I just can’t believe that Paddington is dead. 

The big winner with the untimely demise of the Queen – apart from Chessington World of Adventure* – is that intellectual amoeba, Liz Truss. You can imagine The Thick of It scenes of high-fiving and fist bumps when the news came through. What an opportunity to get a new black dress and look like a ‘stateswoman’? 

Obviously one of her people will have to draw a sad face emoji and the words ‘DON’T FART’ on the back of her hand, but otherwise even this soulless shill would struggle to make political capital from this as she ‘leads the country through this trying time’.

Let’s be honest, apart from old people, weird Glaswegians, and red chino merchants, the only thing anyone really gives a shite about is ‘Do we get a day off? Is the footy cancelled?’

Right, well, turns out they have postponed all the games this weekend. Great.

No point wasting all this sensational Arsenal material then. Because there was none – other than to mention that documentary on Amazon, and we filled some blank space with that the other week.

One thing that is becoming a bit of a bother though, is how Frank Lampard leaves the T out of Everton. And does that thing of describing midfielders using numbers. It was bad enough hearing some young fella on a train describing someone as more of an ‘AM’ than a ‘DM’, but all this ‘he can play as a 6 or an 8’ is just weird. Stop it, you absolute touchmap.

When you hear things like that though it makes you wonder what a football game is. You would think we all must perceive it the same way, but maybe we don’t. Maybe we all see different shadows on the cave wall. Like the blind men describing an elephant and all that.

There’s obviously the people who are there and those who watch on Match of the Day, or in turn just clips on Youtube, or dissected on Monday Night Football. Is the actual 90 minutes not the point now, but actually just a starting point?  The raw material for a week of ‘content’ creation? It kind of feels like it. Says some tit writing a blog. 

VAR, for instance. must be an absolute godsend to the Carragher Industrial Complex. They complain about it, but the complaints aren’t a by-product of VAR, they are the product.

You know all this, but the Queen’s joined Diana and Dodi so, you know, give us a chance, lad.

Going back to how people see things differently, referring to Goodison as ‘The Old Lady’ always feels peculiar. As I always see Goodison as a fella. He did some time, got educated inside and acquired a love of Russian literature, then came out and joined the merchant navy, got malaria in Sierra Leone, got high in Marrakech, and went AWOL in New York where he saw Dylan in Greenwich Village and said he stunk, came home with loads of boss records and clothes and mysterious tattoos, saw the good in everyone, apart from capitalists, loved a bevvy, loved life.

Fucking hell we’ll miss him.

* All the other big tourist attractions must get a boost now the guvnor is off the scene.