Ronaldo celebrates scoring the winner in the World Cup final against Germany.

I watched the World Cup final in 1998 on television. I was pumped up, ready for a blazing finale to a hell of a tournament. Brazil were facing France and there were always going to be goals. In the build up to the match, Brazil’s star striker Ronaldo wasn’t named in the team. Rumours were going around about a seizure, but just before kick-off he appeared and proceeded to play a well below-par game. In fact, the whole team played a below-par game and it’s gone down in history as one of the great mysteries of the modern game.

Foul play was suspected and conspiracy theories abounded. The most likely explanation was an anaesthetic injection he was given the night before getting into a vein, which can often cause a seizure. The reason didn’t matter, the Brazil squad was shaken to its core and lost the final 3-0. The current world cup was time to redress the balance.

Brazil struggled to qualify. The top players play in Europe and didn’t make themselves available to play in the qualifying campaign, so something like 64 players forced their way into the final. Ronaldo had been injured throughout most of the previous four years and I remember many times searching the web to see how his recovery was going. At his peak (at the age of 20), he was the most breathtaking striker on the planet. He had pace, power, vision, mesmerising skills and a hunger for winning. Cut down in his prime it must have been hell for him as he went from one injury to the next, spending most of his time in the physiotherapist’s care.

But a couple of months before the finals he started to play for his Italian club Inter Milan again. He was a shadow of his former self at first but gradually started to play better and better. He’d get 20 minutes at the end of games and soon managed to score 2 goals and win a match for the team. His teammates, when faced with an open goal, would play him in just to boost his confidence. And while others were writing him off, I had this funny feeling that he was going to be the star of the world cup and make up for all those years he’d lost.

And so it was proved. Coming into the final he was scoring for fun, looking like his old self. His ability was not in question and although he missed a few good chances, he scored in almost every game. At the start of the competition, when chatting with friends about what might happen, I remarked that there would be no justice in the world if he didn’t score the winning goal for Brazil in the final. And I’ll be damned, that’s exactly what he did. It was a tense game but towards the end Germany weren’t in the game. Go here for a full match report, I’m sticking with Ronaldo in this article.

It’s not about football though. It’s about a man. A man who was the best at the thing he loved, cut down in his prime. He must have wondered if he’d ever be a contender again, never mind the best. But through blood, sweat and tears, he’s managed to come back and regain his crown - winning the world cup in the way he should have 4 years ago. And nobody can begrudge him that. All the fame, all the money, all the success he’ll achieve in his life will never come close to matching the sense of achievement and relief he’ll feel inside for what he’s spent the last four years working towards.

I don’t idolise people. But I do respect people who beat the odds through sheer hard work and determination. People like Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. And people like Ronaldo.

Where’s the fork on this damn thing?

Yesterday was a tough day. Apart from the fact that it would have been my mother’s birthday, there were other things going on to make it grim. The company I’m working for has suffered badly from the electronics market slump and has had a few rounds of layoffs in the last 12 months. It’s based in the USA and acquired a UK company 3 years ago (the one I’m now working for) and most of the layoffs had effected our cousins across the Atlantic.

The last time though it did affect us (although it happened before I came). A developer was made redundant along with a couple of application specialists. They are friends of mine so it wasn’t a nice thing to see. Having grown up and seen the steady decline of UK industries on television - with thousands of people being made redundant - it all seemed distant and I felt that “it’d never happen to me”. When I left university I felt almost as though the world owed me a living and earning money was a right I had. Not so. Having seen a few friends made redundant it changed my point of view about employment and money (in other words, don’t take either for granted). I work in a volatile industry where losing your job can be a part of the game, no matter how good you are.

Anyway, back to my original story… Yesterday… Okay, back on track. It turned out that the layoffs last time weren’t enough and it was time for some real cutbacks. So from a team of 18 people, only 11 remain in the UK. Two top-notch developers are out of work (which won’t last long) along with a first-class tester and a few others I won’t get into (otherwise this sentence would be too long and you’d lose the thread half way through). It’s a nasty business and shows that the bottom line for any company is making money, not intellectual pursuits. We’re all expendable assets.

It’s going to be strange working in a significantly smaller team on the same significantly large piece of software (around 1 million lines of code give or take). And all the empty desks that remain are going to take a bit of getting used to. And if the company expands in the future it’s going to be damn hard to get the caliber of people we’ve just lost. What I will do, however, is start saving more money. You never know when you’re going to be out on your ear!

On a more positive note though, a large number of middle managers have been removed from the US side of the company - and I don’t have a problem with that. If you’re in a relatively small company and your job is to manage other managers and spend your working life in meetings, then you’re not really contributing to making money. I’m not a big fan of meetings, unless some decisions actually need to be made. Going to meetings just because they’re in your diary doesn’t sound particularly proactive to me… That’s why I like being a software developer, I don’t need to try and justify my position and self-importance in meetings, I can do it by doing what I do best - writing world-class software!

Tennis ball sales go through the roof at this time of year.

Most British tennis fans are only really aware of Wimbledon. As far as your average punter is concerned, it’s the biggest tournament in the world, grass is the only surface to play it on and Pete Sampras is the undisputed king of the game. This isn’t really the case, but I’m not going to blame punters. On terrestrial television in the UK, it’s about all you ever see - satellite and cable have all the other tournaments around the world. Luckily I love tennis. And even more luckily, I have satellite television.

I’ll not bore you with a description of the entire ATP tour. I won’t bang on about the fact that grass-court tennis only consists of about 2% of the annual tour and is therefore a specialist surface that many of the clay-court players don’t even bother to play on. I’ll not mention that Pete Sampras has never won or come close to winning the French Open (a clay court grand slam). And I definitely won’t get into the fact that tennis on grass is boring compared to the rest of the surfaces out there (I won’t go on to elaborate by saying that the average rally on grass is about 2-4 strokes compared with up to 40 during a match between Spaniards on clay). And finally, I won’t mention that clay is my favourite surface.

Anyway, I’ve written about my respect for Tim Henman before, and I stand by that. Considering that Henman is traditionally thought of as a serve-volleyer (the favoured tactic on a fast court like grass), he’s done brilliantly over the clay season. Clay doesn’t suit him at all because it really slows the ball down and gives baseline players time to play passing shots when a serve-volleyer comes into the net. And likewise, clay-court tactics don’t work on a fast surface as a halfway decent serve-volleyer will blast you off the court.

I have no doubt in my mind that Tim can win Wimbledon. He’s certainly good enough, he can play consistently enough, and he can win big matches. For him, they don’t get any bigger than Wimbledon (there’s a lot of expectation on his shoulders) and with his new coach (Larry Stefanki) he’s matured immensely as a player over the last year. He’ll have a few scares along the way, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t make the final and shocked if he doesn’t make the semis.

There’s no way Sampras will win. He’s injured which will affect his fitness, and he’s not getting any younger (sorry!). There are a few hot-shot young-guns that are in with a shout: Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, Marat Safin and Lleyton Hewitt (current world number one, and the in-form player). Oh, and never count out the old veteran Andre Agassi… Forget Greg Rusedski though, I reckon the injuries he’s had over the years mean he’s had his chance, sadly.

Fortunately the current balls that are used at Wimbledon are slower than they used to be, which makes for slightly longer rallies. And these days, the world’s top players tend to be pretty handy on all surfaces, so expect some surprises (I’d love to see clay court supremo Juan Carlos Ferrero win). Once I see how the tournament’s shaping up I’ll post another tennis rant…

Rivaldo embraces goal scorer Ronaldinho.

I came into work at 7am this morning to watch the England vs. Brazil quarter final match of the World Cup. I’m never sure if I want England to win or the opposition but I knew I’d find out when the first goal went in.

When Owen scored for England I was disappointed, so I guessed I was on Brazil’s side (I was alone in that opinion being, as I was, surrounded by a few Englishmen). Watching some of the skill and pace of the Brazilians was awe-inspiring and it was only a matter of time before they equalised (which they soon did after a fantastic run by Ronaldinho set up Rivaldo). But then I was in a quandary. I felt myself wanting England to score again.

After half time Brazil got another from what looked like a cross gone-wrong (again from Ronaldinho) that went in. So at 2-1 I wanted England to score again and for the match to go into extra time. When Brazil went down to 10 men I really wanted England to finish them off and get through. I admit it, I wanted England to win! But instead Brazil dominated possession and England didn’t even have a single shot on target (and to cap it all, the manager replaced goal-scoring supremo Michael Owen with the unproven Darius Vassell - crazy).

It was a let down and I was disappointed that it wasn’t a better contested game, although as a Scotsman I won’t be losing any sleep over it. And the rest of the matches will be a lot less interesting to watch now. Maybe I’ll just have to follow Senegal…

Unlucky England, I wouldn’t have minded you doing well. Winning the final would have been a bit much, but getting there would have been all right with me.

Could you pick the street you live from a photo like this? Click for the full image to try.

Here’s a thought. Imagine that you’re flying in orbit around the earth in the space shuttle (I said imagine), and you suddenly find yourself sucked into a wormhole and re-emerge on the other side of the galaxy (no, I’m not stealing an idea from Farscape, oh, actually I am). You meet up with a craft full of aliens (who just happen to speak English) and they offer to fly you home at super-light speed. You can’t believe your luck until one of the creatures says “Okay, just point out your planet and we’ll drop you off in a jiffy”. This is where your troubles start.

You see, you’re so far away from Earth (or whatever planet you’re from) that you have no points of reference. If you’re hiking in the mountains on a clear day and you have a map (you don’t even need a compass), then you can look around you for some obvious features. You then find those obvious features on the map, line them up, and extrapolate your exact position. Easy.

Switch back to our problem of finding Earth (well, you’re really looking for the sun). From Earth you can look out at the stars and note the patterns they make - you can give them names and worship them if you like. Take three similarly bright stars that form a triangle. They look like they’re pretty close together. Of course, they’re not, and you might have one small star really close to us and two large stars much further away. So the pattern of the stars changes depending on where you are. That looking for star constellations is out.

If you’ve read the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy you’ll know that we live in the rather less fashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy. So you might be able to narrow it down a bit if you could step back and take a look. But it’s ridiculous. You’d spend the rest of eternity (or until the aliens got bored of you and decided to eat you) flying around getting more and more frustrated as you realise you’re never going to get home to watch Big Brother (see, it’s not all bad).

So the aliens get sick and tired of your Star Trek jokes and give you a small ship telling you to find your own damn way home. So what do you do? You’ve given up hope of flying home. So you decide to explore. But where do you go? Boldly go where no man has gone before? Put a tight lycra uniform on? Why not. There are billions of stars in every direction. You randomly pick one and fly there to see what’s happening. Nothing is. So you fly to another one, and it’s even more lifeless. But you see some beautiful astronomical phenomena (I hate Star Trek speak). Anyway, I’ll leave you to carry on imagining…

But you eventually get sick of looking at gas nebulas, pouring coloured paint into black holes and watching stars going supernova. You’re lonesome. There are no humans to discuss whether George Best in his prime would make the current Manchester United team (aliens would have as much clue what you’re talking about as an above-average-intelligence American). Or how it is that Tennents Special can taste so bad. We’re small creatures. I may have an IQ high enough to get into Mensa, but I’m only capable of pondering problems as advanced as what curry to have at my local Aagrah Restaurant (chicken Hydrabady thanks).

It’s nice to dream about flying through the galaxy, but the reality would probably drive me insane with the magnitude of it all. Most people start to panic if they’re more than a mile from their car, never mind 100 light years from their TV! So I think I’ll stick to living here. Or maybe I’ll move to New Zealand for a couple of years. Yeah, I like the sound of that…

Now you know why I try not to think about life, the universe and everything much. It leads me nowhere useful or interesting.

Attensh-hun!

I’ve been living in England for about 3 years now. Previously I’d been living in Scotland since birth for all of about 24 years. That makes me Scottish (as if you couldn’t tell by the accent). I know for a fact that some of my English friends at University had a bit of a hard time living in Scotland (the Scots can be quite ignorant at times) but I’ve had none of that down here. Maybe it’s Yorkshire, my aggressive haircut, powerful physique, or even my winning personality, but I’ve found nothing but friendliness everywhere I’ve gone. I feel quite at home here.

I’m not anti-English. I’ve got loads of English friends. And I’m well educated and experienced enough to know that people are just the same wherever they’re from. They’ve got the same hopes and dreams. The same neuroses. Different accents. But the same people underneath. So bigotry is out.

I can’t say I was particularly interested in the Golden Jubilee. I’m not a Royalist and as far as I’m concerned a bunch of Germans (they changed their name to Windsor just before the First World War if memory serves me correctly) descended from some rather effective murderers and thieves are no better than anybody else. They’re nice for foreign tourists but that’s as useful as the Royal family are in this modern world. (I did say I’m not a Royalist you know). However, if people want to try to relive colonial jingoism and practise Union Jack waving, then I’m not going to stop them. I’m all for it.

And so we come to the reason I started writing this article. The World Cup. And England doing well in it.

In Scotland it’s traditional to support the opposition to England in any football match. If England were playing the “Evil All-Stars” consisting of people like Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Ming The Merciless and John Wayne, then the streets of Scotland would be paved with Swastikas and people would be wearing pointy moustaches (all evil people have pointy moustaches). I too would always support the opposition and, although in the minority in England, I’d be wanting England to lose.

But something’s changed. It started when David Beckham scored a last-minute free kick against Greece to secure qualification to the finals. I was pleased. I didn’t know I wanted them to get through until Becks scored that goal. And it’s gotten worse. Although it goes against everything I should believe, I’ve been watching the England games wanting them to win. Which they’ve just about been doing.

I was starting to feel dirty and sick - I’m Scottish after all! Walking through Skipton after England made the quarter finals I was horrified to see drunken youths singing “Eng-er-land! Eng-er-land! Eng-er-land!” and wearing England flags over their backs. It takes a strong Scotsman to bear such a traumatic sight.

But an antidote is looming on my horizon. If Brazil beat Belgium (not a great footballing nation) then they will face England in the quarter finals. And you know what? I want Brazil to give them a lesson and beat them 4-1. I’m all for England doing well, but I love the way Brazil play. The flair. The quality. And more importantly: if England beat Brazil I’m pretty sure they’d win the damn World Cup. And I just couldn’t bear that. I’d have to leave the country. I can only take so much pain and suffering. It’s bad enough that Scotland’s football team would be easily beaten by an under-16 schoolgirl team at the moment. But to have England win…

I’m sorry. I just can’t write any more - I’m going to have to go and hit the punch bag for a few minutes to work the tension out. And I bet I have nightmares tonight. See ya.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

(Author unknown).

My father read this poem at my mother’s funeral and it makes sense to me. Not much else does at this point. Although I’ll mention one thing that made me smile…

My mother wanted “All along the watchtower” by Jimi Hendrix played as her coffin was carried out of the church (her sense of humour was better than mine). I went along to the church on the morning of the funeral to set up the sound system and checked the volume was all right (it was). One of my mother’s friends was there arranging the flowers and I was chatting to her. After a few minutes I decided, for no apparent reason, to see what was on the radio. As I flicked the button, the following line from the Monkeys song “Homecoming Queen” rang out - “Cheer up sleepy Jean, oh what can it mean. To be a daydream believer…”. My mother Jean would have laughed at that one.

Thanks for all the kinds words of support I’ve received. It’s much appreciated. I’ll reply to you all in time.

My wonderful mother, Jean Conners. 1940-2002.

After a long struggle with cancer, my mother passed away on monday morning around 8.30am. I owe all I am and all I have achieved to her. I don’t know how I’m going to cope without her in my life any more. Anyone whose life she touched will understand the gaping hole that will be left. A better mother I could never have wished for. A better friend I could never have dreamed of.