Short of Line, Length, Sleep

It's 5:07 on a Monday morning, and here I am engrossed in a game of cricket.

Cricket.

It's amazing what the prospect of hammering the Aussies at <insert sport here> on their own turf will do to your sleeping patterns.

Wake me up when it's Adelaide, K?

Milton Keynes' Tartan Army

Milton Keynes at last has a motoring claim to fame that doesn't involve roundabouts.

OK, one roundabout, but as it's in Monaco, we'll let them off on that one.

Yes, Red Bull Racing, Formula One constructor's champions, are based in the south of my fair city, in a large factory (with obligatory "NOTICE US" scarlet bovine paint job). And yet they decide to be registered to Austria, meaning it's not God Save The Queen, but Land Der Berge that play's after the driver's national anthem - a Teutonic double-whammy if Vettel wins.

And yet...it gets me hankering for old days.

You see, it never used to be so damned corporate. Back in 1997, Paul Stewart and his father John (or "Jackie", as everyone insists on calling him. It's a Scottish thing) entered the world of Formula One. They got Ford as a works engine supplier, HSBC as a title sponsor - hell, they even got Rubens Barrichello as lead driver. The car, with its clean white lines and understated tartan motif looked the part, and was on a par with the Benettons in terms of speed.

It had just one tiny problem: it was as fragile as a porcelain kitten.

Chances are, when you saw a Stewart overtaking someone, you'd see it belching smoke and flames within five laps.

And yet, we cheered on Jackie's boys, willing them to do well, buoyed by a single podium in Monte Carlo in 1997. Even the realisation Jan Magnussen drives like your nan, that Jos Verstappen drives like the walking ATM that he is, that there is seemingly no limit to the ways that tiny screws and rubber O-rings can really screw up a V10 engine, we held hope.

And then, one wet day in Autumn 1999, Johnny Herbert went and won us a Grand Prix.

About two weeks after Jackie Stewart sold the team to Ford.

In the words of James May: "Oh, cock."

Down The Tube

Well, that was depressing. Once again, my beloved Arsenal have shown they are most spectacularly capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

And against Spurs, no less. Herbert Chapman would have had kittens.

It seems that Arsenal's time at the Emirates has been a curse (if you live in North London, and know of a former worker at the Ashburton Grove industrial park with a Tottenham shirt and working knowledge of voodoo, please let me know). Time was, at Highbury, you'd get off the tube at Finsbury Park station - despite the fact that Arsenal tube station was opposite the North Bank - and join 30,000 others descending upon Gillespie Road or Avenell Road, bringing the whole of N5 into a red and white standstill.

Nowadays, of course, where you get off the tube depends largely on where you're sitting, thanks to the fact that Arsenal have built the new ground smack dab at the halfway point between Arsenal and Holloway Road stations. They even had the foresight to build it right next to Drayton Park (which, according to the 1970's era London Game, I long to discover) - and, of course, Drayton Park is now closed on matchdays.

If it wasn't so damned stupid, it'd be hilarious. Much like Fabianski's goalkeeping...speaking of which, I have a suggestion for Ol' Flappy-Hands. Take the Picadilly Line. Keep going until you reach Heathrow. Get plane. Don't come back.

Oh well, there's always next week...