Donaldson's Dairy

I often find that I tend to get into things a bit too much.

Maybe it's an addictive personality, incredibly low boredom threshold or the long suspected but never confirmed autism that I may well have.

Whatever the cause, the result is that I find too much interest in things. I have to learn every detail, remember every fact, or engage with every available piece of information there is about something. It often seems to stick in my head, dates, names, facts all get slotted away, which can be a good thing - when competing on game shows for example (Virginia Wade). This is all fine, no one suffers but myself.

It doesn't stop there though.

When I get into something, for some stupid reason, I feel like I need to share it with everyone else. Conversation is a healthy thing and there is nothing wrong with sharing interests...provided you remember that not everyone is as much of a loser as you are and will not care as much as you do, dickhead. Too many times in my life I have realised, mid-story, that the recipient of my fascinating/hilarious story is glazing over, and wishing they had killed me when they only had the chance.

To this day I'm haunted by an encounter when introduced by a colleague to their friend, who happened to mention Hairy Maclary. You may know Hairy Maclary, it's a kids book about a gang of dogs and arguably one of the finest pieces of literature known to man. This poor person - who incredibly and to their immense credit actually has not severed any tie with me since that terrible moment - suffered through a solid 15-20 minutes of one way conversation about the different dogs in Hairy Maclary's neighbourhood. Muffin Mclay, Bitzer Maloney, Schnitzel von Krumm with a very low tum - the useless fact recall system was into overdrive and I just kept the deluge coming.

The familiar 'jesus this weirdo knows a lot about hairy maclary...how do I get away' look came over my new friend, at which point I realised that I should probably just kill myself or at the very least modify my conversation.

Sadly, this morning, confirmation arrived that I have not learned my lesson.

One of my Christmas presents from my brother-in-law to be* was Alex Bellos' book entitled 'Futebol: The Brazilian way of life'. It is an absolutely fantastic read, encompassing all aspects of the game that pervades deep into every facet of Brazilian life. The writer has gone to great lengths (literally, travelling the equivalent of the circumference of the world all within Brazil) to bring to light an entertaining and revealing mix into Brazilian football's quirks and intricacies, the heroes, the villains and all in between. Having been lucky enough to visit Rio two years ago (around the time of MaclaryGate) I could straight away relate to the visions of football in every patch of spare land, the passion that seems to be in everyone, and the skill, technique and expression with which Brazilians play the game.

It's a great book and I would definitely recommend it to any football fan.

I would not recommend it to the poor colleague of mine who, walking into the office and seeing a book in my hand, asked what I was reading.

When we finally reached our desks, four floors later, that might have been the point at which to stop telling him about disgraceful corruption within the CBF...but no, I soldiered on. Bravely I thought this guy - who incidentally knows nothing about football and has no real interest in sports - this guy is desperate to hear about the fact that Maicon is supposed to be named Michael after Michael Douglas but the registrar got it wrong. He's bound to be gripped by the Amazonian variant that is mud football. And you just know he cares about Garrincha's legs.



Ah, hello, glassy eyed look of fear, confusion, boredom and pity ... good to see you again, old friend.

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* He is getting married to my sister on FA Cup final day. If by some miracle Southampton make the final, I'll be doing everything I can to get the wedding called off. Should be easy, I'll just start talking to the registrar about the Fla-Flu rivalry...