World War Zee

World War Z

We saw the 3D version. It’s a good film. The tension builds to an almost unbearable pitch at times. We jumped (twice in tandem, once me in isolation, DLL remembered the trailer, it was over ten minutes since I’d seen the trailer, therefore I’d forgotten it).

We didn’t know whether to ask for WW Zed or WW Zee at the ticket counter. I went for Zee. The people in front of us went for Zed. But they left before the end, the oddballs.

What a load of old-fashioned rubbish

We got rid of that absurd old money long ago. It was absolute tosh. Twelve pennies in a shilling. Twenty shillings in a pound. The guinea, a pound and a shilling. Crowns, half crowns, florins. Utter tripe. Garbage of the highest order.

Then we’ve almost got rid of imperial measurements. They made life easy, didn’t they? Twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, the chain (twenty two yards), the furlong (ten chains, 660 feet) and the mile: 1,760 yards. Honestly, what is going on? Sixteen ounces in a pound, but twenty fluid ounces in a pint, fourteen pounds in a stone, the senselessness is endless and mind-boggling.

So. DLL and I (opposed by BLISS, the traditionalist) are proposing new weekdays (day 1, day 2, day 3, and so on) and months (month 1, month 2, and so on) and there’ll be no more of this Thirty days hath (I mean, ‘hath’? are you two million years old or impersonating Jonathan Woss?) September nonsense because they’re all jolly well having the same.

We Googled it. Tuesday’s named for a one-armed God. That’s hardly God-like. What’s he the god of? The disabled? The dextrously challenged? We no longer believe in Thor and Odin, why name days after them?

If we have to have names, let’s make them meaningful:

Bad mood back to work day.

Not much better than yesterday day.

At least there may be some Champions’ League football day.

Laugh at S***s in the European little-league day.

Almost the weekend day.

Football (winter) or cricket (summer) day.

Roast diner day (winter). Lawnmower day (summer).

Andy Dunn(ce)

I know I’m easily baffled, but why is it that when anyone other then sports writers do that rivers of blood, immigrants taking our jobs and houses thing they’re immediately seen as the fascist gits they are, yet when sports writers and pundits have a go they’re talking good old-fashioned common sense.

Let’s get rid of the urban myth. Once and for all. The facts:

• You don’t win at international level by having hundreds of decent players. They’re good but not good enough. You do that by having a squad of twenty or thirty that are head and shoulders above the rest. Importing the best of the best for them to play against on a regular basis can only help, not hinder developing that elite.

• The precedent 1: county cricket clubs are limited in the number of foreign players they can have on their books. This was the case when England were struggling and when England were the top test-playing nation and remains the case now when they’ve been knocked off that perch.

• The precedent 2: we’ve won one world cup*. We were nowhere near good enough for years before 1966, with only a smattering of foreign players in our league teams. We’ve been nowhere near good enough since, with and without the foreign players.

The pundits, journalists, media, should be full of experts dispelling the myths that proliferate at the drinking men’s club bar and works canteen; not sad and sorry hacks churning out populist rubbish. Very wrong, unsubstantiated rubbish.


*This may not be strictly true, but we've only won the one under anything like the current competition rules.