A completely non-related number, recently.
Today is my birthday. I "celebrated" in style, enduring another day of pointless tedium at my place of employment, and wondered where it all went wrong, not for the first time.
On the day that I was born, Mr. Edward Brooke, the former Attorney General of Massachusetts, became the first Afro-American to be elected to the United States Senate; if that appeared to represent progress, it was surely balanced out by the election of a Mr. Ronald Reagan, a chimpanzee-fucking B-movie actor, as Govenor of California on the same day. Also that day, by Presidential decree, Lyndon Baines Johnson signed into law an antitrust exemption to allow the National Football League to merge with the American Football League, thus paving the way for the American television networks to be peppered with advertisements across the weekend and on Monday nights, with a few seconds of heavily padded men wearing helmets bumping into each other in between.
In "real" football, The Everton Football Club Company Limited, holders of the Football Association's Challenge Cup trophy, were handily placed in second (2nd) place in the English First Division following an impressive 2-1 win away at The Sheffield Wednesday Football Club Company Limited. However, on the day I was born they were about to suffer a disappointing 0-2 reverse in the first leg of their second round tie away at Real Zaragoza. The "mighty Blues" went out of the competition on aggregate two weeks later after only managing a 1-0 win in the return leg at Goodison Park, a stadium which had recently hosted World Cup group games, and which was in no way said by the incumbent chairman to be in danger of failing to obtain its safety certificates.
The Everton Football Club Company Limited also ran its business at a profit, had an impressive figurehead in the shape of Sir John Moores of the Littlewoods pools and retail empire, and was able to attract some of the top players in the game, such as Mr. Little Curly Alan Ball, holder of a World Cup winner's medal, who turned down a move to The Manchester United Football Club Company Limited in order to ply his trade at Goodison Park. Just like somebody of the ilk of Mr. Wayne Rooney would today, obviously.
Number one in the United Kingdom's "Hit Parade" was occupied by this popular beat combo, with this wonderfully syncopated disc.
Today's chart is topped by a gentleman by the name of "Professor Green", who should indeed have been murdered by Colonel Mustard, in the Lounge, with the revolver.
UK unemployment was around 2.5% of the workforce. It currently lies at 8.1%. A "consultant" was somebody who explained to you why you needed a hip replacement operation, and gave you an indication of when the hospital would be able to perform same; now a "consultant" is somebody who works for an accountancy firm who produce reams of spreadsheets to demonstrate that the deficit of the health trust is such that all operations have to be cancelled, and that the hospital must indeed close as part of a rationalization exercise, before submitting a seven-figure invoice to said trust.
Whilst in those days the biggest worry was fat old men in suits destroying the planet via the means of a thermonuclear holocaust, today the biggest worry is fat greedy old men in suits raping the planet of all its material wealth, and thus inevitably leading the planet into an idealogical clash and, ultimately, into a thermonuclear holocaust. Oh, that, and a big fuck-off asteroid passing within a celestial midge's widge of Earth, something which astronomers should not have seen coming all those years ago.
So, where did it all go wrong? Am I that much of a "jonah" that, following my birth, everything turned to ratshit? This may well be the case. However, I am more inclined to blame the television chef Gordon Ramsay. If it all were my fault, I should bear the lines on my face which he does on his, and he should bear my baby-smooth skin. And I can make much better omelettes.
Perhaps his mum should have kept her legs shut one cold, fateful February night in Glesca. If she had, The Everton Football Club Company Limited might have been Premier League Champions for the last 20 years. Or at least managed to keep hold of Sr. Mikel Arteta.
Are others boycotting Mr. Ramsay's restaurants due to the detrimental effect his birth had on the United Kingdom over the last 45 years?
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