The windmills of ones mind can be a very strange place.
About ten years ago, the Beckhams were rumoured to be buying a converted windmill just down the road from my humble abode. The local paper went to town and hired a DB lookalike for ten quid to pose and prance about the locality to visualise what if the "brand" did indeed come to town.
Thankfully they did not. I am not a fan of either. Obviously DB was never going to win any popularity contests on account of the team he then played for. I will never forget that moment of cynicism at Old Trafford in 1997 when he sulkily hacked at Lucas Radebe and made obscene gestures behind his back.
His wife fares no better I'm afraid, she can't sing, she is not really that good looking - as Paddy McGuire said on Shameless once, "I like more meat on my bones".
The Beckhams became, in my opinion, a sad reflection of how cheap and demeaning our society had become. How utter averageness could be blown up to being world-class talent. She was a member of a manufactured pop-group, he was a midfielder who could pass and take a free-kick but was hardly renown for his tackling or heading.
Recently he was linked with a move to Tottenham, it has fallen through apparently. Whilst non-entity experts like Talksport's Adrian Durham gushed Beckham was the missing-link in Spurs title challenge, the more rational view was here was someone the wrong side of 35, over for a couple of months having a break playing a standard of football roughly the same as our League One and who's positive contribution was more than likely to be shifting huge amounts of replica shirts with his name on.
On Saturday, Beckham turned up at Arsenal where he has also trained before. He and one of his son's saw the Gunners, fresh from their triumph at ER ease to a three-nil thrashing of Wigan.
Last night, I was wondering what if Beckham had joined Arsenal instead of Spurs and got a game at ER last Wednesday? - what kind of reaction would we have given him?
Would he have got dogs abuse? Id edge my bets and say so. We are quite a begrudging lot at Leeds and have very long memories. The guy not only played for them, he has on more than one occasion declared them as his one and only football love.
A couple of years ago, I attended the England v Slovenia friendly at Wembley with some lads from Nottingham, mates in their early twenties. One a die-hard Forest fan was visibly upset that Beckham did not make an appearance from the bench and moaned he had only gone to the game in the hope that Beckham got a touch of the ball.
The majority of people think Beckham is now a national treasure. Some say he is the future of our game, as a coach or even as a manager. For some, the day he abandons his Ambassadorial work amongst shady, bent FIFA executives, gives up playing silly Soccer with the Yanks and dons his tracksuit then England dare hope again.
Not for me though, he is an arrogant, intellectually challenged, scruffy, hideously tattooed average footballer who is still feeding off a couple of goals for England against Greece nearly 10 years ago.
I'm sure I am not the only one who feels this way. If he had stepped out for Spurs, Arsenal whoever I'm sure he would have got as much abuse as accolades. Then again, when Gazza turned up at Leeds with Everton in the twilight of his career, he got a fantastic reception from our fans which nost certainly was not the case during his early days - remember Spurs at home in 199091?