Friday 27 January 2017

Cup a load of this

© Simon Poulter 2017
For some people, the cup of coffee you see here on the right is a dependency. "It's my crutch" and "I couldn't start my day without it". Indeed, in the first couple of hours of the working day in the City of London, where my office is, you must keep your eyes peeled for fellow desk drones powering along the pavement, a rigid arm extended, cup in hand, like a cross between a Dalek and a Lego figure (perfectly formed for beverage carrying with their holed fists as, effectively, cup holders).

I first witnessed this coffee-cup-as-urban-street-accessory fashion 20 years ago in Seattle, America's self-appointed coffee capital. On every street corner people were engaged in conversation, lidded coffee cups in hand, lattes going cold. In New York, the outstretched arm-and-cup combo soon became a fixture as the coffee chains proliferated (there are more than 200 branches of Starbucks in Manhattan alone). Today, it is a common sight in almost every major city around the world.

Such is the prevalence of takeout coffee in London that the city contributes five million of the seven million cups that the entire UK throws away - every single day. That amounts to around 2.5 billion each year. The chains, mindful of their corporate reputations, have made much of making the cups as recyclable as possible...or so we thought. And, so, we dutifully stand over our office recycling bins, separating cups and plastic lids and the corrugated cardboard collars, thinking that we're doing something good for the planet and Brer Polar Bear. But no. It is now believed that less than 1% of those cups - 1 in 400 - actually ends up being recycled, with the vast majority ending up in landfill. Such is the scale of the problem that environmentalists have called on the government to introduce a tax similar to the 5p plastic bag charge to encourage people to use their own reusable cups and mugs.

However, the reason why it is not so easy to properly process these , however, is a simple case of municipal inefficiency: for all the green virtues of the cups' design - with recyclable cardboard and plastic - they have a fundamental flaw: a thin film of resin that keeps the coffee in which, I'm sure you'll appreciate, is something of a prerequisite. And it's this plastic lining that can't be easily separated from recyclable components by existing recycling techniques.

However, the City of London Corporation, along with the coffee chains and various large employers in the Square Mile, have launched a scheme to introduce recycling bins together with the start-up Simply Cups, which brands itself as "the UK's ONLY active cup recycling scheme". It has developed new techniques to effectively separate the cup components and make them fully recyclable, with the recycled materials ending up being used for everything from park benches to pens which will be then donated to schools, community projects and other beneficiaries.

The Corporation's 'Square Mile Challenge' is asking City firms with more than 500 employees to sign up to the scheme to have Simply Cups bins installed in their offices. The first 30 companies who do will even receive a year’s free collection. McDonald's, Costa and Pret a Manger have already been involved in a trial of the collection service. Simply Cups' Peter Goodwin says that the issue of coffee cups should be treated with the same degree of importance by companies and their employees as paper recycling: "Large numbers of coffee cups are binned in offices as people arrive at work or pop out for coffees throughout the day. We’d like to see responsible disposal of these cups become as commonplace as paper recycling schemes in offices and we hope that seeing the products that can be produced from their recycled cups will help motivate city workers to support the recycling effort."


Of course, use of one's own reusable cup is probably the most economic of all, especially as the coffee chains and their suppliers appear to be taking their time developing cups based on new, fully recyclable materials. But in the meantime, the City of London's campaign will at least create awareness of the enormous daily waste that I, by own admission, contribute to.

Thursday 19 January 2017

The feeling of helplessness as the Trump card gets played



It might be wrong to reduce the great office of President of the United States by comparing it to a science fiction film, but when the incoming 45th President is little more than a petulant child himself, treading such ground is not without its merits. Because, I can't help comparing Donald Trump's inauguration tomorrow - speeding towards us like one of those pink stretch limousines used for hen nights in Essex (a lot of noise, crass behaviour and fake tans) - with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

This third of the thoroughly underwhelming Star Wars prequels found the scheming Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (who is really the Sith Lord Darth Sidious) engineering the transformation of the Galactic Republic into the Galactic Empire, with him as Emperor, thus propelling the galaxy into decades of oppression, bolstered by the Dark Side of The Force. Got all that? 

The point I'm clumsily trying to make is that since Trump's unexpected victory on November 8, his transition from President-elect to Commander-in-Chief has been unfolding with us looking on, helpless, as he has, mostly, outlined his thoughts in a random stream-of-semi-consciousness via the medium of Twitter. He'd barely won the election before tweeting, in the early hours of November 11, "Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!".



Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised: ever since he started using Twitter in 2009, Trump - then just a billionaire businessman with a history of exotic wives and a side career as America's version of Alan Sugar on The Apprentice - had used the platform for his wonky, archly dumbed-down observations, such as claiming President Obama's birth certificate was "a fraud", along with more inciteful suggestions that have mirrored the inflammatory nature of his presidential campaign. 

Since the election on November 8, Trump has, in 140 characters, declared Nigel Farage his preference for UK ambassador to Washington (breaking any number of diplomatic protocols in the process); waged personal war on Meryl Streep, branding her "overrated" and a "Hillary Flunky", just for her thinly-veiled comments about him at the Golden Globes (and this after he once included her in a glowing tweet about Hollywood's greatest talents); derided the cast of the hit Broadway show Hamilton for making a speech to Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, and had a go at Alec Baldwin for his note-perfect Trump impersonation on Saturday Night Live; and he's taken on everything and everyone from CNN and the "unfair" media to the US's own intelligence agencies.

Despite more sensible views to the contrary, Trump refuses to drop his Twitter account, declaring in typically bombastic style that it "has become so powerful that I can actually make my enemies tell the truth.". Methinks some self-inflated opinion of his own authority here. Earlier this week, in Michael Gove's less than objective interview for The Times, the incoming president gave the following, typically rambling statement on keeping his @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle, as opposed to taking over the official Presidential account:

"So I've got 46 million people right now - that's a lot, that's really a lot - but 46 million - including Facebook, Twitter and, ya know, Instagram, so when you think that you're 46 million there, I'd rather just let that build up and just keep it @realDonaldTrump. It's working - and the tweeting, I thought I'd do less of it, but I'm covered so dishonestly by the press - so dishonestly - that I can put out Twitter - and it's not 140, it's now 280 - I can go bing bing bing...and they put it on and as soon as I tweet it out - this morning on television, Fox - 'Donald Trump, we have breaking news'." Twitter, itself, must be beside itself at the publicity. 

It's amazing that with such a lack of self-editing Trump is able to tweet at all. But there, in that last line, is the crux of the matter: Trump tweets, Fox News runs it as breaking news. The White House press team will be feeling particularly redundant at this moment. Not to mention the strategy teams and all the other political advisors that would normally populate the White House staff.



Trump's supporters and a few commentators will cutely say that this break in protocol is all part of Trump's populist appeal, that he won't stand on ceremony and will tweet exactly what he wants, when he wants to tweet it, and without any consideration for who might be uncomfortable about it. Some will say that without the confines of tweets being filtered through officials and advisers, as any other form of official communication, Trump is doing what he said all along would be central to his philosophy, that "making America great again" means connecting with America, not hiding behind the Washington Beltway.The trouble is, his tweeting is beyond folksy engagement with the supposed disenfranchised of Middle America. Most of it is thin-skinned reaction. Are petulant responses to actors' joshing really what we should be seeing from the US Commander-in-Chief when there are more pressing matters to attend to, like Syria, Russia, China and the global economy? 

It brings me back to another comparison I've made - just after the election result itself - when I noted that America had elected Homer Simpson as its president, a boorish, bar hog with oddly coloured skin who'll drunkenly say anything outrageous to make him look popular. That may have been a persona to get him elected, but so far it doesn't seem to have come to an end. And nor can we expect it to for the next four years at least.



Saturday 14 January 2017

Costa Brava? Who knows what he is

Diego Costa/Instagram

What a fickle creature football is. Lose two games on the spin and your team is "in a slump". Win two back-to-back and you're in the form of your life. Back in October, the Wednesday after Chelsea had magnificently taken the scalp of former manager José Mourinho's Manchester United, winning 4-0, they travelled across London to what will always be the Olympic Stadium, where West Ham unceremoniously dumped them out of the EFL Trophy, or whatever pseudo-American name some marketing types have come up with for the old League Cup.

That may have been a blip. In the Premier League, Chelsea were on their way in that remarkable 13-game unbeaten run, one which propelled Diego Costa to the top of the league goal-scoring chart, with 14 goals to date. 

This is the Costa who'd been a part of the previous season's malaise under Mourinho, the fiery Costa whose combustible side was rarely far from the surface, who had appeared to be easily provoked by cynical defenders, but was now showing a more mature, focused nature, channeling his fire into being what football people like to term "a handful" in the box.

Costa's prolific goal scoring this season appeared to coincide with Antonio Conte reporting that his star striker was contented, but also admitted that over the course of the summer the Brazilian had once more questioned life at Chelsea. Conte appeared to have settled him, getting him to knuckle down on what he does best, removing the tendency to be a red card waiting to be shown, and getting arguably the best football out of the Brazilian since he signed for the club. A rumoured bust-up between Costa and Conte after the striker was subbed during the home fixture with Leicester in October was dismissed as 'one of those things' that happens all the time in football. Even the very public disagreement between Costa and Pedro during the post-New Year game with Tottenham that ended the unbeaten run was dismissed by fans and club insiders as merely a sign of how badly the players want to win. So, hunky dory then?
Well, perhaps not. Last night's shock revelation that Costa will not play any part in today's visit to the King Power Stadium appeared amidst a flurry of claims and counter-claims amongst pundits. The story emerged in Italy, with Sky's Italian affiliate claiming that Costa had had a robust exchange of views with one of the club's fitness coaches during training this week, leading to Conte allegedly telling the striker to "go to China". By coincidence, Costa's agent - the omnipresent Jorge Mendes - had been seen in the company of Tianjin Quanjian's billionaire chairman Shu Yuhui, with reports circling that the Chinese Super League club was offering the 28-year-old striker a contract worth a staggering £570,000 a week. More stories emerged claiming that Costa himself had ordered his reps to get him a move to China, following the lucrative deals done with Oscar and John Mikel Obi.



Diego Costa/Instagram

And then Costa confused everybody by posting a rah-rah photograph on Instagram of him and Pedro celebrating scoring against Tottenham with the simple caption "Come on Chelsea!!!", followed by a blue heart. Still, though, this walks in the land of ambiguity: such a footballer's social media post isn't much more sincere than a public display of badge kissing. "Come on Chelsea!!!" could be heard a number of ways: the barely concealed frustration of "Come ON Chelsea!!!", the wearisome "Oh, come on Chelsea...", or the perfunctory "Come on Chelsea!!!" that periodically comes from the stands during a lull in noise. Then there is the question of timing, and whether it had been Costa, at all, who'd posted the picture. Unlike many of his Chelsea teammates, Costa is an infrequent presence on Instagram, but when he has appeared it's obviously been him (earlier in the week he'd posted an oblique video clip of the frozen Cobham training ground first thing in the morning, while over Christmas he'd posted images of him relaxing with friends, possibly back in Brazil). Significantly, Chelsea captain John Terry and teammate Cesc Fàbregas (supplier of many of Costa's goals) were quick to 'like' the post. It's hard to imagine either, especially Terry, would endorse a player badly at odds with the club.

So, back to the fickle nature of football. One minute Costa is throwing bibs at his manager and failing to turn up as a presence, the next he is banging 'em in. One minute he is homesick for Madrid, the next he is fine and settled. And, then, news of a bust-up, rumours of a "lower back problem", his manager telling him where to pursue his career, and the player getting dropped from a key away fixture with the imperative of maintaining or even extending Chelsea's five-point lead at the top.

Whatever the truth, whatever the actual facts, there has clearly been a disturbance in The Force at Stamford Bridge. Perhaps this all a load of nothing, and after Conte - who is not afraid to apply the iron rod if necessary - restores Costa after a token suspension, all will resume as if nothing has happened. Roman Abramovich is said to be insisting that Costa is going nowhere for at least the remaining two years of his contract, but we've seen Costa more or less down tools before. The trouble is, Chelsea lack options: they will probably play Hazard through the middle today, with Willian and Pedro flanking; Michy Batshuayi - who cost more than Costa - has yet to convince the Italian that he is a worthy rival to Costa; and prolific 19-year-old prospects Dominic Solanke and Tammy Abraham are amongst the massed ranked of Chelsea youngsters out on loan. Conte's rumoured interest in Swansea's Fernando Llorente may have just cranked itself up a significant notch.


If, though, Costa's head has been turned by the eye-watering amount of money on offer from China, Chelsea might just have to accept that living by the sword means dying by it. We've had to put up with plenty of "rent boy" trollery since Abramovich's millions transformed the club's fortunes, with generous remuneration being part of the Chelsea operating model. One might argue that the Chinese largesse is merely free market predation at work. There would be no point complaining about Costa's head turning when plenty of Chelsea players have been drawn to the club by much the same methodology.

Perhaps it will just turn out to be a storm in a Costa coffee cup. But I'm not so sure. On this occasion I do think the smoke goes with a fire. Antonio Conte either needs to put it out, or let it burn itself out, and take Costa's contribution to Chelsea's title bid with it. Or he bags himself yet another striker, and hope that the magic the Costa has been applying can be instantly replicated to keep the title push alive.

Tuesday 10 January 2017

Look up here, I'm in heaven - Bowie one year on


© Simon Poulter 2017

It probably took me the best part of that Monday morning to take it all in. Because it just didn't seem true, let alone expected. Or even logical. Three mornings previously I'd eagerly started to consume Blackstar, like everyone else blissfully unaware of - or subconsciously ignoring - the clues that, now, seem far less than cryptic. As I had done as a teenager with a new purchase, I listened to the album non-stop throughout the Friday, Saturday and Sunday, first as the overnight iTunes download and then - as soon as I'd been able to get out of the house and down to the FNAC on the Champs-Élysées (then my nearest record shop) -  the CD. Yes, we music heads are somewhat obsessive-compulsive like that: I needed a physical confirmation that Bowie's new album was real. To acquire it required taking Line 9 of the Métro to Franklin D. Roosevelt station, where poster ads for Blackstar adorned the entire length of the platform walls, further proof that, by any dimension, this was a major album launch, from a major artist. The fact that this would only be the second album from that artist in 13 years only added to the sense of occasion.

And it was strange and confounding and oh-so definitely Bowie. Blackstar won nothing but rave reviews. I myself wrote, in what would significantly be the final post of my What Would David Bowie Do? blog: "★is simply stunning. You might have expected me to say that but, trust me, I don't out of slavish sycophanticism. Because, creatively, conceptually and, most of all, musically, it has exceeded expectations. It is the Bowie album I wanted, and we needed."

I wasn't alone. "The overall effect is ambiguous and spellbinding, adjectives that apply virtually throughout Blackstar," wrote Alex Petridis in The Guardian. "It’s a rich, deep and strange album that feels like Bowie moving restlessly forward, his eyes fixed ahead: the position in which he’s always made his greatest music." That appeared on the 7th. How were we - anyone - to know what lay behind Bowie's restlessness.

He was, though, and in the words of Blackstar producer and long-term collaborator Tony Visconti, "at the top of his game". As we now know from David Bowie: The Last Five Years, Francis Whately's wonderful BBC2 documentary screened last Saturday, Bowie was already undergoing treatment for cancer when he brought together a relatively unknown group of jazz-minded musicians at The Magic Shop studio in New York's SoHo, not far from his home. The assumption was that cancer was simply something Bowie was dealing with, but once his death became known, the resultant record's themes of reflection and even acceptance of mortality made perfect sense. "Look up here, I'm in heaven," opened Lazarus, the third track. "I've got scars that can't be seen. I've got drama, can't be stolen, Everybody knows me now".

Whether, though, he knew his condition was terminal as he wrote the album is not fully clear. The lyrical prescience is chillingly uncanny. But by the time Bowie came to make the promo videos for Blackstar's lead single and title track, as well as for Lazarus, he was ready to tell the Swedish video director Johan Renck over Skype that he was "very unwell and I'm probably going to die". The treatment had been stopped. Time - the untameable beast that smoked a cigarette in Rock'n'Roll Suicide - was running out on one of the most unique figures of the 20th century, even if he'd spent much of the 21st century at that point out of sight.

Dying so soon after releasing Blackstar could have been the most Bowie thing he could have done. A theatrical exit, enigmatic to the last. We may never know whether it was his desire to get the album out, or whether some other force kept alive long enough. Or, simply, the emotional release of bringing out his final record exhausting his failing body. But whether, in hindsight, Bowie's death can be explained, it was still unreal. The release of an album for any living artist - let alone such a storied figure as David Bowie, with close to 50 years of recording behind him and all those flirtations with myriad musical styles and changes of image - is always an event of excitement and trepidation.

For the fan, I've always maintained that nothing beats the first play of a new record. It's like disrupting virgin snowfall or unboxing a new iPhone. There is fevered expectation, nervousness even. Will it improve upon its predecessor? Will it be worse? Will it chart new creative territory? Will it move me? For Blackstar these emotions were accentuated by the fact that we had only just come to terms with Bowie being 'back' after extended absence. You could be forgiven for getting giddy at the sight of all those billboards and magazine back cover adverts trailing the arrival of a new album.

Rolling Stone/Jimmy King

We'd been treated to some wonderful, wicked Bowie teasery in the previous three years: waking up on the morning of his 66th birthday to see a tweet from Duncan Jones, his filmmaker son, revealing new music, the beautifully reflective single Where Are We Now?, followed by an entire album - The Next Day. Nothing for close to ten years, not even a hint, and then - BOOM - Bowie was back, back, BACK. The release of the bonkers, brilliant Sue (Or in a Season of Crime) in 2014 to herald the Nothing Has Changed compilation augured that Bowie was in a rich vein of creative form. News of Blackstar merely consolidated this.

Which is why the text I got that Monday morning from a colleague in Finland - already one hour ahead - saying "Sorry man" was so baffling. Sorry about what? After three consecutive days of playing the album non-stop, and even then not being able to catch up with all the reviews that appeared before Christmas, the very last thing I would have expected was for Bowie to be dead. "He can't be," I thought to myself. "He's just brought his new album out." My inner narrative was defiant: you don't write, record and release an album, and then die two days after it comes out.

Monday morning wore on. It was now headline news. Television, radio, online. People were already gathering to enshrine the Bowie mural on the side of Morleys department store on Tunstall Road in Brixton, a ten-minute walk from the house in Stansfield Road where the singer had been born, 69 years before. Mid-morning I received a text from my friend, the musician Steven Wilson, himself another huge fan. We discovered that we'd both received copies of The Laughing Gnome reissue in November 1973 for our birthdays, a week apart. Even more delightful was that they'd been bought as a job lot by my parents from Woolies in New Malden. Within a few days Steven paid his own tribute, adding a stunning, faithful cover of Space Odyssey to the set of his forthcoming Hamburg show. It would become a fitting tour staple.

However, as Steven and I exchanged messages, the enormity of Bowie's death still didn't sink in. I guess that's classic denial. I later blogged about it, of course, not so much in grief as trying to process it all. There was some backlash to such melodrama, the "snowflake" accusations of the cold-hearted who felt it necessary to shower discorn on the mass outpouring of what would be the first of so many celebrity deaths in 2016. Obviously, none of us were friends with Bowie, or related to him. But that glib dismissal of the "Diana-isation" of Bowie's death cruelly and ignorantly glossed over the power of art, of music, and indeed of Bowie's art and music.

He wasn't some mythic, messianic man of the people. That was why we was considered so cool. He wasn't one of us. For much of his career, he wasn't one of anything discernible. He was David Bowie. He may have been born in Brixton, growing up in the suburbia of Bromley, but as soon as David Robert Jones became David Bowie, and all permutations thereafter, he became a pop star unlike any of his peers. And that was the point. That was his point.

© Simon Poulter 2017
I am too young - well, I was too young - to have experienced Bowie the first time around, whether the tousle-haired, Newley/Brel-obsessed folkie, the supreme songsmith opening his 'classic' 1970s account with the remarkable Hunky Dory or commencing the first of his characterisations with Ziggy Stardust.

Even if I score some points for The Laughing Gnome being the first single I ever owned, I formally entered Bowiedom with Ashes To Ashes and its album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps). And then, as so often was the case with Bowie, no sooner had he embraced, briefly, New Wave and the New Romantic eras, than he was shape-changing again with Let's Dance. Only later did I dive into his 1970s canon, discovering the most extraordinary body of work, and an incredible eight-year run of nine albums of original songs, plus the live albums (and the Pin Ups collection of covers).

There were - are - many ages of Bowie. The folkie, the progressive rock pioneer, the glam rocker, the soul boy, the Berlin lab experiment, the lost years of the late '80s and misguided attempts to embrace youth with drum'n'bass in the '90s, and then the second golden era, as a relaxed, contented Bowie emerged with HoursHeathen and Reality. Indeed the latter spawned Bowie's final concert tour, and it was interesting to hear bassist Gail Ann Dorsey say in the BBC documentary how relaxed Bowie was on the Reality Tour. "He was funny - that was the real David Bowie".



It was not something I'd ever thought of about Bowie. Not that I thought him a po-faced automaton, but his characters and guises masked the Brixton boy beneath. After his death I poured over interviews with him on YouTube, and only then did I become mournful. Because throughout was the very antithesis of measured, PR-controlled rock legend, but the chuckling, jovial soul with a recognisable, self-depreciating south London sense of humour. He was, in interviews with Michael Parkinson, Jools Holland and Chris Evans, a Bowie I'd never previously considered, a Bowie you'd want to hang out with in the pub. All fans at some point yearn for personal contact with their heroes, but this sensation was different. It was final realisation that the Thin White Duke, the whey-faced Pierrot clown, Ziggy and all the others were simply costumes. That was when I realised that we'd lost someone unique and peerless. And that was also when I realised that it was OK to mourn. Because Bowie was more than just a pop star, more than a poster on the teenage bedroom wall. He'd been a part of my upbringing. And in that sense, he would be irreplaceable.

Thursday 5 January 2017

If you get it wrong you'll get it right next time

Picture: Getty Images

I start the year on a negative note. Now, I accept that after all the merde that passed our way in 2016, commencing 2017 with the triviality of a lost football match doesn't seem all that bad, and truly it isn't. But, like most Chelsea fans, I would sincerely hope, last night's defeat to Spurs will stick in the craw for a long time. Why? Because it simply should. This is Tottenham we're talking about, after all.

Why one team should be considered the one to beat over any other with whom you've had history - and Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United come immediately to mind - is not immediately clear, and is really just a symptom of the irrationality that is football fandom. Every opponent should be the one to beat, which is surely the logical objective of the game. But like Jerry Seinfeld and his postman neighbour Newman, Chelsea fans have a simmering dislike of Tottenham, going back to who-knows-when, and for no reason whatsoever other than Spurs are simply a rival worthy of our dislike.

But let's not get caught up in all that. Tottenham are, so far this season, looking more resilient, more potent and more disciplined than the side that collapsed in the final stages of last season. That contemptuous draw at Stamford Bridge on May 2 marked not only the end of Spurs' serious challenge to Leicester City for the league title, but also the inexplicable moment that Eden Hazard finally switched on the Eden Hazard we once knew, and had been absent without leave since the beginning of the season. Luckily for Chelsea, that Hazard is still with them. 

Just not last night. First off the bat, Chelsea weren't bad. Spurs' 2-0 win may have ended Chelsea's remarkable 13-match unbeaten run, but that may have been almost inevitable. Yes, perhaps if things had gone differently last night, and César Azpilicueta and Victor Moses had not missed their marked man not once but twice and in identical circumstances, the game might have had a different outcome. But let's not ignore the fact that Tottenham were the better composed side last night. Their MO wasn't that dissimilar to the start they made in May and indeed the way they took the lead at Stamford Bridge in November. In Dele Alli, Tottenham have a true gem, and in Wanyama they had a solid object in midfield to disrupt Chelsea's counter-attacking play. And, perhaps, if Diego Costa had been a little sharper, or if Pedro had run into the space that caused the visible ire between him and Costa, or Hazard himself had been more accurate when he had a shooting chance, then Chelsea may have extended the record to 14 unbeaten.

But it wasn't to be. As Gary Cahill, eloquent in his post-match interviews, said, "we are not robots". An important point. In the previous 13 games Chelsea had been imperious, whether winning emphatically over Manchester United and Everton, or grinding out more modest victories over West Brom, Sunderland and Crystal Palace. It became too easy to think that Antonio Conte had simply found the switch to turn this form on after those early season disasters against Liverpool and Arsenal, the latter of which prompting his change to the 3-4-3 formation that unlocked the success that followed.

This morning Chelsea are still top of the league and five points clear. Last night's defeat may have opened things up a little for the chasing pack, but the Premier League is still in Chelsea's hands if they want it. For us fans, we'll deal with wounded pride (which is, frankly, the biggest casualty). Conte's men will want to reflect, as they watch the video replay at Cobham today, on why they were unable to find the gears to really counter Tottenham and repeat that life-affirming reversal in May. Conte himself - a breath of fresh air at Chelsea following the rank negativity of Mourinho - will want to look at whether he put Cesc Fàbregas on too late to make a difference (his link-up play with Costa was evident from the moment he came on) and whether he should have replaced N'Golo Kanté earlier when it was obvious that his passing and positioning had been uncharacteristically off-kilter.

Football, as I've often quoted Danny Baker, "is chaos". There is no logic to it, no rhyme or reason. Chelsea can start a season poorly, then go on a record-seeking run, and then end it with an off night. That's why we love the game, warts and all. No team is infallible, just as there is no such thing as a perfect 10. Sometimes irresistible forces encounter immovable objects, and they tussle until one is the victor. That wasn't exactly the case last night. Chelsea weren't bad, it's just that Tottenham were better. 

The job now for Antonio Conte is to pick his players up. They won't have lost their mojo in a single, tough encounter (though the mystery is still unsolved as to how this same team lost it in the weeks between winning the league and restarting their campaign a season ago) but they will need to think about what didn't go right for them against one of the toughest opponents they will face this season, and build on it. There's the matter of an FA Cup 3rd Round tie against Peterborough on Sunday to think about - and think hard about (their 2015 4th Round exit to Bradford City should still be fresh in their memories...), followed by the resumption of Premier League hostilities that will see Chelsea play Liverpool (away) and Arsenal (home) in the space of five days at the end of this month. And we are only at the half-way stage of the season, anyway. 

Mental discipline and mindset were the reasons Chelsea fared so poorly last season. Antonio Conte has reversed that. There is confidence oozing through the side. Last night was an aberration. This morning, as the players file into the meeting room at the Cobham training ground, my hope is that someone on the staff is a fan of the late Scottish folk-rocker Gerry Rafferty, and as a musical pick-me-up, plays them his 1979 it Get It Right Next Time. Because if you get it wrong...