…Sometimes when writing this blog I there is a need for me to have a week off; perhaps due to my diary being suddenly changed or having to work on a Saturday afternoon (because much as I adore football and my little project, I still have bills to pay). I’m writing this on a Saturday afternoon when you, dear reader, have gone two weeks without one of these daft little entries to read. No game for me today, because I’m in Brighton without a car or any money (I’ll come to that in a bit). So what on earth was my excuse last week?
Well, I couldn’t really watch a game at 3pm on a Saturday as usual as I was busy getting married. Really. At 3.30pm my long suffering fiancée became my wife, and my thoughts couldn’t have been further from football as we had a wonderful day surrounded by the closest of our family (and my mum and dad via Skype, as my mum is still poorly). A point of note: as the wife was getting her dress on I was downstairs watching Leicester playing Leeds on TV (sneakily, may I add) with my daughter and nephews. The very second that the Mrs had her beautiful gown zipped up, David Nugent scored the spawniest of goals to make it six wins in a row for my boys. If that isn’t a good omen then I don’t know what is.
The key to any successful relationship is compromise. Our honeymoon was booked for Amsterdam, one of our favourite places in the world, full of awesome people, architecture and my wife’s personal choice of hangout – coffee shops. If you’re innocent enough to presume that my bride is a massive fan of different brews of the brown stuff then you’ll need educating; On our last trip to the Netherlands we sat in many a different coffee shop surrounded by the haze of marijuana smoke as my other half got nicely toasted.
This is where the compromise comes in: I’m completely teetotal, deciding to adopt the straight-edge attitude to my life. I am however, not preachy with it; despite my own personal choices and weaknesses I see no point in putting my viewpoint on others. You’re fine to do whatever you want to do and I’ll probably have some sugar while you’re doing it. For example, if I refused to go anywhere that people drank alcohol my career as a comedian would be irreparably damaged. For the record, I’d much rather sit surrounded by stoners than I would drunks, and the big advantage of having the wife under the influence of weed is that I suddenly become the funniest man alive and we’re allowed to eat cake late at night with no cajoling required on my behalf.
So I knew that we would spend some of our time sat giggling in a coffee shop each day, smiling at the Dutch people (we try to avoid the tourist orientated areas where possible) and enjoying the décor which is nearly always graffiti from previous customers or airbrushed murals dedicated to Buddhism or Bob Marley. There’s not much else I can do whilst the Mrs has a smoke, although it does mean I’ll have at least three glasses of hot chocolate a day. Not made from powder, either – always Chocomel chocolate milk heated with a milk steamer and served with a tiny biscuit. Excellent. I always marvel that the staff of the coffee shops (usually only ever one or two people) manage to both be experts on marijuana, smoke their fair supply of the stuff themselves AND manage to look after money and be pretty decent Baristas. Great work…
Jim Smallman - The Football Neutral 