Don’t adjust your television sets. Yes, this is still an Aston Villa website, but given the lack of weekend footballing action – I use the terms “football” and “action” very loosely given our season so far) – I wanted to offer our lovely readers a chance to win another prize. I know, I know, given I’ve already given away one prize this year, surely we have to be more tight with our purse strings, especially in this period of austerity. To hell with that though, especially when I have kind people providing me with prizes for you guys (and gals) to win.
Football aside for a moment, and blissfully spending an article ignoring the doom and gloom surrounding B6 for a moment, good friend and fellow columnist for Football365.com, John Nicholson has a new book out about how you shouldn’t be cutting back on all that delicious fatty meat we all know and love, and how doing so made him a very very sick man indeed. Physically that is, the guy still has impeccable rock ‘n’ roll music tastes.
The book is really quite good (I read all 270+ pages in one sitting), but you needn’t take my word for it alone, as it managed to get serialised in the nationals earlier this month. Job well done then, son. Or rather, John. I guess “son” is a tad contrived as a moniker for me to give a chap who is only six years younger than my own father. Even if he is altogether a lot more of a past dope smoker than my Dad will ever be.
Moving swiftly to the point of why I’m talking so much about a Middlesbrough fan (well someone has to be – at least he understands what it is like to support a team that regularly wins nothing), John has kindly given me a signed copy to give away to a lucky reader of Aston Villa Life. Free merchandise hey? What’s there not to love. All I ask in return is you read the review which should, in any case, convince you of why you would want a chance to get something for free – as if that isn’t incentive enough, right?
The Meat Fix – Sometimes What You Think You Know Isn’t What You Should Know
To cut to the chase, John’s new book is about his decision to change his lifestyle due to years and years of malaise from poor choices which, given the fact this is a site about a club that knows all too well about that, I figured was quite a natural segueway. I just wished our troubles were solved as quickly and easily as John’s ended up being, although I also hope it doesn’t take us 26 years to find the answers, as it did him.
In the book, one that takes in jaunts to Las Vegas, Edinburgh, and Norfolk, John talks about the trials and tribulations of this old game we are all in called life. Like you or I, he didn’t get an instruction manual on how to live it and, again like you or I, he’s had his fair share of issues along the way, and supporting ‘Boro makes our support of Villa look frankly like a lifetime in paradise.
John liberally adds comedy and profanity to the mix of his narrative of his years as a perceived hippy, and liberally spatters the book with profanity and beer drinking stories, coupled with a view of growing up in the insular 60s and 70s culture of how anything south of Dover was seen as “fancy foreign muck”, especially when it came to food. I know of few other books, nay I can’t name one, that manages to get comedic value out of Berni Inn stories, replete with those historic culinary faux-pas moments that we all have seen. Well done to John for that I say, which is how most people seemed to order their steak back then.
Looking Back On Life In the 60s & 70s
John’s story as a 60s-born child also illustrates a picture that any of us who have grown up in working class England (so that’s a fair few then) will have vivid memories of. Cresta Pop and the whole idea of the pop man coming round is surely not something only I recall. If such reminiscing wasn’t enough to get you intrigued, then perhaps the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll will whet your appetite. If it doesn’t, well, then we really should be asking questions about what this season has done to your mental health. Feel free to search for the number for NHS Direct if so. Actually, I’ll save you the time – it’s 0845 46 47 – and, yes, that is the whole number.
For part of the book, when John isn’t covering the life and times of growing up listening to the Grateful Dead, he makes his main point which is how eating “healthy” put him on a fast track to a heart attack, although he has mercifully avoided the same fate that claimed his father’s life. It also manages to fit in quite a lot of lavatorial humour, although I can’t imagine half of it was as funny at the time for poor old Mr Nicholson as he regales a moment describing how he narrowly avoided a (literal) brown-trouser moment in a Chicago foyer.
For part of the story, it is an insight into years of being passed from pillar to post in the NHS with no idea of why his gut was so bad, only to realise, in reality, that doctors don’t always have the answers to everything, despite their claim they do. So, essentially a bit like coming across an NHS version of our friends in Sweden who run a similarly Villa themed website. All hail those who know everything. Well unless, of course, it turns out they don’t.
To summarise, it’s all about meat, exploding arses, a heap of rock music, as well as several drug episodes, so if you’re anything like me, you’ll love it. Just a shame it doesn’t come with a free mug of beef tea, but then you can’t have it all. We’re not Manchester City after all. We do have limits on what we can and can’t do, much like Villa can play Heskey wide and can’t try to win games. See, the parallels are endless.
Anyway, to the prize, or rather your chance of how to win it. In order to win a signed copy of John’s book, just let me know who Villa’s number 11 is below, and you will be entered into a prize draw to win. Alternatively you can tweet the answer to who is Villa’s number 11 to my Twitter account @astonvillalife along with the hash tag #meatfixcomp, or post a comment on the Aston Villa Life fan page on Facebook under the post for this article with the same answer.
Contest closes at 12 midday on 26th February, which is actually my 33rd birthday, so get entering and to the winner, the spoils! Well a signed book anyway.
For those of you unlucky blighters who don’t manage to win, the book is available from multiple outlets. You can buy it from Amazon here
I should add, finally, feel free to discuss anything you like below, as I’m not expecting comments to stick to talking about John’s book, so you won’t find me commenting later saying that you’ve just ignored my view, and that I’ll stomp my feet till you toe the party line. My head isn’t that big, even if it was bigger than the teacher’s when we had to measure our heads for a project in my last year of primary school. I’m no Vincent Kompany though. Or the Mekon from Dan Dare.
So there it is, the review. Of course, I imagine and fully expect the comments to be about something totally different, with at least one from Frem on how we do need some more wingers. So, as you were lads (and lasses), and get entering the competition in the comments below, whilst talking about Aston Villa!
The Author
