Now, of course, it's always sad when a long-term relationship comes to an end. While the advent of the iPod may have removed the need to split the commonly assembled record collection between you, there's still no substitute for having your faithful partner there to support you in times of need, to act as a reserve of extra strength when everything else seems to be going against you, and with whom you can lie back and savour the good times.
The triumphs over adversity were always all the sweeter in the knowledge that you'd always been there for one another, and knew you always would be. Until, that is, the Other Man arrived on the scene.
OK, there were others beforehand who'd tried to turn an eye, other than just the inevitable hangers-on and flatterers attracted by success itself, even some who for a while looked like they might stay the distance – soppy, faithful little Brian, that flighty sod David (oh how you loved it when his falling out came to blows and the throwing of shoes), and of course the big lump that was hound-dog Steve - but in the end they all turned out to have been short-lived affairs, pretty superficial, and you always ended up as a couple made stronger by the tests these other guys had posed – you were reassured by your other half's assurances that they just had to be let down gently, and that it'd always been your advice, your strength, that'd really been valued. But this one rival was different, and in truth you'd always known that.
He was suave, sophisticated, with rugged continental good looks, and he always seemed to have your one time partner's (and one-time sole confidant's) ear. Where you offered passion, he sought poise instead, your constant energy was blunted by his deeper thinking. For a while it looked like he was out of the picture – a job abroad having taken him away – and you rested easy that the showdown you'd dreaded, and the rejection you'd always feared, hadn't come to pass. But perhaps you rested too easy, in fact, and got complacent, let your standards slip a bit, and that was fatal. Because then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he was back, just when things were not going as they should. Now he made you, and all around you, aware that you weren't yourself quite the man you once were, and your temper, which had never been too well-restrained, started to become a problem. When he started acting like he knew better than you, even to the point of openly, publicly even, criticising the way you've tried to discipline the kids, well, that was just the line that your pride couldn't let him cross, so you snapped.
You got him on his own and tried to face him down as you had so many others down the years, but he wouldn't flinch. You yelled and screamed and threatened, and he just respectfully, politely, but with menacing and maddening calmness, said you were out of order and should think about what you were saying. So, of course, you decked him, and just for a moment, as he lay sprawled before you, holding his chin and split lip, you were exhilarated. But just for a moment, a tiny moment before your whole world came crashing down around you, because you saw his eyes move behind you, and someone behind you gasped at the betrayal of trust of which you'd just shown yourself capable. You turned and found it was your partner standing there. It was Alex.
But so much for my foray into Mills & Boon land – I thought I'd just give you a teaser trailer of my new novella, Carrington, which may or may not shortly be available at all good online bookstores, is entirely fictitious and bears no resemblance, intended or otherwise, to any person or persons, living or dead. Oh and Alex was short for Alexandra, ok? Glad we got that clear.
Right, ahem, back to the world of football instead, and in an entirely unconnected development, which I'm sure didn't involve any sort of punch up with chunky continental pub chef Carlos – sorry, assistant coach Carlos, the namesake pub chef was in Emmerdale, wasn't he? – regardless of what scurrilous online rumour might say, Roy Keane has left Man United. This too is a saga of a tragic double act, that of Alex and Roy at the Training Ground, which on Friday last week seems to have transformed itself into something more akin to Dick and Dom at da Bungalow, resulting in the hastily assembled "mutual consent" announcement of the departure of the Man United captain of 12 years standing, which therefore struck absolutely no-one as genuine (George Burley leaving Hearts "by mutual consent" a couple of months ago was only marginally less convincing, mmm?). Despite these last minute attempts to create dignity out of a shambles, it doesn't make for happy viewing, does it? Let us indeed hope there are no voyeurs nearby to look on in interest, let lone people sad enough to be compiling dossiers...
On the pitch, the first match of the weekend action was Arsenal's early visit to Wigan, the reverse fixture of which will be the last ever competitive match at Highbury in a few months' time, and even if that game may not in itself be a championship decider come May, the fact that the two teams involved were respectively second and fifth at the outset of the day, at least made it this weekend's top game. Now, normally I'm not a fan of kickoffs being moved to just after noon on a Saturday to suit TV scheduling, but on this occasion, I was very much in favour, since I found myself enjoying a nice afternoon out at the rugby courtesy of a very nice American law firm, and the thankfully well-heated marquee where pre-match lunch was served found itself so far at the luxury end of the market that it even had plasma screens showing the first half of the Wigan-Arsenal game while lunch was underway. Top stuff.
There were some really good goals scored in an action-packed first half, probably the best executed of which was Thierry Henry's free kick, gracefully curling into perfect contact with the inside of the post and thus beating Filan (whom I remember from a previous stint at Blackburn Rovers was a goalkeeper quite capable of playing out of his skin to deny Arsenal a dozen otherwise certain goals in a game), and of course this strike turned out to be the winner. But then the host announced that we needed to make our way to the stands (those of them still there, that is) and a short walk through the entirely plasma-bereft streets of Twickenham ensued, meaning I was unable to keep track of events at the JJB after the interval.
This is where quantum physics came into play, and in particular the uncertainty principle. I am not, I should explain, referring to the way in which the rugby match's kicking failed to match the earlier, cross-code precision of Monsieur Henry's free kick, though of course if all the dead balls had been struck with that degree of accuracy, the result might have been even closer than it turned out to be. No, instead this is the phenomenon whereby it is said that the state of a particular observable event, when not actually observed, is in flux. For an entirely cogent explanation of this, check your popular science references (Stephen Hawking, Bill Bryson and so on), but the matter essentially comes down to whether you get the concept of Schrödinger's Cat. Said cat, who by the way it's important to note was only ever a hypothetical one, lest you be concerned about the possible animal cruelty angle, was put inside a sealed and impenetrable lead box along with a radioactive isotope and a canister of poison gas, which was set up so as to be release the toxin only should the isotope decay and thereby emit a triggering particle (albeit one that could not escape the lead container, so no sneaky clues there). From the outside of the box, once sealed, you have to ask the question, is the cat alive or not?
At first blush, you might say that the cat must either be alive or dead, but if you did, that would be where you lost your chance of a Nobel prize for physics, because in fact the cat is neither one nor the other, but instead is both at the same time. With the possible outcomes in flux until such time as you open the box to make the observation, the cat is both alive and dead simultaneously, and arguably it's only the act of making the observation that makes the outcome crystallise. So, to take the analogy across to Saturday afternoon, where we started off, was the Wigan game still a first away win this season for Arsenal, or had there been a Wigan goal? Should I open the box (by looking up the score on my wap phone) and run the risk of killing the cat (and Arsenal's slender remaining title chances) with my impatience? Was I wrong to think of Pascal Cygan at left back being equivalent to a trip-wire triggered canister of poison gas? Well, in the end, it won't surprise you to learn that I did indeed look up the score, and thus let the cat out of the box, so to speak. But having the result on 128 pixels squared of Nokia technology, it's just not the same, at for the Arsenal game at least I had seen most of the action already.
For example, it wasn't until I saw Match of the Day that night, after a brief encounter with Schrödinger's Lesbians in a Richmond pub (trust me, we don't have time to explain, and you had to be there anyway really), that I learned that my wap phone had let me down in not mentioning that the Zenden goal for Liverpool was a knocked in rebounded from a penalty that Crouch had missed in front of the Kop, so very much still the Hidden Dragon indeed there. Quite how little justice could be done to Cisse's goal, let alone his expression after scoring it, by the mobile phone equivalent of watching a match on teletext, well, it just staggers me, and Morientes wasn't bad either with his strike.
Wap also failed to tell me that Newcastle's capitulation at the Bridge was helped along by the absence of both Shearer and Owen through injury, although I kind of expected that result to go to the home side, and Crespo's goal was a worthy winner. Charlton's defeat by Man United at the Valley was not as convincing as the scoreline suggested, by contrast, and if any one goal deserved to win the match, I think it was likely Darren Ambrose's shot for 1-1 rather than Van Nistelrooy's killer final goal for United. That said, the Dutchman played like a man possessed – he must have done, let's face it, scoring from outside the box – and in a post-match interview he said how shocked he had been by Roy Keane's departure the previous day.
At the Stadium of Light, the isotope definitely seemed to have decayed, the Black Cats slumping before a revitalised Villa onslaught, although I think they were lucky not to have conceded a goal from when the Keeper carried it backwards into his own net (must have been the Roy Carroll linesman again). West Brom also kept the West Midlands smiling with an emphatic defeat of Everton, just in time to stymie David Moyes's chances of getting the Rangers job, and the last game on Saturday was a nil-nil for Blackburn at Eastlands.
On Sunday, West Ham suckered Spurs with a last gasp equaliser, while Fulham led Boro twice before losing to a vintage Hasselbaink strike (and before then bleating about the second Boro equaliser being offside, which I thought a bit rich considering how Zat Knight was twice so far off the pace of the game that the linesman hadn't noticed him playing people onside in dangerous Boro moves, and had flagged instead).
The best unobserved action of the whole weekend, however, awaited me when I finally got to see the Barcelona goals in Madrid, Ronaldinho's brace being so good it even got the Bernabeu crowd up applauding the man. Would it be good to see him and Thierry Henry playing together, as has been hinted at lately could happen? Well, just so long at the Brazilian turns up as the first major signing for Arsenal to be funded by the Emirates Stadium cashflows, I'll be happy. I suspect, however, it'll take a lot of looking in boxes before I can make that event come to pass...