We're on our way to Wembley

Manuscripts don't burn

Book burning is absolutely wrong. Like flag burning, or effigy burning, but, somehow, infinitely worse. It says “not only am I a fanatic and barking mad, but I'm also an idiot and intend to deliberately remain so”. The burners of the world will probably disagree. That's how I see it.

The manuscripts don't burn quote is from The Master and Margarita. A book that, along the way to its eventual construction, did have the manuscript burnt, by the author, living in fear of political oppression in Stalin's Russia. A book that the author retained in his memory. Now more than ever, book burning is an empty gesture. Everything exists electronically, in a number of places, simultaneously. The minute I press “publish” this is on the Google server, it's backed up, it's dropboxed into the cloud. Not only is book burning a moronic gesture of crass stupidity, it's an utterly empty one. Meaningless. Pitiful.

Only fanatics burn books, and only religious and political fanatics at that.

Yes, it was an awesome fry up

ME: I don't want to complain or anything, but my full English hasn't turned up.

KIZ: Get the stuff and I'll do you one.

ME: I was only joking.

KIZ: [A short time later] here's the shopping list.

That was that. Absolute bargain. Whiz down to Lidl and back. Quick David Gower, and there it was: egg, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomato, beans, fried bread (I'm sure I've forgotten something). Sorry, Harlequins. It was my fault, I cost us the game, but I was just too full up to manage the lucky kebab roll on the bus.

Wembley, more awesomeness

I know you're supposed to moan about the transport and this and that, but the stadium is superb, the arch is majestic, the views spectacular. Even the toilet provision is adequate (not something in the usual stadium design manuals).

Thanks to BLISS for the chance to get there, and to DLL for the company, and to KIZ for having me so full up I even managed to resist every single tempting smelling food outlet along Wembley Way.

Unfortunately, and, I think, inexplicably, given the chance to impress a 83,000 crowd including loads of possible converts to the cause, 'Quins decided to rest Chris Robshaw, Mike Brown and Danny Care, and didn't offer much significant resistance to a dominant Saracens team.

The dreaded Mexican wave

Strettle was knocked unconscious. It was only five to ten minutes to get a neck brace on and stretcher him off (thankfully, he's ok), but that was long enough to challenge some attention-spans and a Mexican wave broke out. I think it's hugely disrespectful to start that sort of nonsense at any time, but particularly when someone's knocked out and may have a broken neck or worse. Tossers.

On a happier note...

...paraphrasing one of the match reports:

Steve Borthwick (Saracens), Joe Marler and Nick Kennedy ('Quins) had an exchange of views about the incident that left Strettle unconscious. Afterwards, as Borthwick was examining his bloody nose...

Well, we won that one.

That lucky kebab roll thing

Obviously applied to the Arsenal, too. Arsene's team is embarrassingly fragile.

I'm not saying this is the right thing to do, and it's something I grew out of with advancing age and fragility, but, whenever the younger me was on the wrong end of that sort of hiding, I eased the pain by running around kicking lumps out of anything that moved until I was sent off or subbed off. Violence is never the answer, but it can be a partial solution, and Wenger needs reinforcements with psycho tendencies. He needs to lose the perma-injured players, with their physio-tendencies, too.