I gather that Lady Nina wants £13,500 per share. Who will pay that?
Apart from that : Wow ! It’s over ! The football season is over.
Inter v Bayern will be a war of attrition between two defensive managers.
The Arsenal season is no more.
What a big relief that is ! No more walkovers against the worst Porto side we have ever seen, no more 3-0 home defeats by Chelsea, no more Gooners ringing me up, moaning about a team that can’t even win when it’s 2-0 up at Wigan with 10 minutes to go.
Nothing much happening. Fabregas has not gone, nobody has arrived.
The Arsenal team needs experience and power but I’m not holding my breath because I don’t believe AW will sign enough experience or power.
I have no more to say about the team.
My bottom line, as I said two weeks ago, is that third place isn’t what it used to be.
Today I see that Jose Mourinho agrees with me. But he said it in a different way.
He welcomed Chelsea’s double of League and FA Cup and praised Carlo Ancelotti, but he reckons Chelsea\’s title victory, with the lowest points total since 2003, was helped by declines at Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool.
In The Sunday Times, Mourinho said, “People can write what they want. I\’m happy Chelsea did it. I want it very clear I\’m happy they won. They did what they did, and we did what we did. They won after four years, we won after 50. They score more goals, we made more points. They were out in the Champions League last 16, we were out in the semi-final.
“They won the FA Cup without playing one single big team, we won the Carling Cup playing Man United in the semi-final and Liverpool in the final. Their shirt was blue, our shirt was blue. Different time, different opponents, success. And for Chelsea this is what matters.â€
Any other thoughts ? Yes, let’s forget about football for a month.
So many other things to enjoy : music, literature, art, cricket, tennis, golf, alfresco dining and a million other pleasures and pastimes.
On Saturday I was a bit knackered after 2,000 of us had a rocking Friday night with the Alabama 3 at the Forum in Kentish Town.
Last Tuesday night I went with an actor friend to see One Night in Turin.
Recently, I was telling him about my memoir-in-progress and he loaned me Praeterita by John Ruskin, which he bought in the art critic’s former house in the Lake District. The title is Latin for Past Things.
He loaned me that book because what I was saying about my Preface reminded him of lines from the introduction to Ruskin’s autobiography.
Ruskin had said that, since this would be his final book, his avowed principle was that he would write “frankly, garrulously, and at ease ; speaking, of what it gives me joy to remember, at any length I like…and passing in total silence things which I have no pleasure in reviewing.”
If I was being frank and garrulous, I’d have to say that when I look back on 2009, I have one regret : I wish I had listened to Salman Rushdie.
Around Xmas-New Year 2008/2009, I read The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 3, in which Rushdie was asked : Do you get up in the morning and write first thing?
Yes, absolutely. I don’t have any strange, occult practices. I just get up, go downstairs, and write. I’ve learned that I need to give it the first energy of the day, so before I read the newspaper, before I open the mail, before I phone anyone, often before I have a shower, I sit in my pyjamas at the desk. I do not let myself get up until I’ve done something that I think qualifies as working.
That line has haunted me for the last 17 months. Hardly a day has gone past without that phrase jumping into my head : The first energy of the day.
Now, 17 months too late, I’m listening to Salman Rushdie.
Therefore, pretty much every day from now on, I intend to write my book before I write ANR. After 12 years of bashing out thousands of ANR pieces in the mornings, I’ll be happier this way. And what I write on ANR may be different for that reason.
Last Xmas-New Year, I read The Paris Review Interviews Vol. 4, which has an interview with Jack Kerouac, who said, “Oh, the Beat Generation was just a phrase I used in the 1951 written manuscript of On The Road to describe guys like Moriaty who run around the country in cars looking for odd jobs, girlfriends, kicks.”
I read this stuff because I love books and respect great authors.
Also in Volume 4, William Styron says, “The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.”
Hakuri Murakami says, ” I think memory is the most important asset of human beings. It’s like a kind of fuel; it burns and warms you.”
Philip Roth says, “Each one of one’s books is a blast, clearing the way for what’s next.”