Thoughts on Rent, Football & Eurovision

When everybody was chanting 'It's coming home' at the recent Euro football competition I didn't realise they were singing about me potentially going back to my mother's house to live at the age of 46, although I do object to being referred to as 'it!' Yes, now that the pandemic has been declared 'over' by politicians and the eviction ban has been lifted on tenants I've been slammed with a whopping 15% increase in rent and there's naff all I can do about it, other than pack up and 'do one' as I believe it is fashionable to say.

Yes, I am one of those old fashioned people who still uses a property for its traditional purpose of living in it rather than for making oodles of money. As rents shear away from wages at an exponential rate I seriously do wonder what will happen in years to come. Will we be one big happy homeless nation while a minority get to rattle around in ten properties each, letting out cupboards for £2,000 a month for us to squat in? I anticipate a mass exodus from this particular block that has been home to me for five years, soon to be filled with London commuters on four times the salary. The great unquestionable God of Market Forces has spoken.

Free market lovers say that there is no 'magic money tree' when it comes to funding public services but when it comes to mere mortals paying rent they expect us to find a whole forest!

Well, I've been looking for one of these 'magic money forests' but all I found were a few vines - they were sour grapes. Boom boom! But no, these magic money forests do exist, but they can only be found offshore and they seem to be for the exclusive use of millionaires and billionaires - you know, in places like the Cayman Islands. 

So what of the football?

As Bruce Forsyth used to say 'Didn't they do well?'

As well as Brucie's game shows, Worzel Gummidge was a popular programme when I was a child. It featured a scarecrow that came to life and generally tried to win the affection of a stuck up wooden doll called Aunt Sally, who used always used to buy two cakes in the local café, one for eating and one for throwing.

Now this came to mind because I wondered if football fans do a similar thing with beer. Do they buy one pint for drinking and one for launching whenever a goal is scored? I can't quite understand the whole drink-throwing craze. Surely it is possible to contain one's excitement just long enough to put the glass down? And if not, how did people manage to keep the liquid in the receptacle for the entire history of football but suddenly find an irresistible urge to hurtle it in the mid teenies, or whatever they decided to call the decade from 2010 to 2019?

I'm guessing the most sensible approach is to buy two pints and to drink four fifths of the first one, leaving four fluid ounces in the bottom while you enjoy your second pint. As the players near the opposite goal you then pick up the depleted pint which will contain just enough liquid to made a splash should a goal be scored. When the pressure is off you merely revert to your full pint and continue supping contentedly.

The other obvious aspect of this is that of discomfort. One can only hope that the goals one wants are scored late in the game to minimise the time spent soaking wet. Another aspect is that one probably doesn't want to arrive home smelling like a brewery, that's assuming you can afford to have a home. If you're reading this huddled in a sleeping bag on a slowly melting Antarctic ice shelf in 2100 because that's all you can afford, 'homes' were like warm boxes with people inside.

Observing all the airborne beverages on the TV news I wondered how fans were going to top it should England have actually won the entire competition. Unfortunately we didn't get to find out, but casting my mind back to those TV shows of the 1980s, perhaps Tiswas-style carnage with custard pies and buckets of water would have been in order!

In the end Italy scooped the double whammy of winning the Euro competition and the Eurovision Song Contest, another institution that I cannot get my head around.

Now I'll concede that there are lots of reasons that European countries may not be huge fans of 'Royaume Uni' at the mo, but this is a 'song' contest, not a popularity contest. Surely the clue is in the name. It's not called the 'Eurovision Political Affiliation Contest With Added Music' is it? Admittedly our song wasn't amazing (are any of them?), but I still can't see how it was so bad that we deserved 'nil points.'

Personally I feel sorry for the performers. It should be an honour to represent the UK on the world stage, but they remind me of soldiers being ordered out of the trenches to face the onslaught like lambs to the slaughter.

And talking of music, isn't it time the line in the ubiquitous football anthem was updated to 'fifty years of hurt?' from 'thirty.' Let's hope Gareth Southgate's boys can triumph before it reaches sixty. Or indeed before I reach sixty! Come on England!