Alison

Despite the title, this is a post about football, just bear with me. I don’t know how many of you follow a sports team, but if you do, you will be very familiar with the ups and downs of a regular season, as well as the emotional swings that take place over the course of a match. This is even more pronounced in football (soccer, to those of you who don’t follow it).

This season has been anything but regular for us diehard Liverpool fans. I’ll spare you the details regarding our extensive list of injuries, games lost that should have been won and missed goal scoring opportunities, as they are easy enough to find, but one thing that has been a constant bugbear is our lousy form against lower half opposition and the precarious position it which it left us as the season wound down. We were left in the position of needing to win our last three games and hope that someone above us slipped up.

Last Sunday, the 16^th I settled on the sofa after returning from work in order to watch our game against West Bromwich Albion. They had already been relegated and so had nothing to play for so you might expect them to be swamped by a rampant red tide, but seeing as how we have underperformed consistently against teams in the bottom six, I didn’t hold my breath. My heart sank when they scored first, as it was against the run of play, but absolutely typical of our season. Roberto Firmino managed an equaliser for us, but West Brom put their entire squad behind the ball and basically sat tight.

With the striking talent on hand you would expect Liverpool to simply batter down the doors and storm the goal, but alas, most of our shots went astray, were frustrated by defenders or fizzled out as strikers ran out of room and options. I suspect that due to the importance of winning the Liverpool players were trying to ensure a 100% opportunity before shooting, instead of taking what was on offer and having a go. An understandable attitude, but when you need a goal at any cost, the best bet is usually to take every opportunity on offer, regardless of how slim.

As the second half progressed my spirits dropped even lower, and I was resigned to us only being able to eke out a draw against a bunch of ale house kickers, which is what every team managed by Sam Allardyce become under his management. The clock ticked over to the regulation 90 minutes and the referee announced four additional minutes of stoppage time, not that it did anything to perk me up, as it felt like being asked to wait while the hangman retied his noose. Our final attack seemed to be winding down when Sadio Mane hit what might have been meant as a cross into a West Brom defender, earning us a corner kick with 15 seconds to go. Our ace corner taker Trent Alexander Arnold ran to the corner in order to make sure there would be enough time for him to take the kick, quite likely the last of the game.

I was just as surprised as anyone else watching to see our six foot four Brazilian goalkeeper Alisson Becker making his way at a fair pace up the pitch to add his presence to the last gasp of the game. This sort of thing happens from time to time in the lower divisions, but rarely comes to anything, although from time to time the ball deflects of the goalies’ shin, arse or shoulder as it enters the pinball machine from hell that is the goalmouth area in the last seconds. To call this sort of thing a “Hail Mary Pass” is something of an understatement but you get my drift.

What happened next was not so much a Hail Mary as all ten Decates of the Rosary, the Catechism, and the Sermon on the Mount all rolled into one. No one was within a yard of Becker, for all the reasons above, but Arnold put a beautiful ball in the perfect spot for Becker to rise above the fray and deliver the most perfect header I have ever seen: the ball came to him from his right, he made a perfect contact and the ball flew away to his right, confounding the ‘keeper and hitting the inside of the side netting with a flourish.

I seriously lost my shit at that point. I was yelling, bouncing off the sofa and flinging my arms in the air. I called my wife to come upstairs to see the replay, as I needed confirmation of what I thought I’d just seen, and to let her see the most perfect moment in football. I truly can’t put into words my emotions at that moment. If you’d written that as the ending to a sports movie, you would have been laughed out of the room and would never be able to show your face in Hollywood as long as you lived. The scenes after the goal were equally emotional: his team mates swamped Becker, each one of them bursting with joy and relief. I saw Roberto Firmino, one of his fellow countrymen embrace the crouching Becker and then lift his face to the heavens and let out a full throated roar of ecstasy. Each of his team mates crowded around Becker, administering rib cracking hugs while smiling so widely they seemed in danger of having the tops of their heads fall off.

When he emerged, Becker was in tears and pointed skyward, in honour of his father who had died tragically a couple of months before, Becker being unable to attend the funeral due to the lockdown.

I’ve watched the goal over a dozen times since, and I’ve noticed that Becker didn’t take his eyes off the ball for a second. I’m convinced that Trent Alexander Arnold saw the space around him and aimed his cross at Becker. Becker hardly had to move his feet to get into position, and that just makes it all the sweeter for me.

The final whistle blew a few seconds after the restart and again, all was grins, hugs and amazement. I don’t think there was a single person present who failed to congratulate the winning goal scorer, as there is no shame in losing to class of that nature.

Now, I’ve seen some great game winners in my time, the most obvious being Divock Origi’s header against Everton in December 2018 which he scored six minutes into stoppage time, and of course, his second goal, also a header, which put us 4-0 up against F.C. Barcelona in the European Champions League Semi Final second leg in May of 2019 which set us up for our victory in the final, but this has to be the greatest game winning goal of all time.

To put it into context, Liverpool F.C. were founded in 1892, and this is the first time a goalkeeper has scored for us. Not even at the height of his antics did Bruce Grobbelaar, aka Coco the Clown ever even consider anything as crazy. Thankfully, we beat Burnley 3-0 on the following Wednesday to keep our hopes alive, and now all we have to do is beat Crystal Palace on May 23^rd to be assured of European football next season. If it happens, every person associated with the club will have Allisson Becker to thank. I guarantee you that 40 weeks from now, maternity units all over Merseyside will be registering the births of a whole host of babies called Alisson. Some of them might even be girls!

Just in case you haven’t seen it, here is the goal. I defy you not to be in awe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFXkwCtEzDQ

And here is the man himself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh87KHMNsKk

I’ve Never Met A Nice South African

How do you feel about neighbours? I mean in general as well the people living in the houses or apartments near you? I’ve always been rather indifferent to them, both in theory and in practice. I’m just far enough along the spectrum that even though I’d like to have relationships with those living around me, I just can’t be arsed to put in the effort, hence my disastrous time living in a purposeful community built around the idea of everyone sharing space, etc. that ended up being a bastion of white privilege inside a bastion of white privilege. I had almost no contact with the neighbours in my last home, barely enough to recognise more than a couple of them, but this changed when I move in with my sweetheart, who is now my wife.

Our immediate neighbours are something of a Curates’ egg, so I’ll start with the excellent part first. On one side of our townhouse is a truly wonderful woman. She has three, (now four) dogs and a couple of cats, although we never see the cats. She and my wife bonded over their mutual love of canines and quickly developed a friendship. As well as being a great neighbour, she is incredibly generous. Being from the south, she makes the most outrageously wonderful gumbo I have ever tasted. Her mother lives with her, but she is unable to make half a batch, so on a number of occasions we  have been on the receiving end of a huge container of gumbo so stuffed with Andouille, crab legs and shrimp that it really doesn’t qualify as  a liquid.

After we bought a new T.V, she asked us if we had a sound bar. Of course we didn’t, as we never considered it, so she gave us hers! Her rationale was that the dogs kept tripping over the cables, so she bought a wireless one. Naturally, we insisted that we pay her for it, but she downright refused, even though it would have cost us $400 or more to buy it new. She has been equally generous in other ways too numerous to mention, but especially when it comes to having our dog stay with her overnight or when we are going to be out of the house for a while. Her medicines mean she has to go to the bathroom very frequently, and it wouldn’t be fair to leave a dog alone in that condition for any length of time.

Lest you think us a couple of moochers, we reciprocate at any opportunity. Our neighbour doesn’t leave the house, so if she needs something picking up at short notice, we are more than happy to do so for her and drop it off. I’ve also installed a video doorbell for her and helped assemble a dog cage, and I’m always willing to help out with any task that she feels is beyond her.

So far, so wonderful. Now we come to the subject of this post. The neighbours on the other side are a completely different proposition, or rather, the husband is. They consist of a Japanese woman and her white South African husband, their son and daughter. When I say Japanese, I mean born in Japan Japanese, not fifth generation, as many people are around here. She is a lovely woman who is very friendly, but generally keeps herself to herself.  Now before I go any further, I’m not saying there’s a power dynamic there, but there’s a power dynamic there.

When my wife moved in, the husband was very helpful, offering help if needed and giving her his cell number should she need it, being a (white) woman living alone. I’ve never had much conversation with him, but he has some strong opinions, especially when it comes to the Homeowners Association and things to do with property rights, which brings me to the main event.

A couple of months ago we had a contractor do some work on our yard. While using the wheelbarrow, one of his employees put a couple of small scratches on our neighbours’ concrete path. Not deep gouges, not feet long, just a couple of scratches about two inches long that would fade if left to be. Our neighbour was not a happy man. He went off on a rant that led to my wife giving him the contractors’ details so they could take care of it between themselves. There was no malice involved, the scratches were accidental and to accuse the employee of “Trespassing without my permission” (sic) was just plain ridiculous. To cut a long story short, our neighbour presented the contractor with a bill for $100 to cover the materials and time involved in repairing the “damage”. Seriously!

The contractor is a nice chap just trying to make a living, and I’m sure he didn’t need the grief or expense of dealing with the jerk next door over something so minor that most sane people would have just let go.

But wait, there’s more! A couple of weeks later, he decided to remove a couple of small trees from his back garden. Rather than take them to be recycled, he dumped them on the other side of the street where sits a plot of land ready for two new town homes at some point. He tried to cover his arse by offering them to anyone who wanted them, but of course, no one did, so they proceeded to die over the course of the next week. The plot across the road is somewhat overgrown and has quite a bit of Scotch Broom on it, but even so, that’s no excuse, although when it was pointed out to him that the trees were an eyesore his response was “Well, we’ve got plenty of eyesores here already”. Can someone tell me, if two wrongs don’t make a right, how many wrongs do? Because I’m not sure.

He eventually cut the trees up and disposed of them after some gentle nudging from my wife, but you can see what an arsehole this guy is. I really can’t stand him, and I have to admit that I wouldn’t put myself out for him. It’s a shame when the people who live close by don’t understand how to behave in a civilised manner, but I suppose it could have been a lot worse. Oh, and just in case the title of this post needs some explanation, Spitting Image was a bitingly satirical comedy show on British T.V. in the 1980’s, so some of the refences in the video might not translate.https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2urkuf