The Kerryman (South Kerry Edition)
Sheffield United, nil; Aston Villa, nil. The soccer is back
IN HIS LATEST WEEKLY COVID-19 DIARY, TADHG EVANS CELEBRATES THE RETURN OF 0-0 DRAWS, AND EXPLAINS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TAOISEACH LEO VARADKAR QUOTING FROM 2004 FILM ‘MEAN GIRLS’.
IT’S ALMOST HALF-TIME IN GAME TWO BETWEEN CITY AND ARSENAL, AND IT’S SCORELESS... ENTER ARSENAL’S DAVID LUIZ, WHO SEEMS TO HAVE NOTHING ON HIS MIND BUT TO WRECK THE PLACE
Wednesday, June 17
DEAR Diary – The Premier League is here again: the most exciting, intense, fashionable sports competition on earth.
Aston Villa, nil; Sheffield United, nil.
My God it’s good to be back – and it even looked for a moment like someone had actually gone and scored a bloody goal, no less!
Someone had indeed scored, actually – the ball clearly crossed the line, but staff had forgotten to turn the goal-line technology back on after the COVID break.
And as we all know, the beautiful game is made beautiful by people making mistakes we can mock on Twitter, so we’ll have to chalk this game down as another classic.
But there’s more: it’s almost half-time in game two between City and Arsenal, and it’s also scoreless – until Arsenal’s Pablo Mari picks up an injury.
Enter David Luiz, who seems to have nothing on his mind but to wreck the place.
He’s quickly at fault for the first goal, deflecting the ball past himself towards deadly City marksman Raheem Sterling. 0-1.
And right after half-time, he drags Riyad Mahrez down, it’s a penalty, and he picks up a red card.
He’s gone after just 25 minutes, in which time he’s effectively been responsible for putting his team 0-2 down.
Chelsea, PSG, Chelsea again, and Arsenal have paid a combined €100m+ in transfers alone for this man’s services over the last decade.
And that’s why, whatever your ambitions in life are, you have no business giving up.
Thursday, June 18
DEAR Diary – Things are definitely returning to some bit of normality, but that doesn’t mean they’re back to the way things were yet.
Most days are still very, very boring, and the most excitement I felt today was in brewing a pot of tea.
I fancied a drop of scald, and all the family were around the table, so I decided to surprise them all by doing something helpful and preparing a pot: a treat for us all at the end of another long day.
I’ve a very set routine when it comes to making tea: boil the kettle, scald the pot, fire three Barry’s teabags in before the water, then leave it draw on the hob with the dial precisely halfway between two and three.
I leave it there for exactly two minutes, and after all that it’s more tar than tea, really, but that’s the way I like it.
Anyway, I thought I’d a great job done until I arrived o’er to yonder table.
‘No’ said the mother, the father, the uncle, the sister, the other sister, the dog, the other dog. I’m crushed – hurt, frankly – but I’m in a philosophical mood and know that life guarantees us nothing.
Que sera, sera.
Friday, June 19
DEAR Diary – In his address to the nation today, Leo Varadkar used a quote from Mean Girls, and this ended up grabbing more attention than the actual nitty gritty of his latest update on COVID regulations.
Some of you reading this may not be of an age to know what ‘Means Girls’ is or was, and you therefore won’t understand why Varadkar quoting this film is a talking point.
So I’ll consider this diary entry a public-service announcement.
Mean Girls was a 2004 film aimed primarily at a female, teenage audience – but it happened to be excellent, and like all excellent films, it ended up appealing to people outside of its target audience.
It helped that it starred Lindsay Lohan, Tina Fey, and Rachel McAdams, and was therefore not short of big names.
It revolved around a group of four extremely popular but nasty teenage girls who basically ruled their secondary-school class – or ‘highschool grade’, as the crowd over say – with vicious psychological warfare.
McAdams’ character in particular – Regina George – would be considered a very hard bit of stuff. It was a cinematic triumph, shamefully overlooked at that year’s Oscars, but it might not be the best look for a Taoiseach to quote from a teenage ‘chick flick’, even one that was as good as this.
So now you know.
The weekend
DEAR Diary – It’s Sunday night in the middle of June, and Dingle ought to be hopping.
But the pubs aren’t open. Nobody’s walking the streets while trying to sing Wonderwall. Nothing’s happening at all, actually, save for me driving around with two of my friends.
I’m not writing this while driving, for the record.
It feels more like an Outback village than one of Ireland’s most ‘happening’ places.
In recent weeks I’ve fallen into a certain line of thinking: was lock-down really as bad as we thought it was? But it was, and it still is.
Dingle wouldn’t usually be like this in wintertime, never mind June.
I’m also growing irritated at the number of people on social media saying they don’t want to return to the ‘old’ normal, that this lock-down has been great.
It hasn’t, like. I had a re-read of my weekly diaries this weekend, and I’m reminded that I’ve written whole diary entries about a new kettle; about a hole in my sock; about watching a video of the world Rubik’s Cube record. The lock-down has been mind-numbing for me, and I’m one of the lucky ones who had a job throughout it all.
Be careful what you wish for, loyal readers of mine.