Patience.org

Great to see Fulham back at Craven Cottage for the first home game of the season last Saturday. After two years spent in exile in what felt like another country (QPR) we’re back where we belong. Shame I had to miss it, but I’ll be there for next game.

Dad met Al Fayedoutside the ground beforehand, thanked him for bringing us back (even if the chairman wasn’t that enthusiastic about it a couple of years ago) and pointed out that he’d been coming there since 1937. Even a year ago it looked far from certain that any of us would see the place again unless we bought one of the luxury flats that appeared to be on its horizon.

Crumbs, in this political maelstrom, you can’t ignore what’s going on, so I give you the thoughts of two great American writers (well sort of) Norman Mailer and Bruce Springsteen.

And Mailer gives us the fine word, ‘smugmanship.’ Learn it, remember it, it’s sure to come in useful.

“So I kicked his amp over, smashed his guitar and cut myself up.”

Well, you would, wouldn’t you?

Well, you would if you’re Pete Doherty and your best mate and co-singer songwriter has just looked at you in a funny way during a song that’s a thinly-veiled story of their tortuous relationship.

Great feature here on The Libertines, Britain’s greatest contemporary band that I had the fortune to see in NYC a while back, which was quite something.

He’s currently going through a spiral of drug-induced paranoia, while the others are getting on with it. Hopefully he can pull out of it, but the spectre of him playing gigs at his flat for cash (which he’s doing tonight incidentally) doesn’t exactly point to a situation that’s stabilising.

Still, can’t wait for the new album, which arrives at the end of this month, apparently as deftly produced by Mick Jones as the debut was.