How we appeased those baleful gods

BY observing a few simple superstitions, the celebrated writer Paul Howard and I basically won the Champions League for Liverpool last season — you may recall that in the Diary the morning after, we were gracious enough to praise the Liverpool lads, because we couldn’t have done it without them.

Recently we opened a new front in the campaign, by deciding to watch Liverpool playing Wolves in the Premier League, not in the famed Boot Room at my place, but in the house of Howard — from which more than a million Ross O’Carroll-Kelly books have emerged, but no Premier League title. So far.

Which brought into play a few daunting issues — our portfolio of superstitions had been confined to Champions League games, so with this brave initiative we were stepping into the unknown.

Was it too brave perhaps, to place such a burden on the lads, facing an already difficult away game against an excellent Wolves side? Or was it a risk worth taking, in the knowledge that if Liverpool somehow got through this one, they must be even better than we thought they were?

After much profound contemplation of our responsibilities, this is how we did it — we would watch the game in Paul’s house, on the other side of Avoca, but he would collect me at my place, and we would sit in the Boot Room for a minute, watching the TV on which we had won the Champions League. Thus we would hope to appease the baleful gods, absorbing some of the good ju-ju in the Room, and then venturing across to face the ultimate test.

And the result? Liverpool beat Wolves 2-1. Yes, these guys really are good.

But later that night, back in the Boot Room I heard a strange sound — turned out that Paul had left his phone there, when we communed with the paranormal forces which rule our world.

You will always pay a price, to those baleful gods.

I will say this much for the General Election counts that we will be watching today — they are probably not rigged.

I would not say this with any confidence about America or Britain, given the levels of degeneracy that are now rampant among the ruling classes in these endangered democracies.

Or to be more precise, I would ask this question: if they thought they’d get away with it, would the Trumpist parties of

America and Britain rig their elections?

And I’m not talking here about black arts such as gerrymandering and voter suppression — which they are doing already — I mean actual interference with the counting of votes. Would they do that? I gotta say, not only would they do it, there isn’t even a sliver of doubt in my mind that they’d do it — another reason to be grateful, that we made our voting so complicated.