Leo I was at Mlolongo, heading back into town via Jogoo Road, running on pure hope and 80 bob in Airtel Money.
Kabla nipande, I asked the conductor, “Hadi Doni ni how much?”
“70 bob.”
I offered 60. Classic test. Sometimes they fold. This one didn’t.
So there I was: either alight at Donholm and walk like a pilgrim, or pretend I paid all the way to town and pray the conductor develops selective blindness.
I boarded the Embassava, sat down, and immediately started having an existential crisis. Five hundred metres later we stopped to pick more humans, and a short girl with cornrows and a face card that could start wars sat next to me. She smelled like she had her life together. I, meanwhile, smelled like overdue rent and unfulfilled LinkedIn applications.
I wanted to say hi. I wanted to compliment her. Instead my anxiety did what it does best: turned me into a malfunctioning NPC. Also, I had exactly 10 bob left. I’d heard those legends of men paying a girl’s fare to look chivalrous. With 10 bob I couldn’t even look charitable.
My sister called. I answered in French:
“Hurira after thate minutes ndî matatu îna inegene, please.”
The Mpongo Love babe side-eyed me. I could feel her reassessing my entire bloodline. For a second I felt like the mysterious bilingual girl in a matatu romcom. Then the club bangers kicked in, MC Mido saying unspeakable things, and when “Shake It to the Max” dropped she sang every word.
Gen Z confirmed. Early twenties. Going for hepi. Me? A geriatric millennial whose idea of excitement is refreshing job boards until the Wi-Fi cries.
Then it happened.
She put her head on my shoulder. Looked me dead in the eyes to check my reaction. And just… stayed there. Scrolling TikTok like this was normal.
People in the matatu started giving us the jealous couple stare. We looked cute except stuck in traffic between Syokimau and Pipeline with no memory-erasing machine in sight. Every time the bus hit a bump her head shifted… and she put it right back. I could feel her body heat through my black hoodie.
I said nothing. Not a single word.
But for a few minutes I forgot I was jobless, living at a relative’s place that had reached the “they hide the toothpaste and tissue” stage of hospitality, and refreshing job sites like a man waiting for a miracle. It felt like when a strange cat chooses you, or a baby smiles at you for no reason. Warm. Temporary. Dangerous.
Maybe God sent that pretty little girl with cornrows just to distract me from my problems for one Monday evening in October. I might never see her again. But I will remember that bus ride.
We got to Donholm. The conductor, who had clearly been watching me the whole time like a CCTV, asked for the remaining 20 bob. I told him the truth: I was broke. He sighed the sigh of a man who has seen every trick, then dropped me at Jogoo Road where I was supposed to alight anyway.
Anyway, good people… if you know of any marketing jobs (or literally any job that doesn’t involve flying planes or performing surgery), please connect a human. My dignity and my Airtel balance thank you in advance.
The Law of Irreversible Drift:
Once a woman’s emotional momentum shifts away from you, no past memory has enough gravity to pull her back.
You can remember everything. But to her, you’re just history written in a language she no longer speaks.
Five games, five wins, top of the league. Manchester City, a fortnight after an independent commission found they systematically broke the Premier League's financial rules for nine straight seasons.
So what exactly are we all watching?
Not asking for the season to be scrapped. That's daft, and it punishes nineteen clubs who've done nowt wrong. But I'd like somebody at the Premier League to explain why the table at the top of every sports page is one they already know is wrong.
Because here's where we actually are. The commission has ruled. City lodged their appeal on October 1st. No sanction has been announced. Nobody knows when it will be. Sky are reporting that Premier League clubs themselves don't expect City to even BE in this league next season if the appeal fails.
And in the meantime, the league just carries on. Points are awarded. Positions are published. Clubs are planning January windows around a table that might be fiction.
Think about who that actually hurts. Not City, they're fine, they're top. It's the club that goes down in May by two points and later finds out the table was never real. It's the club that sacks a manager in February over a league position that gets rewritten. It's the staff at a relegated club losing their jobs over a season nobody can stand behind. Real money, real people, decided by a table the league itself can't vouch for.
And the bit that genuinely sticks in the throat. Everton got docked ten points, mid season, reduced to six. Forest got four. Both for single PSR breaches. Both punished DURING the season it mattered, so the table stayed honest.
Eighty charges over nine seasons, plus thirty five for refusing to cooperate with the investigation into it, and somehow that one has to wait.
Carragher's right. Do it this season. Whatever it is, apply it now, to this table, the way it was applied to Everton and Forest. Because every week this drags on, the Premier League is asking us to treat a standings table as real while quietly knowing it might not be.
Due process matters and the appeal has to be heard, I'm not arguing with that. But there's a difference between due process and letting a club sit top of a competition for an entire season while the punishment for breaking that competition's rules sits in a drawer.
The league's credibility isn't damaged by what City did ten years ago. It's damaged by what the league is choosing to do about it now.
Nine seasons. Then three years of charges. Then a verdict. And still, somehow, nothing.
Who's season is this, exactly? 🖤🖤
#PremierLeague #MCFC
I once’s missed an ex girlfriend’s birthday party who was acting distant. 45 people there plus family and her own boyfriend, no where to be found. My phone blowing up, “where the hell are you..”. Next day i come over, no present, tell her “sorry, it’s a long story..” that girl nearly cried for hours.
For the next 6 months non stop texts, i love you’s, buying me presents, asking to hanging out more. It broke my heart, that breaking her heart was the answer..
The thread that I'm going to tweet in the next few mins contains some seriously disturbing information about a sexual predator that landed Man City in court a few years ago. So, genuinely, if this is a subject that could adversely affect you, don't click on links, or mute me. 1/n
This is Gregory Green. In 1991, he stabbed his pregnant wife Tonya to death during an argument and then called 911 to report his crime. He was allowed to plead no contest to second degree murder and sentenced to 15-25 years in prison. While incarcerated, Gregory was a model prisoner, and with the support of pastor Fred Harris, he was paroled in 2008 after serving just 16 years.
After his release, Gregory married Fred Harris’ daughter, Faith, who had two children from a previous marriage. Faith and Gregory had two daughters together, but Gregory’s anger and aggression caused Faith to file for divorce in September of 2016. He sought revenge right away.
Before Faith could move out, Gregory tampered with his own car so that the exhaust was re-routed back into the car itself. Late one night, he took his two sleeping daughters, Koi (5) and Kaleigh (4) and put them in the car to suffocate before returning their bodies to their beds.
Gregory then attacked his wife, duct taping her to a chair in the basement before cutting her on both sides of her face from ears to chin and shooting her in the foot — but he wasn’t done. Marching his two teenage stepchildren downstairs at gunpoint, he shot them both in the head in front of their screaming mother before bringing the bodies of Koi and Kaleigh downstairs for her to see. Gregory then went calmly upstairs and — once again — called 911 to report what he’d done.
In spite of clear, indisputable evidence of premeditation, Gregory was allowed to plead guilty to four counts of second degree murder, torture, assault with intent to do great bodily harm and felony firearms violations. He was sentenced to 45-100 years in prison; although this was the second family he annihilated, he will be eligible for parole in just 47 years.
This is the second man I’ve profiled who murdered his family, got locked up, got out, had a second family, and then murdered them too. If even one woman had been allowed to do such a thing, you can bet your life that we’d never hear the end of it.
Ever hear of Gregory Green before today?