‘A Little Respect’

‘A Little Respect’

Sunday, 29^th of March, 2020.

So, that is it. I am, as of tomorrow on ‘lock-down’.

On Friday I was one of the ones selected to stay at home and be retained by my firm for the foreseeable. At least a month – possibly two.

We all just do not know how long this thing will last or even if it will be beaten – I mean, they must be working on an antidote right, but how long will it take and for it to be distributed? By then, how many more will have died?

Yesterday the UK figure went to over just under 1100 deaths. 1100 deaths – Christ, that’s horrendous enough and what are the officials saying, that they would be happy with 20,000!!! Jesus, even 1 is too much, never mind 20,000…

For the first time yesterday, I don’t mind admitting, I got scared. No, not that Liverpool may never win the League, again, but that I could become one of those statistics or that my mum or brother could become one. Or people who I also love and also know. It’s just, like a lottery winner, it could be anyone. I feel even more scared now as I read today that even healthy people have died of this Covid – 19. It is as indiscriminate as a bomb dropping during a war. This though is not one of my dreams where I get really scared of seeing grey clad German soldiers in their tanks on my old green but it is reality. Who is to say that the people I just avoided in Aldi have not got it? Who is to say that I’ve not got it?

More worrying in the bigger, unselfish picture, is that the poor NHS staff don’t know if they have got it. It is an absolute travesty that they have not been provided with testing kits. They above anyone should have these even before they start their shifts. It just does not make sense to keep them at risk at this time. They are akin to the soldiers who went over the top to face the machine guns and shrapnel bombs – let’s all hope to God that there is not a similar outcome in casualties like the Somme, in 1916.

Get them protected. Get them tested. ASAP.

I just stayed in yesterday. Got-up late. Late for a Saturday. 11 for goodness sake. Normally I am up and about and out down Morrisons by at least 11. What was I like? I did not even feel like going out. Despite the dry weather. At least it wasn’t raining. A quick walk around my garden and a kick-about of a ball was the sum total of my exercise. Lazy bistard!

As for the footie – well, I thought I’d sit down and watch Football Focus – or was it, Music Focus or, what passed for music these days! My, my, I may as well have spent an hour flicking through You Tube at Mo Salah, Mane and Bobby Firmino’s Liverpool goals. What a load of rubbish to be fair. Just, just, stick to the football. I don’t mind whatever music whilst watching clips of LFC but to be subjected to all that – no. Yes, I am getting on, over half a century now and am allowed to be put in the ‘grumpy old men category’!!

I recorded last Saturday’s MOTD and am half-way through watching it – so don’t spoil it for me to tell me that Terry probably topped the polls as the leading Premier League captain. Personally, and controversially being a Liverpool fan, I’d have Roy Keane every day of the week as Top of the List. What a never-say-die captain who just had that bit of Sounessesque nastiness to his game that you just knew your team had more than half a chance with him leading it. Liverpool should have got him from Forest when they could have. Imagine him and Souness having a dressing room bargy!!! Souness may have just come out on top but Liverpool FC would have been the winner; as it was Man United were – on so many occasions too, especially with Keane on the pitch. You could say ‘We loved to hate him’ – no, just hated him but with a grudging respect.

Anyhow, I recoded last nights Top Ten Premier strikers and if Robbie Fowler ‘God’ is not in the top 5 then there is going to be trouble! He had everything and I can only see that goal v Villa on footage now, when he struck it from at least 50 yards out, as my actually memory of seeing it in the ground has sadly disappeared. Or his 3 in 5 minutes v Arsenal. You can just see me there in my beany cap at that end, as the Kop was being re-built. Loved Fowler, twenty million times more than Owen.

So, I have that to watch, having also saved-up, just wisely now, my money. Then there is the ITV documentary on Friday about foreign players – how about Avi Cohen who scored at both ends v Villa when we clinched the league in 1980! A top 5 of the top Foreign Players would be a good programme – Henry springs to mind immediately – loved him, except when he scored against us. And Bergkamp – such class. Oozed it.

Also, I have on my recorder the highlights of the World Cup of 2018. Not too bothered to be honest. If they had decided to show highlights of Spain ’82, I would have been all over it like a rash. That was my first, proper final tournament. Watched majority of them. Just soo glad I got to witness Italy v Brazil live…What a contest of contrasts. Even now I still feel that Brazil will win the game…

Football has saved me on more than one occasion. Women come and go but there has always been football and the true, true, love of my life, Liverpool FC. To the day I die, that will never change. In an instant just thinking of some of the goals and matches I’ve seen can transform my mood, just like it has since I’ve been writing this.

With my other love Erasure, in the back-ground, for they are also my time-line to my life’s events, I feel more positive than when I started to write this blog; maybe once all this is finally over, we will all show each other more than ‘A Little Respect’.

A. Phillips.