'Elegantly wasted' has always been a term enjoyed by yours truly. It rings of a combination of cool and rebellion.

Inelegantly wasted is what you see across Shoreditch on a Sunday lunchtime, when clumps of arseholes who've already been up all night and look a bit peeky in too few clothes plump for a lunchtime sojourn of double vodka red bulls with a bomb of Jeigermeister to down in one and then have all the appearance of being about to shit themselves as they struggle back to the bar for another round or ten on the credit card (and you need a credit card). I witnessed five chumps in action doing precisely this earlier, and I thought 'Max Beckmann would have enjoyed this' and I love Max Beckmann, Beckmann painting the Weimar Republic. Probably a place we do not want to revisit.

I don't blame them, but it's pretty shitty to watch, this emptiness in action. I suggest that an explanation may be that what used to happen over four days straight is now compressed into a mere twenty four hours, and that they need to do this to compensate for their ghastly work tomorrow when they will probably be busy cutting my own credit limit wearing their cheap suits, that and the universal availability of the derisible but usefully brain fugging coke, which paradoxically rather suits the smooth running of 'the machine'.

So it has come to this, Max Clifford wins a football match. Max Clifford will win the Premiership, Max Clifford will lift the Champions League. The nation quivers in apprehension as to whether two players shake hands. The whole of the Chelsea team crumbles under the weight of tittle tattle. Paradoxically, they suddenly can't SCORE. You couldn't dream it up, it's pure soap opera. I believe a conspiracy- that this has been constructed. It is a convenient way of selling papers and bigging up nationalistic passion before the World Cup- the money spinner that desperately needs British ticket sales. It seems to me like a rather clever marketing ploy. I mean, if all the England players were behaving themselves there would be no stories, and football players by definition do not behave themselves, they are the dangerous beasts of temptation and thrill and comparative daftness- ideal material. Wayne Rooney next....

Mind you I did watch the '70's classic 'Rollerball' last night.

Day off. Just been playing the Foos and the Eagles (see below- not The Eagles) pretty loud while cooking a hopefully resounding vegetable curry. I'm sipping whisky and I've got to meet a guy in half an hour. The music felt fantastic, resounding everywhere, especially that deep bass you get upstairs out of the living room- that thumping noise. I like all that, it's like a gig when you are in the foyer. Now I'm enjoying the silence as much, just like you do after a gig also.

So I've read my Roland Barthes (Mythologies) on the significance of Steak and Chips and Wine, and wonder of it will 'connect' with my students in third year. And I've sat at my new writing table and not written much at all, and I've watched of terrible events on the television to do with Poles under Stalin. I do this allot, but without the new writing table which is a little intimidating to be honest.

It's been a long day- four sessions. Jesus. So I'm fabulously glad I can stay up late with the whisky and love Chris Rock on the television. Chris Rock is fucking fantastic.

On another, not unrelated note, any Killing Joke fans out there? (80's now a bona fide dissertation subject)

Decided Keef book crap. Delighted with new record- Eagles of Death Metal (Heart On) Try 'Cheap Thrills' and 'Prissie Prancing' -decent sort of swagger deep in LA irony and full of Keef riffs swamped into Zep /Aero/+ occasional country waves- real nice (brought Julie down from Daniel Deronda upstairs anyway and I'd defy you not to shake your butt to this one). Too young for me of course but I'm time traveling and so are they. So reading to compensate The Third Reich in Power (Evans) at the same time - recommended- very forensic- makes you feel you are learning something while your shaking your butt to fuck off rock and roll, which is an ideal combination - this may be called surfing our times.

Fashion designer hangs himself at 40. The fashion editor comes on the TV to explain his legacy.

'He changed the silhouette of trousers' she says. Fuck me.

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I usually don't blog about football or the university.

However, I feel so worried for those who are pouring their hearts out over the John Terry affair, I feel the need to present a little rationality (not present in the media)

1. We call our fellow creatures ex-boyfriends or girlfriends for a reason. It means they are available. All of us have had that terrible time when an 'ex' sleeps with our friends. So that team Bridge stuff is just idiotic- go cry in private like we all have.

2. If we confuse football with church, you may have an England team of 11 Cliff Richards, and there aren't 11 of him and I think he's dodgy anyway. And we'd lose.

3. A football team of non adulterers would be impossible, even in the pub team.

4. Footballers play better when there is trouble in their lives- It's a fucking diversion from the miseries of life in the first place- to fuck off and play football (ask my nephew)

5. Whoever thought that people who are good at sport are good at being good. Explain why they should be?

6. Anybody who takes takes a footballer as a role model is obviously an idiot.

7. Girls love footballers