Beef Bagel

2.55pm GMT+2. I know it’s not kick off yet my senses are naturally most heightened at 3 o’clock on Saturdays and Sundays no matter where I am. Why were dull in Tel Aviv. We’re not playing a whole lot better than when MJ was in charge, we just do so with a little more luck and steadily but surely, more belief. What the hell are we going to dish up today in a game that I wont even see? I wont have a chance to shout at the players, Wigan or Spurs, watching for any change in their play, the insults and advice of a thousand voices still ringing in their ears. I do hate missing a game. I feel powerless to help at the best of times but at two and a half thousand miles away, over 300 metres below sea level, lieing alone on a treatment table in a small room, covered in hot mud and wrapped up like tutankhamun’s human reefer, I think I’ve reached an all time low.

I can just about lift up my head to look at the shape of my mummified body before the effort is too much and I let it fall to the leather pillow again with a jolt. Five minutes ago a large Russian therapist with as little humour as English caked my body head to toe in Dead Sea mud, turned the lights off, the muzak up and left me with the command “sleep”. Now all I have for company is a ticking clock, an instrumental version of Here Comes the Sun and a slight sense of dread about exactly how Tottenham are going to perform today.

I start to shift inside my blanket cocoon as I rack my brains for a player in form, one too strong for Wigan today. Nothing. I catch sight of a ‘Panic Button’ on the wall. How the hell am I supposed to get to that? It’s over three feet away and even if I could wriggle my way over there, what am I going to today? I can’t even scratch my balls right now, and believe me with the heat from the mud under a pair of those all-purpose, all-gender, material pants, I’m starting to itch.

Instead I relax and let anesthetic music from the Enya tribute band seep into my brain and slowly the room melts away and I’m in the stands at WHL. The players are warming up but I can’t quite make who’s made the team. There’s no faces out there on the Lilywhite players but I know that one of them is Prince Kevin, fresh from a solid display in Tel Aviv. There’s Lennon, Keano and Glenn Hoddle. Of course! Glenn! Ramos has come back and in a move of managerial genius he’s going to turn our season around. He’s recalled the King of WHL into action 20 years after he last played for Spurs. Now why didn’t MJ think of that? Why didn’t I? Damn it this Spaniard is good. The crowd are chanting but I don’t know the song. I can’t work out the words even though the tune is familiar. Up…please? Wake? And the grass green and the blue and white stands from the Lane disappear again into a swirl of beige tiles.

“Wake up please,” continues the robotic Russian, until I start to wriggle around and she unwraps me from my muddied shrouds. She hoses me down like I’m in a car wash, the hot water causing landslides of mud to fall from my body washing the aches and pains of my bones down the plug hole with the dark grey sludge.

I flick an eye over to the clock on the wall now reading 3.20pm and I shu the mutton dressed as blonde away as I realise I’ve less than two hours to make it back to the flat in time to at least listen to the game, if I can find a channel showing it.

I collect the family from the indoor Dead Sea spa pool. My parents look like spring chickens in this room full of geriatrics, who immerse themselves in the waters of what they think is the secret to eternal life. It’s like a scene from Cocoon mercifully minus Brian Dennehy and Steve Guttenberg. One wonders whether a life guard goes round prodding these floating elderly to check they are still alive.

It’s a long old ride back to Tel Aviv. Israel’s long hot summer is finally coming to an end as the first rains hit the windscreen of our car from a sky that’s got hotter and closer by the day. The air is fresh again when we arrive back home. You can breathe and breath without tiny warm droplets of water forming on the inside of you chest tickling your body into small harmless coughs.

I race upstairs and I’m on to Spurs TV and the audio commentary from London Live. It’s half time, the team on paper looks like one of MJ’s but the scoreline makes my eyes pop out on stalks. It takes a while for it to sink in that we’re winning 3-0. For a minute I’m convinced it’s stats of shots on target or corners or something, anything but goals. My mind zooms out of the Middle East at supersonic speeds and down again to the shelf in the Bakery where my season ticket sits alone and missing the game as well. There’s an empty seat at WHL today and I’m missing a rare win. In fact, I missed the only other Premiership win this season. Does this mean I have to miss all the games?

I sit and listen for 45 minutes to a tantilzing radio commentary; excellent they are but excruciating in how painfully close they get to the real experience without being anywhere near it at all. It’s all Spurs, that much I can work out but from what I can make out Wigan are more dreadful than we are fantastic. We sound better than four days ago and that’s enough for me combined with the unassailable scoreline.

I’m thrilled we’re winning and torn to hear that JJ’s got two. He’s in my fantasy team and I’d love him to score again but I’d hate to miss a hat-trick, so rare at WHL. I’m on my feet as Darren Bent picks up number four for Spurs and his second in as many Premier League encounters and I”m convinced we’ve scored a fifth until the high pitched radio voice calms down and tells the story of a goalmouth scramble.

Finally the whistle blows and I hear the deep cheer of relief from my brothers in London as we climb up to 14th place in the league and at last have some form we can build on. I turn the computer off and stroll into the sitting room for the second game of the day as my last night in Israel is fittingly spent watching the Tel Aviv derby, Hapoel at home to Maccabi, but that game’s for another website altogether, Falafel in Pita.com.

http://www.megavideo.com/?v=83DHMGLO

I hope you’re not going to take your skin off because I really like skin on a bagel.

The Bagel.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under Match Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.