by On Sunday my flatmate invited me to see The Big Lebowski at one of his Meetup groups. I went along purely to see the film – I had no interest in dressing up in a Jeff Lebowski bathrobe or doing anything remotely social. I’m not sure the film quite deserves its cult status but it’s clever in many ways and is certainly worth seeing. But afterwards people discussed the movie (I just wanted to go home) and my flatmate became political and controversial and strident, as he does, and then I realised something. Look at their faces. You’re pissing other people off here. It’s not just me.
I’d come to just about tolerate my flatmate, mainly because he said he’d be out by the end of May. Without that light at the end of the tunnel, it’s likely I’d be in a pretty bad way by now. But at the weekend I thought, shit, I’ve had enough of this. I really want you out of the picture. And what if you decide not to leave?
And that’s exactly the problem. He’s always in the picture, front and centre, commentating on and making his opinions known about just about everything he sees and does, and wanting to involve me in the process. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would find this tiresome.
Then yesterday something happened. Someone in Liberia had offered him a job. He was booking his flights to New York where he’ll spend a month before going to Africa. He commentated on the online booking process for a good half-hour – “no I don’t want to book a luxury hotel”, “why on earth would I want to buy travel insurance from you?” and so on and so forth. His commentary was music to my ears. He leaves the country on 8th June and will move out, I hope, two weeks earlier. Then I can get on with my life again.
Yes, Leicester City really are the Premier League champions. That’s just staggering. The upper reaches of British football are so money-driven, and such a closed shop, that something like this is pure fantasy. But it’s real and I have no idea how. The format of the Premier League makes it extremely hard to fluke. Any of football’s cup competitions are flukeable. A baseball World Series certainly is. Even a grand slam in tennis is flukeable to a degree. But the Premier League? Leicester must actually have been very very good. How they got to be so good with such limited resources is a happy mystery.
Talking of baseball, the Red Sox have won seven of their last eight games including a three-game sweep of the Yankees and have a narrow lead at the top of their division, but there’s an awful long way to go. Gosh I’d love to go back to Fenway some time – that was awesome.
