English: 116 Clique on DWYL Tour 2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Because my to-do list is not full enough of things which are neither urgent nor important I subscribe to The Guardian’s daily e-mail about football.
It’s called the Fiver because it’s meant to arrive at about five o’clock, and when I first saw it the question that came to mind was: How on earth is there enough new to provide a daily update on football? Well, a couple of weeks ago they really struck something by explaining themselves. Here’s a brief quote:
…right now only one thing seems certain: despite repeated Fiver campaigns, football will never stop. Every second of every day for the rest of your life, there will be a happening of football going on, some story, some outrage, some brouhaha. At the exact moment you die, many years from now, football will be happening somewhere. And in the moments after your death football will just keep happening, all over the place, horribly vital, fresh storms and spats and swoops and sagas brewing up even as your eyes close for the last time and light begins to fade, and the last sight or sound your senses are aware of is a sensational swoop for a 13-year-old Peruvian wonderkid, or a managerial reshuffle in Russia, or a man saying a thing about another thing solely because he was asked a question by a man whose job it is to ask questions and thereby create out of thin air some football to happen.
Now what’s really depressing about that quote is that it’s actually true. And not just true about football, but true about all sorts of things. Other things that will simply roll on into the future, with or without us, include such joys as politics and soap operas, and thinking about this reminds me that we only live once.
When my eyes are preparing to close for the last time will I be thinking about the possibility of a Peruvian wonderkid becoming a world-famous footballer, or will I be reflecting on a life well-lived and a legacy left behind me?
