A FEW DAYS IN BELGIUM

Arsenal defender Sol Campbell recently escaped the media storm surrounding him by disappearing to less than glamorous Belgium.

I’m going to Belgium to hide from the press.
My career is failing, I’m deeply depressed
and I don’t want paparazzi camped by my door.
So I’m off to Belgium, a place they’ll abhor.

I’d initially thought of the Costa del Sol
but I knew that the press would just have a ball
and then pay for their binges with snaps of my face
looking haggard and lonely and quite out of place.

A few days in Brussels should give me the time
to suffer, recover and climb from the slime
that the press back home used as feathers and tar
when they found that I’d fled them in an unmarked car.

Yes, I’m running away to hide from the press.
It’s a masterful move in celebrity chess,
which, rather like football, is a beautiful game,
with lots of own goals and fistfuls of shame.

So I’m going to Belgium to be stoic and strong,
to figure out slowly where I went wrong.
Then I’ll come home and kick all the gossip into touch.
Who’d have thought that my private life mattered so much?