Kirsty - June 27th, 2004 Hi everyone, welcome to this weeks exciting edition of Rambling: The Art Of. Anyway, news... News comes in many forms. ITV news, weird weather people, newspapers, news about the world, news about you, news from friends and family... The list goes on but my fingers and brain can only take so much. They affect you in different ways. Some people feel nothing when they watch the news on TV or hear it on the radio. "An 8 year old boy has been found murdered after disappearing on the afternoon he went out to play football, he was found at 11pm last night near the flats he lived in and his mother is devastated." Some might think subconsciously "Huh?" and some might think nothing. It's like a scene from a movie, just there, but it's not real. You're seein' and hearin' but you ain't feelin'... Others stop and think, others just pretend it doesn't happen and some take notice, thinking how sad and desperate that is. Then they'll hope nothing happens to them. Either way, when you do stop and think what happens in someone else' life and that it really DOES happen, it doesn't help them or you. Then there's the news family come out with sometimes. Some of it is stupid "Ooh, Uncle Jim's coming for tea" or "You're growing". A million situations could happen out of either of those statements though; your Uncle Jim could die at the table or say he's moving to Jamaica and you could stop growing at 3'4 or grow to be 7'1. These are optimistic or pessimistic though, and we know enough about that. What about the awkward type of news? Where it IS there, and you can do fuck all or very little about it, but even if you did, it might not make you feel any better. Like if your dad says (obviously he's divorced) "I'm getting married again" or if your parents ARE together, but they're splitting up. What do you do? I mean obviously, some of you have been in this situation. I haven't, so maybe I'm just being an asshole talking about this, my parents split up when I was 3 so it hasn't changed me. I'm saying you want the best for someone else, but this is your life that it's going to leave a mark on. Selfish, you might call it but we all think it. In the end you just have to decide what to do and how to deal with it, and eventually move on. Friends come out with some pretty tough shit too. They look to you for help, you give advice and help them but if you've never had a step-father who betrayed you, left you in so much debt, or "took a chance" and now they're having an abortion, or something much more normal and you think they're changing when they're with someone else. How can you say what you want to? You might want to say that it was their fault for taking him back so many times and spending the money, or that they were stupid for taking that chance and they knew it was gonna happen, or to say "Fuck you, do what you want"... You can't. The un-selfish side comes out. You give them sympathy and you help them, because seeing them in pain hurts you. It's human nature to care, but it's not to be in their position, physically anyway... So, I dunno what I'm trying to get at. Whatever shocking news comes at you in this life, you have to deal with it somehow. Scars heal, sometimes the heart doesn't. But the brain's amazing, you can remember pain and not feel it. That's life! Kirst x

Jon - June 27th, 2004 Finally, a chance to give someone a good word about. Well done to Portugal for the last 2 weeks or so. Not for beating England in that tense game on June 24, but for the entire organisation of the event as a whole. (The better team DID win, though.) Perhaps the Greeks could learn a few lessons of how to organise a tournament. The skills used have been wonderous. Take for example, THAT game against France. England hooligans brought minor shame to the country by rioting in Portugal, but how well did the Portugese police deal with that? They were a well-oiled machine who had clearly been given their instructions well in advance. The thickos who were sent home, allegedly rioting in Lisbon and elsewhere are a slight blip but it was very well handled. There's a certain stadium in Portugal that goes by the name of "Braga Municipal"; capacity 30,000. This is one of several stadiums built especially for Euro 2004, and it is magnificent. Why? Because it's been built inside a mountain! Yes, they've actually found a gap in a mountain and have plonked down a football stadium. That's just cool. Here is where I apologise to any Americans or other non-europeans who have managed to stumble across this column by the sheer chance of mis-spelling something else, and in case you don't know, I'm talking about Euro 2004. A soccer tournament held every 4 years, involving just teams from Europe. These are held the same year as the Olympics, but the Greek's have made a complete hash of building and preparing for it. I know this is quite a short column, but it's only really an intermission between my last one and the forthcoming one. And anyway, I'm only getting one thing loud and clear - Congratulations Portugal! Your organised handling of the event has stunned the Greeks, and it's been very well co-ordinated. Well done. (Just a sidenote, how come virtually ALL the England players are known in tabloids as either a shortened version of their surname, or a nickname? E.g., Becks, Roo, Lamps, Calamity James, Golden Nugget Scholesy etc. Just a thought.) Thanks for reading.