Summertime

It’s been a busy summer so far. That’s good. It keeps my mind away from haunting ghosts.

We’re painting the house, Little Boy and I. The most time-consuming part is the scraping of old loose paint. When we get as far as the actual painting, we’re almost done. We have a tall house, and I don’t like climbing high. I send Little Boy to the top of the scaffold to take care of  the uppermost part. Sometimes kids are useful. 

In Russia the FIFA World Cup is taking place, with great football games on TV every day. We watch all the games, of course. It’s the only "TV show" I watch.  The semifinals start today. Then there’s only three games left. Very sad. It always feels like drug withdrawal when the World Cup is over.

So far we see some clear trends. The European teams dominate. No South American teams, no African teams, no Asian teams made it to the semifinals.

Surprisingly, Germany was out after the group matches. The Netherlands, Italy and USA didn't even qualify.

Shia is better than Sunni, at least when it comes to football. Out of five Muslim countries, the followers of Ali, Iran, was the only one among the final 16. 

Jesus did better than Muhammad. Egypt, with superstar striker Mohammad Salah were eliminated in the group matches. Brazil and their forward Gabriel Jesus made it to the quarter finals. 

Tonight we watched the first semifinal: France  vs. Belgium 1-0. Both teams had a majority of black and brown players, ghetto boys from the suburbs of Paris and Brussels. Almost all the supporters in the stand were white. They can afford to travel to Russia to watch the World Cup live.

Tomorrow is the second seimfinal: England vs. Croatia. I hope England will win. Football's coming home. I would like to go.

(Picture taken a couple of weeks ago, when we worked on the painting the first two walls)

The Story of Christmas revised

This happened some years ago, when little boy was about five yo. They had learnt about The Story Of Christmas (Luke 2:1-20) in kindergarden. One evening before Christmas little boy and I were playing with plastilina clay. Little boy started to retell The Story in his own way, and asked me if I could model it in clay. He was the director, and I just made what he told me to.

We made Jesus in the crib and Virgin Mary and his stepfather Joseph, and the Three Wise Men who came with gold and frankincense and myrrh (Matt 2:1-15). At this point little boy started to deviate from the original version of the story. He suggested that Jesus should get a soccer ball, so I made a soccer ball for him.


Then little boy wanted a soccer match. I made two goals, and little boy set up the teams. Even Virgin Mary had to participate, to make the two teams equal.

I argued that it was not very likely that Jesus was running around with a soccer ball just a few hours after his birth, but little boy insisted. Maybe he was right, taking into account the incredible tricks Jesus did later (the water-to-wine trick, the calming-the-sea trick, the five-breads-and-two-fish trick and so on)

Defeat at Elland Road

In my country we’re crazy about English football (real football; some call it soccer). Most men and some women have their favorite team in England. Leeds united is my team. They had the best team when I was a kid, in the 1970s. You can’t change favorite team. Never. I still follow Leeds United, but not as enthusiastic as before. Now I'm more interested in skiing and science and literature and music. I don’t even know the names of the players anymore. It’s a shame, isn't it?

Anyway, this weekend I was in England to see Leeds United. In fact, we were lucky, and got to see three matches:

Saturday: Doncaster - Sheffield United 2-0

Sunday: Liverpool - Blackburn 2-1


It was cool to be at Anfield Road. We went up to the stadium two hours before the start of the match to look around, to visit the club store (bought a T-shirt for little boy who is Liverpool fan), and to see the Hillsborough memorial (where 96 Liverpool fans were squeezed to death on the over-crowded stand in 1989). Even a Leeds fan must admit that there’s something special about Anfield. The atmosphere is magic when the crowd sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

When we got back to Leeds, I went for a walk around the quarter and ended up with a dark malty beer in an old bar with live jazz. Nice to get some music after all the football.

Monday: Leeds - Cardiff 0-4


This was our main match, the highlight of our trip. We were on the North Stand, with the hard-core Leeds fans. The club is short of money and has a crap team now, but the supporters are still enthusiastic (or fanatic). The F-word and C-word and P-word were shouted continuously, but only aimed at the referee and the Cardiff players. I didn’t hear a single negative remark about the Leeds players, even though they lost 0-4 at home. The Leeds fans are used to hard times.

After the match we were met by 200 policemen (and women), with helmets and shields, many on horses, some with barking dogs. I haven’t seen that many police ever. They wanted to keep the Leeds and Cardiff supporters separated to avoid fighting. For some reason they hate each other.

I don’t hate anyone, but I like English football >:)

The evil dentist

At the place where I grew up, there was a mean and evil dentist. His office was in the school building, right by the football field (football=soccer). When the ball hit his window, he got furious. He ran out and grabbed the poor boy that kicked the ball by the ear, and pulled him into the dentist’s chair. He picked the nicest and whitest tooth in the boy’s mouth. With an evil grin on his face, he drilled out a wide and deep cavity, while the boy cried and screamed in pain. Finally he filled the cavity with dark and ugly amalgam.

Don’t you believe it?

I used to tell this story to my little boys. They believed it, and even counted on my teeth the number of times I had kicked the ball at the dentist’s window >:)))