Jeremy Clarke Jeremy Clarke

A tale of bitter brotherly rivalry

For this West Ham vs Liverpool match the competition between Oscar and Klynton reached a new and optimum level of intensity

I did my utmost to dissuade Oscar from choosing West Ham United and a life of misery tempered by farce [PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo]

For early humans there was no distinction between spirit and matter. There was no idea of self; no barrier between consciousness and the world. Eventually, evolving self-consciousness and thought put a barrier between the two. Object was irrecoverably divorced from subject. Or so I’ve read somewhere. Something like that anyway.

Very recently yet another barrier has been erected between human consciousness and the world in the form of the smart phone touch screen, putting us at not one but two removes from reality. No wonder everyone’s lost the plot. On Sunday, at the very forefront of the evolution of human consciousness, I took human evolution a step further by watching West Ham play Liverpool on my phone screen while sitting in a room in Provence. My phone screen was connected to another phone screen held shakily by my grandson and pointed at a television screen in his tiny bedroom in Basingstoke. So in this way I was able to watch the match at three removes from reality, and I was happy to do so because I don’t have a Sky Sports subscription and Radio 5 Live soccer commentaries are blocked to French listeners.

For this West Ham vs Liverpool match the brotherly rivalry was at a new and optimum level of intensity

My grandson Oscar shares a bedroom with his younger brother, Klynton. Klynton supports Liverpool, Oscar the Hammers. As a caring grandad I did my utmost to dissuade Oscar from choosing West Ham United and a life of misery tempered by farce. But choose them he did. In choosing to support the consistently successful Liverpool, however, Klynton’s life will be less stressful and longer and I congratulate him for it.

The brothers share a tiny bedroom. They are either watching screens in this bedroom or they are at school.

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