All right, mates? You had a heck of a week, eh? I can sympathise - because I have had an even WORSE week than that! Your mate Craig has had one ruddy HECK of a flippin' week! What? Oh, yeah! Don't get me started. Absolute heck of a week, me! If you don't believe me, just take a look at me diary:
SUNDAY: What a HECK of a day! Really. Absolutely shockin’! It started with me having to read all the reports about how I missed the goal and hit the post against Spurs, then I had to watch all the reports on Sky about the same thing, then hear people laughing and joking about the same thing round the meat counter at Tesco’s. Everyone’s a comedian, aren’t they? Then we had a cousin of the missus come round for lunch. Cousin Barry. She’d been badgering me to let him come round for ages, cos he missed the actual wedding due to his job, which apparently involved lots of travelling. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll get some extra meat in and cook a proper old Bellamy roast lunch with all the trimmings’. So I’m beavering away in the kitchen, right, sweating like billy-ho, getting everything cooking nice and steady. Then he turned up. Ding-Dong. Door opens. I was gobsmacked. Absolutely, totally, gobsmacked. Her cousin Barry turns out to be that Barry Scott off the Cillit Bang adverts. I kid you not! Barry flippin’ flamin’ Scott! The one who shouts so loud your earholes bleed. ‘HI, I’M COUSIN BARRY SCOTT!!!! YOU MUST BE CRAIG!!!! BAD LUCK HITTING THE POST YESTERDAY!!!! HA HA HA!!!!’ ‘All right, all right, mate, no need to shout!’ ‘WHO’S SHOUTING? OH - IS THAT MEAT I SMELL? MMMMMMMM, LOVELY!!!’ What a HECK of an afternoon THAT was. Oh! I only got through it because I stuffed a butter bean in each ear. Christ that man can talk!!! And always about the ruddy disinfectant industry! Boring as hell! ‘I WOWED THEM AT THE 2006 IDEAL HOME EXHIBITION WITH MY PENNY TRICK!’ ‘Oh aye, Barry?’ ‘MY LATEST TV AD IS BEING SCREENED IN 30 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES!’ ‘That’s nice for you, Barry’. IT MAY VERY WELL WIN AN "ADDIE" - THAT'S AN ADVERTISING EQUIVALENT OF AN OSCAR!!!!' 'Oh, right, magic, Barry, man, eh?' ‘I ACTUALLY HAD GROUPIES WHEN I DID AN OVEN DEGREASING DEMONSTRATION IN MILAN!!!’ ‘Good for you, Barry’. Oh, he never stopped! Talked all the way through Antiques Roadshow, he did. And beyond it! Did my flamin’ head in, he did. Went to bed, left the missus to it, and I could still hear him: ‘LOOK AT THAT PENNY NOW! JUST LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT!!!’ He didn’t leave until 1am! Promised to come again soon, he did – he’ll be flippin’ lucky! Absolute MUPPET!
MONDAY: Woke up with one heck of a headache – I wonder why! Breakfast time – got the Wogan show on, just getting the meat out the oven, like, and the doorbell rings. It’s that pesky paper boy: ‘Here’s your new copy of Wales Today, Mr Savage!’ Deep breath, count to ten, keep yourself calm, Craig, he’s not worth it. ‘One, as you well know, the name is “Bellamy,†not “Savageâ€. Two, Wales Today is a high quality MONTHLY magazine, right, and this is the THIRD time in five DAYS you’ve brought me the October edition! You need to pull your socks up young man!’ He’s smirking now. ‘I bet your mail will arrive before you leave for work today’. Eh? ‘How do you know that?’ Smirks even more. ‘Because my dad says you couldn’t miss the post if you tried!’ Slam! ‘We still scored, didn’t we? So that was an ASSIST!’ Damn – I should’ve shouted that and THEN slammed the door. Stood there feeling a bit foolish, like, shouting through the letterbox. Oh well, I made my point – that’s what matters. Drove in to Melwood – the ‘booster’ seat cushion I’ve just started using works like a treat, it does – I can see well above the steering wheel now. Training was tough – Rafa said, ‘I want to try out another possible solution to your chronic offside problem, Craig – sit on the bench and watch’. He’s inscrutable, that man. I sat there all the way through the five-a-side and I couldn’t figure out where this was leading. Then he said at the end of the session, ‘That was much better, Craig,’ and walked off. He’s brilliant, the Gaffer, but a bit of a puzzle at times. Got back home just in time for Diagnosis Murder. Absolutely superb. Then I heard something land on the mat – yup, you guessed it, yet another copy of Wales Today. I’m not paying for them, mind, so the joke’s on the paper boy.
TUESDAY: This was more like it! A half-decent day. Took the new Argos catalogue to be bound in leather (French Morocco – very soft and smooth and quite economical) with a view to slotting it into me collection – I’ve got every one since 1998 on a special shelf in me study. I don’t know why I started, but it’s become an obsession now – and, to be fair, the books are absolutely cracking! A sort of ‘history of our times,’ you might say. I often take a copy down and have a browse – always a great range of products, all at really competitive prices, and loads of colourful pictures. This latest one is massive! I can’t wait to pick it back up from the binders. I use Walter Dickinson & Sons in Warrington – the bloke there is very, very good, even though he does insist on holding up the leather for me and doing that stupid Hannibal Lecter sniff-sniff-sniff malarkey – HE thinks it’s hilarious. Absolute rubbish. Oh well, takes all sorts, I suppose. Most of the lads went round to Salif’s place for lunch. He’s got Dudek part-timing now as a waiter – he greets you at the door, you know, towel over his arm, the lot! It’s like being in a flippin’ restaurant! Put ‘Salif’s’ outside in neon and you’ve got yourself a proper poncey bistro, like. But, as I’ve said before, you cannot fault the guy as a chef – this time he gave us a choice of FOUR dishes per course, all of them, by the sound of it, superb. I myself personally had Braised Halibut with herb gnocchi, crab and lemongrass broth, followed by an absolutely superb bit of meat, followed by Citrus Croquant with lemon sorbet and an orange caramel sauce. Lost for words! Magnificent! Sat there rubbing me tummy, I did. Had a bit of a disaster later on, mind: I fancied a nice hot chocolate while I watched Deal or No Deal, but we’d run out of milk (typical), so I poured six pots of Yakult into me mug, stirred in the Options hot chocolate powder and heated it up in the microwave (as me Mam always says, ‘Our Craig will find a way!’). Suffice to say I was violently sick about ten minutes later, and was still dashing to the lav when it was way past time for bed. Never again! The missus must have a stomach made of iron the way she puts away that Yakult stuff!
WEDNESDAY: Not much happened at Melwood – I was still involved in Rafa’s experiment of watching from a distance. The glass steamed up after a bit so that was a waste of time! Met me agent and manager, Drystan, who actually pulled out his finger and travelled over from his office in Pwllheli to see me (when I was at Blackburn and other clubs I had to visit HIM!) He’s 67 now, is Drystan, with a plastic hip, bifocals and very little hearing, but he’s still as sharp as a tack. ‘Craig, son, I’ve got lots of exciting ideas to exploit your image rights’. Hey up! Interesting! ‘Yes, I will soon be in a position to show you “The Craig Bellamy Collection†– an entire set of top quality steak knives – all of them monogrammed with the “CB†initials – for the discerning lover of meat and meat-related products! They’re being made in India!’ That sounds smashing! Me mam will flippn’ pee herself! ‘That’s not all, Craig, boy. Oh, no. Not by a long chalk. There will also be a Craig Bellamy mug, a Craig Bellamy balaclava, a Craig Bellamy junior kagool, a Craig Bellamy calendar and…a Craig Bellamy children’s alarm clock that has little arms that shoot out when the bell goes off! Oh yes, boy, this is just the start of a massive commercial operation based on the Bellamy brand!’ I was really excited, like. ‘Will any of these things ever be available at Argos?’ Drystan tapped his nose and winked: ‘Let’s just say that you should put in an order for the Argos Christmas 2006 Gift Supplement – I suspect you’ll find it rather…enjoyable’. Fan-flippin’-tastic! Felt a bit adventurous when I got home, so I saw The Paul O’Grady Show at teatime – and I quite liked it. He’s a good lad – a bit camp, in my humble opinion, but a decent sort, and he likes dogs, as I do. I’ll probably watch it again. Cheered me up, it did. I had to keep going out, though, when that flippin’ Cillit Bang advert came on – I’ve heard more than enough from Barry flippin’ Scott, thank you very much! Then off to prepare at Anfield. Well, I made it on to the pitch tonight. Plenty of time to make an impact. Oh yes. When did I come on? Only the NINETIETH MINUTE!!! To make matters even worse, right, me Great Uncle Vernon from Swansea was in the crowd – oh yes, that must have impressed him, eh? ‘He’s on!’ PEEP! ‘He’s off again!’ How flippin’ humiliating is that? I was flippin’ FURIOUS!
THURSDAY: Just light training today. Paco took me aside and told me I was being short with everyone, which I felt was unnecessary; I mean, I can’t help the way I look, can I? Paco’s got a bit of a funny nose but you wouldn’t hear me joking about it. Flippin’ fed up. Watched Extras tonight. It didn’t sound like my cuppa tea but Xabi Alonso, who’s a bit of an intellectual (you can probably tell that from looking at his hair), told me it’s a crackin’ show, so I thought I’d give it a go. I soon wished I hadn’t. What a load of conkers! Absolute rubbish! ‘Extras’? I wouldn’t want STARTERS! Oh well, I was still on a high from watching Diagnosis Murder earlier on. Now THAT – and I make no apologies for saying so again - is a flippin’ GEM of a television show! An absolute cracker of an episode today! See, Dick Van Dyke had a young tap dancer come in with a fractured toe. ‘Oh, I tap dance, too,’ says Dick, all nonchalant like, and then does a tre-flippin’-mendous dance routine, right? The patient’s looking at him, like, ‘How the heck does this white-haired old doctor know how to dance like THAT?’ Amazed, he was. Suddenly, Dick’s son comes in. ‘Oh, hello, son, someone got shot?’ He said that in an absolutely superb, throw-a-way, jokey sort of way – you know Dick. ‘Yeah,’ says his son, ‘me!’ CRASH! Dick is absolutely flippin’ stunned!! His son’s been shot in the stomach!!! So he has to operate on his own son while trying to work out who pulled the trigger AND stole the weekly shipment of jalapeno peppers from the local 7/11 AND harassed the unusually short but quite attractive nun from the local St Jerome of Christ’s Dusty Sandals Convent. I tell you, right, I gripped the flippin’ sofa arm so tight that the plastic covering squeaked every other minute! What an absolutely CRACKING show. Then I read a few pages of Bill Oddie’s new nature book and went to bed.
FRIDAY: Had the weirdest dream during the night. I was in Hollywood – no idea how or why – and Mel Gibson and Dustin Hoffman got into a right old fight. I was in there trying to act as peacemaker, you know: ‘Come on, you two, leave it out!’ It was just handbags, really, but Mel had a bit of a glint in his eye and was shouting stuff in Hebrew. Suddenly, Dustin catches ME with a left hook! Bang! The next thing I know I’m on a trolley in some hospital, right, with Dustin and Mel (and Rob Brydon – no idea where he came in) going, ‘Oh, Craig, sorry, man, it was an accident!’ Then I was wheeled through these white doors, crash!, and into an operating room! ‘Oi,’ I was shouting, ‘Oi, we’re having none of this, mate! Oh, no, I’m not having an operation!’ Then I fell off the trolley and looked up to see none other than Dick Van Dyke holding out his hand: ‘Craig Bellamy,’ he said, ‘I’ve always wanted to meet you!’ Then I woke up. The wife goes: ‘Why have you got that great big grin on your face, luvver?’ I had an’ all! Our brains, eh? Absolutely crackers they are sometimes! Training was okay, except for some absolutely shocking refereeing decisions in the five-a-side. So much whistling I thought I’d got flippin’ tinnitus!
SATURDAY: The Daily Mail came – but no flippin’ wall chart! ‘Top twenty Root Vegetables’. Really wanted that one. Well, of course, I’m sure that paper boy took it. Absolute monster, that boy. Niggle, niggle, niggle. I might have a word with the newsagent next time I’m in. Then, of course, the match. Draw a veil over that, eh? Absolute shocker, everyone else had, eh? Fed up, absolutely flippin’ fed up. Went home, got a bottle of shandy and some meat and went straight into the study and locked the door. Took the Argos Summer 2002 catalogue off the shelf and sat back in me recliner (which, aptly enough, came from Argos). I think I’ll be there for quite a while.
