Those of us that had been up all night were in no mood for coffee and donuts, we wanted strong drink. We were, after all, the cream of the national sporting press.

That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn't entirely conquer - he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.

Most people who deal in words don't have much faith in them and I am no exception.

Given my calling I had to stumble across people who felt the same way. I was a young reporter.

Hope rises and dreams flicker and die. Love plans for tomorrow and loneliness thinks of yesterday. Life is beautiful and living is pain.

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning.

We have bigger things to brood on and enormous reasons for wallowing in terminal craziness until we finally hit bottom.