Liverpool’s Lovren was the biggest football star in XaW Files: Beyond Humanity (now free to read online with Amazon Prime: last Prime Day today!).
After it was published, Liverpool won the Champions League and Premier League titles. He was then blamed for any defensive lapses when he played!
After leaving in the summer, Liverpool’s defence has collapsed! Including against Leeds, who were the main team in XaW Files; they were promoted last year!
Now, Liverpool seem to have joined their main rivals in the Salford Red Devils triangle!
Coincidence? Weird or What (good TV show, giving different versions of an event, and letting you… be Sherlock!).
Lovren has now moved to St. Petersburg, where the first chapter travelling Russia ended with a chess theme, Bond parody wordplay and a tennis love match between Kournikova and Sharapova:
You Can Lead a Horse to Tennis
I thanked the horse for its Saint Petersburg info, and asked if it fancied a stroll. It agreed, and introduced itself as Wiki Steedia. We walked around some of the green parks and grey streets, until reaching a tennis stadium. There was an exhibition match being played there between Russian greats Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova, so I asked Wiki if it wanted to watch. Wiki said neigh. It said it would love to, but knew of an open chess tournament taking place in an exclusive club, and thought it might be able to get some work as a bit-part player there. So we said goodbye after I thanked it for the lift and flight from Moscow.
I was sad to see Wiki leave, and thought You can lead a chess horse to tennis, but you can’t make it play.
Tennis Love Match
I was sorry to say goodbye to Wiki, but was glad I opted to watch the tennis, as it was a great game. Kournikova took the first set to love, then Sharapova took the second to love. The third set was the decider, kind of like the Y in greenYgrey.
The games went to serve throughout the third set, and they played a tie-break rather than one having to win by two games. Kournikova had just taken a three-love lead, with an incredible volley, when I felt something tugging at my leg.
I looked down, and was astounded to see it was Love, the mixed-up vole; the lovely love correspondent at the greenYgrey.
From Russia with Love
‘Follow me quickly,’ Love said. ‘It’s time for you to leave Russia. You must not stall any longer, for this episode is already well over its time limit, and you don’t want to be using up all your time with no sign of our ol’ Wolfhol yet.’
I had to agree with Love. I had become engrossed in the Saint Petersburg sights and tennis match, and lost sight of time.
I followed it out of the stadium, and down into the Sportivnaya station. I loved the greenYgrey look of the station. Love said it did too.
We passed through Admiralteyskaya, Sadovaya and Zvenigorodskaya metro stations. I remember arriving in Obvodny, and thinking it looked like the CERN Large Hadron Collider. It was to be my last thought for a while, because then we seemed to shoot off at proton beams speed, and I lost consciousness.
References:
Neigh/Nay is a word for a horse noise and a slang word for no. Fyodor Dostoyevsky biography: http://eng.md.spb.ru/dostoevsky/other_museums/omsk/?more
From Russia With Love was a 1963 James Bond film.
Saint Petersburg and Russian literature information from Wikipedia.
You can lead a chess horse to tennis, but you can’t make it play works kind of like that old chestnut phrase: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
XaW Files free to read online at Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.co.uk/XaW-Files-Beyond…/dp/B019NOY9ZU
Lots more free thinking fun loving wordplay on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/marc.l.latham/
mistYmuse 