Finished Two Books In A Day Including The Worst Football Book I've Ever Read

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So two books have been finished. The first was Too Late To Turn Back by Barbara Greene. An account of her journey through West Africa in the nineteen thirties with her cousin Graham Greene.

It's an OK book. The author isn't racist towards the native people there although there are moments where she does come across as patronising. To be fair she does appear to acknowledge this in this edition published in the nineteen eighties.

To be honest acceptable though it was I very much doubt I'll remember it in the future. A sort of literary McDonalds.Apart that is as a comparison if I ever read her cousin's account of the same trip Journey Without Maps.

So the next Penguin/Pelican paperback to emerge from the great unread is:

A128 - W G Fearnsides and O M B Bulman  - Geology In The Service Of Man

Yes I know. But when you collect vintage Penguins/Pelicans then this is a consequence.

The blurb describes it as "eminently readable". I doubt that but no stone will be left unturned in finding out.

I've also finished Big Sam the autobiography of Sam Allardyce (with Shaun Custis). In terms of his time in the job the Usain Bolt of ex England managers.

I'd borrowed that book (written before he became Sunderland manager let alone England) to have a laugh in the light of what happened subsequently. Those moments are there but on completion my main question is how a book as badly written as this one got published.

For there are moments when it seems to suggest that Allardyce can barely string words together (which his TV interviews show is not the case). I've mentioned before of a sentence with four "I"s in it. Another example that caught my eye was in describing the Bolton player Hierro "There wasn't a better passer in the Premier League and I include Paul Scholes who was the master". A sentence which if you think about it makes no sense. I did wonder whether an uncredited writer of this book was Google translate.

Even the construction of this book is dire. Chapter five is entitled Stateside With The Rowdies with regard to Allardyce's time with Tampa Bay.and has roughly fourteen pages in it. Just three are actually about the Rowdies. The remaining pages are devoted to other tropical parts of his career in Coventry and Preston.When going through the clubs he's managed suddenly inserted between them is a chapter on his management style. Surely that would have been more suitable towards the end?

And speaking about the stories of the clubs he's managed I have said before that I've some sympathy with him for how the football boards/owners have treated him (although in his last season with West Ham if the second half of that season was as good as the first he could still be Hammers manager today). But these chapters seem less about setting the record straight as settling old scores. In terms of the trials and tribulations of being a manager a far better book is Neil Warnock's The Gaffer (who is,incidentally, now manager of Cardiff City).

So in all respects this is an awful book. However as I mentioned before when taking this out  of Porthcawl library there might be a chance of redemption. For as the lady librarian implied, there are further chapters to be written.

Until the next time.

In Which To Avoid The Estate Agent I Go To The Library,Keep A Promise,Avoid The Subway,And Continue Being A German Housewife

Hello there. Hope you're feeling today.

Well there has been a viewing on the house. The first as it happens for about a month and a half so the wife had been on a frenzied cleaning/tidying spree on the weekend (I was at work - though she will say I hardly do anything anyway).

Anyway it's Monday. I have the day off and I know my duties. Clean the bathroom. Tidy every room in the house. Wait for 11:15am and get out. For the appointment is at high noon.

There are things that need to be done and most would have been done earlier in the morning. The viewing though meant these had to wait to nearly lunchtime.

So Porthcawl was my first stop to change the library book. What could be the perfect book to replace the Oliver Kay one I've raved about a few posts ago? What else could it be but?

From the humour section

When taken to the desk the lady librarian looked at me and said "It's got a few chapters missing." Thus I'll claim the first ever recording of a joke made by a librarian in Wales about a former England manager. Albeit one with a 100% record. Sporting wise this book has become a notch below Lance Armstrong in your attitude to it after recent events.

The laughter begins at the cover where there is a quote from Sir Alex Ferguson . "Sam is one of the great characters of the game" You will note not "managers". But that is being a bit unfair. In a small foreword the far better manager does praise Allardyce and it is deserved. The thing about him (Warning metaphors are going to be mixed here) is that he (like Tony Pulis) has built a reputation as a Red Adair of managers. Parachuted as it were into clubs in trouble and improve them. Trouble is when that initial job is done he's then treated like the Pied Piper was once he got rid of the rats.

I've started reading it, written before he became England manager let alone after he lost it. You laugh when he says that it's a job he covets especially as a West Ham fan he's quick to attack us in the introduction. But you know what? So far it's the most badly written book of all the library football books I've read. So many "I" this and "you" that. In chapter one I even counted a sentence where he used the word I four times. Of course that's not his fault but that of his co writer Shaun Custis.

You may remember a few posts back that I had mistakenly said that there wasn't any books in the Age Cymru charity shop and that, once I'd been advised I was wrong promised to buy a book there the next time I was in Porthcawl. Well that promised has now been kept. Not only was it a book,it was also a Penguin as well.

Norman Davies - Vanished Kingdoms

This brick of  book is about European states,organisations etc that longer exist. Does seem interesting.

It only cost me 50p. Which means that the Penguin weekly book budget is currently 60p. There was no time for more books as there were more things to do.....but first food.

Now if it wasn't for the viewing the plan was going to be an attempt at antipasti Genovese as per Elizabeth David's book that I've mentioned in an earlier post. But Liz and the antipasti will have to wait. I'm out of the house,in Porthcawl and hungry. I think Subway.

However that idea is quashed when I find that the place is stuffed full with teenagers who have been rehearsing in the nearby theatre for a production of Annie. I know this because they're all wearing sweatshirts with "ANNIE" on their chests. Instead lunch is taken at the nearby Welsh Deli. It's a sausage sandwich with a cappuchino. Forty years ago a request like that would be met with silent questions about my sanity. Now the staff take it at their stride.

It took me fifteen minutes to have lunch (which was good by the way). A lot can change in fifteen minutes.

This was Porthcawl before I had lunch.

Dry but look at the clouds

And this is what it looked like when I came out of the Welsh Deli.

After the shower

Then it was time to do drive away and do some grocery shopping in away from Porthcawl at Lidls. Many years ago I remember an interview with a "retail analyst" who said that in Germany housewives would buy most of their food from Aldi/Lidl as the quality was just as good as the main supermarkets but cheaper whilst going to those other stores for particular branded goods. Well we have been a German housewife family for many years and we're not alone. In the Lidl car park I went to there were Jaguars,Mercs and 4x4 motors.

And as inflation will rise, and the cost of food will rise because of Brexit more and more people will become part of a German housewife family. It will be ironic that one of the main beneficiaries of Britain leaving the EU are be German discounters.

Until the next time.