Pass the Porto

This blog will be five years old in June, and I am around 35 posts away from a total of 500, so expect a few short and potentially rubbish pieces in the coming months as I strive to keep up with my number superstitions and coincide the two.

Thanks to the rather hysterical nature of the security services in this country, which could have resulted at the very least in a Dooce, and possibly even worse, I have chickened out of a piece on Abu Qatada, which remains on draft. I will instead step on the safer ground of the Europa League, whilst studiously avoiding any mention of that C----- T----.

After an ultimately satisfactory if not entirely satisfying victory at Villa Park, thoughts must now turn to the utterly pointless and seemingly endless slog of the inferior European club competition. I don't know much about Porto, other than that they have been among the best Portuguese teams for some time, although the once great heights of clubs in that country have not been reached in recent years, so their title win - albeit by a margin of 21 points - last season (wonder if AVB wishes he had stayed on there now?) can perhaps be taken with a small pinch of sodium chloride, though they did of course win the bloody Europa Cup as well. Hulk is there to smash and they have Maicon and Danilo. It's a tough one to call, and I don't expect it to be an easy game, though it may be suited to the style of Merlin. Looks unlikely that Yaya will get a run out, which is a shame, and let's hope Mario doesn't blow it again. It's on ITV in any case, so that's got to be good.

I've started reading Notes on a Scandal by Zöe Heller and, although the style initially put me off, I'm now beginning to enjoy it. In the early chapters, Heller mentions Kit Kat by name and then goes on to refer to 'instant noodles in plastic pots'. Why couldn't she just say Pot Noodles? But there is some redemption in the use of the word 'gelid' in chapter 5, and I'm enjoying (in a purely literary way, you understand) the sexual frisson of the teacher's affair with the adolescent boy. It's made me think of myself as a 15 year old, and made me realise how very unappealing I undoubtedly would have been for any bored pottery teacher, especially one who looked like Cate Blanchett. Ah well.