Sooooo England failed to lift the Euro2020 cup at Wembley. What a missed opportunity! Ah well. The English can be very mouthy when it comes to their football and have a way of extolling their players as if they were gods and their team, the best on Earth. The last time they hosted in 1996, England reached the semi-final but lost to Germany on penalties – with Gareth Sothgate, the current coach also missing his spot kick.

Of course, I was totally against England winning. I could only imagine the obnoxious headlines –

”IT IS HOME…FINALLY!”,

“SUPER ENGLISH BOYS FOIL THE ITALIAN JOB” or “CUP COMES HOME AND MISSES ROME!”

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It did not go unnoticed that the three players who missed their penalty kicks were black. And knowing what an unforgiving and speckled with racists lot the English fans can be, all I can say is good-luck to Rashford, Sancho and Saka (they all sucked though!)

In other good football news, Hearts of Oak mathematically won the Ghana Premiership. 

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I personally had a good weekend, catching up with friends from undergrad days. Those social gatherings are a mixed bag. They can be really good when you connect and reminisce on how great your Uni. days were. They are also at times depressing when it hits you that all this talk of old school music, Nokia 3310s, Motorola Razor phones and extinct nightclubs means you are slowly but surely…dying.

I am not going to lie, but seeing more and more salt and pepper hair or fast receding hairlines on friends who once had full heads of jet black hair and rocked serious afros keeps reminding me of our frail mortality.

Of course, there are always the one or two frigging vampires who never seem to age and actually look younger each time we meet. Now they just ruin it for everyone.  I usually sidle over to those Dorian Grey types and nonchalantly ask them about their diet or exercise routine. Honestly, I think they are just blessed with good genes.

Some of us are fighting a losing battle. I curse my fat, balding uncles and my progenitors for the bad genes they bestowed onto me. We usually end up deleting pictures so many times at these reunions, as people keep whining about how fat they look or that it is their wrong side (whatever that means). I usually start shortly after on a fad diet or some half assed workout regime, before I inevitably fall off the wagon. “Chale you can’t fight age. Embrace it” a wise friend once told me. 

Right now I am looking at the gym bag on the floor and thinking of the salad I have ordered for lunch waiting in the fridge and wonder whether I am going to win or lose this time around.