Four To Go

After Monday's game I've become a figure of pity whenever the subject of football comes up at work. "You never know, you might stay up," the Man Utd fan offered in consolation. "I can't see Hull winning again and the Scousers have dropped a few points at home."
"I don't know," laughed the Villa supporter from the queue for last-minute photocopies, "even Owen thinks you'll get stuffed."
"Yeah, well if we do he'll probably end up playing for you next season," I replied. His smile disappeared. "I fucking hope not."

Running IV

The same route again but I upped the pace after halfway and cut over a minute off my previous time. It was the perfect weather for a run, sunny but not too hot, with a slight headwind on the outward half blowing dust and car exhaust fumes at my back.

April in Riga

Like a shower in a dodgy hotel, Riga's temperatures swing from one extreme to the other. As I write it's twenty degrees outside and the tree downstairs has exploded into blossom overnight. We haven't had a drop of rain for two weeks, daylight stretches long into the evening, and the sky remains an unadulterated shade of Coventry City blue. "It's something unusual," a student told me. Whatever it is, I'm not about to start complaining.

The Morning After

We didn't win because for all our huff-and-puff we had nobody capable of creating chances. Viduka's legs have gone, Martins and Gutierrez run around but don't actually do anything, Duff has lost his pace, skill and crossing ability (but still looks quite good compared to Geremi), and Butt, Guthrie, Barton, Smith and Nolan are different names for the same player, each slightly worse than the one before. The only positive thought I had at full-time was that we'll soon be spared paying Michael Owen's wages. "He only needs one chance," commentators say. Well, he got it - and he was no David Kelly.

The game in Twitter updates:

Are they sure that bloke's an opera singer? Looks like someone they dragged out of The Blackie Boy.

Decent start from what I can see. Not that that's very much between static and splutters.

Admittedly I've missed quite a bit of this match, but is Michael Owen actually on the pitch? I've heard his name twice.

Our best effort so far from Duff. Make that our only effort so far.

We could be playing Di Stefano, Gerd Muller and Thierry Henry up front here and still not score. What we need is a bit of invention.

Pass, Martins. Pass!

Face it, we're down.

Must Win Game: One of Three

"We know the situation, we know the stakes and now we have to produce" - Alan Shearer.

Tonight's game is the most important since the last time we played Portsmouth needing a win to stay up. Even now, seventeen years later, I can still remember the explosion of relief when David Kelly scored the only goal late in the game. For a while we never looked back. Win tonight and Hull and Sunderland might fold under the pressure. Lose and we can start planning trips to Doncaster, Swansea and Blackpool.

Be strong, lads.

Running

With one thing and another I wasn't able to run again until this morning, so I stuck to the same route, distance and pace as last week: twenty-five minutes, two-and-a-half miles, touch the metal fence at the port and turn back for home. Banners in the colour of the Latvian flag hung from lamp-posts down by the river, a pleasure boat was moored by the walkway, waiting for passengers. I ran back into a headwind. Drunks lay sleeping in the long grass by the market.

Kemeri

In years to come, when I think back to Kemeri it'll be the sound of barking dogs that I hear first, loud and insistent like car horns in some big Chinese city. What little traffic there was moved too quickly on the narrow roads. Church bells rang from invisible spires. Everywhere was the foul, rotten-eggy smell of sulphur.

I walked aimlessly for the first half an hour, finding nothing but dust, before stumbling across what's left of the spa park. Two men in wheelchairs were arguing by a weatherbeaten statue, turned black by the angle of the sun. Paint peeled from walls, metal rusted, weeds grew taller, the lovers' island had tarpaulin over the roof and the only visible sign of restoration was a scribbled line drawn through the graffiti. Through the trees I could just make out of the Colgate-white shell of the Kemeri Hotel, slowly being rebuilt. To the right, by a latticed bandstand, an old woman filled a plastic water bottle from a concrete spring.

A signed path started on the far side of the hotel, finishing at Kemeri National Park and a raised boardwalk that winds around boggy woodland like a toy railway. The temperature was up to twenty degrees. I sat on the grass reading, waiting for my train.

Lielvarde

It's half past twelve and the Lielvarde train sits idling on platform six. Hawkers stand by the door speaking quickly in Russian then moving down the carriage, selling nothing. The sun beats through the dirty window, passengers step languidly across the glinting metal tracks, over the tannoy the announcer draws her vowels out until each new station begins to sound like a list of complaints.

The guidebook describes Lielvarde as "the first town upstream from Riga worth spending some time in," which doesn't say much for the places I passed on the way. There are only two things to see, one at either end of Lāčplēsa iela, named after the mythical Latvian bear-slayer and adopted son of the Lord of Lielvarde. Nearest the station is Udevena pils, a replica 12th century fort that looks like somewhere you might drop the kids off for an hour while you have a Sunday afternoon pint. Three kilometres in the opposite direction, the Andrejs Pumpurs museum overlooks a quiet stretch of the River Daugava and the ruins of a stone castle built by crusading German knights.

Neither was really worth the trip.

The Next Place

Beirut, Bogota, New York, Almaty. We sat in the bar after work flicking through jobs on the transfer list. Someone had brought a highlighter pen and was marking the salaries in fluorescent green. Another was counting the vacancies, "...two hundred and twenty six, two hundred and twenty seven. Look at this, there are fifteen jobs here. It must either be massive or shit". Two people were talking about Portugal or maybe Milan, one laughed at a description of a school's great students. "That means they'll be out-of-control," she said in a voice that suggested too much knowledge. The highlighter pen settled on Costa Rica. "I'm getting sick of these post-communist countries," came a voice from the far end of the table. "I dunno, there are plenty of jobs in Poland." "Eeeeuurgh, it's grotty." "Not everywhere it isn't. Where did you go?" "I've never been."

"How about you? Seen anything you fancy?" someone asked, turning to me. "No, not really," I replied, thinking once again about Japan.

The Morning Run

I upped the run to twenty-five minutes this morning, over a traffic-clogged road then keeping to the banks of the river as far as the castle. I turned back by the metal fence at the entrance to the port, passing unemployed men with cans of beer and fishing rods, all dressed in army fatigues or black leather jackets. The pace was comfortable until the very end when the top of my thighs began to tighten, possibly due to the fact that I was running in flat-soled pub trainers. Otherwise it felt like I could've gone a lot further.

Tomorrow's a day off. On Thursday I'll try to add another five minutes.