The philosophical definition of happiness is a match between what you want and what you have. And what you want changes as soon as you’ve got it. Always more. Always better. Hence the difficulty to satisfy. An Arsenal fan, when you finish fourth, will say, “Hey, we’ve been in the top four for twenty years. We want to win the league!”. They don’t care that Manchester City or Chelsea have spent 300 or 400 million euros. They just want to beat them. But if you finish fifteenth two years running, they will be happy if you finish fourth after that.
Arsene Wenger, on happiness and satisfaction.
One thing I know for sure, Arsene Wenger was right: we would chomp Mike Dean’s arm off for a top 4 finish this season.
Top four looks unlikely, however, as the League has suspended operations and will probably cancel the season soon. We haven’t heard any confirmation of the season being vacated but they are talking about it. Italy have suspended their season, the Bundesliga is following soon, teams are putting their own games on hold and it looks increasingly likely that all football activities will be stopped soon. My guess is that the hangup is over money, as in relegation, top four, etc.
Part of me doesn’t want to worry about the money aspect of football. It’s the least interesting and most overreported component. However, money does lead to success and success to money and if clubs aren’t going to play 9 games this season that means hundreds of millions of lost revenue for a club like Arsenal. The hope there is that Arsenal have insurance and that the insurance covers the losses. But if not, we could find ourselves in some very difficult situations – where the club can’t or won’t pay back the season ticket holders for example. I’m not saying that they will or won’t do such a thing, just that it’s an example of how far reaching this shut down is going to effect everyone.
I’m not even counting the folks who rely on work at the Emirates every other weekend and the companies and families that depend on those services and that consumption. Just think about how many activities take place in and around the stadium every match day. Heck, not even just on match days. There’s always something happening – tours, club shop, museum, having a sandwich at the local cafe, pies at Piebury Corner, so on.
Also, there’s the small matter of the Premier League title. It would be incredibly harsh not to hand the title to Liverpool. They are statistically nearly uncatchable at the top of the League.
Below the title, however, is a huge problem. As I pointed out the other day Arsenal could finish top four or at least in Europe. Ending the season now has massive financial ramifications for every club in the League. But I’m not sure how we proceed?
Things are being shut down as governments like the United Kingdom and the State of Washington (USA) try to get a lid on transmission rates in order to prevent a tidal wave of emergency visits. This is smart but the problem is that we won’t have a vaccine for 18 months. I wonder if that means that unless we are going to shut everything down for a year and a half – not going to happen – then what IS going to happen is sporadic shutdowns for the next 18 months as we try to basically keep a lid on this as much as possible until the vaccine is released?
I don’t know. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m an epidemiologist or a doctor. I only pretend to know something about football. And I only do that to aggravate the other supporters who like to say that you shouldn’t have an opinion unless your an expert at something. But I digress.
Anyway, this week has been pretty wild. Mikel Arteta posted a great message on Twitter this morning, full of the right kind of attitude that we all could be copying right now:
In that spirit I will try to post some things for people who are self-quarantining to try at home. Things that are helpful and fun. For example last night I made an incredibly good Chana Masala
You should make it! Here are some tips that I will add: I always microplane (grate) my ginger and garlic. I just don’t like chunks in my food. And since I’m on the low salt thing, I used a LOT of garlic and ginger. But I also added a TSP of salt to this recipe. That is about 5 grams or about 2000mg of sodium. Obviously, that would blow out my entire day’s worth of sodium if I ate the whole thing but I ate about half and had been very very good with my sodium intake earlier.
I also always par-boil my tomato and then peel it and de-seed it. Again, this is a thing I have about chunky textures. I hate seeds in food and cooked tomato skins are awful.
As for the sodium intake thing.. well.. ha! I haven’t been tracking like I should. I will get back on that today. I do want to post some cool graphs about my health and whatnot so that I can encourage other people struggling with pre-hypertension, low sodium diets, and weight loss.
I could give the excuse here that I’m “stress eating” but honestly, I’m just using that as an excuse and it’s pretty weak. I could and should just be tracking what I put into my body. It’s not hard!*
And finally, in the “what else can I do to help?” category, I’ve seen a lot of suggestions and I’m just going to compile some here:
- You can buy takeout from your local restaurants to support them and their staff. If you were going to go out anyway, why not?
- You can buy gift cards from these same businesses – though that seems less helpful because they are still going to waste a lot of food stock during this slowdown. Plus, while it helps now, it doesn’t help when you go and cash that in in a month or whatever.
- Telework if possible
- Donate to your local food pantry – some football clubs are already doing this with the food they ordered for this weekend, if you can afford it, buy extra cans of food and donate them.
- On that last tip – STAY AWAY FROM THE SUPERMARKETS. Right now, those workers are absolutely crushed with crowds. Perhaps now is the time to look at Amazon pantry or some other options? Also a lot of supermarkets have pickup (door to car) services. That can also be an option sometimes.
- If you HAVE to go to the supermarket, don’t be a pushy a-hole.
- Things to stock up on (what will be good in the apocalypse)
- Drugs (acetaminophen, ibuprofen, nyquil, and mucus relief)
- Bullets**
- Whiskey**
- Cigarettes**
- Dried foods (beans, rice)
- Water
- Dog/cat food
- Backyard chickens (for their eggs)
That’s all I got for today. Taking the dog for a walk now. It snowed here and it’s cold today. Kinda crummy!
*Maybe it is hard? Maybe it’s harder than I think and takes more time than I am estimating.
**I’m joking, these things are always lying around in abandonded buildings, that’s what I’ve learned from Red Dead Redemption and Fallout
Are you thinking it’s going to be so bad we’re reduced to dog and cat food? 😉
Seriously, in the grand scheme of things, the effect of this on regular folks with hourly pay jobs is much bigger than league position. Coming up with a way to help those people out needs to be a much bigger priority than a payroll tax cut.
I’ve been eating chole/Channa all my life and still don’t make it, relying on Wife-of-1-Nil and before her, Mom-of-1-Nil of course hers was best, RIP). But now I have to try. Thanks for this.
Fresh naan and raita (cucumber and yogurt salad) are classic accompaniments as well, of course.
I should get into raita – I bet it’s raita up my alley in terms of how I’m trying to eat these days.
Dude don’t sweat it. Too much stress. I replaced sodium for spice years ago. When I cook for family and they complain about the (lack of) salt, I have pink Himalayan and the regular table stuff. Go to town but don’t bother me.
My Dad’s old colleague (a very good cardiologist) said unless you have a serious underlying condition that can be effectively treated by diet, ANYTHING you do swings the numbers maybe, maybe 10% either way. Critical for few patients but not for most.
Tim,
An interesting article in the Guardian about Washington State. In a nutshell, the figures bandied about regarding the area, is skewed purely because the area started testing before the rest of the country.
Worth a read, not just for locals.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-washington-state-us-outbreak
What that also brings up, is a point I made in an earlier thread, that the US seems to be dealing with the outbreak on a “state by state” basis. That simply is not good enough. Obviously. There has to be “joined up thinking”. That also extends to countries. It transpires that the decision to ban flights from Europe, while maybe being the right one, was made totally without at least mentioning this to any of the European governments involved. They found out from the press. Incredible! Basically, you have a leadership, which relies on confrontation rather than cooperation, presumably because it makes him look “tough” in front of his fawning public, who then rush out to re-elect him. What has to happen before everyone wakes up? We’re all in this together.
Don’t forget the coriander/cilantro. Lots of it, chopped finely and spread over absolutely everything.
Some good tips to address the sometimes forgotten consequence of avoiding everything – the economic impact of people not going out or doing things or events being cancelled. We are already seeing pay cuts, forced unpaid leave, business closure and lay-offs. This thing is going to claim a lot more victims than just the ill. Man, I could really use some football to watch now…..
Just a small point, but food banks prefer money over canned goods. Thanks for your writing and analysis.
https://www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-blog/donating-food-food-bank-consider-cash-instead-canned-goods
A good time for Edu and the gang to get the Auba contract sorted and get the youngsters tied down on better deals.
A lot of clubs will be sniffing around Saka who only has another year left.
They aren’t going far at the moment get them in the office.
In all countries in Europe people seem to stockpile toilet paper. This is very surprising to me, and i still struggle to understand the thinking behind…
Do you use bidet or lota?
Can one deep freeze toilet paper?