So another Wimbledon’s finished, and despite always cherishing the annual opportunity sitting in front of my computer in my pants pretending to work whilst actually watching sport for two weeks solid, I’m absolutely delighted that it’s all over. But wh, you ask, y?

Firstly, because my best friend’s stubborn and repeated refusal ever to back Novak Djokovic continues to help maintain my wine habit, and secondly because I won’t have to hear the phrase “change-up” for another year. The phrase apparently derives originally from baseball - and it’s fair to say that it also derives me nutty.

Used liberally by all the commentators, a “change-up” seems to mean any variation in a player’s tactics during a rally (or indeed on a serve). I sort-of understand what they’re getting at, but occasionally get confused when the variation to which they’re referring takes pace off the ball; for instance, a slower serve, or a slice - these, logically, you’d think, would be a “change-down”.

I do feel for these commentators though; finding correct vocabulary must be a constant nightmare. Hmmm… if only the English language had a simple word for “variation” which could encompass both these senses; of speeding up the play, and of slowing it down. Oh hang on, I’ve got it! How about JUST SAYING “CHANGE”, FOR FUCK’S SAKE?

So despite all the hullabaloo in all sections of the UK press, ranging from outraged righteous polemic in the Guardian to The Sun “hilariously” sending Page Three models to present delegates with brown envelopes, English calls for moral rectitude were overwhelmingly ignored by Johnny Foreigner, and Sepp Blatter, with a victory speech full of Day Today-esque maritime metaphors, was re-elected FIFA president. But what does the whole episode tell us?

Firstly, of COURSE FIFA is corrupt. It’s a self-regulating, self-serving organisation outside any rule of law which is flooded with money; how could it be anything BUT corrupt? But then you might say that all of football is corrupt to some extent; clubs are allowed to exist with massive debts and to play by a completely different set of fiscal rules to other businesses, agent bungs, and “tapping up” of players are rife, players can buy privacy and pretty much anything else with the obscene amounts of money they earn, and the fans are milked like battery cows for every penny they’ve got by owners who have no interest in the game whatsoever. FIFA’s brown envelope culture seems fairly venial compared to what goes on in the upper echelons of club football, including English club football.

Secondly, Sepp Blatter is popular. Not with the British press, but then for Fleet Street, he commits the two cardinal sins of being a) slightly dodgy, and b) foreign. But compared to his predecessors Joao Havelange (who was even MORE corrupt, and financially useless to the point where FIFA was bankrupt when Blatter took over in 1998) and Stanley Rous (who backed the apartheid regime in South Africa and blocked the expansion of the game in developing nations), Blatter is a sweetheart. He’s promised to refer the current scandal to the FIFA ethics committee (which is laughable - a FIFA ethics committee is as oxymoronic as a very stupid male cow), and to ensure that future World Cups are decided by votes from all FIFA member countries rather than by the current shadowy 24-man committee (which, on the other hand, is a sensible idea - at least the brown envelopes will be shared out a little more equally!) Most importantly, the concensus worldwide is that, as FIFA president, he (whisper it soft!) actually hasn’t done that bad a job so far.

Thirdly, everybody hates the English.  It’s a combination of distaste for our percieved sense of moral superiority, vivid memories of how we used to behave in the first half of the last century and in the centuries preceding (personnified by the likes of the aforementioned Rous), and mostly, visceral hatred for our press. (This latter factor is particularly easy to sympathise with; our politicians and celebrities have very little choice, but humble football administrators from abroad undestandably wonder why they should have to put up with the sort of bullshit dished out by the unprincipled, lying, ravenous pack of devil dogs that is the UK media). They also suspect - rightly - that our current crusade is in part fuelled by sour grapes over the award of the 2018 World Cup to Russia (whose oil-stained brown envelopes were always going to be considerably fatter than our own).

The long and the short of it is that this “scandal” has turned out to be a fairly insignificant storm in an English teacup. Our papers might scream that the only way is Ethics, but the rest of the world in turn suspects that we’re a bunch of bitter hypocritical preachers with over-fond memories of our colonial past. The truth, as always, is somewhere inbetween.

(PS- if anyone wants to read something a bit more intelligent / well-thought-out about FIFA, or football in general, I’d point them in the direction of Tim Vickery.)

As the table-tennis season winds inexorably towards its conclusion, with my team once again mired in a soul-crushingly futile battle against relegation (a fate which was only avoided last year by me drunkenly pleading with the League Secretary at the annual dinner dance to ignore the fact that we’d finished bottom), now is possibly not the most auspicious time to introduce the squad - but never mind. Belmarsh “B” are as follows. Names have been changed to protect the incompetent.

Skip - a veteran of over 40 years, our diminutive team captain possesses a fearsome defensive chop-based game. He will not hesitate to employ negative tactics in lengthy rallies, and will regularly win at least a third of his games simply because opponents get bored and give up as they need to be home before midnight. Five-times winner and current incumbent champion of the FDTTA Most Flatulent Player award, Skip is a shining example of captaincy - he’s a great leader, a stirring motivator, and incredibly annoying in doubles matches when he “amusingly” tries to trip me up just before I play my shot.

Mr Hunt / Mr Angry Head - a relative newcomer, and the only non-”Marsh-an” (i.e. Romney Marsh native) on the squad. Mr Hunt, first name Mike, is a tall, broad-chested, granite-chinned chap possessing smouldering latino good-looks, a devastating “widowmaker” forehand, and a huge blind-spot as to his manifold shortcomings in the good-looks / devastating forehand departments. His chirpy on-table demeanour, with shots punctuated by regular loud cries of “Oh, for FUCK’s sake, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!!” are, for some reason, regularly misinterpreted as signs of an irascible, over-competitive nature. He is in fact possessed of a zen-like calm and inner tranquility. (In much the same way as are, say, Joe Pesci in “Goodfellas” or Michael Douglas in “Falling Down”.)

Nibbles - The youngster of the team, Nibbles gets his nickname from his habit of hoovering up any remaining biscuits after the half-time tea-break (and not at all from lurid tales of his past exploits as a voracious sexual conquistador, oh no. Honestly. Especially not since he’s about to get married.) The most naturally gifted player on the team, his powerful all-round attacking game is only spoilt by the fact that it usually takes him 20 or 30 points to realise that the match has actually started. Nonetheless, he possesses the squad’s best winning average, as well as one of the most extensive collection of O’Neill, Animal, Billabong and Ripcurl hooded kagools in the Western Hemisphere.

BREAKING NEWS - sadly, Belmarsh “B” WERE eventually relegated from Division 1 this season: needing an 8-1 victory in our final game, we came agonisingly close(ish), putting up a valiant effort in losing only 5-4 to a team who were a player short (i.e. 3 of our 4 points on the night were won by default because the opponent’s third player didn’t turn up). We did win the league’s “Most Sporting Team” award, though (which is basically confirmation that the other teams think it’s amusing how rubbish we are.)

Stay tuned for future table-tennis bletherings, including more terminology updates - next time, you can find out what the expressions “floater”, “they all count”, “slapper”, and “keep it there” might signify! (And I’m sure it’s already up there on your “must read” list, just below the next Katie Price book… )

Apologies; a week of heavy work and (coupled with a slightly strange interest in women grunting volubly whilst wearing short skirts and playing with bits of wood and cat-gut) means that the the only material I’ve come up with is another slightly cruel sports-based lookey-likey.

Diminutive Belgian tennista Justine Henin…

… and diminutive Welsh comedian and impressionist (as long as it’s Ronnie Corbett), Rob “would you like me to do my Ronnie Corbett impression now?” Brydon.

Apologies once again for my protracted silence, which has been due to a combination of workin’ like a merkin and, frankly, not a heck of a lot to say which wasn’t easier and more lazily expressed in a 3-sentence Facebook update. (I’m even starting to find Facebook hard work, to be honest; the only thing stopping me getting into Twitter is fear of being harrassed by Kanye West.)

I’m moved to write because of the INCREDIBLE difficulty I’ve recently had in letting someone win a game of table-tennis. But why, you ask, would you, the mighty Tafkass, possessor of the “widowmaker” forehand, let someone win? Well, this week, I played a local friend who has recently been diagnosed with depression. We’d often talked about having a game of T-T; he claimed to have played at school, and we’d often engage in competitive banter to the point of it becoming a typical male “I’m going to kick your BUTT (and then whip you naked round the shower room afterwards with a wet rolled-up towel)” not-at-all homoerotic braggadocio exchange of views - but we only finally got round to a proper game this week.

Unfortunately, when my first seven chop-side serves were dunked straight into the net by him, it was obvious that we weren’t well-matched (which was fair enough, and to be expected; after all, he hadn’t played for nearly twenty years, whereas I play twice every week, possess a “widowmaker” forehand, and caress my bat for three hours solidly every night, before giving it a lingering kiss goodnight and sleeping with it under my pillow). We were only seconds into an hour-long booking - so I decided to “take one for the team” and try my best to make it look like an even game.

Christ, it was difficult. On the one hand, you’re balancing having to play easy shots (or miss the table altogether) with the risk of being found out, and it becoming an issue; he’s by no means stupid, and “why are you patronising me? Is this some lame-arsed attempt to make me feel better because I’ve been diagnosed with depression?” was not a conversation which I particularly wanted to intrude upon the convivial Corinthian spirit in which a game is ideally played. On the other hand, when I let him go 4 games to 3 up, and witnessed his frankly over-the-top whooping and hollering, culminating in an exclamation of “In your FACE, Tafkass!” followed by a rumination of “d’you know, I really don’t know why you bang on about table-tennis so much; you’re not actually all that good at it, are you?”, the force required to maintain the grittage of my teeth nearly made me swoon. (I was helped by the background consciousness of the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, I’m genuinely not all that good at table-tennis…)

However, all in all, I think I did a good thing. He was extremely cheery by the end of the match, and I coughed up my post-game forfeit pint with a liberal dose of faux chagrin at having been “beaten”. My next tricky task? Avoiding playing him again. He’s already asked me to keep next Wednesday evening free…

* - 100 VP points - heck, let’s make it 1,000 (although to be honest, it’s a fairly meaningless currency these days… in light of this recent hyperinflation, I reserve the right at a later date to devalue the VP Point, at which stage your 1,000 will become worth 1 New ReichsVP Point) - to anyone who can fathom this title. Clue - Dorset MP.

High summer is upon us, and anyone who habitually bleats about not liking sport (women, nancy-boys and other net-non-contributors to the economy, mostly) had better hire themselves a field in Somerset, bugger off there and listen to some rubbishy music with like-minded idiots who are happy to pay £1000 for 3 days of sleeplessness and 50-deep queues for chemical toilets.

Wimbledon is now in full swing, and massively honourable mention must go to John Isner and Nicolas Mahut, who are deadlocked at an astonishing 59 games all in the final set of their second-round match. A regular best-of-five-set match should last around 2 and a half hours, maybe add an hour if it goes the distance. Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal’s massive epic final in 2008 lasted 4 hours 47 minutes. The previous longest match in history lasted six and a half hours. Mahut and Isner are currently at the TEN hour mark, and are still going - that’s longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (watching rather than reading), longer than Serena Williams took to play her entire winning Wimbledon CHAMPIONSHIP last year, and a whole bunch of other stats. The fact that this match is completely dominated by booming serves and thus (whisper it soft) actually quite boring is irrelevant; the titanicism (titanocity? titan-eousness?) of their efforts is incredible. (Mind you, I played table-tennis last night, and because I arrived late had to play two consecutive games. Twenty incredibly intensive lung-busting minutes of occasional small side-to-side movements later, I was shattered. AND I didn’t have free water / crowds applauding me / gimps picking up my discarded balls like those pampered tennis wussies do.)

On the minus side, it’s been another record-breakingly-shit week for British tennis hopes. Apart from Andy Murray, who doesn’t count as British because he hates Britain, isn’t English which everyone takes to mean British, speaks in a broad Glaswegio-transatlantic drawl and won’t bow to our queen or something (probably), ALL of our players in the men’s AND women’s draw were knocked out in the first round. £30 million a year is lavished on these cack-handed twots by the LTA; just to put that in context, the team behind the brilliant BBC Wild Night In programme on Sunday was ecstatic because, after months of fundraising effort, it had managed to raise £1 million for vital biodiversity projects around the world. SIX measly pounds is enough to make an acre of rainforest safe from the palm oil planters. FIFTY pounds is enough to buy food for an orphaned orang-utan for a year. And TWENTY pounds is enough to buy me a soap-box for standing on whilst hectoring you with irrelevant and utterly specious comparisons between sums of money involved in charities and sporting events. (Make it twenty-five, and I might even shut up.)

And then, of course, there’s the World Cup. Aaahhh, the World Cup. More on that later…

This story from a week or so ago managed to grab the fragile, dangling nutsack of the press’s attention and give it a good squeeze; Google, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, put up a playable version of the game on their homepage as its “doodle” and left it there for a day or so. So far, so not very interesting; all I really learned from Google’s stunt was a) that yes, my childhood is over 30 years ago, thanks for reminding me as if the mirror didn’t do that often enough already, and b) that for all the undoubted growth in my wisdom, experience, waistline and general stature as a human being, I’m still as fucking shit at Pac-Man as when the machines on Felixstowe pleasure beach used to swallow my pocket money in five desperately disappointing and malcoordinated minutes back in the early 1980s.

Then a company called “Rescue Time” reported that the Google Pac-Man had led to a staggering 4.82 million work hours being wasted - the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, or enough money to employ all of Google’s staff (including its directors) for six weeks. It’s an interesting assertion based on very creative use of what you might call imaginitive statistics, and one which raises a whole new set of questions; chief amongst which is how many valuable work hours have subsequently been lost reading Rescue Time’s spurious-in-fact-let’s-not-beat-about-the-bush-utter-bollocks assertions and commenting on them as I’m doing now? (Time spent by me writing this post thus far - 27 minutes. My entirely self-fabricated and meaningless consultancy fee? £100 per hour. Entertainment / information value of said post? Well, let’s be honest, nil. You do the “math”.)

But then I realised how much free publicity Rescue Time had gained from all this, and, bearing in mind the well-known fact that 78.327% of statistics are made up on the spot, I thought I’d give it a try myself…. so here goes.

You know those stupid fucking St George flags which everyone seems to be hanging out of their cars to celebrate England’s impending loss in the World Cup (on penalties in the quarters to France on July 2nd - you heard it here first)? I’ve calculated* that, if you take cost of the diesel required to transport them over from China and then back again in a month or so when they head to the landfill site a couple of miles away from the factory where they were first made, then add on the cost of increased fuel / journey time man-hours caused by the reduction in the aerodynamic performance due to drag on every car which displays them, and finally factor in the man-hours required for every purchaser to go down to Netto to buy a new pair every time they fall off the back of Ford Mondeos and hit my fucking windscreen this morning nearly making me veer into a lorry because you were too thick to have secured them properly, you dull-witted moron - then the monetary equivalent would be enough to pay Sarah Ferguson to go away somewhere - anywhere - and to not come back for AT LEAST six weeks. Now THAT’S a statistic worth thinking about.

(* - From a huge list of big numbers in my imagination. Sorry, I didn’t keep the working-out.)

It’s been a while since the last serious social faux-pas, but like the proverbial London buses, three (at least) came along and ran me over all at once last Friday.

I was playing a doubles match in the annual tournaments at my local squash club for the first time, having entered myself on the back of a run of good results. I’d previously (wisely) confined myself to playing squash with close friends, who were familiar with the fact that my charmingly folksy Mediterranean shouty gesticulatorama dummy-spitting implement-breaking on-court demeanour was emblematic of my unique emotionally-demonstrative patchwork personality, rather than, say, of me being a dickhead.

The evening started badly; I turned up 10 minutes late; not entirely my fault, as I’d been held up at a 3-hour monthly meeting of the Maintenance Administration Committee of the block of flats where I own a rental property. (Imagine how boring that meeting sounds, then magnify it by a factor equivalent to the disparity between N-Dubz’ fame and their talent, and you’ll get close to how dull it actually was. Just when I thought the meeting had finished - on 2 hrs 20 mins, which would in itself have been the longest meeting ever - an old fella piped up with a dispute about an old insurance claim, which had occurred before I even bought my flat. The upshot was that the managing agent promised to look into it, but would need to dig out the relevant paperwork, and I SWEAR that the last TWENTY minutes of the discussion - all of which took place whilst I was desperate for a piss as well as to depart - consisted entirely of “Well, you know, I’m really not happy - I want this sorted as soon as possible”. “OK, we’ll dig out the paperwork and look into it”. “Well, as long as you do, because I really don’t think this is being handled correctly”. “No, I understand - we’ll get the file out and report back next month”. “Right, as long as you make sure this is investigated properly, because I’m very…” etc etc etc etc. Etc.)

(Yawn…) oh, sorry, where was I? Oh yes, 10 minutes late for squash. In the normal run of things, you’d think that this wasn’t a blue-whale-sized deal; yet I turned up to a sea of faces stonier than Cheech and Chong put together; for it seems that a) doubles matches tend to go on for longer than the normal 40-minute allotted period, and b) the whole evening was booked up with doubles matches - mine, and then 7 others. Thus my late arrival had inconvenienced everyone playing after us - 28 separate individuals, their extended families and probably entire circles of close friends, extending outwards to 3 or 4 degrees of separation… in fact, I’m half-expecting to see “Inconsiderate Squash Bastard Ruins Friday” as the headline in this week’s installment of your super soaraway Kentish Express.

On to the game itself; I was playing with a guy of around 40 against an older man and a woman of 35 or so with a heavily bandaged knee. Having never before played doubles, I was instructed to call a let (whereby the point is replayed) if I was in any danger at all of banging into anyone - however, keen no doubt to make up as much time as possible to atone for my late arrival, I ignored this advice and proceeded to run into / knock to the ground said partially injured woman FIVE times during the course of play. She didn’t seem to mind. Much. The first couple of times, at least. My physically intimidating approach paid off as we raced into a 2-1 lead - then, however, on surrendering a 6-point advantage in game 4 and losing the game with a poor shot, I launched into my trademark battle-cry of “OH, for FUCK’S sake!” - only to look up at the viewing gallery and see the young families of both my partner and knee-woman staring at me, kids borderline quizzical / frightened, adults ashen-faced; cue appropriate self-abasement. The deciding game was a close one; we held the lead and match point at 14-13, and my serve (directed deliberately straight at knee-woman’s patella, obviously) had the opposition in trouble - my partner was set up for an easy put-away… which he proceeded to dunk into the “foul” area at the bottom of the wall. We (or rather I) then lost the next two points as well, and that was that. Well, nearly. The last point over, the now-dead ball rolled to my feet, and in a fit of pique, I took a frustrated swing, miscued completely - and looked up to see the ball whizzing at 90mph straight into the bowlarks of my startled partner. Cue tuts from the gallery and a sotto-voce chorus of “that’s really not on” / “what a bad loser” etc. A massively suppliant round of “sorry”s to anyone who would make eye contact with me didn’t seem to do the trick, as I was roundly ignored in the bar when drinks were being taken afterwards. And as I write this, there’s a mysterious and unexpected “call me back” message from the club’s membership secretary on my phone…

Still, it’s the taking part that counts.

Praise be! For our saviour carrieth our hopes and dreams and promiseth everlasting joy and heaven through his mighty works. Yea, verily I say unto thee, he receiveth gladly his cross and always achieveth the goals of his faithful.  Yet woebetide us all - for this very week, he hath been cast down by his enemies on a green field far away - injured, despised and tormented, he beareth the stigmata of his pains through hand and foot…

Luckily, it now appears that Wayne Rooney’s ankle injury isn’t as bad as was first feared.

Last week I was forced, by dint of my continued reluctant dependence on BBC’s news and sports channel Radio 5 Live**, to listen to much of the Cheltenham racing festival.

One of the races was rather amusingly called the “Ryanair Chase”, sponsored by everyone’s favourite airline. I don’t know a lot about horse-racing, but judging by the name of the event, I assume a) that although it’s part of the Chelteham festival, the race is actually run at another course 50 miles or more away (like, say, “Cheltenham Wincanton”), b) that instead of having an orderly start, the jockeys just gather around where they think the race will happen half an hour beforehand, jostling for position and bitterly regretting the £20 they spent on “priority horse-mounting”, c) that jockeys are charged £25 for every kilo they’re overweight, d) that owners pay a surcharge of £1 every time their horse takes a dump, e) that spectators, for the duration of the race, are denied the racecourse’s normal refreshments facilities and instead have to pay £3.95 (plus £2.50 credit card fee) for a lukewarm cup-a-soup, and f) that if any of the jockeys fall off during the race, they somehow make their way to a big “lost jockeys” warehouse on the outskirts of Dublin and are never heard of again…. (etc…)

(* - I’m honour-bound to offer VP points when a title pun is as oblique - OK, as shit - as this. So 10 aforementioned bijou pointettes to anyone who can name the famous female co-writer of the song I’m referencing).

(** being nearly 40, vegetarian and fairly dull, I should of course be listening to Radio 4, or ideally sitting in silence.)