of his own and isn't toeing the party line?

‘Burn ‘em!’ is what we’re all likely to be shouting after the next Budget.

NHS - NOT GOOD ENOUGH

Can’t we just fast-forward to autumn? I whined to the other half as we plodded round Worthing last weekend, sweating like pigs and chugging down water like it’s going out of fashion. This super-hot summer has become almost as tedious as all that tennis on the telly.

It's funny how all media reporting has failed to highlight the impact of this year’s ‘El Nino’ weather phenomena on current conditions, preferring instead to hammer home the point that the reason we’re all frying is pretty much our fault. Oh yes, should I mention 1976? That mother of all heatwaves. And also, an El Nino year.

Like the proverbial elephant, I remember summer 1976. Catholic secondary school. Early teens. Lessons under shady trees on the school playing fields. Knee high socks could be swapped for ankle socks or sandals. For once, ties banished to the outer recesses of your floordrobe. Hurrah! There were no school closures in them days.

Hot weather is no laughing matter for the elderly or infirm. Now is definitely not a good time to get sick. Not that there is any particular period when going down with a bug or two is preferable but in today’s NHS world, patients may as well be sat under a shady tree on a school playing field because trying to get a quick or timely diagnosis on anything is pointless.

The saga of mother’s chronic conditions continues. I’m now on her GP’s speed-dial as in my role of care-concierge, calendar updater, prescription collector and chauffeur to the ancient wonder, I am also first in the chain of command on all things medical.

‘Eez bed neeuws’ uttered the good doctor in an Eastern European accent that would have gone unnoticed in the Kremlin.

This ‘bed neeuws’ or rather bad news, is that the NHS’s Iron Curtain Deficiency Clinic have refused to accept mother’s referral for further investigation of her ongoing anaemia and iron deficiency on the basis that her ‘markers’ appear borderline. In their view, she doesn’t meet the ‘criteria’. What criteria would that be exactly? The criteria that her anaemia may not be a sign of something seriously wrong with her?

I held my tongue as the doctor read me the letter of response sent by the specialist department. Outrageous! I thought as an explosive barrage of expletives detonated silently in my head. I appreciate the NHS is skint but to play God with sick people’s lives is beyond the pale. Who in the NHS will take responsibility if mother deteriorates further whilst waiting for someone, somewhere to conduct specialist investigation of her conditions? It’s a ***king disgrace, is what it is!!

What’s even more outrageous, is that according to Doctor Google this situation is not new. Reading this article published in May 2022, it seems this practice is what the health service prescribes at large:

https://www.patientsafetylearning.org/blog/rejected-outpatient-referrals-are-putting-patients-at-risk-and-increasing-workload-pressure-on-gps 

Happy to provide advice and guidance but anything like proper testing, in-person examinations or specialist consultations then forget it. Not a good time to get sick, not now, not ever.

As I’ve said many a time on this blog - pushing out care into the community, things are only going to get worse as time goes on. The NHS has thrown up a blockade so formidable that not even Trump can bomb his way out of it. Seeing your GP is going to be the end of the line for most of us. Anything else and it’ll cost you. Privately.

There’s not a day goes by when some poor bugger has had to resort to private healthcare in order to get drugs, surgical interventions or access to new treatments that would not otherwise have been possible on the NHS. The media is full of these tales. The sad thing is that once-upon-a-time these stories would have been an exception, now they’re just the norm.

It just isn’t good enough!

BOOKING.MEH

Cyber life is becoming more and more of a gigantic pain in the arse as time goes on. Websites that could once be trusted to delivery a quality service or product now appear to be nothing but platforms for shysters.

Rapidly going down the shitter in my estimation is that popular website Booking.com. Where once you could select guaranteed hotel or other types of accommodation for a reasonable price, now it’s become a repository for foreigners offering sub-standard rooms that blow you out at the last minute throwing a gigantic spanner in your travel plans.

It has been my misfortune to be at the receiving end of these practices not once but three times in the past few months. Cheap accommodation booked for concerts well in advance, cancelled just days before travel leaving me fuming and totally in the lurch.

Cancellations happen – yeah, I get that. Sometimes there are mix ups with room bookings, etc. Nobody’s perfect but when this starts to happen regularly particularly during dates when there are multiple big events or concerts happening at the same time especially in London then I start to get a bit suspicious.

Take my room booking for this weekend for example. I’d booked 2 nights at a property in Woolwich more than six months ago costing £64 per night. Bargain price for a weekend in London. I messaged the property mid-June to confirm my time of arrival as they’d requested.

Then today, two days before I’m due to jump on a train to the Big Smoke. Wham! Sorry, your room’s cancelled. There’s been a double booking so sorry, you’re getting canned. Tough.

What! Exactly when did this double booking occur? You failed to mention this 3 weeks ago when I messaged so I can only assume I’ve been given the boot either because the Hyde Park festival is on or because England miraculously qualified for the World Cup quarter finals and are playing Norway this weekend. Maybe you’ve found another sucker that’ll pay more for a bed than I am or you’re having all your mates round to watch the footie.

Either way, I’m now as mad as hell because I can’t get my train tickets refunded so £42 out of pocket.

My previous cancellations followed the same pattern. Harry Styles plays Wembley so my cheap rooms booked in Camden got unexpectedly cancelled and so did the replacement rooms at the Colonnade Hotel. Bit of a coincidence or what?

Needless to say, I shall in future be using Travelodge, Premier Inn or any other bona fide hotel chain if I feel the need to visit the City so your loss not mine.

Let this be a warning to anyone out there that is using Booking.com to snag themselves a bargain break. Be prepared for last minute heartache and headache. Should you be using this platform then make sure that whatever arrangements you’ve made are fully refundable even if it means paying that little bit extra for travel or accommodation.