The Hoddle of Coffee: Tottenham Hotspur news and links for Thursday, July 18

Hi, Hoddlers!

I could really use a glass of milk.

Ramble of the Day

I’ve revealed before that I wasn’t exactly the nicest child growing up, and I have another story to back that up. It’s a story from when I was a bit younger than the one I shared in a previous ramble — I’m talking about seven years old.

My younger sister and I are only two years apart, so we did quite a bit of playing and hanging out with each other. It was all the usual stuff; coloring together, playing with toy cars, watched the same kids’ shows, among other things. Still, our paths diverged in some ways. The difference between being five and being seven feels very dramatic, at least to a seven-year-old (or to me as a seven-year-old; don’t know if I can speak for all seven-year-olds). For me, that meant spoiling a little bit of my younger sister’s fun.

I remember two distinct instances, though there may have been more. (Who knows how mean I truly was?) As a kindergartner, my sister was a big fan of Dora the Explorer, and I had occasionally watched it. I’d also occasionally enjoyed it, but seven-year-old me had eventually become too mature for Dora. In fact, I thought Dora was pretty lame, which means when my younger sister brought up Dora one time, I told her how I felt. I essentially told her Dora wasn’t very cool, and that she should stop watching it to be more cool and mature like her older sister.

I did take this whole thing a step further, though. I also decided it was uncool to believe in Santa Claus; only little kids could believe such a thing, after all. I therefore decided to one day casually rip off the bandage and tell her, probably a couple of years too soon, that Santa Claus didn’t exist and that Mom and Dad were the people responsible for the gifts under the tree. She handled it quite well in front of me, accepting the information easily.

She then told her whole class that Santa didn’t exist, which some kids already knew and other kids were shocked by. As she told me during the process of writing this ramble, my sister just told her surprised classmates, “my sister said it was true.” It was enough to allow them to accept the news, and the entire thing went over without it being a major event.

I’d like to say I’ve since become nicer, but I’ll let both my sisters be the judge of that. I definitely don’t try to ruin the things she really enjoys, though.

tl;dr: I was a mean kid, ramble number two.

Links of the Day

Newcastle has hired Steve Bruce as the team’s manager.

Bolton Wanderers players and coaching staff have not been paid in 20 weeks.

Joey Barton has been charged with causing actual bodily harm after assaulting Barnsley manager Daniel Stendel.

A study has found that MLS players miss more matches following concussions than Premier League players do.

Transfer updates: West Ham has signed Sébastien Haller from Eintracht Frankfurt

Today’s longer read: Richard Foster on Lewes FC two years after it began paying its male and female footballers equally, in an excerpt from his new book From An Acute Angle published by The Guardian