As I look out on to my garden, the thermometer is nudging 27 centigrade in Hatch Warren which is quite extraordinary for the end of September. More remarkable still, is the distinct possibility that the hottest weather of 2011 may well end up being in April and September/October. The azure blue skies resemble the height of June or July and it is likely that the fine weather will last well in to the weekend. However I am off to Cornwall to retrieve my luggage I left behind in August and there is a very real prospect that I am going to have a weekend plagued by sea mist that can easily reduce the temperature by 10 centigrade in coastal areas. Fingers crossed I get lucky for the third time this year.

The weather has not been the only extraordinary event this week; we have also had the actions of Carlos Tevez the footballer and the German government once again voting to spend all their money bailing out Greece and others with trillions of Euro’s. They must be getting really pissed off with all this; in fact a German financial expert said it was like telling the German nation to “swallow poison to cure an illness.” I am not financially qualified to understand this Euro crisis, but one assumes that Germany cannot afford members of its own Union to collapse in to economic and social anarchy, I bet they wish they hadn’t joined. I saw a documentary on Newsnight last night showing Greek students throwing CD’s at government buildings in protest that they had been given them because education system could no longer afford books! The whole fabric of Greek society is under threat; crime is up 40% vagrancy up 60% unemployment is spiralling daily and there is every chance other members of the European Union (Spain, Italy, Ireland, Portugal?) may collapse completely as well, a bit like Argentina a decade ago when the President had to be air lifted out of the country for his own safety. That is not good news for anyone.

Amongst all this chaos in this weeks news, we have an Argentinean footballer refusing his manager’s request to come on as a substitute for Manchester City in a European Cup game. This has caused more vitriol from ex players and managers than you could imagine and Tevez has now stupidly made himself the pantomime villain of the football world. As you would expect he is now desperately trying to claim he was misunderstood by the manager, but is too late, he has blown it. Let us not forget Tevez has failed to make the first eleven so far for City because in the summer he asked to leave, a wish that was granted providing a suitable club from South America (where he wanted to go) could match his Manchester City’s valuation. No one could find the money, not Tevez’s fault, but not Manchester City’s either. For a couple of hundred grand a week you would expect him to get his head down and crack on with it in the hope for a move in January, but no, he has sulked and moaned whilst ‘ordinary’ people, many of them City fans, lose their jobs. Pathetic.

Perhaps Tevez should read the story of former Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trauttman. Trauttman was a member of the Hitler Youth and Paratrooper in the Luftwaffe in the Second World War. He was captured by the allies on the Western Front and kept in a prisoner of war camp in Ashton-in-Makerfield, Lancashire, as one of only ninety of the one thousand in his regiment to survive. He had fought for Germany on the Western and Eastern front and received the Iron Cross for bravery. Trauttman refused repatriation, instead taking up work as a farm labourer whilst playing part-time for St Helens Town where his remarkable goal keeping skills grabbed the attention of Manchester City. The new chapter in his life, with the challenges it threw up, was only just beginning.

Overcoming what must have been a hurtful and humiliating demonstration against his signing attended by 20,000 City fans, Trauutman went on to make 508 appearances for the club and gained respect across the nation. His day of reckoning came with his legendary and epic performance in the 1956 FA Cup Final at Wembley Stadium when, with 17 minutes left, he suffered a severe blow to the head and neck whilst diving at the feet of Birmingham City’s Peter Murphy. Despite his injury Trauttman kept going until the final whistle, somehow still managing to perform several heroic saves to preserve City’s 3–1 lead. His neck was noticeably twisted and crooked when he went up the famous steps to collect his winner’s medal and three days later an X-ray revealed it to be broken. Yes that’s right Carlos Tevez, he played…..in goal……with a broken neck. Get on with it you spoilt little shit bag.

Meanwhile I will go off to Cornwall with the nagging thought that history tells us that economic depression has to be avoided as economic depression is generally followed by wars, and big wars at that. Depression breeds nationalistic paranoia (see Germany 1930’s) and allows politicians to demonise emerging nations or race (China perhaps?) justifying military action with the signing up of millions of unemployed men who have been stoked up by nationalistic propaganda in Government backed media companies (Fox Broadcasting comes to mind). Perhaps the real danger is not China or Islam, perhaps it is…….AMERICA!!!

The good old US of A thought long and hard about obliterating the UK in the depression of the thirties, but we don’t see that in the history books, it’s not good for Anglo-American relations. Of course, that is unlikely now, but I still don’t trust them, I often wonder who their next target is?

At 87 years old, I wonder what Bert Trauutman makes of it all? I don’t suppose Carlos Tevez gives a fuck.