What goes up will surely not come down….

A slow last week for blog entries. My excuse is that I was rather deeply involved in two events that didn’t, one way or another enable proximity to a computer to be established. Firstly, there was the small matter of the Labour Party in Southampton capturing four council seats in the elections, accompanied by my guilt that if I was not out as often as possible with my friends and colleagues bothering the residents of the city something terrible would happen: but the residents seemed not too bothered as it turned out, and indeed were generally well disposed to the idea that they should go out and vote for us. This is of course, something of a surprise, because it’s a ‘well known fact’ that Labour only did well in a few parts of the north. Look a bit more closely, media, I say.

The other event (not quite so important) was that Southampton Football Club gained promotion to the Championship (hooray). This was taxing and stressful, and involved most of a weekend either preparing, watching or celebrating. I realise the players did have a shift to put in as well, but it must be appreciated that being a happy fan is just as hard work as being (pace Southampton’s recent history) a miserable curmudgeonly fan all of Saturday and Sunday because the team has lost again.  I did observe, however, that politics is never entirely absent from even these events: I watched some ‘official’ recorded scenes of celebration after the game: the players were all greeting the fans in rapturous joint festivities, and across the airwaves came the familiar song ‘we’re coming for you, we’re coming for you, we are Southampton, we’re coming for yooooooou’. Very rousing, except that from where I was standing the day before, I recall a rather different version being sung, which involved some very rude words, reference to a football team just down the coast and some fish. It may be that a family friendly version was indeed being sung in others parts of the ground, but if not, it was good to see the authorities seeking to pour political oil on troubled waters and not petrol.