...self-consciousness Is A Man's Worst Enemy.

Record Stores Can't Save Your Life. But They Can Give You A Better One.

Several Months Later, And I Have Finally Read One Of The Three (books), Even Though I Wanted To Read All Three Of Them Immediately. What Happened In Between? Other Books, Is What Happened. Other Books, Other Moods, Other Obligations, Other Appetites, Other Reading Journeys.

I Have Learned Things From The Game. Much Of My Knowledge Of Locations In Britain And Europe Comes Not From School, But From Away Games Or The Sports Pages, And Hooliganism Has Given Me Both A Taste For Sociology And A Degree Of Fieldwork Experience. I Have Learned The Value Of Investing Time And Emotion In Things I Cannot Control, And Of Belonging To A Community Whose Aspirations I Share Completely And Uncritically.

Contemporary Poetry Is A Kind Of Reykjavik, A Place Where Accessibility And Intelligence Have Been Fighting A Cold War By Proxy For The Last Half-century.

By The Early Seventies I Had Become An Englishman - That Is To Say, I Hated England Just As Much As Half My Compatriots Seemed To Do.