AS I alluded to in last week’s column, we have moved house.
They say it’s one of the most stressful times, along with bereavement and divorce.
After the week we’ve had, all three were on the agenda at one point.
I’m still yet to locate a shoe. I found the right one, but the left one is at large. Everything I own is in a box that I can’t find.
We made the classic mistake of not marking the boxes “kitchen” or “shoes”. Instead, we packed identical brown boxes full of our stuff, loaded them on to a van, and then unpacked them into the new house.
How my left shoe became estranged from my right is baffling to me.
Meanwhile, when it came to rebuilding flat-pack furniture, we’d lost a vital screw. Not only did I know what it was called – it’s a cross-dowell by the way – I didn’t know where I could get it.
So I took a picture of it and tweeted the leading DIY shops. All three came back to me, and within an hour I had the part I needed, two hours later the furniture was built.
I just wish they knew where my shoe was.
THE ISSUE regarding convicted rapist Ched Evans’ return to football following his release from prison has made experts out of many.
There are those on Facebook and Twitter, as well as football message boards, who are suddenly well-versed in the criminal justice system following the Evans case.
I’ve heard many people say that Evans, who was jailed for five years in 2012 after an incident in Rhyl in 2011, has ‘served his time’ and should be allowed to return to his job immediately.
The level of opposition to Evans making that return has been felt by Sheffield United, the club to which he was contracted at the time of his conviction; Hartlepool United, whose manager Ronnie Moore showed interest publicly in signing Evans; and this week, Oldham Athletic, who backed down on talks to sign the player when it was revealed that club officials had received threats.
It was suggested that Evans could play for a club in Malta, and the Professional Footballers’ Association this week said that the former Welsh international might have to seek a future in football away from Britain.
The simple fact – which seems to be ignored by many – is that Evans has not served his time. He was released halfway through his five-year jail term on licence, which means he has to liaise directly with the Probation Service for the next two and a half years.
It prevents him from leaving the United Kingdom, - so that’s Malta out of the window, and also the PFA’s hope he can be rehabilitated at a club away from these shores.
The PFA’s head, Gordon Taylor, compared Evans’ situation to the Hillsborough campaign, in that his was as big a miscarriage of justice as those campaigning against the inquests into the 96 deaths in 1989. Taylor, quite rightly, has had to apologise for those comments.
There is much talk about Evans and the need for his rehabilitation, but little about his victim, who has been forced to move house multiple times after being identified by Twitter users.
Her story is the real tragedy here, and the focus should not be on why a footballer is not allowed to return to the job that brought him great personal fortune; it should be on a young woman who has not been allowed to live her life in peace.
The system has failed her, not him.
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