If proof were needed that not all Premier League Footballers are narcissistic prima donnas who spend most of their spare time seeking super injunctions to stop the tabloids writing about their sordid private lives look no further than West Bromwich Abion's Gonzalo Jara. Before the kick off at Anfield on Sunday the announcement was made over the PA that, in support of the trapped Chilean, miners Jara was to donate ... cue drumroll and hushed silence around the ground, wait for it............ his match worn shirt. Wow!! Has there ever been a more generous gesture in the history of the Premier League - the PA might as well have announced that I bought a copy of the "Big Issue" outside Lime St Station on Saturday. Why this noble act was announced to such dramatic effect is beyond me. I may be being unfair to Jara. He may not be one of those footballers who are paid tens of thousands of pounds every week (although he almost certainly earns more that 99.9% of those in the crowd) and that shirt might have been very precious to him. Maybe he was also donating some cash but was keeping quiet. But whoever thought that announcing that a Premier League player was going to give up a shirt would be viewed as an act of magnanimity worthy of mentioning proves how out of touch with reality those in the higher echelons of the game are. I know that around me the announcement was met with laughter. No doubt the shirt will be auctioned so that an ordinary fan can dig deep in his pocket to be the true (and no doubt anonymous) benefactor.
Here's a very rare Bank Holiday sight -our garden in sunshine. I've had a wonderful Bank Holiday sitting in the garden reading the Saturday, Sunday and Monday papers all in one go. My only misgiving is that the Observer still hasn't recovered from the loss of Kathryn Flett whose TV reviews were always the first thing I turned to and whose musings from her home town of "Random on Sea" the second. I'm following her on Twitter but, however witty her 140 characters are they are no substitute for her clever and highly accurate take on life that guaranteed a smile every Sunday for many years. Sorry Observer but you haven't found a replacement yet and when David Mitchell is away, as he was this week, the newspaper is not half the read that it used to be. If you can't entice Ms Flett back why not poach Sam Wollaston from The Guardian? He's about the best there is at the moment, along with Charlie Brooker and Grace Dent.
I wonder what they would have had to say about Saturday's Magic Numbers when Stephen Muhern gave one viewer an enormous prize of £310,000. The odds against winning this amount were huge but in a suspense filled couple of minutes a man from Kent who is getting married in a fortnight managed to choose five boxes containing huge sums of money whereas on each pick there was a near fifty fifty chance of winning nothing. The show went from strength to strength and got bigger and bigger each week. Marion and I enjoyed it very much and have taped all seven episodes for posterity and addition to our son's virtual scrapbook.
Tomorrow used to be the last day of our financial year but it is now just the end of month two. However, I will be looking with interest at Craig's spread sheet to see if all the right columns turn green as we hit sales targets. Lets hope that caterers have had equally pleasant Bank Holidays to ours and their coffers are ringing with record sums to go out and spend on new boilers tomorrow to bring a record end to what would have been our year.
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