Patience.org

So for my second appearance in the British media within a week, I sent my story into the Guardian’s Fiver, which is a satirical look at football sent out each day at, roughly speaking 5pm (hence the name) and well worth reading.

Anyway they’ve been running a series about the cushiest job you’ve ever had, so I wrote about my couple of summer jobs working at Wimbledon. I should point out that I did not write the bit about American readers, despite it being in quotes. They inserted it as part of an ongoing friendly jab at their many US-based readers.

Anyway, take it away…

TONIGHT’S TV AND RADIO

ITV 1: London Soccer Night (11.10pm)
“I once had a cushy number at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club,” trumpets Nick Patience, kicking off another day of your brilliant jobs.

Five: John Barnes’s Football (1.25am)
“That’s Wimbledon for those particularly slow on the uptake/your American readers.

Portuguese Football – Porto v Vitoria Setubal (2.05am)
“All it involved was sitting in a commentary box on Centre Court and ensuring that only those with a press pass came in to watch the tennis.

Dutch Football – Feyenoord v Ajax (3.40am)
“Better still, they employed two of us – but only needed one to stand guard at any given time.

Argentinian Football (5.10am)
“We were also given press passes and, being fairly keen photographers, we were able to snap away with the pros on Centre, No1 and other courts.

Sky Sports 1: Spanish Cup Football – Betis v Bilbao (10.30pm)
“Close-ups of Martina’s muscular forearms stay with me to this day.

J League Weekly (12.30pm)
“We only had to get to work before play started, which was usually 2pm, too…

Sky Sports 3: Live Women’s Football – England v Scotland (7.30pm)
“…and the food vouchers we were given in addition to £30 quid a day were also good for lunches of the liquid variety.

BBC Radio Five: Sport on Five (7pm)
“In addition to watching the entirety of Wimbledon 89 and 90 close up, I was also able to take great pleasure in ejecting Gerry Williams (where is he now?) from the press box.

Talksport: Kick Off (7pm)
“He was attempting to erect his shiny new Sky TV (or whatever they were called then) tripod and do a piece to camera, but I wasn’t having any of it. As we shoved him out we told him bluntly there’d be no pieces to camera on our watch!

Newstalk 106 (www.newstalk106.ie): Off the ball with Ger Gilroy (7pm)
“Good times!” Any more cushy numbers out there? Or is it time for a new TV and radio riff? As always the.boss@guardian.co.uk is willing and waiting to be serviced.

Next week is TV turnoff week in the US. We don’t yet have such a problem and have actually cut back to just one telly (a reduction of 50%!).

By complete coincidence, BBC Radio DJ Steve Lamacq today was asking on his afternoon show on 6Music about Draconian or unreasonable rules imposed by your parents when you were young. It quickly became apparent that ITV (the UK’s first commerical TV channel) was effectively banned in many listeners’s households, including one person whose parents went to the lengths of removing the channel-changing knob (it was the 70s) so they couldn’t re-tune their TV.

Anyway, I decided to send in the story of the lengths my Dad went to to prevent Charlotte and I from watching TV (not just ITV, although that was seriously frowned upon at all times – and with good reason, let’s face it!). To wit:

When my sister and I were growing up in the 70s and 80s, we were also prevented from watching ITV by and large. It was deemed inferior to the BBC and let’s face it, they were right!

In fact my Dad sometimes took it one step further and went as far as splitting the electric cord on the TV such that he could take the business end (the bit that plugged into the wall) back to work with him at lunchtime so that when we got home from school (my Mum worked part time and so wasn’t there a couple of afternoons a week) we couldn’t watch any telly until he got home at about 5.30!

So we listened to the radio instead.

Still I didn’t really miss much in terms of telly, apart from the odd Grange Hill and if I was as handy with a screwdriver, I might try the same thing on my kids now!

And you know what? He read it out on the show.

…ten and a half months old.

Kid #2 stood for the first time unaided today. She used his chair to pull herself up but then stood there, holding onto nothing but thin air, smiling her little head off. She’ll be walking before 12 months old, that’s for sure – you heard it here first.

One of our little man’s favourite rituals since we moved is to lay on our bed just before he goes to sleep at night and watch the flashbulbs go off on the 86th floor observatory on the Empire State Building. Not many kids can do that, I guess.

Tonight the lights illuminating the tower at the top (of what is going through its second reign as New York’s tallest building) are white, which seems from the lighting colour definitions chart to be the catch-all colour. Next up on the schedule is blue, for a couple of different reasons.