pandemic behaviour

The Northern Line’s morning service is a bizarre environment at the best of times. 

Adults cram into carriages, creating a human “how many sweets in the jar” challenge, all suffering from overtiredness, overheating and overhearing someone’s shit drum and bass playlist blaring out of some Apple earphones. I don’t think anyone has ever been happy to be on the Northern Line. It’s the dentist of commuting methods: a dread-filling, sweat-inducing necessity of modern life.

Yet, despite the day-to-day sense of enduring a Bushtucker Trial, we tolerate it. It opens up the world of cheap (in the same way that designer gear is considered cheap at outlet stores when it’s still fucking ludicrously priced for what it is essentially a logo to showcase on “the gram” to people that essentially give zero shits that you just paid 500 quid for a picture of a posh carrier bag) rent in London and a path to Inferno’s for anyone that has had too many beers on a Saturday night. In fact, maybe we love the Northern Line.

What we probably never expected throughout our love-hate relationship with the TFL’s most “don’t lean against the doors” announcement-graced line, is that it would be considered a death trap.

+++

Okay, so a death trap might be a little strong, but you know where I’m going with this. If you don’t, then you need to crawl out from under a rock larger than the ones Post Malone shoves up his nose before a gig and take a look at the news.

COVID-19, or coronavirus to those with shares in Desperado or Sol, has struck the world and sent it into a frenzy. There have been several moments in recent history that have threatened to send the world bonkers – Trump attacking Iran, Trump sparring with North Korea, Trump denying climate change, Trump teasing Russia, Trump supporting every clinically insane, right-wing leader in world politics, Coleen Rooney outing Rebekah Vardy – but the outbreak of this pandemic has genuinely done it. The straw has broken the camel’s back.

love island: rating the islanders

Sometimes you get a tick. Not like one of those jungle buggers than buries its way into Harry Redknapp’s gooch, but an incessant, persuasive buzzing that follows you around buzz buzz buzzing everywhere you go. One week ago, I too fell victim to the tick. It all started when rolling down my Twitter timeline, glassy-eyed, discarding thousands of Manchester United transfer rumours.

Something then peaked my interest: @ITV2 Meet our 2019 islanders. Before I could face the reality of it being June again, I was faced with 12 of dazzling white teeth flashing back at me. Love Island, the reality TV show that dictates the social lives of a whole country for two months, was back. My brain started to itch.

“My mum kicked me out for bringing too many girls back!”

In Year 7 science, our teacher introduced us to hydrochloric acid. Dangerous stuff, he said. I remember wondering just how dangerous it was. What would happen if you drank it? Not the wonderings of a psychopath, merely an example of the dumb shit you think about when you're a kid. What happens when you spray deodorant on fire? How many Toxic Waste can one eat at once? Coke and Mentos... what's going on there? In this instance, it was just how bad hydrochloric acid was.

When I heard Anton, the class of 2019's token scotsman, brag about the above, I felt the pain of pouring hydrochloric acid into your own ears. 12-year-old me satisfied. 23-year-old me mortified. And there it was: the content tick. I gave these sparkly bastards a week to stamp their impressions before succumbing to the tick and producing some equally sparkly content.

Iain Stirling, step aside.

the world's greatest drama

At approximately 9:40pm on Tuesday night, my phone experienced an earthquake.

This was no disaster, however. It was a seismic rush of uncalculated expression charging through an array of group chat feeds. WhatsApp, Twitter and iMessage notifications cascaded into eachother. Unfamiliar vowels and consonants came face to face for the first time. Everything was in capitals. Nothing was spelt right. No-one cared. Football was on stage, and it just hit the top note.

In the stalls, anarchy ensued. Drops of lager sprayed the dried memories of the summer. Tribal divides were broken. Jaws dropped. Neanderthal semantics rose from extinction. From the ashes of genius-induced defeat in Barcelona, Liverpool's phoenix was soaring into the Champions League final.

"Did you see the game last night?" The question reverberated around work spaces, classrooms, playgrounds, lecture halls, kitchens, everywhere. Every football fan wore a glint in their eye, one that showed the pride of witnessing something special. Marvelling at Trent Alexander-Arnold's genius, smirking at Divock Origi's heroics, admiring the Kop's noise. As relentlessly as tribal forces contracted, it was difficult to hide a smile at Liverpool's achievement.

how it feels not to watch game of thrones

The world's gone fucking mental. And none of you are going to agree with me.

This, essentially, is the diary extract of a societal loner. As Green Day once cried into my confused teenage ears: I am walking the lonely road, the only road that I have ever known. But this is no boulevard and my dreams are certainly not broken. This is all ludicrous and the fact I've witnessed enough content-worthy behaviour about this in the last three weeks frankly worries me more than Brexit and climate change put together.

In fact, climate change might have something to do with this: it's April and winter has come.

Game of Thrones. We are only three episodes into season whatever of Game of who gives a fuck and the world has already descended into chaos. Whoever decided it was a bright idea to put new episodes on at 2am UK time on a Sunday morning has ensured that normal people are subject to a Monday of absolute, overdramatic dragony bollocks.

The moment you enter your office/classroom/kitchen there's tension. It's like breakfast in rehab. A whole night has passed without a fix of powdered snow, ice and fire. People are cracking.

Any mention of any word results in a snap reaction of fear. DON'T SAY ANYTHING. WHAT DO YOU KNOW. HE DOESN'T DIE. NO SPOILERS YOU. You were only asking for a pen and you're suddenly being interrogated by a crackhead. Today I sent someone the link to a recap article as a bit of light-hearted Monday fun: word spread, angry mob descended, Steve Harvey public apology required.

the daily mail summer

"Sun is in the sky, oh why, oh why, would I want to be anywhere else" - Lily Allen

The clocks have gone forward, in case nobody told you. 

In case nobody relentlessly reminded you that you would ‘lose’ an hour of sleep on Sunday and that you would stay unconscious for a mere 12 hours instead of the luxurious weekend 13. Ergh, the hassle.

When somebody tells you that the clocks are changing, you panic as if your life is about to spin into a vortex. That is, until you realise that this is twenty bloody nineteen and everything changes itself except the oven, your car and Piers Morgan’s personality.

The truth of the matter is that something much greater has arrived. Something to trivialise the position of a clock hand into an oblivion of irrelevance that only houses things like David Moyes and the bit of plastic on the end of a shoelace.

This is an enigma that only graces British shores. It rocks up like that old family member that visits once a year. They bring rare sweets that you’ve never had before and smell like, how you’d imagine, the drawing room in Cluedo smells. They are fun and fucking annoying in identical quantities.

This is the, drumroll please, Daily Mail Summer ©.

What a strange name, I hear you say. Why would you label something that isn’t a school sports tournament after the Daily Mail, you ask with bewilderment. Well I have several reasons. One is here. Another is here. And here. Here. Here. HeRe. hErE. HERE. 

The Daily Mail Summer is the kid who goes to Spain eight times a year and returns to his snotty, vitamin D deprived classmates with tales of nutmegging Messi, fighting a shark and losing his 12-year-old virginity to an 18-year-old model from Malaga. The Daily Mail Summer is Jay from the Inbetweeners.

Well, William Mackenzie, it’s time to open up that briefcase and lather on some sun-cream because the Daily Mail Summer has reached Britain and – as fucking always – nobody has a clue what to do.

The first rule of the Daily Mail Summer is that it must be anticipated with at least a week’s notice. 

Any sign of a 17 degree, cloudless day must be preceded with a few days of ‘BRITISH HEATWAVE HELL’ tabloid headlines and awkward office conversations that consist of one person saying “it’s meant to be warm this weekend” and another responding with “oh is it?!?!” despite having heard this three times previously that day. You sip your scolding, instant coffee daydreaming about a chilled 5% alternative.

Rule number two, said BRITISH HEATWAVE HELL always arrives on a Saturday. On a Saturday, society undoes its tie, unbuttons its shirt and puts on a pair of flip-flops. 

You wake up in a slight sweat – new territory – and spot the lustful beam of sunlight shining through the curtains. You react to it like a moth, banging into it like a dusty twat. Before you reach the shower you’ve already played three Tame Impala songs and Summer Breeze by the Isley Brothers. You put the shower on a few degrees cooler than usual. It makes you feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in your mind.

Once you’ve nonchalantly rejected your trusty tracksuit bottoms for some shorts and completely discarded the idea of wearing a top – all to the beat of Will Smith’s Summertime by Will Smith – you bop your way into the garden and breathe in the sweet, sweet summer air. Just like Miami, just like Will said. 

But it’s early April and it turns out 17 degrees doesn’t feel that much hotter than 13 degrees. In the shade it feels colder, and you look down at your sad erect little nipples as you silently think about what top you’re going to put on.

But does that stop you? Absolutely fucking not. You are British, you are tough, and you have worked all week to enjoy the fruits of a Daily Mail Summer’s day. 

You head straight to the WhatApp group chat and send a bait-loaded hook into the pond: “Pints” quickly followed by “Pub garden” in case anyone has lost their mind. There are no question marks as this is not a bloody question. The sky is blue, the sun is visible and summer has arrived. The Daily Mail said so.

Once you settle on some jean shorts, a white t-shirt and some sunnies, if you’re a middle-aged white kid, or shades, if you’re a father of three, you leave the house with the world at your feet. 

You bounce your way into town to the sound of chirping birds, paddling pools and lawnmowers, reminiscing about the times you were a little shit and used to gleefully chuck piles of cut grass on your mate with hayfever. You pass the ice cream van: wash pastel cartoons, 90s kids music, same middle-aged man, same wife beater vest. A cone of suspicion with a 99 flake and sauce.

Walking through a town centre on a Daily Mail Summer’s day is a safari. The population of your town evolves, flexing the gems that you knew existed but never saw. 

The convertible Audis driven exclusively by estate agents and the local drug lord. The family of nine with an Childline inducing communication style. The pre-pubescent worms smoking weed under a tree. Everyone that voted Brexit. The North Korea-esq sized armies of kids on bikes. The 9/10s. The tattooed blokes drinking Stella on the street. Your town living its best life, tears in your eyes.

If an alien decided to take a holiday to planet Earth – the poor sod –  and wanted to experience an authentic Daily Mail Summer, without reading some prestige content, they need not look further than a beer garden in a suburban JD Wetherspoons.

Populated by all of the above and the ice-cream man, whole towns pack into the adult playground to get their fix. Trays of Strongbow Dark Fruits and Carlsberg cascade onto splintering benches as you nod and shake hands with former schoolmates like you’re about to play an FA Cup fixture. 

Through the pints, the fights and the sobering five minutes when the sun goes behind the clouds, sunglassed Brits across the country are gleeful, pissed and  – somehow – pink.

It’s seven o’clock and still light, cries everyone. The insanity! Once pint glasses stop refilling, herds of dozy wasps leave the pub to return back to their respective hives, content. 

Under a tree, in the shadows, the Daily Mail Summer, wired from success, sniffs, looks towards the camera and winks: it’s rain until May boys, we got ‘em again.

twenty percent (of doom)

Low Battery

20% of battery remaining
|||

For the love of God, it's only 8:30am. You gaze down at your good for nothing, cracked screened iPhone 6s - let's be honest, it's always an iPhone - as the turtleneck-wearing ghost of Steve Jobs takes a bite out of an Apple and nonchalantly turns the egg timer counting down to you and your phone's imminent death. 

You knew Jobs was a bit of a knob, you've seen Fassbender in the movie, but it turns out his ghost is a bit of a twat too. 

Yet, in that one moment of panic-stricken frustration, your attention does not direct itself to the pittance of his corporation's batteries.

Oh no.

What you're thinking about is the iPhone XR. You know your time for an upgrade is on the horizon and you've seen the tweets about it having 'the best battery yet'. You forget that's like saying Theresa May's latest Brexit plan was her 'best yet' - a bit better but, ultimately, still completely shit.  

18% |||

Right. So we're skipping percentages already are we? What happened to 19%? Sure, it's one of the uglier numbers, along with 17, but to skip it out altogether is a bit of a dick move. But there's no time to start feeling sympathy for numbers: it's time to enter fight or flight mode. 

*Double taps Home button* 

we're sorry for the delay

We are sorry to announce that the 7:15 train to... London King's Cross... is delayed until approximately... 8:00... due to a signal failure. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused.

inconvenience (ɪnkənˈviːnɪəns/)
The fact of being troublesome or difficult with regard to one's personal requirements or comfort.

Ah yes, how inconvenient. How very inconvenient indeed. To put this simple inconvenience into perspective let's think about some other inconvenient things. An empty tube of toothpaste. A dead lightbulb. A fire drill. A card machine without contactless. Bird shit. A spot on your forehead. Light drizzle. Forgetting your password. Needing petrol. Diarrhoea. Need I go on?

Now, National Rail, you petty fools, I would not personally apply such a passive term to such a cataclysm. Sure, you are currently thinking that relating a train delay to a large-scale and violent event in the natural world may be a tad dramatic. Well you too are petty fools and have not taken into account the domino effect that ensues once the rail announcer's sweaty finger pokes the first, delicately balanced tile over.

Your time is now. The apocalypse is now. Is cataclysm to apocalypse too big a jump for the third paragraph? I'm angry just thinking about what's coming. On a day like this the sun should fall by 10am and an emergency bank holiday should be called. I'm fuming. Let's just do it.

coffee

The coffee shop. The simple, quaint café that was once your living room on the high street. The most simple of concepts that has transformed into a hipster haven of confusion.

It doesn't really make any sense. I mean, making a cup of coffee is something that even the worst of interns can eventually learn. So why do we find ourselves queuing to spend nearly £3 (a whole pint of actual beer) on a cup of burning, milky anxiety?

I recently found myself in said coffee shop, in said queue, buying said over-priced liquid product. Yep, sound the alarms, we have a hypocrite in the house. As a human centipede of millennial-looking folk stepped up to the counter, their orders sounded more complicated than a potions class at Hogwarts.

What ever happened to a latte, I thought. Is 'latte' not continental enough? Clearly not. The modern coffee order has instead transcended into a haiku of decaf, soy and chai, always ending in 'to go'.

Having witnessed the thespian performance of those ahead of me, I started to doubt my own order. Is a cappuccino 'enough'? Picking that was already a stretch, considering a mocha or, better still, a hot chocolate would almost certainly taste better. In fact, if this is the game that we're playing, we really just want one of those rainbow and unicorns-inducing pink frappuccinos. But alas, this is the coffee gods' world and just we're livin' in it. A cappuccino it is.

five am in toronto

As I walked through Toronto's Pearson airport, the sun rose in the distance above the cluster of urban pillars making up Canada's most popular city. I walked in solidarity between a casual formation of businessmen, couples and families, glancing through the glass towards the metropolitan hub. The spike of the CN tower pierced the rising golden orb, oozing an orange glow into foreign skies, providing the backdrop for the first step of an adventure.

Whilst strolling towards the departure lounge to catch my second flight of the day, Drake's Views coursed through my headphones in what I considered an authentic listening experience - I was in his city, after all. It was Keep the Family Close, the album opener, that struck the most poignant chord. Maybe it was the irony of doing the exact opposite of the title's imperative, maybe it's just a good tune, but it triggered a pause in time that I'll never forget. Satisfaction in its rawest form.

Fast forward two and a half years and the romanticism of 5am in Toronto is merely a mirage of my memory. Stood on an over-populated train, my tired legs struggle to suspend my hungover body as the ThamesLink stops and starts its way through the Hertfordshire countryside. Snail-like rain drops dribble down the doors, blurring the view of a lifeless grey horizon. Middle aged commuters sip over-priced, instant coffee, fuelling the fight to avoid eye contact with any of their neighbours.

It was at that moment when the opening notes of Keep the Family Close, pricked my ears into life. It was the first time I'd listened to the song in a long time, and its impact was like that of seeing an ex after a prolonged period apart.

twenty18

“For last year's words belong to last year's language 

And next year's words await another voice.” - T.S. Elliot

As the calendar year prepares itself for a software update, the world pauses to take a poignant glance over its shoulder. On life's treadmill, we are relentlessly instructed to look forwards whilst seconds, minutes and hours rush by under our feet. The turn of the year presents us with a rare opportunity to slow down and reflect on the produce of the last 365 days. We revisit the good, the bad, and the ugly of 2018, and evaluate how iOS19 will patch the shortcomings of its predecessor.

So, what does 2018 look like? Whilst 2017, 2016, 2015 and co. await the arrival of the history book's latest member, who is preparing to walk through the door? The answer is undoubtedly subjective. 

For some, 2018 is a brash, regressive and condescending, with thinning yellow hair and a sickly orange glow. For others, a panicked, uninspiring figure, unable to give a concrete answer to those that rely on it. Maybe it doesn't walk through the door, but instead rides in topless, on a horse. When the power players of global politics represent the cast of a bad seventies sitcom, media scramble to caricature them into the face of their annual review, but do we really want to remember 2018 as the year of Trump, Brexit and Vlad?

home

"Our country has been through difficult experiences in terms of unity. Sport — football in particular — has the power to help that. It is a special feeling." - Gareth Southgate

On 27th June 2016, English football was clouded with the ash of an Icelandic boom. As eleven players collapsed onto the pitch in Nice, fury raced its way from Lands End to John O'Groats. In its wake, the rage left shards of victimised pint glasses in puddles of beer-drenched tears. Football wasn't coming home, England were. The nation's disconnect with the squad had never been worse.

Fast forward 145 days, and words of disconnect continue to pollute the country's papers. Teresa May's frail Brexit proposal has left the country hanging from a tightrope, with her own teammates scything away at the rope one resignation at a time. With the country in need of a hero, English football’s candidature is no more than low-hanging fruit for satire. Right?

Flip to the back pages and fall into a utopian parallel. On Sunday afternoon, England beat Croatia to qualify for the UEFA Nations League finals in Portugal next June. The national stadium finally became a cauldron of passion, representing a euphoric microcosm that banished the fear and uncertainty of the outside world. 

The victory at Wembley topped off an incredible year of transformation for the national team, who became arguably the first people ever to stick to the concept of 'new year, new me'. Kittens became lions, and it becamse, dare i say it, ‘cool’ to support England again.

superclásico

'For a century, one duel has halved Buenos Aires. The God of one half is the Devil of the other"

- Eduardo Galeano

Occasionally in life, the stars align. Shining specks in the night sky meet, forming patterns that are romanticised from the safety of planet Earth. Get a little closer - approximately 4.24 light-years closer - and a star bares its teeth. Face a ball of furiously burning gases, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star suddenly loses a touch of its charm.

Back down to Earth, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, two more combustible entities are set to collide. The constellation of the Copa Libertadores, South America's top club competition, has guided bitter rivals Boca Juniors and River Plate towards a stellar collision that will dwarf the magnitude of cosmic activity.

It's been 58 years since the inauguration of the Copa Libertadores, yet the first that has graced a final between Boca Juniors and River Plate. If fate wasn't clear enough, this year's final is the last that will be played over two-legs at each team's home ground, meaning that both Boca and River will take their turn to welcome their arch nemesis to their own, spitting cauldron.

The derby, the superclásico, is widely considered to be the greatest in world football, and is regularly dubbed the holy grail of the sport's 'bucket list'; attend a superclásico and you've done it all. Take a stroll through Buenos Aires and the presence of the two teams is unavoidable. Whether it be the ragged replica shirts, the branded shop fronts or the murals of Riquelme and Aimar, the city breathes from two lungs, one blue and yellow, the other red and white.

fight

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face" - Mike Tyson

It's 6:15 on Sunday morning. Two hours have passed since my confused alarm chimed on its day off. My tired eyes fixate on the screen illuminating the room, and the peace of dawn is broken by high-pitched growling of Joe Rogan and co. The television pixels construct an image from over 5,200 miles away, in Las Vegas, where one of the most important sporting events of the year has descended into unadulterated chaos.

Conor McGregor is not a personality associated with calm. The Irishman is the shot of whisky that so often fuels a late Saturday night - a figuration that has become a commercial reality through his Proper 12 venture - and one of few people on this planet that can get me to set a 5:15am alarm on a Sunday morning. His opponent, Khabib Nurmagomedov, personifies everything expected with a bruiser from the Dagestan region of Russia: unaesthetic, rough, robust.

Three minutes and three seconds into the fourth round of the biggest UFC fight of all time, the tactical skill of Nurmagomedov choked the ego of McGregor. After months of media attention, hype and cash, the Russian bear suffocated the octagon's green and gold oxygen supply to the point of blurry-eyed submission. For ten seconds, Khabib was the golden boy and his legacy was stamped in the blood-stained canvas of the UFC.

Then the Dagestan fighter initiated a riot. As he flew over the cage and towards McGregor's team, the glitz of Las Vegas descended into a brawl outside your local Wetherspoons. The technical quality that illuminated a championship fight became a distant memory as wild, un-calculated punches were thrown from all parties. It was raw violence,  but I couldn't stop watching.

social media

"Comparison is the thief of joy" - Franklin D. Roosevelt

On the 07:41, tired fingers repeat downwards movements on tired screens. Change the backdrop to a sterile, white lab and you feel part of a nineties sci-fi movie. The robotic routine repeats.

Swipe, swipe, swipe, tap tap, swipe, tap tap, swipe... 

As the train heads towards a world of screens, retinas dart momentarily away in search of a break, before being fixated back to a conveyor belt of images that appear below. To the untrained mind, the photos that rush by show no more than a display saturated with unoriginal aesthetics: bikinis, bars, beaches, boyfriends, blurrrr... the scrolling hits top gear. 

The picture I'm presenting is not one that would be sent onto the conveyor belt itself. Whilst it sounds like a dystopian mirage constructed in Charlie Brooker's imagination, this is a reality that lies much closer to home than 90% of what appears on our screens. 

Yet our brains don't agree. Whilst our exteriors represent a glassy haze, our minds are going twelve rounds. Every photo represents an opportunity for our self-esteem to compare and contrast, collating evidence by which to cripple itself. We put ourselves up against selected, filtered, edited supermodels in the most corrupt game of Top Trumps the world has ever seen. 

adulthood

As the 07:41 train to Horsham trundles towards the platform, at 07:43, auto-pilot is in operation. In fact, the body is in cruise control from the moment the alarm goes off: snooze, alarm, snooze, alarm, up, shower, hairdryer, clothes, teeth, breakfast, walk, station, machine, ticket, platform.

The day's first hour leaves the brain dormant. In such vacant moments, the realities of post-university life dawn. On the platform, one glance left and right reveals generations of routine. My one month of commuting into the city is a microcosm compared to those alongside me. The biosphere of adulthood drifts towards responsibility, one train at a time.

A train carriage is a melting pot of professional diversity. All it takes is a sense of intrigue and you're whisked onto a safari of the British commute. C-level executives send micro-troops into virtual battle on their iPhone screens, sometimes even paying for bonuses with their corporate coiffeur. Others engage in personal conversations via WhatsApp, sending loving, angry or even sexually explicit messages to their respective other halves. Then there's us, collectively observing the above.

Some of these people have been programmed into this routine for longer than I have been alive. The previous 23 years probably seem like a bit of a blur for them, a frightening prospect for this year's rookie. From the up, down, left, right dynamism of university, travelling and every adventure that graces our early adulthood, we suddenly attach ourselves to a binary cord between home and office, receding to the mean. Damn.

david silva

"He's a player that often looks like the only grown-up on the pitch" - Barney Ronay on David Silva

When I sat down to binge-watch the new Amazon Prime documentary All or Nothing, I was drowning in pre-conceptions. The behind-the-scenes look into Manchester City's title-winning 2017/18 season has triggered the first seismic shift in the tectonic plates of this fledgling Premier League, as fans and professionals agitate towards their respective standpoints. Fascinating, cringy, classless and compulsory viewing are just some of the jury's verdicts so far, and I don't think I need to tell you which came courtesy of their Portuguese rival.

Personally, I loved it. As a football fan, there's no better elixir to quench our thirst than taking a glance into the extra dimensions of the game. Multiple times a week we fixate on 90 minutes of football, but there's no denying that we are only engaging in the sport at its most superficial form. We focus on the feet of our heroes, and villains, whilst their psyche is speculated upon but rarely confirmed. Our insight into the minds of players and managers often come through a post-match interview diluted with PR spiel and then we re left to spend another week debating over who's annoyed and who's not.

It was the documentary's breaking of these lines that really caught my imagination. Being the fly-on-the-wall finally became a reality, and our wings took flight into Pep Guardiola team-talks, the City dressing room, and the personal lives of their squad. One particular personal life tapped into an emotion that I never thought a football documentary would, and that was David Silva.

07:41

"In football blogging, the good things can change in a second" - Didier Drogba

It is with the words of a legend that we wave goodbye to Time to Make Some Mates, just how it would have intended. The name that carried this page through the 2016/17 season, of which I spent on loan in the South American non-league, and the dormant 2016/17 season, spent out of action with a drink problem, has been amicably shown the door. 

As any great obituary should do, here's a quick flashback to the true origin of the name: 

"I thought I would very quickly explain why the title of this blog is what it is. At first glance it appears completely irrelevant and one would probably question why I have avoided every possible Argentinean stereotype (Let's Get Messi and The Hand of Blog were close contenders). However I decided to go with something that has epitomised Argentinean culture from the moment I landed to the moment I write this post....

The Mate.

Just to get it out the way, 'The Mate' is not the bloke you go down the pub with or that person you vaguely know that you bump into in a club. In Argentina, 'The Mate' is life. Mate is a hot drink that is consumed at all times of the day, no matter the activity or social occasion." - (The Wonder of Mate, August 2016)

So now that's out of the way, the truth. The name was impractical, confusing and an all-round terrible attempt at being (a) cultured and (b) witty. Believe it or not, I do possess acquaintances that I'd regard as 'mates', and so the apparent public cry for friendship made next to no sense. By the time I had explained what Argentinean mate was, attention spans had drifted into the abyss and the moment passed. So just as with Arsene Wenger, Time to Make Some Mates is officially #OUT.

Whilst I'm sure Unai Emery will do a decent job at the Emirates, I wanted to recruit a more creative replacement to lead the blog into the 2018/19 season. As I flicked through random words in both English and Spanish, the options got tackier than the 'Força' ('strength' in Portuguese) year abroad tattoo on my wrist. However, a solution soon came my way courtesy of ThamesLink rail.

As an English graduate, ditching the words for numbers is rare. Yet, as I stood on my commuter train this morning considering my dilemma, there it was.

This blog started as a travel blog, and continued that way for 35 articles, so it would be a shame to ditch that completely. The problem I have is that very recently I've entered adulthood and my life consists of a new routine of eat, sleep, get on a train, work, repeat. The only travel in my life revolves around the trains between Hertfordshire and Central London. I guess you could call it micro-travel. Anyway, it was good enough for me and I now own a blog named after a time on a train timetable.

Now you won't be surprised if its late...

It's 07:41, enjoy the content.

Cologne Christmas Special

So... we're back.

Whilst there was an ever-so-slim chance of this blog continuing after the South American adventure had finished, the bleak reality of hangovers, lectures and grey British skies soon put an end to that. As the blog was showered with a mixture of praise and piss-taking comments on Nottingham's finest nights out, I couldn't help but feel a sense of vacancy without it in my life. I mean, it was nice to verbally share life thoughts with actual English humans instead of a non-responsive blogging site, but the writing was something I missed.

I couldn't just start again though - there was no chance that I was going to illustrate a night in Ocean as an opener to the comeback tour - and I needed a reason to write. With that in mind, a pre-Christmas trip to Cologne in Germany was the ideal opportunity to soak in some blog magic and ensure that Time to Make Some Mates could make a suitably stunning return to the spotlight. It was the Robbie to my Take That.

The glamour of the comeback was quickly brought back down to Earth as a 5am start at Manchester airport somberly drizzled all over my parade (this ego-driven stance may or may not continue but for now I'm enjoying it). I flew out to Germany with my girlfriend Coralie, yet the Scrooges at RyanAir made sure that our £20 fare would not allow us to sit together and we were promptly separated. We weren't the only ones and a variety of puzzled families and couples went their separate ways to find their cramped individual seats on Michael O'Leary's capital-sucking sleigh. Talk about the charm of the Irish...

The YAftas

  327 days ago, I sat in Heathrow airport. I had a beer and a fancy pie in front of me, and was just tucking in as Ian Wright and Glenn Hoddle walked in and took a seat on the table next to me. I was almost too engrossed in my own mind to really take into account how random it was at the time; I was suddenly facing a year of living in South America ahead of me, after all. Yet as I look back on this adventure, per say, that moment set the tone.

Predictably, this last 11 months have been the best of my life. In reality, who would go and live on the other side of the world and come back saying otherwise? It is true though. Everyone always tells you that this will be the case, but you're too worried to accept this gleam of positivity in the mist of the worrying and over-thinking. The prospects of being kidnapped by a cartel or of not being able to get 3G on your phone are far more realistic than actually having a good time.

 Low and behold I actually have had a rather good time, bar the odd barbarity or bump in the road, and I am glad that I decided to type it all out on this blog. Even a quick glance back at some articles triggers the recollection of some small peculiarities that I had already forgotten. Whilst I never wrote this for views, so not to raise my hopes, the feedback has been unreal. I set a very broad target of 10,000 views back in August, and as we now sit on over 11,000 it is safe to say this has been a nice success. A big thank you to everyone and anyone that's ever read or shared the page!

It's not about the blog though. It's time to honour those who made this year what it's been. Whether a thing, a moment or a person, they deserve to be commended for affecting my life in the best/worst/most bonkers way possible. This is what it's all been leading up to (you just haven't known it until now).... welcome to the YAftas*.

A Ginger Bloke With His Guitar

  I sat in the upper tier of the Allianz Parque last night, observing a fellow Brit bring the house down. There he was, with messy ginger hair and a baggy t-shirt, strumming a guitar as 50,000 Brazilians hung onto his every word. To be fair, he actually looked like a generic speck to me, considering the position of my seat, but I assume he's still ginger and still plays a guitar. I never really expected to write a 'review' of a music concert, and this isn't really that, but the experience was pretty thought-provoking and warranted a bit of blog space.

  In terms of me, I was not really in any fit state to go to a gig. Saturday night involved a heavy electronic night that resulted in me walking through the door at 9am on Sunday morning. I gave a very meek 'bom dia' to my housemate as he was cooking his breakfast and retreated into my cave. I slept until about 3pm and woke up feeling more fragile than Victor Moses' reputation after the cup final*. I only had a bit of time before I needed to leave, and the thought of listening to a bunch of songs about love for two hours nearly pushed the nausea over the edge.

  It was the first concert I'd ever been to on my own. I always considered that a bit of a sad thing to do, but an article on Buzzfeed said it's in their '12 Things Everyone Should Do Alone At Least Once' list. That was all the evidence I needed that it probably was sad, but I wasn't missing out on Ed Sheeran because of this so screw my social precautions. Saying that, the dark bags under my eyes and slightly paler skin tone I was wearing made it all look more tragic than it already was. I would say it put me out of the general audience demographic, but the possession of male genitalia and being northwards of 20 years old already did that job.