Chinese Super League Explained

Here is a bit of a sweeping statement but one that through a bit of research seems to have a good bit of truth in it. 

China will not really be accepted by its own people as a global super power until it attains similar status in the world rankings of the sport of football. 

The undeniable fact is that, for such a huge nation China is crap at the beautiful game.

This was not always the case as before the Civil War, in the 1930’s, the National Team dominated the competition in their part of Asia. 

The victorious Communist State policy prioritised football as very low and it was not until 1979 that China rejoined the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA). 

Since then underachievement has persisted with no qualification to a World Cup Finals and just two wins, five years apart in the East Asia Cup. 

There is no doubting the popularity of football in China with legal and other transmissions of English Premier and European League games with potential to reach a 1.35 billion audience. President Xi Jinping is a fan and his perception of the commercial and propaganda value of football has been a contributory factor behind the State goal to make China a football world power by 2050. 

As in other Socialist Market economic policy areas the Government set out the rules and then these tend to be interpreted by the State Bureaux, Provincial leaders and private enterprise with the outcome being, in reality and practice, quite a flexible version of the original. 

Western Media has, in the last 12 to 18 months been swamped by the hype and hysteria of the Chinese Super League (CSL) even to the point of it appearing to pose a major commercial threat to the dominance of the rich and influential Premier and European Leagues. 

The CSL was actually formed in 2004 when the existing Jia-A League was rebranded. This earlier incarnation of football had seen brief populist and financial success in the 1990’s but was plagued by match fixing, widespread abuse of gambling and endemic corruption. Even under the refreshed form of the CSL the same worst excesses persisted by 2010 and although sanctioned still lurk in the background. 

The current CSL consists of 16 teams, all located in main population centres in the eastern part of China. The climate of low temperatures determines that the season runs from February/March through to November/December. Under the broad State remit to attain a high world ranking many of the technical and business aspects of global football have been adopted through the importation of management ideas, professional standards and of course, through the importation of selected foreign personnel from on and off pitch specialisms. 

The shopping list of foreign star players heading for China remains a matter of intense speculation and rumour in the media. CSL teams were, from 2011, allowed five foreign squad players but with only four including an Asian Confederation player to be allowed on the pitch at any one time. The top three teams at the end of the season have eligibility to play in the Asian Champions League and the bottom two teams suffer relegation to China League 1. 

Centralised State Control is overriding but the funding and day to day business operations of the teams is from the wealth and power of the Chinese private sector in industry, commerce and finance. 

The 16 CSL participants show their corporate identity with the suffixes to their home towns being not ,as in English football United, City, Town and Athletic but the branded names of some of the largest companies in China. Guangzhou, who have dominated the CSL for the last few seasons are run by Evergrande, a construction conglomerate. Other parent companies include the Port of Shanghai, Investment and banking groups and in the Property and Medical sectors. The huge spending power, branding awareness and commercial profile of the companies has been behind the massive hype although many have published financial losses in their football operations. This clearly illustrates that football is a loss leader within the much bigger promotional picture of the main business interests of the owners. 

However, such has been the emphasis on furthering the image and public perception of the core companies that the consequence has been the excess of moneys targeted to lure foreign stars to play in the CSL. This has caused significant concern at State level and at the mid point of the current season (2017)  the Chinese Government firmly applied the brakes to the spiralling situation. 

The transfer fees for overseas players were effectively doubled with the imposition of a levy equal to the fee (if under £5.3 million) to be directed to the Youth System of the game and above that threshold to a State Development Fund. 

These measures have quickly stifled the speculation of the massive deals of up front payments and obscene, even by Premier League standards, weekly wages. 

Keeping in context the CSL is still very much in its infancy and as such the teething problems of run-away commercialism are to be expected. 

In the 2016 season the total CSL attendance was just under 6 million and with an average crowd per match of 24,000, so about the average gate seen at English Championship level. 

The development of Chinese players has been slow. The season end Golden Boot Award for top scorer has gone to a foreign player for the last four years and with the best Chinese striker, Wu Lei, somewhat behind in 2016 on 14 goals. 

There are models globally where fledgling National Teams have successfully learned all aspects of the game from foreign imported players. The US MSL is now predominantly of home grown talent and with an improving record of performance on the American continent and the World Cup. 

China has attained global Superpower status in just about everything else through central planning and strong governance but the business of making football work for the benefit of the State is proving to be bit more difficult than expected.

C*****

An older bit of my writing but a favourite on the theme of building and buildings.

The word is Clunch.

It sounds like it could be a swear word or an anatomical part.

In modern language it could be a combination word produced by an auto-text facility to describe at least five different interpretations.

a) I see it being used to describe that awkward moment of meeting between two longstanding male friends when a hug is called for but genitals must not be seen to come into contact.

b) It could equally refer to a gathering of dieting office workers around a canteen table where caloric values for respective dry corn or yoghurt based snacks are being compared.

c) How about an account in a local paper of a vehicle collision with a Restaurant with the use of the word as a graphic and onomatopoeic headline, plus exclamation mark.

d) I like to think of the word being used to describe that mechanical process in an old classic car with no gear box syncromesh when a steep hill looms up ahead and a change down is required.

e) One final one, unless you have some good interpretations yourself, is to describe the deductions of a highly intelligent detective sleuth based on a natural sense and feeling of a crime or misdemeanour.


The real meaning of Clunch is quite plain and on first impression, uninteresting, but in fact it has played quite an influential part in the history of the buildings of our country.

Clunch is a traditional construction material based on English chalk stone. It can consist of a variety of materials either quarried, excavated, cleared from the land or scrounged and when amalgamated and bedded in mortar it can be used for structural purposes from a mighty Cathedral down to a simple boundary wall. It was seen as cheap and readily available in areas where good quality stone was not in abundance.

The Romans, during their occupation of England, used this hardened form for civil engineering but not much has survived because of the susceptibility of the material to disintegrate from frost. Clunch was popular for craftsmen to work with as it was reputed to be capable of cutting with a saw rather than requiring specialist stone masonry and tools.

Notable buildings so constructed include:

St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle  http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1990408,
Lulworth Castle http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/868135
and internal features at Ely Cathedral http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1601505

The chalk originated in the Cretaceous Age some 143 to 65 million years ago and from various embedded impurities it has a greyish white colour and sometimes with a greenish tinge. It is however quite a warm and comforting hue and a few paint manufacturers do refer to Clunch in their sample books and colour swatches. It is often found as a decorative finish in Listed or Heritage Buildings.

There are still active quarries in the South and East of England producing the materials for different markets and large blocks are well suited for working by sculptors or for show pieces such as landscape features for Horticultural Shows . The obsessively superstitious have an apparent craving for lucky stones made out of Clunch.

It may be a softish material as far as its building applications go, but as a small boy I do recall a painful experience when I was nastily grazed by a coming together with a Clunch wall of a building in Thetford, Norfolk.

In that particular moment I felt that a constant muttering of that word under my breath was the best sounding, pretend swear word in my small world.

On your Marks

There is an age difference of 12 years between me and my youngest brother, Mark.

This may not seem big in the wider scheme of things, the big picture, in the fabric of time and space but it actually is quite a gap and I feel personally that I am poorer in many respects for it.

On the day that Mark was born Father took the four of us, the older children from ages 14 to 6 out for the day and I think that we went to Scarborough. That was in the time when the attendance at the birth of a baby by the male partner was discretionary and even bordering on being actively discouraged. It was quite a long way to go but it was early August and in scorching weather as I seem to remember from sticky backs of legs on sweaty vinyl car seats.

In my twelfth year I was happy to have a new brother but far too involved in my own busy and active life to pay much regard to the everyday bringing up of a baby. I was recently enrolled at the Grammar School which was an ancient institution heavily traditional and proper. My extra-curricula activities included Scouts, a brief and hair raising attempt at church bell ringing, brass band and youth orchestra as well as usual playing out, ranging far and wide through the town and surrounding countryside and showing an interest in girls.

At age 15 I was determined to leave school and join the Army. The wise counsel, although frustrating, of my Parents soon showed me that my shorter term plans were best served by staying on at school until I was 17.

In the meantime Mark was just starting off in his own life and did not know anything about the armed forces at age 3 or the process of anything more than pre-school education by the time he was 5. My 'A' levels went to plan and in 1981 I went off to Polytechnic. Mark started at Infants School. The following 4 years away studying (yeah, right!) meant that I was only at home sporadically and I would have little time to catch up with or share experiences with Mark. He was still only 10 years old when I started my first full time job and at that age typically into Star Wars, Lego, Videos and with an unhealthy and semi superstitious following of his football team, Liverpool.

We had drifted apart, understandably with the age difference being accentuated by my attempts at being a serious grown up, an employable person and starting to think about buying a first house. One common experience that we did share was when Mark was a page boy at my wedding. Over and above the family occasion he also took on the spirit of the thing and wore a Kilt and full Scottish regalia to match my own pale homage to our ancestry on Father's side.

My own children were born between 1990 and 1995 and Mark,  became old Uncle Mark and a constant and reliable source of entertainment and constructive things to do. In that 5 year period he graduated and started work in graphic design before doing a lot of other grown up things in succession including buying a flat in London,  going into business partnership with brother Chris and getting married.

I was thrilled and honoured to attend his wedding ceremony to Jo at Hackney Town Hall in 2007. I was fairly oblivious about what happened during the 16 hours of the pub crawl around those bits of London where tourists hesitate to tread. We met up at the Cutty Sark in Greenwich before the epic Stag Do but I am assured that it had caught fire and was devastated the day before I got there. Strangely my clothes were quite smoky when I eventually got home.

We all live full and involved lives and so it can be very difficult to meet up other than at main seasonal celebrations or talk for more than a few minutes on the phone.

Just yesterday, however, I shared a magical moment with Mark which made up in some small way for what I have missed in his previous 37 years. He was understandably excited but also a bit apprehensive about his first ever drive in the VW Variant E Squareback that he took on from our late Father's car collection.

It had been garaged and immobile since 1979 being surplus to our family requirements and super-ceded by a larger 412LE Estate. In the last 12 months the car, actually 4 years older than Mark, has had a mixed experience in the quest to get it back on the road. It was, in good faith entrusted to a garage owner who it transpires had Neo-Nazi tendencies. A further few, non Fascist affiliated  mechanics throughout Yorkshire, skilled in their trade struggled with different problems arising from the long hibernation of the vehicle for 34 years. Mark tracked down the necessary fuel injectors, perhaps the most crucial of the missing elements, after an internet search. This had been a very arduous task given that only around 30 of the make and model survive on British roads and a good proportion of the 1.2m worldwide production have rusted to nought.

Late yesterday afternoon I drove Mark and Mother to the garage which had performed the best miracle of coaxing the Squareback. We went in my VW Passat Estate, a sanitised and clinical descendant.

The dreadlocked mechanic appeared from between the shell of a camper van project and restored Beetle to meet Mark.

I had forgotten how basic the interior and controls of the car were even though I would sit up front next to Father whenever I could get my "bags-it, me" in against stiff competition.

A huge, almost omnibus steering wheel with the Wolfsburg badge and metal press bars for the horn. Three dials, one a fairly useless analogue clock, the others MPH display only and a fuel and warning light gauge. The lights operated on a pull out and turn button. Basic heater. No radio or even a dashboard slot to put one in. That was it.

The rear mounted engine turned over and fired up in that distinctive air cooled rasp, a bit hesitant at first but then stronger and distinctly fumey. Mother reminded us that a member of the family had suffered miserably from constant sickness in the car from sensitivity to the same fumes and so it had to be side-lined. No names or recriminations intended, Susan.

Mark sat proudly on the black plastic drivers seat, Mother riding shotgun. In the quite spacious spartan and pre-ergonomic surroundings they looked tiny and vulnerable.   I checked the lights and indicators standing in front of the long, smooth bonnet. As children we would always express great shock to any of our friends who might be around when the bonnet was opened and we would claim that someone had stolen the engine.

The car moved under its own power and with Mark in control. I followed in my space -age interior but soul-less means of transport.

On the steep ramped incline out of the garage premises, and waiting for a break in the traffic, the engine revved enthusiastically. I like to think that this was entirely of the Squareback's own doing as though expressing its revitalised spirit and that it could not wait to hit the road with it's new master.

 

                                                                         

(n.b; Other Thomson siblings are available. The foregoing is not intended to express or imply any favouritism or preference to the named individual or make and model of car. I love you all equally.)

Hunting Tigers

Those under the age of, say 35, may find it hard to comprehend but in the pre-social media and gadget era one of the most treasured possessions of youth was the autograph book. 

The what? I can hear some tech-savvy dependants ask with incredulity but it is true. 

The humble shop bought or home made book, often multi coloured in sections through its pages, was the constant companion of teenagers and not just those actively seeking the stars and celebrities of the day. 

My own autograph book was a rather flamboyant one for a 10 year old lad. It had a padded floral front cover and gawdy lining which was noticed by my peer group with some inevitable remarks of a non-politically correct nature along the lines of it being, put mildly, a bit effeminate. This was a fairly regular and consistent form of language for the 1970’s. 

I just didn’t care though as I had bought it with my own pocket money and it was a very personal thing, perhaps even my first proper possession. 

The first signatures were my own. You would be hard pressed to find anyone who has not spent a good few hours in practicing their own signature just in readiness for becoming a noted personality and it is a tricky process to achieve a convincingly grown up and legible one. 

The main purpose for the autograph book was to collect the signatures of teachers and staff at that momentous occasion of the last day at junior school before the summer vacation and the prospect of resuming education as the small-fry at the huge and impersonal secondary modern in September. 

I never actually got the autograph of anyone famous apart from, I seem to recall, the Bishop of Lincoln who was a bit taken aback by my approach with book and biro whilst he was on a visit to our local parish church. 

The popularity of the autograph book evidently suffered with the development and widespread availability of the mobile phone as well as the almost intimate association possible with the famous and infamous through an almost hourly update of their moods, behaviour and often inane thoughts on their managed Twitter feeds and on Instagram and other social media platforms. To me the mystique and worth of celebrity status has been irreparably cheapened by 24-7 access. 

The selfie has taken the place of a good old physical signature, of course  that assumes that the current gaggle of wannabee personalities can actually write in the first place. 

My well founded cynicism was however tempered just this week with an open day for supporters at the stadium of our local team, Hull City. 

The invitation was to attend at a training session on the beautifully manicured pre-season grass of the pitch followed by an opportunity to meet the full first team squad.

It was a free event and so I volunteered to go and take along with me the sons of a friend, aged 5 and 9. They were in their replica kits although the players named on the shirts had been sold off in the close-season as part of a major shake-up including a new manager, the first Russian in English football. 

The event was attended by about 2000 children, parents and guardians keen to get in close proximity to an otherwise cosseted and chaperoned collection of wealthy athletes. 

Just one hour into the three hour timetable I could see parents in conversation with their youngsters about getting into a good position to take advantage of the meet and greet opportunity. Gradually a straggling line grew just inside the low perimeter wall of the pitchside with jostling children as well as a surprisingly well attired and made-up group of young mothers. 

This move was quickly dispersed by the club organisers who gave directions for an orderly queue to form in the stadium concourse to allow small clusters to be led down to the long line of table tops and chairs where the players were to be sat after completing their training session. 

What caught my attention and made me strangely nostalgic was that the majority of the children and a few of their mothers were clutching a proper and traditional autograph book. 

These, over the final hour of the open day, were passed in turn along the line of players who with care and respect filled the pages with well practiced thickly inked scrawls and squiggles. 

I could only stand and stare at this wonderful sight. 

I did however have some sympathy for one of the Hull City squad who along with the whole stadium heard a small girl, no more than 7 years old, point and shout out to hear father who was way up in the stand more than once “ who is that dad, who is that?” 

You never know, that ego-crushing anonymity could spur that player onto great things in the coming season. 

Who are you?

@ the coal face

I have worked in an office for the last 30 plus years. 

I should mention that it is a small office and I am in fact rarely there in person as my job involves a lot of driving out to appointments. 

Being sat at a desk rather than behind a steering wheel is such a rare occurrence that I really enjoy it and also the interaction and camaraderie of my fellow workers. We are a close, compact team and as we often comment, we spend more time in each others company than we do our own families. 

I can think of nothing worse therefore than a mega. open plan, Corporate office where the employees are in confrontation in their daily workloads and where politics and back-biting are a necessity to get ahead or to just maintain a position in an ancient hierarchical order. 

Such is the environment of the dreaded jargon and management speak where the main protagonists use it relentlessly to make their own jobs and roles more important and impressive than they actually are. 

Informed studies of this phenomena have attributed its widespread use as a means of disguising a poorly implemented job or to give the impression that the individual knows what they are doing but, the superficial hot air aside, do not. 

We have all been in meetings where management speak has made us cringe or confused in equal proportions. 

Here is a bit of a collection of those doing the rounds in a modern office surround. 

I have omitted to give an interpretation or translation of these as they are largely self explanatory, or if not, are just a fascinating insight into how those who have the luxury of many idle hours can funnel it into the production of bullshit. 

Helicopter View

Idea Shower

Touch base offline

Low hanging fruit

Look under the bonnet

Get all your ducks in a row

Don’t let the grass grow too long on this one

Not enough bandwidth

The strategic staircase

Run it up the flagpole

Put a record on and see who dances

Square the circle

Lifting the kimono

Product Evangelist

We need a holistic cradle to grave approach

Sprinkling our magic

From the get-go

We want 110%

Capture your colleagues

We are still optimistic that things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline

My door is open on this issue

High altitude view

Wouldn’t want to wrongside the demographic

On a go forward basis

Can someone give me some colour on this post ?

I concur

Touch base

Circle up

Can you roll these changes through the model ?

If I could piggy back on what I was just saying

Maybe someone could just unpack that a little more

We must crank it up a bit

The only caveat is……….

At the end of the day

It is what it is

Talk to that point

Get our arms around that

We are in the business of creating synergies

Shift those graphs

Massage the red dots

Why don’t you go ahead and take a stab at that and get back to me ?

We will work through the night to get this to you first thing in the morning

Get a download

What’s the time line ?

Vanilla strategy

Apples to apples, apples to oranges

We have to drill down through the numbers

Deep dive

Do you have capacity to model this out to year 2329 ?

Who’s your Daddy

Lets not hammer a dead horse

Let’s not reinvent the wheel

Shoot me an e mail

So and so pinged me last night

Adding value

Pari passu

Ready. Fire, aim

Out of pocket

Shit flows downhill

Roadmap

Let’s huddle on this one

Ramp up

Net net

They shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade, a spade

We need to get this done PDQ

Lets grab the bull by its horns

Lets make the stars and the moon align

Keep your oar in the water

I think this would be a good exercise for you

Whats the game plan ?

Let’s take a 25,000 foot view

ETA’s

We need to noodle this a little

Something we can all aspire to

Take ownership

Be the bulldog

Circling the wagons

Too leveraged

There’s more grease left in this pig

On the same page

The interns are taking over

Lets gets some seamless

JFDI

We need to organise deliverables

Knowledge transfer

Identifying core competencies for holistic improvement

Transition phase

Restructuring initiative

Great thread

War room

Net worth or nothing

Cack me nimble

My question to you is…….

Don’t spin your wheels

The meat and potatoes of the matter

Senior exposure

Gin up on the model

Step it up now boys and girls

Don’t be afraid to push back if you’re feeling overloaded

Just the tip

Does that make sense

No worries, let’s update and get it out to the group

Pls, asap, thx

Feel free to reach out to me

Epic fail or Epic win

Smilin’ and dialin’

Does this thing have legs ?

Talk the talk

Turn into a pumpkin

Pencils down

In the weeds

Just so you know where I’m coming from

Read the tea leaves

Wrapped around the axle

Can you arrange this data along swim lanes

Let’s put on our training hats for a minute

Drop fenders and come alongside

What’s the long pole in the tent

You’re fired

There are just so many that I didn't even have to mention about Blue Sky thinking or running things up a flagpole. 

Send me anymore that you may have via the comments section...................................

Free Rome

What have the Romans ever done for us?

Well, for my family they have certainly provided a lot of free stuff over the years and to my parents with five children and my own three wonderful youngsters that has been, on many days-out, a deity send.

I am a firm believer that there is some educational content and value in everything. This could be a strong material fact, an anecdote or just, my speciality, an unverifiable piece of urban mythology. It is little wonder that my children, when growing up, became a bit confused when, on what they thought was just an enjoyable day trip out they would be bombarded with some useful and some not so useful fact about things we drove past. That could be a building, a type of tree, a funny shop name, a rare car, a very distant aircraft or even a strange or suspicious looking pedestrian.

In most instances, through the speed we were travelling or the lateness of my actual noticing of the interesting item, the children would have nothing to see as the essential illustration of my fact or statement. This would involve some complex explanations for the ensuing 10 minutes involving frequent hands off the steering wheel. Everything was, without the visual explanation, totally out of any context.

Roman things are, by design, the perfect free educational resource.

A Roman road, wonderfully straight and some good miles long provides the opportunity for me to have a rolling brief on its engineering, logistics and purpose. I will intentionally plan a long journey to include a stretch of Roman road. Sometimes I may be surprised by an arrow straight trunk road which just appears after a particularly car-sickness inducing series of bends, rises and falls. This starts my contention with the children or indeed any passengers at the time as to whether we are on a true Roman road or just a concession to a modern by-pass or much needed overtaking opportunity to clear a backlog behind labouring juggernauts and caravans. Gradually, by such subversive indoctrination my children, now all adults, have come to recognise the trademarks of a Roman road and I swell with pride if they identify such before I have had a chance to remark.

I will pay the often extortionate entry fee to visit the best surviving artefacts of the Romans.

Vindolanda in Northumberland is well worth the large amount of denarius' that are handed over to the youth dressed most unsuitably for the chill of the north-east in sandles and body armour. Actually, the latter is very useful for a night out in Newcastle.

Hadrians Wall is also a good free resource but any educational content has to be paid for by a bit of a hard long walk across rough terrain and we have only tended to do this on the way back from a holiday in Scotland or well out of season if we have managed to get away for autumn half term or a spring break.

We are very regular visitors to the City of York which has an abundance of free stuff from the walls and defensive buildings to fragments of stone pilfered after the Roman abandonment and then used in later construction. Unwittingly, the period may well have been remembered not so much for the architecture, engineering and culture as the greatest for the supply of hardcore, rubble and dressed stone for Anglo-Saxon housing and patios.

My favourite feature in York is the incongruous pillar of very mixed materials which stands close to the Minster. It was found in flat pack kit form in an early excavation and subsequently re-assembled. If you get to see it you will understand that there were no actual instructions provided. It may even be upside down which, from my own experience of self assembly, can easily happen.

I spent a year of an internship in Lincoln, another great Roman garrison and cultural centre. More free stuff around the Cathedral and Castle, a stone gateway,some spa baths. One of the partners in the firm I worked for had a house built on Roman foundations and I was invited to see them having expressed an interest in such things. The stonework was perfectly preserved and accessible from the cellar. The craftsmanship was beautiful to behold. Of course the labouring will have been done by slaves with their Roman Masters getting all the glory.

My strongest memory of Roman artefacts also emphasised to me the cruelty and hardship of that period of, lets face it, occupation by a mighty foreign power.

In the mid 1970's my father took me to the site of an archaeological dig in a field just adjacent to the busy A15 or better known Ermine Street, the equivalent of the M1 of the invaders.

Maps of the locality between Lincoln and the Humber crossings on the way up to York showed many villa sites. Prime real estate for those qualifying for freedom from military or civil service. Early retirement at 35 but with a life expectancy of not much more.

The field was quiet after the working party had left. The site had been throwing up bits of mosaic tile and pantile fragments for many years under the farmers plough or from treasure seekers. A large rectangular shape had been revealed after careful removal of tons of topsoil. I could make out detail from my school projects on villas, some hypercaust pieces from the underfloor heating, labelled pieces of pottery still partly embedded in the ground and short stretches of partly intact but largely jumbled up tessera (Resource book; The Romans in Britain for ages 8 to 11. Published in 1970).

Then, in the four outer corners of the excavation I saw four metal collection trays, upturned as though to protect or hide something being worked on. Ever curious and a bit nosy as a child I lifted up one of the trays. Huddled in the corner was the skeletal remains of a small baby. This was the same for the other three corners. I was shocked but also a bit morbidly fascinated by this discovery.

My father explained that the babies will have been sacrificed for a favourable blessing for the villa by the deities. I was already following the train of thought about who would supply babies for this barbaric practice. The field was soon returned to the farmer after meticulous recording and removal to a local musuem of the most important items. I hoped that the babies had received a suitable and respectful memorial if they had been left where they had been put to the sword.

"It's not a handbag" argues Jack Bauer

Very few people get to live out their fantasies. 

It does not have to be anything elaborate or even fantastic but in the mind of the individual it can be the most crucially important thing in their lives. 

I am fortunate in that I can assume the role of one of my heroes in the simple act of wearing a single item on my person. No, I do not cavort around with my pants over my trousers imitating Superman, well it was just the once and charges were not pressed on the basis that it was an aberration of my otherwise unremarkable character. 

I cannot stand the feel of even a pair of sunglasses perched on my nose and so a Batman mask is out of the question. There are just too many in the Superhero category to mention along with their own costumes and traits. 

My bit of hero worship is a simple thing, a drab-olive coloured khaki shoulder bag. 

It has the full title of a Tactical Gear Bag and many an army quartermaster would be able to reel off what items could be reasonable carried amongst the two large front pouch pockets, two slimmer flanking pockets, cavernous main part, inner zipper compartment and in two loop fasteners on the front flap. 

The versatility and durability of the TGB came to my attention when used by the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) operative, Jack Bauer (played by Keifer Sutherland) in the long running and cult TV series of "24". 

Of course he used it in its proper role in the carrying of an arsenal of weaponry, communications equipment, surveillance devices, his PDA by which his team at CTU headquarters kept him up to date with latest intelligence and many other classified bits of kit. 

Anyone who has followed "24" through its nine series will know the capabilities of Jack Bauer. 

He is, at heart, a family man but when faced with a credible threat to the Yoo-Ess-of-A from whatever source he can leap into action and you have just feel sorry for the baddies who dare to menace, attempt to extort or just mess about with the nation and people he is sworn to protect. 

Getting hold of a Tactical Gear Bag was a bit of a mission in itself. 

There are plenty of them available through the massive media and merchandising arm of the "24" franchise, even bearing the distinctive emblem of CTU but they are a bit sanitised and only a pale imitation of the real thing. 

I was not persuaded to part with the $30 plus shipping for what was nothing more than a gimmick. I could see that such a bag would easily fall apart when loaded with anything more than a pack of mints. 

I trawled the internet for something more genuine and authentic. 

It had to be military issue, army surplus or a second hand trade from a serving or demobbed member of the US Forces. 

It took some time to track down a prospective purchase. Jack Bauer would be proud of my dedication to the task of sourcing the item, but of course he would not show it. He might get his assistant Chloe to send me a congratulatory text by proxy. I would be perfectly happy with that. 

From my PC I communicated with a Seller deep in the heart of America. I could imagine a dark back room in a dark backwards town where white supremacists and survivalists obtained whatever they required to feel supreme and survive. 

It would be a seedy little spot or alternatively, a slick hypermarket type operation with daily Manager's Specials on ammo, personal protection, tinned goods and radiation sickness pills. Children would be enticed to join the National Rifle Association with six free shots using a handgun at the outline of an obvious but not openly mentioned Black President. 

I was pleased not to have to make verbal or other contact with my source in placing the order for my very own TGB. It was the equivalent of £12 including shipping. If price were an indicator of quality I should be worried, very worried but when the package arrived some 7 days later I could not have been more pleased with the service provided. 

I did not leave an endorsement to that effect in case it put me on a 'watch-list' of the FBI or my details were traded with our home based security organisations. 

I have had the bag for some 6 years now and it has never failed to perform beyond the call of duty. The sturdy shoulder strap is rivetted as though part of an aircraft wing structure. The 100% cotton covering, made in India, looks as good as new even though it has been in many a tight situation in terms of weather, crowds and stuffed under the seat of a train or bus.

Whilst eminently practical it is a piece of fashion history, well I think it is although others have scoffed and asked if I knew that the war had ended some years ago and carrying of a gas mask was no longer compulsory. 

I often dip back into Season 5 of "24" for tips and hints on wearing and making best use of the TGB and Jack Bauer is a good role model for this. 

The bag and me are inseparable. 

I used it just this afternoon on my mission to get the shopping in for tea. 

It easily swallowed up two packs of steaks, a garlic bread, a four pack of ginger beer, bag of stir fry, two fishcakes, two punnets of mushrooms, can of lucozade fizzy orange and a 2kg bag of spuds. 

Not that he would ever misuse the bag for his own domestic purposes but I can well imagine the gravelly tones of my hero Jack contacting base with the message "Chloe, send me a recipe on my PDA".