Tottenham Quotes

Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of a football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

If you support Tottenham you always give more love than you get back... Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they're almost good. They always promise that they're going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you

Everything's falling apart according to plan.

OK, publishing a book and releasing a movie is all very well, but Tottenham beating Man. U. 3-2... priceless.

I finally grasped the machinations and subtext of that phrase the year I turned twenty-five. When you begin to wonder if life is really just waiting for buses on Tottenham Court Road and ordering books you'll never read off Amazon; in short, you are having an existential crisis. You are realizing the mundanity of life. You are finally understanding how little point there is to anything. You are moving out of the realm of fantasy 'when I grow up' and adjusting to the reality that you're there; it's happening. And it wasn't what you thought it might be. You are not who you thought you'd be. Once you starting digging a hole of those questions, it's very difficult to take the day-to-day functionalities of life seriously.

Life Without Work To do nothing In this day and age, When so much pointless work Is being produced, Could almost be considered an achievement. It all compares most unfavorably With my own imaginary Body of work.

VIEW FROM A HILL I am not yet quite over it. I am lying down on top of it. Surveying behind me a wasteland Of dried-up promise. While the lights below twinkle With dull mocking uncertainty. There isn't much left to look forward to, And the looking forward of the past has been belied.

RIVETING TORPOR It is remarkable how far I am prepared to go In order to avoid doing the one thing that might Provide satisfaction, and it is remarkable to consider What I will do instead of it, purely for the pleasure Of being dissatisfied. When it is merely a matter Of sitting down for a few hours and dreaming That something of value might eventually arise From this routine of self-enforced boredom.

On the flight home, I daydreamed of Tottenham Court Road and ordering shit off Amazon. I thought of Farly's laugh and the sound of my flatmates getting ready for work int he morning and the smell of my mum's perfume in her hair when I hug her. I thought of the bliss mundanity of life; of what a privilege it was to live it.

IMPROVIDENCE The other lives I might have led All now might as well be Dead. Survived by no one. Barren, without issue of any sort: This withered bud, failed In art and love. With no time left To change my course. But time enough for infinite remorse.

I had a feeling once. I wonder what happened to it.

Patronage of Negation I am constantly confronted by other people’s works That I could have created myself. And I am constantly disappointed by them. Sadly, I have to recognize them For what they are: inferior versions Of what I could have done If I’d been insecure enough in my abilities To do anything.

Whenever I’m in a relationship I feel as if I’m being unfaithful to myself.

Tottenham is the worst kind of bad team, because they’re almost good. They always promise that they’re going to be fantastic. They make you hope. So you go on loving them and they carry on finding more and more innovative ways of disappointing you.

You revolutionists' the other continued, with leisurely self-confidence, 'are the slaves of the social convention, which is afraid of you; slaves of it as much as the very police that stands up in the defence of that convention. Clearly you are, since you want to revolutionize it. It governs your action, too, and thus neither your thought nor your action can ever be conclusive. (...) 'You are not a bit better than the forces arrayed against you -- than the police, for instance. The other day I came suddenly upon Chief Inspector Heat at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. He looked at me very steadily. But I did not look at him. Why should I give him more than a glance ? He was thinking of many things -- of his superiors, of his reputation, of the law courts, of his salary, of newspapers -- of a hundred things. But I was thinking of my perfect detonator only. He meant nothing to me. He was as insignificant as -- I can't call to mind anything insignificant enough to compare him with -- except Karl Yundt perhaps. Like to like. The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolutions, legality -- counter moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical. He plays his little game -- so do you propagandists.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the [war] until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men…he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all…Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

I had discovered after the Swindon game that loyalty, at least in football terms, was not a moral choice like bravery or kindness; it was more like a wart or a hump, something you were stuck with. Marriages are nowhere near as rigid - you won’t catch any Arsenal fans slipping off to Tottenham for a bit of extra-marital slap and tickle, and though divorce is a possibility (you can just stop going if things get too bad), getting hitched again is out of the question.

His only extravagance was soccer, though he called it football, of course, rooted for Tottenham. His mother, you see, was Jewish; she loved how Tottenham fought back against anti-Semitic slurs and called themselves the Yid Army. The Yiddos. For Leo, he said, it had also been the name, so meaty, so metrical. Tottenham Hotspur, its own tiny song.

I always assume that people I admire are single.

Tottenham Court Road, and he left a tidy business

My Sadness is Deeper than Yours My sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too.

SONG OF DAWN I saw the sun rise by accident. It was a horrible sight. Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refuge in a moist pillow, and lay there, alone, at the dawn of another day, that brought me closer to another death, pondering the vanity of my solitude, the vanity of procrastination, and the tiresome inevitability of waking up again the same person. It might still be possible to change, but obstinately I remain the same, hoping that others might take solace in my consistency. But perhaps they take no solace in it, perhaps they too find it tedious.

Ah, but thinking became morbid, sentimental, directly one began conjuring up doctors, dead bodies; a little glow of pleasure, a sort of lust, too, over the visual impression warned one not to go on with that sort of thing any more - fatal to art, fatal to friendship. True. And yet, thought Peter Walsh, as the ambulance turned the corner, though the light high bell could be heard down the next street and still farther as it crossed the Tottenham Court Road, chiming constantly, it is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses. One might weep if no one saw. It had been his undoing - this susceptibility - in Anglo-Indian society; not weeping at the right time, or laughing either. I have that in me, he thought, standing by the pillar box, which could now dissolve in tears. Why heaven knows. Beauty of some sort probably, and the weight of the day, which, beginning with that visit to Clarissa, had exhausted him with its heat, its intensity, and the drip, drip of one impression after another down into that cellar where they stood, deep, dark, and no one would ever know. Partly for that reason, its secrecy, complete and inviolable, he had found life like an unknown garden, full of turns and corners, surprising, yes; really it took one's breath away, these moments; there coming to him by the pillar-box opposite the British Museum one of them, a moment, in which things came together; this ambulance; and life and death.

On the flight home, I daydreamed of Tottenham Court Road and ordering shit off Amazon. I thought of Farly's laugh and the sound of my flatmates getting ready for work in the morning and the smell of my mum's perfume in her hair when I hug her. I thought of the bliss mundanity of life; of what a privilege it was to live it.

Maybe I shouldn't have wasted my life.

Whenever I'm in a relationship I feel as if I'm being unfaithful to myself.

And what have I learned from all these affairs of the heart? One thing only, and that what I knew to begin with: that I have no business being in one at all.

The rush is there and my body tingles. Sounds funny but it's true. It's better than shafting a bird. Better than speeding. Mark's head is a mess but the bleeding has stopped. My knuckles are bruised and Rod's eyes have gone a bit mental looking. We join the crush trying to get into the ground and we can hear the constant chant of CHELSEA. This is what life's all about. Tottenham away. Love it.

What impressed me most was just how much most of the men around me hated, really hated, being there. As far as I could tell, nobody seemed to enjoy, in the way that I understood the word, anything that happened during the entire afternoon. Within minutes of the kick-off there was real anger (‘You’re a DISGRACE, Gould. He’s a DISGRACE!’ ‘A hundred quid a week? A HUNDRED QUID A WEEK! They should give that to me for watching you.’); as the game went on, the anger turned into outrage, and then seemed to curdle into sullen, silent discontent. Yes, yes, I know all the jokes. What else could I have expected at Highbury? But I went to Chelsea and to Tottenham and to Rangers, and saw the same thing: that the natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

I last visited White Hart Lane in early February 2016, and as I took my seat, after a few pints in the (TV-less) concourse, in the upper tier of the South-West corner I couldn’t help but notice the tumbleweed rolling around the ground. The stony silence from areas of the ground where I would normally expect the home fans to be sitting was deafening, and the whole ground was reminiscent of a ghost town. Whenever the magnificent Watford support ceased singing for a brief second or two I could hear the hollow, dry wind, and I found the desolate, dry and humourless atmosphere all rather eerie. But here’s the weird thing. If I squinted my eyes it almost appeared as if 36,000 people were sitting in seats around the ground, and the only conclusion I could draw was that it just one guy and that it was all done with mirrors.

Combing through the literature on clashes between black people and the police, I noticed another clash – one of perspective. While some people called what happened in Tottenham and Brixton a riot, others called it an uprising – a rebellion of otherwise unheard people. I think there’s truth in both perspectives, and that the extremity of a riot only ever reflects the extremity of the living conditions of said rioters.

I feel as if I don’t have time To do anything. So I do nothing Other than remind myself Of what I should be doing, And admonish myself for not doing it. I tell myself to be patient. But I don’t have time for patience anymore. I don’t have time for time.

Oh, yeah. Well, it’s just a bad habit we’ve slipped into,” said Harry. “But I haven’t got a problem calling him V —” “NO!” roared Ron, causing Harry to jump into the hedge and Hermione (nose buried in a book at the tent entrance) to scowl over at them. “Sorry,” said Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the brambles, “but the name’s been jinxed, Harry, that’s how they track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance — it’s how they found us in Tottenham Court Road!

From "The Jasmine Farm" by Elizabeth von Arnim, c 1934: "...except for a little trickle of water somewhere near, and the piping, on an oleander bush, of a solitary bird, so great a stillness surrounded her that in the whole world there might have been no one but herself. Relaxed she sat, her hands palm upwards on her lap, her mouth open because she was too tired to keep it shut. If she had known it, she was being exquisitely welcomed. The scented air, floating past her, lingered to pat her face. From a row of Madonna lilies, under the windows of the house, came fragrance, crossing the grass to greet her. Slanting shadows cooled her. The bird piped away, as if to her alone, songs of wisdom and good cheer. She was surrounded, companioned, pressed upon by beauty; and, for all she saw of it, it might have been Tottenham Court Road in a fog. 'Lift up your heart,' something whispered--'foolish woman, lift up your heart.' But of what use is it to exhort the absorbed, those who are steeped in their own particular tragedies, to do things like that? She heard the whisper, she recognised that familiar words were drifting through her mind, and all she did about it was listlessly to wonder that anybody had enough energy to lift up anything.

There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown-paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a skeptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella.

And Tottenham shan't be able to to resist me in this dress. No man could." "Olivia!" the marchioness said from her place. "That is entirely unladylike." "Why? That is the goal, is it not? To tempt one's husband?" "One does not tempt one's husband!" the marchioness insisted. Olivia's smile turned mischievous. "You must have tempted yours once or twice, Mother." "Oh!" Lady Needham collapsed back against the settee. Madame Hebert turned away from the conversation, waving two girls over to work on Pippa's hem. Olivia winked at Pippa. "Five times, at least." Pippa could not resist. "Four. Victoria and Valerie are twins." "Enough! I can't abide it!" The marchioness was up and through the curtains to the front of the shop, leaving her daughters to their laughter.

I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have learned to feather it. When first I was with Sir Chris. I found lodgings in Phenix Street off Hogg Lane, close by St Giles and Tottenham Fields, and then in later times I was lodged at the corner of Queen Street and Thames Street, next to the Blew Posts in Cheapside. (It is still there, said Nat stirring up from his Seat, I have passed it!) In the time before the Fire, Nat, most of the buildings in London were made of timber and plaister, and stones were so cheap that a man might have a cart-load of them for six-pence or seven-pence; but now, like the Aegyptians, we are all for Stone. (And Nat broke in, I am for Stone!) The common sort of People gawp at the prodigious Rate of Building and exclaim to each other London is now another City or that House was not there Yesterday or the Situacion of the Streets is quite Changd (I contemn them when they say such things! Nat adds). But this Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darknesse, or the Dungeon of Man's Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets nor Houses but a Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, allways tumbling or takeing Fire, with winding crooked passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch. (I have heard of that Gentleman, says Nat all a quiver). It is true that in what we call the Out-parts there are numberless ranges of new Buildings: in my old Black-Eagle Street, Nat, tenements have been rais'd and where my Mother and Father stared without understanding at their Destroyer (Death! he cryed) new-built Chambers swarm with life. But what a Chaos and Confusion is there: meer fields of Grass give way to crooked Passages and quiet Lanes to smoking Factors, and these new Houses, commonly built by the London workmen, are often burning and frequently tumbling down (I saw one, says he, I saw one tumbling!). Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape: in this Hive of Noise and Ignorance, Nat, we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What's a clock? And thus do I pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I'll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me pass among them in the World. (You will disquiet your self, Master, says Nat coming towards me). And what a World is it, of Tricking and Bartering, Buying and Selling, Borrowing and Lending, Paying and Receiving; when I walk among the Piss and Sir-reverence of the Streets I hear, Money makes the old Wife trot, Money makes the Mare to go (and Nat adds, What Words won't do, Gold will). What is their God but shineing Dirt and to sing its Devotions come the Westminster-Hall-whores, the Charing-cross whores, the Whitehall whores, the Channel-row whores, the Strand whores, the Fleet Street whores, the Temple-bar whores; and they are followed in the same Catch by the Riband weavers, the Silver-lace makers, the Upholsterers, the Cabinet-makers, Watermen, Carmen, Porters, Plaisterers, Lightemen, Footmen, Shopkeepers, Journey-men... and my Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.

N.E.W.T. Level Questions 281-300: What house at Hogwarts did Moaning Myrtle belong to? Which dragon did Viktor Krum face in the first task of the Tri-Wizard tournament? Luna Lovegood believes in the existence of which invisible creatures that fly in through someone’s ears and cause temporary confusion? What are the names of the three Peverell brothers from the tale of the Deathly Hallows? Name the Hogwarts school motto and its meaning in English? Who is Arnold? What’s the address of Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes? During Quidditch try-outs, who did Ron beat to become Gryffindor’s keeper? Who was the owner of the flying motorbike that Hagrid borrows to bring baby Harry to his aunt and uncle’s house? During the intense encounter with the troll in the female bathroom, what spell did Ron use to save Hermione? Which wizard, who is the head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the Ministry of Magic lost his son in 1995? When Harry, Ron and Hermione apparate away from Bill and Fleur’s wedding, where do they end up? Name the spell that freezes or petrifies the body of the victim? What piece did Hermione replace in the game of Giant Chess? What bridge did Fenrir Greyback and a small group of Death Eaters destroy in London? Who replaced Minerva McGonagall as the new Deputy Headmistress, and became the new Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts? Where do Bill and Fleur Weasley live? What epitaph did Harry carve onto Dobby’s grave using Malfoy’s old wand? The opal neckless is a cursed Dark Object, supposedly it has taken the lives of nineteen different muggles. But who did it curse instead after a failed attempt by Malfoy to assassinate Dumbledore? Who sends Harry his letter of expulsion from Hogwarts for violating the law by performing magic in front of a muggle? FIND THE ANSWERS ON THE NEXT PAGE! N.E.W.T. Level Answers 281-300 Ravenclaw. Myrtle attended Hogwarts from 1940-1943. Chinese Firebolt. Wrackspurts. Antioch, Cadmus and Ignotus. “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus” and “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.” Arnold was Ginny’s purple Pygmy Puff, or tiny Puffskein, bred by Fred and George. Number 93, Diagon Alley. Cormac McLaggen. Sirius Black. “Wingardium Leviosa”. Amos Diggory. Tottenham Court Road in London. “Petrificus Totalus”. Rook on R8. The Millenium Bridge. Alecto Carrow. Shell Cottage, Tinworth, Cornwall. “HERE LIES DOBBY, A FREE ELF.” Katie Bell. Malfalda Hopkirk, the witch responsible for the Improper use of Magic Office.

Billy ran around with a rare old crew And he knew an Arsenal from Tottenham blue We'd be a darn sight better off if we knew Where Billy's bones are resting now Billy saw a copper and he hit him in the knee And he took him down from six to five foot three Then he hit him fair and square in the do-re-mi That copper won't be having any family Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Billy went away with a peace-keeping force 'Cause he liked a bloody good fight, of course Went away in an old khaki van To the banks of the River Jordan Billy saw the Arabs and he had 'em on the run When he got 'em in the range of his sub-machine gun Then he had the Israelis in his sights, went a rat-tat-tat And they ran like shites Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? One night Billy had a rare old time, Laughing and singing on the Lebanon line Came back to camp not looking too pretty Never even got to see the holy city Now Billy's out there in the desert sun And his mother cries when the morning comes And there's mothers crying all over this world For their poor dead darling boys and girls Hey Billy son where are you now? Don't you know that we need you now? With a rat-tat-tat and the old kowtow Where are Billy's bones resting now? Have a Billy holiday… Born on a Monday Married on a Tuesday Drunk on a Wednesday Got plugged on a Thursday Sick on a Friday Died on a Saturday Buried on a Sunday. "Billy's Bones

Sorry,” said Ron, wrenching Harry back out of the brambles, “but the name’s been jinxed, Harry, that’s how they track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance — it’s how they found us in Tottenham Court Road!” “Because we used his name?” “Exactly! You’ve got to give them credit, it makes sense. It was only people who were serious about standing up to him, like Dumbledore, who ever dared use it. Now they’ve put a Taboo on it, anyone who says it is trackable — quick-and-easy way to find Order members! They nearly got Kingsley —” “You’re kidding?” “Yeah, a bunch of Death Eaters cornered him, Bill said, but he fought his way out. He’s on the run now, just like us.” Ron scratched his chin thoughtfully with the end of his wand. “You don’t reckon Kingsley could have sent that doe?” “His Patronus is a lynx, we saw it at the wedding, remember?” “Oh yeah . . .” They moved farther along the hedge, away from the tent and Hermione. “Harry . . . you don’t reckon it could’ve been Dumbledore?” “Dumbledore what?” Ron looked a little embarrassed, but said in a low voice, “Dumbledore . . . the doe? I mean,” Ron was watching Harry out of the corners of his eyes, “he had the real sword last, didn’t he?” Harry did not laugh at Ron, because he understood too well the longing behind the question. The idea that Dumbledore had managed to come back to them, that he was watching over them, would have been inexpressibly comforting. He shook his head. “Dumbledore’s dead,” he said. “I saw it happen, I saw the body. He’s definitely gone. Anyway, his Patronus was a phoenix, not a doe.” “Patronuses can change, though, can’t they?” said Ron. “Tonks’s

NAP ON A MUGGY AFTERNOON When we part, all the closeness and pleasure of our time together immediately dissolves into lonely agitation. Having shared a cool iron bed with a warm and beautiful woman, I return home and lie incapacitated on the sofa: drained, dismantled, wracked with longing and restlessness; yet somehow, despite the dismal aftereffects, it seems worth it. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

WINDSONG I have a heart like a wheelbarrow, there are no windmills in my mind. Love blows in and floats around freely like the wind - getting in the way of other things. This rootless love without design, which has no object, point or point of origin - one looks for it in every face, looking for somebody to become that place where everything that falls apart falls into place. It seeks definition, a place of rest, to find its home in a woman's breast - to die there, or multiply there. When, surely to keep it to oneself would be best. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

You looked away when we passed each other on the street. Then you disappeared again, and your life was complete. The Hate Poems, p.54 John Tottenham

You yearned to earn the right to have your problems taken seriously, to move on and claim your reward: the right to be bored. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

SENSE AND INSENSIBILITY You fell just far enough to break your fall, losing it while being careful not to lose it all. A struggle embraced conditionally, that you could emerge from victoriously, with enhanced credibility. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

I can go from biting loneliness to social claustrophobia - and back - in ten seconds flat. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

Cast further adrift by this subtle urgency, I can feel my precious life ebbing away. Better to be a recluse than a loose wreck, a small fish in a pond instead of lost at sea. Erudition without motivation cuts no ice around here; the extent of my ambition is shabby gentility. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

LETTING GO In a constant state of choking down bitterness. Getting it all down in the hope of exhausting it. Only to find there's more, it multiplies. How empty my life would be without it. What a gaping hole it would leave. And what could possibly take its place? That's a good question... I'm drawing a blank. To 'let go' of bitterness and resentment: It's an interesting concept. I must try it sometime. No hurry. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

I will love you more if you let me hurt you. Your readiness to endure my pain creates a disheartening closeness that I would rather live without. But if deprived of it, I will want it again. Until this sweetness, never free and usually painful, finally dries up.

Leave me to long for no one in particular, to retire from this realm of delight, and return to the stasis I hold dear: these are words that no one wants to hear.

Constantly fighting funny familiar feelings of futility, trying to put the brakes on the morbidity, but it keeps rolling down the line. And as I watch it disappear, life as I have long known it, becomes ll the more precious and acutely defined.

The need to duplicate pleasure is the source of much misery in this world.

Well, it was time to move on, anyway: the beauty wasn't in the consistency.

It's sensitizing, of course, to feel this way, and ideally it should nurture other areas of one's life like gentle rain. But this sort of happiness feels like a dead end. Bliss: but I would still be relieved were it to end. No problem: That can be arranged.

It is strange to consider That I once actually had a future. And It is becoming difficult to look back With any pleasure upon my past. A lostness Washes through me, freighted with bitter nostalgia. I am reminded of a time of hope that never materialized And I find that the past itself has become tainted By the future.

LOOK BACK IN LANGUOR It is strange to consider That I once actually had a future. And It is becoming difficult to look back With any pleasure upon my past. A lostness Washes through me, freighted with bitter nostalgia. I am reminded of a time of hope that never materialized. And I find that the past itself has become tainted By the future.

MY BRILLIANT NON-CAREER I often tell myself that I could have done anything I applied myself to. When, out of all the things I could have Applied myself to, I applied myself to doing nothing. And found that I couldn't even do that. The notion that I should have been doing something Kept getting in the way. And now, of course, it is too late To do anything: It has always been too late.

BENEATH MYSELF Anything that requires perseverance Has a wilting effect upon me. When opportunity calls, Apathy is the natural response. I cannot even call myself a failure. I have never tried hard enough At anything To earn even that accolade.

REMAINS I lie awake on grainy mornings, Gently killing the hours Of causeless hope, dozing Without reason and numbing myself To the numbness of what will be left Of this new day, by the time I finally rise And the crooked struggle begins To remain awake.

FROM PILLAR TO PILLOW Every day is a journey From hidden hope to resignation; From honorable intention To blurred self-flagellation. But there comes a point When it is easier to do one's work Than agonize about not doing it. I haven't reached that point yet.

ANOTHER DAY Take some initiative, Do something with your life: I get up from the sofa, Walk across to the table And write these words Down on a scrap of paper. Then I return to the sofa And fall asleep.

Mornings are spent preparing for activity. Nights are spent recovering from inactivity.

I have never been in a relationship, even when I was enjoying it, without continually plotting how to get out of it.

As you cling to me affectionately, covering me with tender kisses, I visualize you, in great detail, melting beneath the thrusts of another, and imagine how much I'll miss you, once I've finally succeeded in alienating you.

Dicen que los gatos te eligen, y no al contrario. Yo comprendí que él me había elegido cuando, un día, me siguió hasta la parada del autobús de Tottenham High Road, a casi un kilómetro y medio. Estábamos lejos de casa cuando le hice gestos con las manos para que se fuera y esperé hasta que desapareció entre la bulliciosa muchedumbre, imaginando que esa sería la última vez que lo veía. Sin embargo, cuando el autobús se acercó, él surgió de alguna parte, y vi una ráfaga naranja subir a bordo y acomodarse en el asiento de mi lado. Y eso fue todo. Desde entonces nos habíamos hecho inseparables, una pareja de almas perdidas ganándose la vida en las calles de Londres.

By the early seventies I had become an Englishman - that is to say, I hated England just as much as half my compatriots seemed to do. I was alienated by the manager’s ignorance, prejudice and fear, positive that my own choices would destroy any team in the world, and I had a deep antipathy towards players from Tottenham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester United.

It’s kind of like—this is the road—this is how it is. If you don’t like it, get off the road.” “What happened?” “In the end?” He shook his head and sucked on his teeth. “In the end, younger, it happened like it was always gonna happen. We rolled a crack house, only this time the Tottenham boys were wise to it. They had a couple of mash men with blammers there themselves, waiting for us. Soon as we got in there, they pulled them out and started shooting the place up. I took out my strap and fired back. Didn’t know who I was shooting at. Bad things happened.

Rutherford had read the reports in the newspaper about the gang banger who had been shot and killed, and it seemed that the protests in Tottenham and Enfield had spread, metastasizing into something much bigger and more dangerous.

numbers show kane is well able 78 words Harry Kane again justified his selection by Tottenham Hotspur yesterday with a fine performance against Everton. He has arguably been the pick of their forwards this season.

The physicality between us was like nothing I’d experienced before. Just the brush of his fingertips over my cheek was enough to make me feel undressed and naked. “I don’t know,” I answered. “What do you suggest? Culture, entertainment, or the underground car park in Tottenham Court Road?

The saucy Miss Tottenham slipped the strawberry into her delectable mouth, all the while looking at Cyrus. His thigh muscles tensed inside the velvet prison of his breeches. Hot pleasure shot through his body at the sight of the red berry slipping through her lips. Adding to his misery, a spurt of juice from the tender morsel painted her bottom lip red. He nearly groaned. Tradition named the apple as the fruit of man's downfall, but tonight he'd argue mightily for the dangers of a ripe strawberry on a certain woman's lips.

When Patrick Vieira came over from AC Milan, he didn’t know a word of English. We gave him accommodation, phone, car and an English teacher. I talked to Patrick in fluent French and before a game I asked in French, can you speak a bit of English to me? Patrick nodded and replied, ‘Tottenham are sh*t’.”  David Dein

When you begin to wonder if life is really just waiting for buses on Tottenham Court Road and ordering books you’ll never read off Amazon; in short, you are having an existential crisis. You are realizing the mundanity of life. You are finally understanding how little point there is to anything. You are moving out of the realm of fantasy ‘when I grow up’ and adjusting to the reality that you’re there; it’s happening. And it wasn’t what you thought it might be. You are not who you thought you’d be. Once you start digging a hole of those questions, it’s very difficult to take the day-to-day functionalities of life seriously. Throughout my twenty-fifth year, it was as if I had created a trench of my own thoughts and unanswerable questions, and from the darkness I peered up, watching people care about the things I had cared about: haircuts, the newspaper, parties, dinner, January sales on Tottenham Court Road, deals on Amazon – and I couldn’t fathom climbing out and knowing how to immerse myself in any of it again.” Excerpt From Everything I Know About Love Dolly Alderton This material may be protected by copyright.

She haunted many a low resort, Round the grimy road of Tottenham Court. She flitted around the no man’s land From The Rising Sun to The Friend At Hand And the postman sighed as he scratched his head You really would have thought she ought to be dead And who would ever suppose that that Was Grizabella The Glamour Cat.

She haunted many a low resort, Round the grimy road of Tottenham Court. She flitted around the no man’s land From The Rising Sun to The Friend At Hand And the postman sighed as he scratched his head You really would have thought she ought to be dead And who would ever suppose that that Was Grizabella The Glamour Cat. And that was not all. There was a letter from Tom Eliot to his publisher Geoffrey Faber about an event which brought all the Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats together who then ascended to the “Heaviside Layer” in a great big air balloon. There was even a couplet to go with it: “Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel, / Up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer.” So Eliot himself had an idea for a bigger structure for these poems, very vague, but it was there. I knew then that I had the bare bones of a stage musical. Most importantly Grizabella the Glamour Cat gave me a tragic character, a character who you would really care about. I asked Cameron and Gillie to join Valerie and Matthew, and the excitement was tangible. There were other poems too, the story of a parrot called Billy McCaw, who lived on the

She haunted many a low resort, Round the grimy road of Tottenham Court. She flitted around the no man’s land From The Rising Sun to The Friend At Hand And the postman sighed as he scratched his head You really would have thought she ought to be dead And who would ever suppose that that Was Grizabella The Glamour Cat. And that was not all. There was a letter from Tom Eliot to his publisher Geoffrey Faber about an event which brought all the Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats together who then ascended to the “Heaviside Layer” in a great big air balloon. There was even a couplet to go with it: “Up, up, up, past the Russell Hotel, / Up, up, up, to the Heaviside Layer.” So Eliot himself had an idea for a bigger structure for these poems, very vague, but it was there. I knew then that I had the bare bones of a stage musical. Most importantly Grizabella the Glamour Cat gave me a tragic character, a character who you would really care about. I asked Cameron and Gillie to join Valerie and Matthew, and the excitement was tangible. There were other poems too, the story of a parrot called Billy McCaw, who lived on the bar of an East End pub. There was the saga of a Yorkshire terrier called Little Tom Pollicle which was apparently Eliot’s nickname, and a long poem about a man in white spats who meets a casual diner in a pub called the Princess Louise and starts talking about “this’s and thats and Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats.” I asked Valerie what the words “Pollicle” and “Jellicle” meant. She explained it was Eliot’s private joke about how the British upper class slurred the words “poor little dogs” and “dear little cats.” She also revealed that Eliot intended the “Princess Louise” poem, as we came to call it, to be the preface of a book about dogs and cats, but in the end cats prevailed. “The Awefull Battle of the

Gary Mabbutt is a living history of Tottenham Hotspur. The refusal to limit his life because of diabetes, the determination to go on playing in spite of injuries, shows the measure of the man. ‘Legend’ is a word that’s applied rather too freely when it comes to describing footballers. When it comes to Gary Mabbutt, it’s the only one you can use.

Spurs became the first football club to have a listing on the Stock Exchange. The flotation, which raised £3.8 million, was over-subscribed by three-and-a-half times.

It’s about glory. It’s about doing things in style, with a flourish. It’s about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.

Remember, you are going to run out in front of the people who pay your wages. Their expectancy of you is high, their value of you is high and their opinion of you is high. So do not let them down. Entertain them and you can only do that by being honest with yourself, respecting your team-mates and your opponents, and by, as a team, playing as one.

I know that being ridiculed for being a Spurs fan is part of the deal and that this team will tear my heart out more times than it will make me leap for joy, but I have made my choice. I can’t wait for the glory, glory nights yet to come.

On 19th November, 1886, Spurs played their first fixture against a newly-formed South London club called Woolwich Arsenal. It was a friendly abandoned due to poor light after 75 minutes, by which time Spurs were 2-1 up.

The fact is,’ David Lacey wrote in The Guardian, ‘that failing to finish opponents off is one of the prime reasons why Tottenham, after playing some of the most attractive football, have ended the season without a prize.

For impartial observers, there was only one conclusion. And it was a depressing one. Spurs might have been one of the six most beautiful teams. But they just didn’t have the bottle.

Harris had taken a phone call from a Dutch journalist friend who told him that Bergkamp was unhappy at Inter Milan and wanted to try his luck in England. As Bergkamp had always been a Spurs fan because of his boyhood hero worship of Glenn Hoddle, he wanted to know if Spurs would be interested. Informed of Bergkamp’s availability, Alan Sugar passed on the enquiry to Francis. Seeing Bergkamp as more of a midfield playmaker than the out-and-out striker he was looking for, Francis turned him down.

One of the fashionable coaching slogans of the time was ‘peripheral vision’, a term which attracted Rowe’s derision. ‘You know what that means? It means seeing out of your arse,’ said Rowe,

They’d won a lot of admirers that season but finished up with nothing. You can’t put applause in a trophy cabinet.

I can live with the misery of the defeats. It’s the hope I can’t handle.

On Trial – Spurs are giving a month’s trial to an amateur, Wm. E. Nicholson, an inside-right of Scarborough Working Men’s Club. He recently celebrated his 17th birthday. His height is 5ft 8in and weight 10st 12lb.

But if any football manager should have been honoured, it was Bill Nicholson. The Double, the trophies, the glory nights, the confident, emphatic assertion that an English club could be the equal of any in Europe – Nicholson’s Tottenham Hotspur did it all first.

Another very striking case is that of Fabrice Ndala Muamba, former Congolese soccer player, midfielder of the Bolton Wanderers. On March 17, 2012, in a match against Tottenham, he collapsed after suffering a cardiac

When you begin to wonder if life is really just waiting for buses on Tottenham Court Road and ordering books you’ll never read off Amazon; in short, you are having an existential crisis. You are realizing the mundanity of life. You are finally understanding how little point there is to anything.

You are finally understanding how little point there is to anything. You are moving out of the realm of fantasy “when I grow up” and adjusting to the reality that you’re there; it’s happening. And it wasn’t what you thought it might be. You are not who you thought you’d be. Once you start digging a hole of those questions, it’s very difficult to take the day-to-day functionalities of life seriously. Throughout my twenty-fifth year, it was as if I had created a trench of my own thoughts and unanswerable questions, and from the darkness I peered up, watching people care about the things I had cared about: haircuts, the newspaper, parties, dinner, January sales on Tottenham Court Road, deals on Amazon—and I couldn’t fathom climbing out and knowing how to immerse myself in any of it again.

While some people called what happened in Tottenham and Brixton a riot, others called it an uprising – a rebellion of otherwise unheard people. I think there’s truth in both perspectives, and that the extremity of a riot only ever reflects the extremity of the living conditions of said rioters. Language is important – and the term ‘race riot’ undoubtedly doubles down on ideas linking blackness and criminality, while overlooking what black people were reacting against. The conditions don’t seem to have changed. When the London riots of August 2011 mirrored, almost step by step, what happened in Brixton in 1985, I wondered how often history would have to repeat itself before we choose to tackle the underlying problems.

I stared at the tribespeople in astonishment. Gerry Francis? A god? I mean, had they not seen his record at Tottenham?

How good it feels At the end of such a long stale day Of sedentary agitation; a relief From the restraints of restlessness: To walk forth in relatively fresh air and recognize anew That the concept that everything is possible Can be grasped Theoretically.

It is hard to give up Giving up. It is hard to give.

With so much unfinished, so much unbegun. I’m not in the mood For anything.

In a continual stricken hurry to do nothing.

All I already haven’t done. The day, without starting, has drawn to a close.