So you think you don't like me?

A lot of people don't like me. This isn't some sort of depressive nonsense where I am being self-pitying or wanting sympathy, there really are a lot of people who don't like me. Some might even hate me, I don't know. All of these people could make up one long line, but none of them would be at the front. None of their dislike, hatred or even loathing could come close to the person at the head of the line.... me.

I hate myself. I don't just feel down about myself, it's not just a lack of self-worth, I actually do hate myself. With every single good thought I have about myself there is ALWAYS one that follows which tells me why the good thought I had was wrong. But it doesn't just stop there, it tells me why I am such an absolute cunt for even thinking the good thought in the first place.

Some people legitimately don't like me because of the things I say, sometimes I go "too far". This is usually because I am trying to get someone else or another group of people to like me, the opposites of the people who now don't like me.

Do you see what is going on here? I spend so much time wondering what other people are thinking about me. This shows a clear case of low self-worth in that I have to get it from others. But the stupid thing is that I am always thinking that other people are thinking about me, this is narcissism of the highest degree and one of the ironic things about mental health issues, you have polar opposites seemingly living together side by side in your head.

The really crappy thing is that I know that I'm being all of these things and that means that I get to hate myself even more because even though I know what they all are I can't stop them. There's one poor woman on Twitter (you know who you are) who, despite her experience in mental health, can't figure out what I believe about loads of stuff. The problem is, neither can I.

The truth of the matter is that I was conditioned into being this way. I was brought up in a world where up was down, black was white, day was night and there were no borders. A world of abuse. I actually didn't even know the word "borders" meant anything to do with emotions or physicality until I was in my 30s and my therapist explained it to me. Part of me finds that hilarious, party of me finds it sad and, rightly, blames my parents on it but of course another part of me hates myself for it because somehow I "should" have known it. And it's no one but my own fault that I didn't.

This is just a small part of what it's like in the mind of someone mentally ill. There is no sense, it is a jumble of everything and yet nothing all at the same time.

Basically it is the mind of a child. Because the people who were supposed to mold me as a child into an adult made me into something else completely, something that makes no sense. And then in my 30s I had to go back to being a child so I could learn everything again properly. Without abuse.

So you think you've got a handle on mental health?

Think you can handle mental health issues? No, I mean actual mental health issues. Not just the feeling down all the time, not just the wondering is anything ever going to change. The real stuff. The ugliness that perpetuates those feelings. The truth.

Well here then, read on. But be warned.... it's about to get fucking ugly.

I was just in the shower. Whether there was an actual sound or not I don't know, but my brain told me there was one. Couldn't concentrate on it but it sounded vaguely like a child scream. My 3yo son was in the living room watching television, less than 20ft away. That was it. That was enough. The vision came.

I saw him lying on the floor. His head was split open. Blood was everywhere. So were his brains. He had fallen and hit his head on the floor. I saw myself come in. Now I was screaming. A blood curdling scream. Life was over. I couldn't go on. In my head I was going to kill myself. But wait, what about my wife, I had to tell her, I couldn't kill myself straight away, I had to wait. I saw her scream. The same noise. Beyond loud.

All of that happened within a space of about 3 seconds. While I was in the shower. All in my head. Because of a sound that probably didn't even occur.

This is mental health issues. This happens four or five times a day sometimes. Four or five times an hour other days. It happens when I sleep. It never really stops.

What are you meant to do? Can you just stop? No. Do I want to ever experience a thought in my head again where I see my son like that. Something I can barely even write down it causes so much pain? Of course I fucking don't. But I know I will and I don't know when it will stop. If it ever will. This is depression. This is helplessness. This is life.

Now I'll go to the shop with my son and buy him an ice cream when I stop crying. The woman in the shop will see the same smiling guy she sees every day and say "Hi". Little does she know. Little do any of you know.

Sometimes it makes me angry. Wouldn't you be angry? Of course I'm fucking angry that I have to live this way. The anger of course is really with others. The ones who caused this. The ones who treated me so badly as a child. But it's not easy to figure that out on your own when your head is full of such complete and utter bullshit. Therapy helps but no one can have their therapist around 24 hours a day. So if I'm angry cut me some fucking slack. Don't pity me. Just understand.

I'm trying to press the "publish" button for this. I can barely see it through the tears.

I am afraid.

I am always afraid.

What happened America, you used to be cool.

The 80s were shit. Seriously shit. There was bad music, bad fashion and ridiculous hair. But then again i was a teenager for some of it and everything was shit.

Except America. America was cool. I dunno how you managed it but you were. You had an idiot actor for president but you still were cool.

Perhaps it was because everything was big. Big movies, big movie stars, even bigger movie explosions. There were big buildings and big cars. Now all that seems to be big are the egos and the portion sizes.

Then there was the space shuttle. Granted that probably didn't come close to the moon landing days but it was the first I saw of NASA and it was fucking awesome. Basically a bus that went into space, how cool was that?

Now there's no space exploration. Just desert exploration. With guns and tanks. What happened to all the space stuff? Seriously, space stuff is super cool, why don't you do it any more?

It hurts me America. I used to look up to you. When something needed doing you did it. You didn't shirk a challenge and simply showed the rest of the world the way to go.

You even out-comedy'd the English for a while. I mean you can still make brilliant comedies but now they seem lost in the humongous ocean of crap tv that is reality shows and political/religious sermons masquerading as news.

I still try to stick up for you America but you are making it harder every day. When one of my fellow Europeans makes fun of you I try to tell them about my cool American friends. I try to tell them to look at a website where Americans are still funny, hilariously funny, or one where they still care about the rest of the world. But they just end up seeing the idiots on Fox News and my point is lost.

Please America, I want the cool you back.

Illness, it's a bit of a larf...

A young neighbour managed to make it to my sister's wedding just before she died. She had cancer and was skin and bone in a wheel chair. No one laughed.

My friends dad died last Christmas from Motor Neuron disease. He couldn't do a thing at the end. Stuck in a lifeless body with no control over it. No one laughed.

So why did we all piss ourselves when Gazza turned up to see his 'old mate Moaty' last weekend just before he shot himself?

Gazza is ill. He didn't catch anything (well he may have but that's normal enough in Newcastle), he didn't develop any tumors or bits didn't start falling off him. But he's still a very sick man. Still, it's mental illness so it's funny. Isn't it?

Now I'll admit that his interview with local radio did cause me to chuckle. But there's also an underlying feeling of guilt. Why would I laugh at this sick man but not piss myself when I see Stephen Hawking?

Even last weeks protagonist who caused Sky News to go into such a frenzy of 'news gathering' clearly had issues. See, can't even call it sickness, have to say 'issues'.

Now there's no doubt that Raoul Moat should never have done what he did. The shooting other people bit. But why can't we rationally talk about why he did it?

For our friends who read the Daily Mail this does NOT mean that anyone is trying to excuse his actions. It means that there have to be reasons behind them, and don't you think that perhaps trying to find out what these reasons were, and perhaps therefore preventing something similar happening in the future, might be a sensible course of action?

See I've made a mistake there. Well a couple of them. Firstly I assumed that Daily Mail readers are capable of rational thought and secondly that they are capable of sensible courses of action. Rather than the usual 'lock-em-up' or 'send-em-home' ideas.

Nevertheless shouldn't the rest of us be able to discuss it? Perhaps not.

We've never seemed comfortable talking about mental illness. Dunno why. Fear, maybe? Or perhaps the realisation that somewhere deep in our minds we could have the same 'issues'.

Moat apparently complained at the end that no one loved him and he didn't have a father. Given that his mother said he'd be 'better off dead' you can probably see where he's coming from.

The father-figure or lack of one is something increasingly more prevalent today. There is an increasing number of children who reach their teens without having any male role-model in their lives. Daddy might have never been around, or might have left when he found out he was going to be a daddy.

And of course seeing as all men are pedophiles we can't possibly allow them to be teachers in primary schools.

There's a stigma with mental illness. People don't feel comfortable admitting it. Perhaps it's something to do with the fact that if you said you were suffering from something like MS you wouldn't get many people telling you to 'pull yourself together', which seems to be the super-duper solution to every mental illness under the sun.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. It's difficult even to write about because you fear someone will just make light of it or make fun of you for doing so.

So maybe I should just end on a joke?

Who's going to pay the expenses for that Moat last week?

See what I did there? Now I feel guilty and disgusting for doing it. But I'm mentally ill and unfortunately it causes me to have to think in a million different ways about practically everything I do or say.

And that isn't a joke.

It's the little things...

I've never liked jugglers. Seriously. They always come across all fucking smug and like they could have your woman any time they wanted. Bastards.

Anyway that's not really the point. Jugglers rely on keeping many balls in the air at once to enable them to keep their powers of woman pulling. They have to concentrate on them all at the same time. What happens if they just look at one and focus on it? Disaster. Balls on the floor and a lifetime of solitude.

Bit like life don't you think?

No? Well let me explain.

Look at a lot of shit that goes on in the world. You probably only have to look outside your window. Especially if you live somewhere crappy, oh I dunno, let's say Aldershot.

Actually Aldershot is a great example. (There's a sentence very rarely used. Unless it ends with 'of a craphole'.)

I'm lead to believe Aldershot has a lot of drug addicts. Like a lot of other places. Now drug addicts cause a lot of problems. Why? Simples. Because they're only focusing on one ball. All the other of life's balls are dropped and everything becomes a mess.

So that's the drug problem explained then. But that's hardly the cause of all of the world's issues is it? No matter what the Daily Mail might say.

But look at the focusing-on-one-ball-juggling-analogy more closely. Can it be used to explain lots of other bad stuff? I certainly hope so, or this blog is going to go downhill very quickly.

How about this; abortion. Now abortion in my view is a horrible thing. I don't like it. I don't particularly agree with it and I'd like to see it never have to happen. BUT, I live in the real world and understand that, unfortunately, it is sometimes necessary.

In America (and in Ireland) there are the anti-abortionists. (I refuse to call them pro-life because that's just fucking stupid. Who isn't pro-life for fucks sake. Apart from some very religious chaps). The anti-abortionists focus all their time and effort into getting abortion banned. Everything else takes a back seat.

I firmly believe that if there were 2 choices for someone to run the country and one of them said he would ban abortion but at the same time he would nuke Brazil then these people would vote for him. "Fuck Brazil, at least there'll be no more dead babies" is quite possibly something that would be said with a straight face.

See, focusing on one ball again. It doesn't really work well does it.

Psychologically wise this is called addiction. People think they know all about addiction. There's uncle Johnny who likes the booze a bit too much. Or that junkie bastard who'll rob your house if you ever leave.

But addiction doesn't have to involve actually ingesting something. There's gambling addicts for example. But importantly there are many many other types.

The religious can be addicts. If some bloke (usually a pedophile) stands up and tells them they must do something like beat themselves with a wet branch of willow, they'll probably do it. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but religion tends not to do sense. Mind you it does more sense than whatever that bullshit masquerading as 'atheism' is these days. Those idiots are managing to be addicts to something that they think doesn't exist.

So why would anyone do something so stupid? There's no evidence AT ALL that what they are doing is worthwhile but they'll go ahead anyway. Because their focusing on one ball again. Perhaps it's the ball that some beardy bloke in the sky will be annoyed at them, or perhaps it's the ball saying they'll be re-incarnated as a dung beetle. Doesn't matter, the ability to reason and evaluate all the facts and opinions goes completely out the window. Just the same as the guy who will do anything to get that next bit of white powder.

Then look at the current financial situation. Years spent focusing on the ball of profit. "Yeah, don't worry about that huge debt and shit, buy that big fucking building made of marshmallow, we'll make a killing." (This was actually in the minutes of a meeting at Goldman Sachs. Ok, it wasn't really, but would you honestly be surprised if it was).

So I propose you all become jugglers. Juggling training must start immediately. No more focusing on one ball.

I'm not doing it obviously as I hate jugglers. Along with a lot of other things.

It's not me, it's you!

Could it be that the longest love affair of a fast approaching middle-aged man’s life is about to come to an end?

No, not my adoration for my right hand, something much more important.

I have been in love with football since before I can remember. My first bicycle in 1980, my first kiss in 1989 (yes I was 15, the other thing wasn't at the same time), my first car in 1992. All momentous occasions and all easily picked out from a 35-year backdrop.

Football, though, has always been there. Part of the furniture, available to be turned to in times of worry, a provider of joy when nothing else seemed to be going right. Impossible to put a date on when it started. When I first kicked a ball or when I first looked on bewildered at a Pat Jennings save on the television. I was always a goalkeeper, part of a strange breed, maybe that is why I don't have many friends. But better to have no friends than be one of those selfish bastards of strikers!

When Thierry Henry’s audition for the Harlem Globetrotters resulted in an injustice that threatened to turn into a diplomatic incident I was left pondering my future without the life-long friend I had come to rely on.

It wasn’t the fact that Ireland hadn’t qualified for the World Cup. I hadn’t really expected them to do so. It was more than that, a question of morals. How could I go on supporting something that seemingly held morality in such disregard?

Now we have the World Cup, and as I've said I'm not that interested. But every time I seem to turn it on there is another selfish little prick diving or cheating.

Things have been slowly simmering for some time. It's not like this is a new phenomenon. Cristiano Ronaldo, has been responsible for some of the most despicable acts of cheating we have seen in some time. Every time he fell over a blade of grass that seemed to have been armed with a freshly sharpened scythe that little voice called conscience nagged away at any celebration from the resulting goal.

But yet I still think he's the best player in the world. Better than that litte cunt Messi, who seems to be immune to people seeing him cheat and dive. Perhaps it's his ridiculous haircut. Or the fact he looks like an oompa-loompa.

A couple of weeks prior to Henry’s display the then England captain, John Terry (the cunt), had almost removed the shirt from a Manchester United forward while pulling him down in the penalty box. Similar to Henry’s situation the referee didn’t see it but, unlike the French Captain, Terry afterwards insisted he did not do it, despite video evidence to the contrary.

Surely a clear-cut case of a footballer being caught out in an indefensible situation? Seemingly not. Any posts on the BBC’s website suggesting Terry had cheated and then lied about it were removed within seconds.

Indeed after that match the Daily Mirror’s chief sports writer wrote a column praising Terry for his leadership in what could be a decisive victory. When I asked him why he had not brought up the act of breaking the rules, the silence was deafening. He wasn't so silent once before when I told him that he was completely wrong about Gary Neville and GNev was in fact a useless little twat who only got a game because he was a bigger tout than whichever historical figure was a big tout. (I'm not big into history as I'm not a Liverpool fan).

Politicians may, deservedly some might argue, get a hard time from the media but at the very least if they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar we expect them to be asked about it.

But where in the football publications can you find players being simply called a cheat? You see allegedly this and allegedly that with quotation marks around the bad words. Running scared are the papers? They don't seem to be when the footballer slips and accidently sticks his dick in some wench that isn't his wife. So why don't they do it when they cheat on the pitch.

Things are looking bleak. My relationship is floundering and I need re-assurance that it is worth trying to save.

Maybe I should go straight to the top. God’s representative for football on earth, head of Fifa Sepp Blatter. Perhaps unsurprisingly my requests for an interview with him were met with derision. But then he's busy sorting out video technology isn't he?

I'll have to look at it psychologically. Football is like love. It makes no sense. It's compulsive and like all compulsive behaviour logic takes a back seat. Fans will seldom admit when their team does something wrong and the majority of the time when they are shown concrete evidence of unacceptable sporting behaviour they will resort to child like arguments of why it is acceptable.

Pointing out reasons like ‘well he did it first’ and such like are what the norm.

So if I am to remain in my relationship I will have to accept the fact that it is going to be an unhealthy one. Biased and one-sided and probably with me as the one to always suffer as a result. Sounds a bit like marriage.

For the time being then it looks like morals will have to be put to one side where football is concerned because it does not look like anything will be changing soon. Besides what other choice to I have? Is there any other sport where cheating is not rampant?

Maybe golf. But Tiger hasn't exactly covered that in glory has he. Unlike all the pornstars he met.

Is the party over?

So there we have it. England are going home. Will they follow the French lead and take cattle class seats on the plane back? I'm sure if Michael O'Leary was watching he will lay on a Ryanair flight back from South Africa for them. They'll have to pay for their own bags of course. But at least there's no need for expensive champagne.

What happens now then? Do we stop watching? Well seeing as I never started watching in the first place that's hardly an option. I did watch the England matches, but that was purely for comedy value and thankfully, on that front, they delivered in spades.

I've never really got the World Cup. For the life of me I can't understand why people want to support a team just because they come from the same place they were born in.

Nationality is a bit like string theory or Shakespeare or boy bands. I just can't understand it no matter how I try.

It's supposed to work like this isn't it; Person A was born in a hospital on one side of an imaginery line which makes them nationality A and person B was born on the other side of the line so that makes them nationality B.

(Obviously some people are born on another planet which makes them Leftists but that's a whole other story.)

Now then Person A must support a certain team because their players were born on the same side of the line. Or weren't, but their granny was so that makes it ok. And person A must want to beat person B's team because of the line thingy. It apparently doesn't matter if persons A & B ended up married to eachother, if they have a different piece of paper telling them what nationality they are then they can't be the 'same'.

See, I'm sort of rambling now. It confuses me that much.

Now a couple of years ago an Irish rugby team were apparently doing quite well and had to beat Wales in some sort of final game which meant they won a Grand Slam or something. How do you get presented with a Grand Slam by the way? Does Hulk Hogan pick you up and throw you to the floor?

Anyway I didn't want this Irish rugby team to win. Why?

BECAUSE I FUCKING HATE RUGBY.

I may have mentioned that to some people before but just in case others haven't heard it I'll make doubly clear...

I FUCKING HATE RUGBY!

Now apparently I was some sort of super-Nazi child molester or something for not wanting Ireland to win. Seeing as I was born in Ireland and have a piece of paper telling me I'm Irish then it's the law that I have to want anything 'Irish' to win.

See I just don't get this. Why? I FUCKING HATE RUGBY. I don't want an Irish rugby team to win at anything. I want them to lose and lose badly. Worse than England lost against Germany.

So the World Cup has never really appealed to me. And it probably never will.

But nevertheless we must get a few words in about the glorious failure of those brave English soldiers. Wait. Hang on. No matter how bad the BBC tried they couldn't even get English fans to say that this time.

Even the pathetic attempt of Gabbbbby Logan to blame the goal that never was didn't bring about the 'Hand of God' hullabaloo we've become accustomed to.

So could it be that England fans have turned a corner? Will there be no more of the divine birthright to win the thing stuff? Here's hoping. I have several English friends I would like to see happy so who knows, maybe in 4 years I can cheer on the England team. Only if John Terry isn't playing of course.

One thing before I go. There is the old saying of 'divide and conquer' which has worked well for many years for warmongering money grabbers. Which brings me on nicely to Sepp Blatter.

Instead of 'divide and conquer' can we now have 'unite and destroy' where Mr. Blatter is concerned. Imagine all the nationality bullshit going out the window and the world of football fans uniting against the single biggest (the fat cunt) thing that is threatening football today.

Blatter you must go and you must go now. You have definitely crossed the line and we don't need any video evidence to confirm it for us.

And take that cunt Terry with you.