England weren't bad in the World Cup. Roy Hodgson is a tremendous bloke and was said to be taking his team into Brazil 2014 without the same overblown expectations that have accompanied England every time since 1966, which is at the very limit of what I can remember.
So, why do we now need any sort of inquest, having taken in the young guns and lost narrowly to two pretty good sides and Costa Rica, quoted at 50/1 to win the group, look like going through in first place.
Why do we need Chris Waddle, once the third most expensive transfer in football history, to do a reprise of his rant at the last World Cup about how wrong it all is, on Radio 5. It only makes one turn over to Radio 3 or 4 because not only is it uncalled-for but we have heard it all before. But I see that Danny Baker has called for all the England pundits to come home when the team does. Good grief, yes. How many men does it take to talk so relentlessly and in such dull fashion for quite so long.
I'm not all that confident in my investment in Argentina, which is what I always do, but either the fancied teams will improve or we will get some unexpected, entertaining semi-finals featuring the likes of Chile, Costa Rica, France and weren't Iran very unlucky not to draw with Argentina.
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But I like to be Radio 3 here rather than 5 and I should not be writing about football.
How long is it since I reviewed a book of poems here, I don't know. Things do pick up in the Autumn but, in one of those rare moments, I have taken a tip from another website and it was for Karen Solie, a Canadian poet who sounds, from the reviews I've seen and the lines there quoted, to be just the sort of thing I want to know about and so her early Selected, The Living Option, will be reviewed here, a little bit after the fact, soon after the book arrives and we will see.
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But whatever you do, you might as well do it with confidence if you can. Those who only watch the summer pass because they are waiting for my horse racing feature, The Saturday Nap, to appear again in October will be thrilled to know that Toronado in the first race at Royal Ascot put me right back on terms with the bookmakers for 2014 and it is only onwards and upwards from here.
And, in the office predictions game, the issue was the colour of Her Majesty's hat on Ladies Day and so I'm back up alongside the leaders in that game, too. It doesn't get any better than this.
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Poems for me are rarely 'inspired'. They are suggested, usually by a word and often in something I'm reading. Books are made out of other books, literature from other literature. I'm reading Donna Tartt's The Little Friend to fill in that gap. I'm sure it's not as good as the other two but if she only produces a novel every seven years then what am I going to do once I've finished this one.
But as in The Goldfinch, when I knew that one line in that was a poem waiting to be written, another line in this rose up from the page and flaunted itself similarly.
It was,
'If it's miracles everywhere, what's the point?'
I would have that if I can find enough to do with it but it is worth sharing on its own just in case I never do.
That'll do.
David Green
- David Green (Books) is the imprint under which I published booklets of my own poems. The original allocation of ISBN numbers is used up now, though. The 'Collected Poems' are now available as a pdf. The website is now what it has become, often more about music than books and not so often about poems. It will be about whatever suggests itself.
