Footy updates

Just thought that the way to keep my football-loving readership up to date with events in the world's most important sport and at the same time give the others a get-out is to include 'footy' in the title. You'll know what you're going to get and can read the post or not, according to your inclination.

I've always thought that treating cup competitions with disdain by playing your second string and academy players is a stupid idea. I get it for clubs in the top third of the Premier League, which have European competitions and hence busy fixture lists, and whose second string and academy players could probably beat the first elevens of most other clubs, but for Ipswich Town of the Championship and Bromley of League Two surely it's a chance to progress in a competition, give the supporters some joy and make a bit of money. But no, Bromley made 7 changes from their usual starting eleven and Ipswich 8. Effectively saying "this competition is completely unimportant and peripheral to our season-long goals so we're not going to treat it seriously and we don't care whether we win or lose." So I tuned in to the game more out of loyalty to my team (Ipswich) rather than an expectation of quality football.

It was an awful, disjointed match and Ipswich got what they deserved - defeat. I'm worried about them based on their performances so far. Their squad is thin and not of a level which is likely to lead to promotion. It's true that they have some players coming in but not yet match fit (surely this was an opportunity to get them some minutes?) but they need more incomings. They've already lost their top striker and are likely to lose their most creative player Omari Hutchinson. Momentum is important and a lucky draw in their first league match and a defeat to a team two divisions lower is the wrong kind of momentum.

In the same competition, Wycombe got a 95th minute winner (where have we heard that before this season?) away to Leyton Orient and Charlton smashed Stevenage 3-1, so they'll both be in today's draw for the second round. Presumably Ipswich will be relieved not to be in it.

Elsewhere, Tottenham Hotspur play Paris Saint Germain in the European Super Cup - a definite step up for a team finishing 17th in the Premier League last season. Let's see if new manager Thomas Frank can improve them. As an Arsenal supporter I had no intention of mentioning our North London rivals but there was outrage that I didn't mention them, so I'll try not to be too rude.

We need to support Brazil

This is not about football 📣. It's about açaí, specifically Brazilian açaí (apparently pronounced ah-sigh-EE). Açaí is a small, dark purple fruit that grows on the açaí palm tree in the Amazon rainforest. It's low in sugar, high in antioxidants, healthy fats and fibre. So it's a kind of superfood and you can get it (if you can find it and afford it) frozen or powdered for use in smoothies or juice blends. I checked out Tesco online and they sell, through their marketplace, Açaí body butter, Açaí body mask (neither of which I'll be buying because I wouldn't know what to do with them) and Organic Açaí powder, which I guess you might chuck into smoothies instead of whey protein powder and I think I might be able to get in my local Holland and Barrett. Alternatively, Ocado does scoopable frozen Açaí sorbet, Organic Açaí Drops, smoothie packs, the TriActive Super Good Bar "with Benefits" Almond & Acai Berry and smoothie bowls. I've never actually used Ocado [any recommendations or otherwise?] so maybe I'll give some of these a try for my debut purchase.

Why should we care about this? Because the great United States of America has slapped 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports into the USA and this threatens the livelihoods of farmers in the northern Brazilian state of Pará, which supplies 90% of the açaí sold to the US. I feel the world should stand up to bullies and we in Cornwall must shoulder some of the burden. Go buy your açaí and support the Amazonian farmers!

Late News: Ocado don't deliver to my area, it says. Although I'm sure I've seen their vans around. Bummer. H&B it is...

I shall report in due course.

Quiz Night answers

First, last night:

-Mastermind specialist subjects:

• The playing career of Sunil Gavaskar
• The Hunger Games
• Leonard Bernstein
• Edvard Munch

-Only Connect from the Sequences round - what comes next?

North: Air - East: Kisser - South: Dumps - ?

Now for the answers you all have been waiting for...

Connections round:

• 14
• 39
• 50
• 55

Answer: The start years of 20th century wars:

1914 WW1

1939 WW2

1950 Korean War

1955 Vietnam War

The connecting wall round gives you 16 words and you have to group them correctly in four groups of four. Example:

• maroon, volume, horse, desert
• count, vanilla, strand, weight
• dump, chocolate, age, standard
• measure, matter, plain, normal

Answer:

(Taken from yesterday's NYTimes app, which is similar)

That's it for quizzing for a while, you'll be pleased to know!

Not my kind of movie

Teenage girly, musicals, three hours long. All no-nos for me in choosing a film to watch. So why I watched Wicked is a mystery. But I’m glad I did, it is very entertaining. It’s a prequel to the Wizard of Oz and contains much that is familiar from the land of Oz, such as talking animals - Peter Dinklage speaks for the history teacher goat. This is not incidental - a rebellion occurs in support of the animals after the school decides to terminate their services.

I've never understood why the Wizard is central to the title of the book and the earlier movie. He's just a fake with no magic powers; it's the witches which are the central characters - the good one and the wicked one. 

The show begins with a spoiler - Galinda (Ariana Grande) announces to the audience that "the Wicked Witch of the West is dead". Here's where I have to confess to a large degree of ignorance about female pop singers. If you played me a song by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Rihanna or even Madonna I wouldn't know which is which. In my ignorance I dismiss them as under-dressed popular artists pandering to a teenage girl audience making appealing but limited music [Ed: patronising old git].

But I stand corrected. Ariana Grande can actually sing. Startlingly well, with a huge vocal range. A little bit lacking in oomph but then I'm comparing her to operatic sopranos that I'm more familiar with and who probably possess larger lung capacities. After listening to her I read some stuff about her and learn she has a vocal range of at least four octaves and she can use the whistle register (the highest soprano frequencies). She is joined by co-star Cynthia Erivo. I'm aware of her from a weird and scary Stephen King adaptation The Outsider, where she plays a savant-like private detective and steals the show. I didn't know she was a singer but this is my loss because she has won an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony award as well as having an Oscar nomination.

These two make the central focus of the film. Initially from wildly different backgrounds - Erivo as Elphaba, the sister of wheelchair-bound Nessarose who is due to enrol in Shiz University and the Dean of Sorcery Studies sees an accidental magic trick by Elphaba and enrols her too. Elphaba has green skin and now that she needs a room she is paired with bubbly blonde Galinda (who becomes Glinda for no apparent reason). Popular Glinda grates on reclusive Elphaba but, in true romcom tradition, they eventually become best buddies, even though they both rather fancy connecting with the same classic all-American boy. Elphaba is enraged by the sacking of the animals who teach in the university and decides she needs to go see the Wizard in the hope that he will change the situation. She and Glinda board a spectacular life sized train and go to Oz. The Wizard proves to be useless and Elphie flies off into the distance on a broomstick leaving Glinda pretty baffled by what's going on.

I tried to get the essential points, as I understand them, in that synopsis. Much that is enjoyable revolves around the outstanding visual production and the strength of the musical and dance numbers; the storyline is pretty incidental.

This is where the film ends, but obviously not the story.

The only real issue for me is it’s a stretch at nearly 3 hours, despite being only the first half of the movie adaptation of the stage musical (I watched it over two evenings). The second half - Wicked: For Good (I'm so glad they didn't lazily go for Wicked 2) - comes to the cinema in November. I'll be there, queuing with the teenage girls.

Quiz Night

I love quizzes. To be fair, you wouldn't want me on your pub quiz team because I know next to nothing about the staple diet of those - popular music, soap operas, celebrities. Although there's always a bit of sport where I might be able to contribute. 

But Monday night is Quiz Night on BBC2. Mastermind at 7:30 followed by Only Connect and finally University Challenge.

When I was a teacher at Chetham's School, as Head of Sixth Form I organised a team to compete in the Manchester Schools' Challenge. I got my good friend who was the physics teacher to build the electronics required to enable the buzzers and we had a lot of fun. I don't think we won anything (musicians don't know much about normal life) and one of the teaching staff, a dour Scottish Presbyterian, denounced us as "prostituting our knowledge", which I found difficult to answer because (a) I was shocked and (b) I didn't know what that meant.

At home when the kids got older, University Challenge was a regular watch (it's been going for over 60 years, only one year less than Coronation Street) and involved a cushion.

Anyway, back to tonight's quizzes. Mastermind is my least favourite because half of the questions are unanswerable except in very specific circumstances, i.e. you actually need to know something about the specialist subjects chosen. Here are those from the most recent three episodes:

• Stage plays of Sir Tom Stoppard
• The music of Led Zeppelin
• Penguins
• The Empire State Building 
• The Glorious Revolution
• The career of Novak Djokovic 
• Caravaggio
• Premier League Darts
• Inside No. 9
• Grace Hopper

See what I mean? Esoteric doesn't come close. The contestants also answer a general knowledge round, which starts with a very easy question and gets progressively harder. Which is OK for me as I'll get a few. Of course for the contestants it's much more difficult because there is clock pressure.

Then there's Only Connect, probably the most difficult quiz show around. You have to work out the link between four apparently unrelated clues (or sometimes three and you have to guess what's coming next). Pure inductive reasoning, of the type used for solving cryptic crossword clues. They're often deliberately misleading. Try this:

• 14
• 39
• 50
• 55

The connecting wall round gives you 16 words and you have to group them correctly in four groups of four. Example:

• maroon, volume, horse, desert
• count, vanilla, strand, weight
• dump, chocolate, age, standard
• measure, matter, plain, normal

It's fiendishly difficult (contestants are on the clock too) but fascinates me. Answers tomorrow!

Finally, University Challenge is basically a pub quiz for nerds. I guess that's me. 

I'm the archetypal couch potato.

I'm really sorry...

...to all my readers who couldn't give a monkey's about football. But...

Here we go, the new football season has started. The last kick of a football of any consequence was on 27th July in Basel, when Chloe Kelly scored the winning penalty against Spain to win the women's Euros 2025. Great joy in the Whitstable household. Since then just...dreary summer. But this weekend we're back.

Ipswich Town started their promotion challenge on Friday with a very lucky 95th minute equaliser against newcomers (but for me predicted challengers) Birmingham City. Exactly the same minute in which Charlton Athletic got a deserved winner in their Championship debut the following day. We can't wait for the big match between the two on April 22nd at the Valley.

Yesterday title-chasing Arsenal won their final pre-season friendly at the Emirates, showing off their new signings. There are apparently other teams involved in all these competitions but you shouldn't expect me to refer to them too often. At the other end of the scale (no offence), Whitstable Town begin the defence of their FA Vase title on 8th November.

So much to look forward to....roll on those dark winter nights.

If you want me to feature your team this season, post a comment below.