By Myles Palmer
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Keep the simplicity !
That’s what most of your replies say : We like the simplicity.
Other emails say : Well done, good luck, keep it going.
David Milroy says, “Myles irritates intensely at times with his blether and staccato style, but his writing is mostly easy on both eye and brain even when the content is nonsense.”
Fair comment, mate !
It’s nice to have so many thoughtful readers. And it’s surprising that so many enjoy the ramblings of an old hippie football fan.
I HAD NOT realised that I’ve been writing here for eight years.
The highlights of those years have been the emails from people who say, “Thanks for giving me something I can’t get anywhere else.”
When I first went online in 1998, Arsenal had won the double and I did not know what a website was and the World Cup was about to start, so we did fb22, our spin-off, about France 98, very spontaneously.
It was one of those go-with-the-flow things and when the football stopped I still had a new toy, so I wrote a blog, although the term “blog” had not yet been invented.
Fb22 was like a diary. It was : Last night I went out with Jeff Dexter to a party and a showcase. Last night we saw Henry Rollins at the Barbican. These are my 40 favourite gigs. These are my 10 albums of the year. And so on
MONTHS AGO I decided to say something about women readers.
But I never got round to it.
Some women wrote to me and said : We love football too, give us some credit, we don’t watch just to see the legs of the players.
I know that. Football is for everybody and ANR is for everybody.
I’ve never had a problem with women watching football or playing it. My attitude has always been : If girls want to play football, no force on earth will stop them. And if girls don’t want to play football, no force on earth will make them play.
Our daughter Caroline played for Mill Hill Girls for two seasons.Their coach Ian, a QPR supporter, was absolutely brilliant with the girls. He got them fit, organised and motivated.
But he had to take a helluva lot of backchat. And Zoey’s attitude could have been better. Zoey is Andy Impey’s half-sister and if she disagreed with what Ian was saying she used to turn her back on him.
I never saw the team play, but we watched them train. On Saturdays we would pick up Laura and Natalie, the three girls small enough to fit in the back of the car, and drive up to Copthal (Barnet).
Jan and I would swim, have a coffee, walk round to watch training, zoom home for lunch. Then Caroline and I would get the tube to Highbury together, one to the Junior Gunners, the other to the press box.
Anyway, there you have it. Myles Palmer does not think football is for blokes.
But he thinks shopping is for girls.
One day, during Caroline’s gap year, mother and daughter were on the landing outside my office, about to go out.
“We’re going to Brent Cross, do you want anything?”
I did not reply, but I stood up and unbuckled my belt and took off my grey combat trousers and said, “Can you get me another pair of these?”
TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY, so I feel philosophical and nostalgic.
It’s a very warm, still, sunny day in London and I’ve been reading the Guardian Birthdays to see who shares the 17th with me.
Thierry Henry, Robert De Niro, V.S. Naipaul, Belinda Carlisle, George Melly and Kirk Stevens.
I’ve seen many of Thierry’s goals, was galvanised by Taxi Driver, loved Eva Peron the book, liked The Go-Gos Reunion tour at Shepherds Bush Empire, reviewed Elvin Jones/George Melly for The Times, and interviewed Kirk Stevens, Cliff Thorburn and Bill Werbeniuk for Radio Times.
MICHAEL HAS taken to playing a couple of my Seventies albums, so while he’s out – rebuilding a restaurant in Kilburn – I’ve been having a go on his decks while Jan ices the home-made cake that sister-in-law Louise brought round three weeks ago. Marzipan is made from almonds and sugar, apparently.
I put on Wild And Peaceful by Kool & the Gang, all killer bass riffs and grainy horn lines and grunting vocals on Party Stuff and Jungle Boogie, and rippling ballads like Heaven At Once where the group streeeeeeeeetch out with liquidsweet guitar and innocent talk-vocals :”We are scientists of sound, we’re mathematically putting it down.”
We’re having a barbecue tonight, so I dunno if I will see France v Ivory Coast, might tape it.
Best friend Doug phoned from Antibes yesterday and said, “It would be great if Arsenal could nick it on Sunday.”
He rang this morning and said, “France have picked a very strong team.”
August 17th 2005.