Really here

lost my tweeting fingers yesterday - overwhelmed by the lads winning the cup. #mcfc #bluemoonrising #reallyhereless than a minute ago via Mobile Web Favorite Retweet Replymurray w
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We wanted it more, standing up throughout, imploring, urging, exhorting (unlike Stoke's lot who sang 'sweet chariot' for some reason and looked as though too much ale had been downed). But we've wanted success many times before to be left with nothing. This time we did it. This time the quality was on our side. On 73 minutes Yaya seized the moment after clever Silva/Balo footwork to belt the ball home. In the tumult and dry celebratory humping with other males Marc said he'd just begun communing and consulting with departed relatives on 73 minutes. The moments probably weren't connected but we had been getting desperate. Fifteen minutes later City had won their first trophy since 1976 and I had a little cry. As Kant said 'before every satisfaction there must first be pain'. And we were shaking off a lot of pain in these moments. Now maybe United, after too much satisfaction and not enough pain, will experience the 'rapid death of delight'.

Then came the celebrations (Quo, Queen, Roll With It), and the collective joy between players, staff and fans was really something to behold (and which even the reviews on Sunday acknowledged by largely downplaying the 'bought a trophy' sneers).


The first step, as they all said, is always the hardest and now we have foundations on which to build; City, always 'the best team in the land and all the world' in our fertile imagination, could and indeed should be a force again. Outside the ground, we were in beatific rather than mad-for-it mode. Some were going straight back on the 'shameless' coach they came down on; others hung around soaking it all up. For many it was nothing less than closure after the harrowing defeat to Spurs in the 81 replay and the subsequent decline. Later we went to Finchley Road and met up with Pickering's crowd for a few more but then Marc and I made it to mine kebab in hand for the highlights, a few more and iPad YouTubage into the early hours. Arguably, we should have kept the socialising going but we were drained after that collective effort and it felt right, as matchday partners for many a season now, to get back and take the highlights in together.

I wont flood this post with embeds mainly because Blue Moon, with its 300 or so versions across Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll and Rock over the decades generally sounds a bit tired, so here's a few outriders on the Blue Moon theme.


But if you really want to hear the song on Blues' minds right now, it's this ditty on Balotelli beautifully sending up his misdemeanours this season over a driving rhythm, all verse-as-chorus, chorus-as-verse insistence. 'All season i have been shit' he told an ITV reporter. But he was MOTM on Saturday, and like this famous club of ours can go as far as he wants to go (warning! boorish football fans).




Lastly, there's some righteous frustration over at Up, Close and Personal on a shoddily assembled programme of 1991 indie-dance hits that showed Screamadelica to be very much the exception rather than the rule. Yes this was a pure music blog once but it serves the task better over there.