Steve Evans: Football's most hated man

Hello you! It's been a while, no? I've missed you - and no doubt you've missed me too, which is why you're here, obviously. I could tell you why I've been away - but that would involve giving out my telephone number, which ain't gonna happen. And I'm certainly not going to write down the reasons for my blogosphere absence - for all I know you might be a psychotherapist [I love typing words like that, pressing space bar, and not being interrupted by a big red zig-zag. In the words of that guy off of EastEnders and the Parklife video, it gives me an enormous sense of wellbeing] and tap into my insecurities.

No, instead I'm going to draw a line underneath the whole sordid affair and do what I do best: criticise people I've never met while hiding behind my laptop's monitor.

A Twitter dream diary

Where in the world can you jump on a bus being driven by a green-haired lesbian, hang out of the window as it speeds round corners without risking serious injury or death, and set off an on-board smoke machine without having even paid for a ticket?

The answer, sadly, is nowhere, unless you happen to live in my head. Yes, I lived through the above scenario, albeit through the medium of dreamland. The lesbian was great fun, as it happens - she was on her final ever shift so we had an impromptu bus rave before calming down and marvelling at the redder-than-usual lunar eclipse. Luckily the other passengers didn't mind because there weren't any.

A new addition

Here's a thought to brighten your day: I sleep naked. And when I wake from my slumber on Sunday mornings, I tend to stumble rather precariously down the stairs, minus clothes, to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen. During this rather laborious, energy-sapping process, I usually stub my toe four of five times, mumble an obscenity or two and have a testicular near-miss with the bottom banister.

In my naked stair-descending career thus far, I'm yet to be caught by another person/mammal. However, our house dynamic shifted during the weekend. A creature now lives in my kitchen. She is called Vera and is 12 weeks old. She is an impressionable, slightly timid kitten.

Viva Barca

The weekend before last saw thousands of Mancunians and Barcelones descend on London for the Champions League Final, and very exciting it was too if you like football, which approximately 75 per cent of my friends do not - friends who have social lives and see each other on Saturday evenings rather than sit down in front of the TV with a solitary tin of beer and a container overflowing with sweet and sour pork (Hong Kong style, obviously). 

So, thanks a bundle UEFA for scheduling the game when my presence was required at a dinner party, you mercenary, self-centred FIFA-esque bastards.

Dot Cotton is a harlot

I've started watching television again. I didn't mean to, it just happened - normally because I need something to occupy my time while tending to a home-related activity, like making sure the building doesn't become engulfed in a raging inferno caused by some overcooked chicken thighs.

I grew out of TV approximately three years ago because a) I left university and got a job and b) all the good-looking people left Neighbours and were replaced by sadists, smarmy besuited types or insanely talented 15 year-olds who could play the Crocodile Dundee theme tune on a didgeridoo while harpooning a sprinting kangaroo from 100 yards [it's just an image, OK? Jesus. To think you thought I didn't know harpoons are the preserve of fisherman. I actually wrote that particular Wikipedia page, so I suggest you go back and start enjoying that image of mindless kangaroo slaughter. Or, if that offends you, write to McDonald's and complain - they're the real bastards, not me].

An Indian adventure: On holiday with my mum

Hello and welcome to my first and almost certainly last travel blog. The trouble with reading about other people's adventures is that, at best, it's terrifically boring or, at worst, you're reminded of how mundane your life is and quickly fill up with resentment for the person showing off about how tantalising the cuisine was, how the cabin was divine until the waves got a bit choppy between St Lucia and Martinique, or how the natives were surprisingly friendly and civilised despite not possessing a smoothie maker or knowing how to operate nail clippers.

This collective resentment builds and builds until the travel writer is scared away from the public domain and takes self-imposed exile in the relatively safe confines of Stockport, a tourist-free zone south of Manchester and unchartered territory for approximately 99.9 per cent of Britons.

Rudy: 'Worms! I just 8-1! Hahaha!'

Eagle-eyed readers may notice there's no picture credit this week - which means I must have dusted down the long-neglected camera, exercised the shutter and experimented with aperture openings. That's what spring does to us - the excitement sends us ker-razy. Just ask the Robin, nicknamed Rudy by my housemate, who does not shut up when the sun shines upon his teeny weeny worm-accommodating beak.

But this blog ain't about Rudy. He is a metaphor, you see, albeit a slightly tenuous one. Allow me to explain. Rudy is a Robin, right? So far, so good. And he's singing, yeah? Like football fans do, normally when they're having fun and not at the windswept Kassam Stadium in January chewing on an icy conglomeration of beefy entrails. The Robins, it just so happens, is the nickname of the football team I love - Cheltenham Town (which, if you're one of my longer-term followers, you know already). Only the Saturday before last, us Cheltenham fans weren't singing. We had lost 8-1 to Crewe Alexandra.

A blissful naivety shattered

Cast your mind back a few thousand moons to when you were a kid - some family event (celebrating a sibling getting their 100-metre swimming badge, the arrival of a puppy, the laying of a new patio etc) was coming to an end, and it was time to kiss Great Aunty Ethel goodbye. This was about as enthralling as jaundice - but compelled by politeness (and pity), that peck on the aged cheek would always be delivered, albeit with stuttering hesitancy and an unwavering but just-about-conquerable reluctance.

When you're that young, old age and its inescapable physical reminders seem as far away as a £150 two-week package deal to Proxima Centauri. This blissful naivety continues for approximately 15 years until, as I discovered last weekend, it ends as suddenly and unexpectedly as the movement of a bowel tasked with removing days-old seafood.

Fruitical behaviour

Would you eat a mature, over-sized ovary? Well, that's essentially what a piece of fruit is (which isn't quite as off-putting as considering an egg a chicken's period - which, to all intents and purposes, it is).

On that saliva-inducing note, here's some more fruity food for thought:

The trouble with Boris Bikes

A couple of weekends ago I was out in Shoreditch - the night had run its course, my body had been stuffed full of salmon and cream cheese bagels and it was time to go home. Autopilot kicked in and our little group tottered off to the bus stop. In a rather pleasant development, we noticed that none of us were shivering uncontrollably as our cerebrospinal fluid began to freeze solid. 

Let's put these bagels to use, we thought. Screw you number 35, we're getting Boris Bikes home! We felt like mavericks; drunken, bloated and slightly unstable, but mavericks nonetheless.