The Surreal Football Emails Vol. 1

Good morning

I’d like to get something sorted for the second magazine by the end of the year.  Everyone up for doing something? It would require a submission by 14 December.

Let me know and we can get something sorted.

Alex

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Alex

I’d been sending back ‘unsubscribe’ until I noticed that these emails weren’t automatic - Christ, you’re actually sending all this shit out yourself. My answer is no, I don’t want to do anything for a second Surreal Football Magazine or anything to do with with a second Surreal Football magazine. The idea appals me. And I told you that in person three weeks ago that I’m not happy having my name associated with it.


Have you actually thought about it at all? It doesn’t feel like you have. There’s no market for this work, we know this already. Some niches are marketable - writing about football tactics seems to be, so does writing about football tactics and so does writing about football tactics - but writing about yourselves over and over again, calling everyone else a cunt and combining those things with taking the piss out of football, which everyone apparently likes, isn’t a formula which will ever make anyone rich, it’s a way of making ourselves miserable over and over again. 

We’re not making money, we’re just appealing to the same small band of knobheads we always do. Which might be fine if we were producing things we enjoy, but actually we’ve already agreed that we’ll never top the last one. Okay, it was largely shit, maybe even entirely shit, but if anything we’ve got worse since then - I’ve stopped washing and leaving the house, you’ve stopped eating anything but fucking fish fingers and the only reason that Callum hasn’t stooped any lower is that we all agree that’s impossible. I can’t even decide which of us looks like more of a wreck at the moment. For fuck’s sake, everyone involved in the SF clique now considers last time’s mediocrity a golden age, a time before our bland posturing became slightly worse bland posturing, and if that’s your golden age, imagine what your Great Depression comes out looking like. Clue: your BANTER multiplied by my narcissism and you’re still not even close to how grim it’d be.

Not enough? Okay, cards on the table. This isn’t how you get a girlfriend. Women are not impressed by the production of e-magazines. Women do not want to see your e-magazine. Neither do most men, but definitely women don’t. Try bringing up the e-magazine you’ve just helped to produce when talking to a woman - see what happens. I tried and I did see: I can tell you that it wasn’t romantic. She didn’t even give me back my sketches of the SF logo. And in hindsight she was right not to. 

Look, the girl I’m trying to impress at the moment with this doesn’t like Kindles, football or me, so this would be a digital totem to my own failures. Does that sound like something I’m going to say yes to?

Just fuck off and give up, please. We’re both fucking sick of this. See you at yours later for beans on toast. Don’t give me any fish fingers, I told you I won’t eat fish.

Ethan

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Ethan

You clearly are forgetting the times I’ve helped you over the last year, and are paying me back with laziness and insults. Have you forgotten the time(s) that I taught you how to read and write? I wasn’t doing it for my own pleasure, that’s for sure.

Don’t get me wrong: to insult Callum is fine by me. I haven’t heard from him in over a week and I’m secretly hoping that he’s dead in a ditch. I’ve spent too long hoping for this and will be truly disappointed if it turns out he’s still breathing.

Yes, this ebook will be much, much worse than last year. If anything, the ebook last summer will end up looking like a professional product given the amount of effort we’re going to put into this one. I was considering just changing the dates on the last one and  rereleasing it - it would be less insulting to the audience. But like you say, you’re not leaving the house these days and my writing career is at best stunted, and in reality stillborn. I have nowhere else that will have me but my own ebook, and I’m not even that convinced by the quality of the work I can deliver. I’ve got suspicions that I’m a real chancer, if I’m honest.

I suppose you’re right that there’s no market for the book. We’ve more or less closed down the site, we don’t really tweet from the account anymore, and all we use it for is to plug our work elsewhere. Work, I note, that is a husk of the kind of work we used to produce. Most of it is borderline serious analysis that we’re churning out to support our reckless spending on meat and booze (me), stuffed toys (you), and living in Corby (Callum). We’re completely finished in terms of producing work that deserves any kind of respect - the ebook is another way of bleeding try the arseholes that still think we’re doing something entertaining. They deserve our contempt. Let’s just bury our mutual hatred for a couple of days for one last tiny payday.

If you’re going to use the weekly baked bean evening as a way to hold me to ransom over the ebook, then you’re seriously misguided.  I refuse to indulge you with the more expensive beans, because whenever I come to your house you only provide me with the cheapest beans, and give me half a slice - at most - of toast. With no butter. 6pm?

Alex

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Alex

You seem to have some facts muddled up. I am happy to correct.
Yes, you did help me learn to read, but if you think back, did I really ask you to? Or, actually, did I ask you if you could help me with directions to Reading - the place, Reading - and you misinterpreted, then insisted on spending six months teaching me to read. I honestly can’t imagine a more tedious experience and the time you dressed up as all the letters from the alphabet is something which haunts me worse than anything that happened at school. Six months of: “A is for ant” - yes, I know Alex, we did that one last week, you fucking moron. And for future reference your attempt to form the letter ‘Q’ bordered on perverse, before slipping into full-on perverse when you started doing that song with it.

But that little reading thing wasn’t the worst suggestion you made in this email. No, that would be “let’s bury our mutual hatred for one last tiny payday.” Bury this? If you think there is any possibility of burying how much I despise you and, yes, especially Callum, for this or any other project then you have greatly underestimated how deep the burn is. Every time I think of either of you at the moment I feel like ordering Godfather-style executions for you both. You should think yourself lucky that my sense of cool is the only genuine connection I have with the mob. Fucking bury this? You arsehole, I’d rather bury myself, and I may well do that.


We both know that if, in some nasty reality which we all hated and wanted to end, this ebook got made it would be one of the worst decisions any of us had ever taken, but you want to go on with it anyway. Basically, this is your suicide note, isn’t? Well I don’t want any part of it. I’ve got my own problems - the delusions are getting worse, like I told you, I can’t stop listening to the ‘Life is just a bowl of cherries’ song and, worst, where the fuck is my new girlfriend? I’m not carrying both of us. I couldn’t if I tried, but conveniently I only care about me and don’t give a shit about you, so it’s an easy decision. Isn’t it nice when things work out like that?
It comes down to this: I hate you all as much as I hate the pitiful audience. I’ve realised that now. 

See you at 6 for the beans. I am, however, having second thoughts about Baked Bean Night now that I hate you and want you to die. Perhaps that tension could have been resolved, but then you implied that I’d given you the cheap beans merely because they were cheap, a suggestion which you obviously knew would offend me, and was probably designed to hurt me. “The cheap beans are nicer,” I said. You sulked. I won’t be held responsible for the fact that you see beans a status symbol. 
Ethan
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Ethan

I’ll take that as a yes.

Alex
The Surreal Football Magazine #2 is out around Christmas

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