SPORTY THINGY OF THE WOTSIT

As I was heading out through the lobby on what can only be described as a “mid-morning comfort break”, the office window-cleaner (always a benchmark for open-mindedness, fair play and PC opinions) has just given me what he describes as a “hot tip” for “Sporty-Person of the Year” (or somesuch) --- some golfist or other.

He was NOT impressed when I (rather wittily, I thought) suggested that Alistair Cook might get it ---  (he's a very “literal-minded” chap, our window-cleaner - or at least he appears to be - and seemed not to detect the slight but inevitably wicked glint in my eye when I mentioned this - until recently at least - most unpopular of captains of men…) 

“It’s NEVER a cricketer!” he spluttered incredulously, “Well, not since Botham, and he deserved it…”

’Twas ever thus… (but I remain to be convinced that the general public get all that excited by golfists either…)

Still, you heard it here second, if you want to bung a fiver down…

SNOOKER LOOPY

I'll have to admit that, for the first time in quite a while, and to the general disappointment of my nearest and dearest who were consequently bored to tears by it, I went a bit "snooker loopy" this year.

I mean, I do usually get sucked into the Final of the World Championship over the May day weekend most years, but this year I do seem to have seen an awful lot of the rest of it, too, even though I am, at best, only an annual "fan" of the game, as it's something I only seem to discover during the particular fortnight of that tournament each year and then forget about for the other fifty weeks.

Do I hear a "Thank heavens!" being muttered somewhere close by…?

What is it with me and sports that have to be played out over several days, anyway? I don't seem able to give a rat's kidney for anything played over eighty or ninety minutes, but give me something that grinds away at slabs of days of my time, and I'm happy as Larry...

I think that this year, however, I was finding it all rather relaxing, which was something that I really needed after the events of the last couple of years, and it was all strangely soporific, right up until I found that I began to actually care about the result of the particulars game that I'd been sucked into.

Still, I know that I'll never get drawn towards Sheffield to watch any of it "live" and in person. Me and Sheffield have too traumatic a history for that kind of nonsense, and it would, of course, involve sitting with "people" which is something that I would find rather difficult, I fear.

I do wonder what it was that drew me in so much this year, though. Perhaps it was the fact that it all started off over the Easter weekend which helped to draw me in? Two lengthy weekends with little to do in quick succession topping and tailing the tournament might just have been convenient when there's "nothing else on" and I'm sitting on the sofa feeling a little stuck for ideas or energy.

A few years ago, when I worked from home more regularly than I do now, putting the TV on in the daytime used to be something that I'd occasionally do so that it could keep me company, and I found that the soft clacking of the balls and the polite applause used to help a fortnight tick along quite nicely until the Test Matches would start up again. This is, incidentally, the kind of madness that can cause an addiction to "Bargain Hunt" and is really not recommended for anyone.

Student life in South Wales was what first drew me into the weird world of TV snooker. A couple of frames watching Steve "Safety Shot" Davis bury our then-hero Jimmy White  in 1984 and hearing bellows of "It's po-o-o-rtable, man!" drifting along the corridor and I was hooked, just in time for that epic against Dennis Taylor in 1985…

I still have fond memories of dashing to the off-licence when it opened at 7 o'clock (yes, I'm so old that they used to actually close in my day…) to stock up for the evening and settling down in one of my neighbour's rooms (because he had a colour TV…!) to watch it, and the adrenaline surge of excitement which came with seeing Steve Davis finally overcome at God-knows-what o'clock in the morning to much hollering and cheering which found us feeling rather sheepish the next morning when we came face to face with everyone we'd kept awake.

Still, it was a good night, and never to be repeated. The next year proved disappointing when Joe Johnson seemed to wrap it all up whilst we were still in the pub during the afternoon and another great night in was denied us.

Or was that the year after…?

Still, Joe Johnson… Where the heck did he come from…?

I've never quite had the same experience since, though, as I did back in 1985. For various reasons, my interest has ebbed and flowed over the intervening decades, and some years I've hardly seen any of it at all, but this year it drew me back in and, to be honest, I'm rather glad it did, because those last two games featuring Mark Selby conjured up a little of the old magic for me and, whilst it felt a bit of a shame to see Ronnie O'Sullivan deprived of his sixth title, in the end I was rather pleased that the "Jester from Leicester" prevailed, because, somehow, that proved that the game can still prove interesting and surprise even a jaded old cynic like me.

Right, you can probably wake up now… I think my dull observations on what other people find dull pastimes is all but over.

Well, at least until the Test Matches begin again...

ALBERT SANTATHORNE

When this little bearded chap turned up in the background of the interviews during the world snooker, my first unkind thought was that "Willie Thorne's let himself go…"

Then I thought about what Santa does for the rest of the year, before remembering Uncle Albert from "Only Fools and Horses…"

Oh, how I chuckled to myself, and there I was, on the very brink of posting such merriment out into the great big world when, suddenly, I had pause for thought.

Because all of these thoughts were, of course, completely wicked, wicked, wicked ones to be having.

Our hirsute friend has probably given more to life than I ever have, and may even have spent much of his youth bayonetting enemy combatants, as well as raising a family (or not, obviously - I know nothing of his life apart from his facial hair choices), so who am I to mock his appearance…? After all, at least he's dragging himself over to the shooting range that is Sheffield (the brave, brave fellow) instead of merely settling down in front of the telly and allowing the various pies, puddings and chocolate bars within arm's reach to wend their merry way to my ever-expanding fat backside.

But that sort of thinking, rather sadly, now seems to be the way of the world, and, despite what I occasionally try and persuade myself about, I'm just as bad as everybody else when it comes to snap judgements based solely upon appearances.

Mind you… Having just confessed, in a very public manner, to watching the snooker on TV, now I'm wondering just what conclusions you are currently leaping to about my pathetic, miserable little life…

(This is one of those "postponed" postings that I mentioned earlier - just to show you what you're missing - but, you know, even numbers and all that…)

BLOWN IT

A well-known sporting pundit (and former performer), a fellow who nowadays is more likely to be selling the virtues of a packet of crisps asked a question the other day which went along the lines of "I wonder if non-sports fans know what they're missing?" to which my immediate reaction was to think "Well, yes we do, crisp boy, but we just find it hard to give a damn..." remembering those terrifying days in the Student Union Bar when a load of huge Welshmen would strip naked and sing at each other from table tops after playing in a game of rugby whilst wondering what some of us found so fascinating about the books we were trying to read.

Different strokes, fellas, and all that. I wonder if they knew what they were missing, other than a head full of braincells the next day...

Despite many attempts over the years, football continues to baffle me, as indeed does rugby and tennis, and the Olympics all but passed me by last year, so much so that I still don't recognise many of the Joe Farriers, the Bradley Hardacres, and the Jennifer Ennistons who are paraded in front of me as beacons of something or other by the various advertisers. On one brief morning I did get sucked in by the rowing finals, much as I had during the Greece event eight years before, but I couldn't tell you now who actually won what.

I do, of course, appreciate that a lot of people get very passionate about their team, or a particular individual when they're playing well, and some might even say that this is because they just admire watching someone else reach a pinnacle of human achievement that they themselves never could (although I expect some admire their wealth a little more), so you can't say that we don't know what we're missing because it's there, being paraded before us constantly by the media whether we're have any interest in the tournament in question or, perhaps more importantly, don't.

And it would be very easy to complain at the wall-to-wall blanket coverage of any of these "minority interests" but generally we don't, seeing that it makes a lot of people very happy, although, if you turned it all around and, for example, replaced an evening's programming with a ballet or an opera, I suspect the outcry would be phenomenal.

Which brings us, not very neatly, to Sunday afternoon's Champion's League Cricket Final which was much curtailed by rain but which did eventually get played in the early hours of Sunday evening.

It seems very strange to me that the mere mention of the game of cricket can bring the almost immediate response of "it's SOOO boring" from people who seem quite keen on those 11-a-side kickabouts that I find so tedious, because I found it fascinating, and, judging by the bellowing I was doing at my portable long-wave radio (for I have no sports-based TV channels available to me, obviously) at 8.30 on Sunday evening as the whole thing came down to the last ball after another typical display of ineptitude by the home side in managing to once again snatch defeat from the very jaws of victory, did remind me of that salt and fat peddling pundit and what he had said.

Yes, I do sometimes know what you're missing, but it seems that almost everyone else does too, and the focus of each one of us on our own particular passions is not to be sneered at...

SPORTING QUESTIONS

My lack of interest in sport does tend to bring up a lot more questions that it answers, not least because, in a lot of cases, I really don’t have a clue who most of the people being talked about are, and what it is that they are supposed to have done to earn the respect, awe and high esteem with which many people seem to regard them.

“Do you regard me with dread…?”

“No… With astonishment…!”

Such matters can lead to all manner of awkward situations when I fail to recognise those faces who seem so familiar to almost everyone else and my own ignorance of such matters is exposed for what it is.

Obviously, if I wanted to, I could research all of this and find out more, but I really am no interested enough and, to be perfectly frank, would generally prefer not to “know who THAT is” when they’re right in front of me and getting “in my way…”

Of course, the whole world of sport is constantly and perhaps inadvertently conjuring up a whole wealth of profound and strangely fascinating questions which probably ought to be answered if we felt the need to.

Questions like “Is Manchester United…?”

“Is Oldham Athletic…?”

“Are there many Wolverhampton Wanderers…?”

“Is that Professor across the room a Hamilton Academical…?”

“Who exactly is the Queen of the South…?”

“Stanley, have you ever visited Accrington, Stanley…?”

Some of the many personalities also seem to bring with them a whole host of worrying questions, too…

“What gives Tiger Woods…?”

“Was Curtis Strange…?”

“Was Billie Jean King…?”

“Was Niki Lauda…?” (And what exactly was he louder than…?)

“Did Martina Never-rat-a-lover…?”

“Was Virginia Wade…?” (And how much did she weigh…?)

“Never mind his ability to drive, can that Nigel Mansell…?”

“Was Ricky Ponting?”

“Did Jimmy Connors?”

“How do I get to Graham Hill?”

“How highly polished is a Barry Sheene?”

“How secure are Gordon Banks?”

“Was George Best?”

“She is a nice girl, but can Eric Cantona?”

“Did you train weekly or Daley, Thomson?”

“Did Zola Budd?”

“As well as being a Cricketer, was Phil Tufn’all?”

“Was there ever a Geoffrey Boycott?”

Finally (you’ll no doubt be pleased to hear), my inner geek is almost duty bound to ask: “Was Bjorn Borg?” (“Resistance is futile!”)

This frivolous piece of nonsense was, of course, all inspired by my own ’umble contributions to a recent Twittergame, and why ever not…?

After all, you do have to take your inspiration from wherever you can find it and it does, of course, demonstrate once and for all the limits of my own (very) small spectrum of sporting knowledge…

NAMES AND FACES

I do struggle with names and faces. For about twenty years they’ve failed to sink in, so much so that even when I occasionally go to Head Office, I still fail to recognise two of the three people I normally deal with, so that if they walk past me without introducing themselves, I wouldn’t recognise them even if they were in a Police line-up. Names I really am appalling at remembering, which is why, I suspect, that “social networking” has never come all that easily to me. Tell me your name and I will have forgotten it before you’ve finished the sentence. This, I realise, is not something that I ought to be proud of, I merely mention it as a fact about myself that I am learning to come to terms with. If you’ve ever bred since I have met you, just be aware that I simply do not recall the names of any of your offspring, and am never likely to unless I spend an enormous amount of time in your company (which, I imagine, is pretty unlikely...).

This is particularly true of so-called “celebrity culture…” I kind of think that my own “pop culture” knowledge stopped expanding to any great extent (with a very few exceptions) about twenty years ago, although I then have to remind myself of that mildly humiliating “New Year” party at the Theatre in the late 1990s where, as a game, they put pictures up of people in the news the previous year, and I didn’t recognise many of them either, so perhaps I’ve always been like this...?

It was the year of “TellyTubbies” and the person I’d been paired up with to play this game gave up on me in disgust when I couldn’t name any of them, never mind the rest of the faces being displayed.

I suppose it’s just got something to do with not having young people in my life to keep on boring me to death about any of the “current” culture – Pop Stars, Bad TV and the like - which might excite them, but which I would probably find terribly dreary. Or perhaps it’s just because I don’t go out much, or that I just tend to focus upon the things that interest me.

The problem is (if it is a “problem” at all…) that I have no interest in soap operas, or modern pop music performers, or TV talent shows, or any sport other than cricket, which means that most of the people that “everyone else” seems familiar with kind of fail to register on my personal radar.

This can cause problems. Whenever I do see an advert on TV, more often than not it is implied that I might know who the actors or “personalities” featuring in it are in order to get the joke, but, usually, I simply don’t have a clue about who they are, which rather ruins the intended “jokes” I suppose…

Once upon a long ago, I stood outside a large sports shop during a year when there was one of those “footballing world cup” events, which always appear to be on, was occurring (it may even have been THIS year as I vaguely remember there having been one...), and they had some huge stickers on the windows of some footballists. I kept wondering why small people kept stopping and pointing. I knew that they were not pointing at me, you understand, but I couldn’t understand why they were so fascinated by the pictures of what I assumed to be clothing models. It turned out that they were the then current England footballing team, which only goes to show…

There are other problems with not being all that interested in certain other events, too. There was a bloke in a suit chatting to someone on TV a few weeks ago and I asked who it was, only to be told “Prince William” which only really proves that any Royals that aren’t printed onto my money, or my stamps, are pretty much off my radar, too. I maintained that if he’d been wearing his uniform I would probably have known who he was, but this excuse was greeted with a certain amount of doubt.

I had to be told what an “Adele” was when “Skyfall” came out (although I still couldn’t pick her out of a line up either…) but then I ought to point out that I’m hardly in her “Target Demographic” I would imagine.

Andy Murray and eleven other people...

And I don’t really think that it’s “ignorance” as such, more “disinterest” in a lot of that modern “celebrity culture”, so I kind of blank it all out. You see, I could tell you without even looking it up that the actor who played Professor Zaroff, Joseph Furst, also played the villain in the television play “A Magnum for Schneider” that eventually led to the creation of the “Callan” TV series, but I wouldn’t generally expect anyone else to know that, so why should anyone else expect me to recognise an uncaptioned picture of  the twelve “Sporting Stars” who were nominated on this year’s “Sporting Personality” programme…?

Well I did think that I vaguely recognised the tenniser, but the rest did have me stumped...

This seemed to rather surprise one of my very few connections when I happened to mention this in that FizzBok place, in so far as they remarked upon it after an entire year of being otherwise silent.

“A whole year without commenting...” I thought, metaphorically rolling my eyes in disbelief, “And THIS is what you choose to fixate on…?”

I did wonder, for “comedy” effect, whether it was the current line-up of “Showaddywaddy” but it turned out that apparently it was most definitely NOT (although I suspect that there aren’t all that many people who might know what a “Showaddywaddy” is nowadays, either).

I did also suspect that some people thought that I was just joshing with them, and perhaps pretending to be ignorant of such things, but, perhaps sadly, eleven of those twelve people were (and are) actually all just faces in the crowd to me, and, when I asked if people wanted to fill in the blanks, someone suggested that there might be a “Bradley” in the mix, but failed to point out to me which one it was.

Bradley Whitford? (I’ve heard of him…) Bradley Whitaker? Bradley Wilson? (Lots of Bradleys with surnames beginning with “W” it seems… Although one or two of those might be names I’ve either made up or misremembered...) Brad Pitt…? Or perhaps it was the surname of one of the girls…? Is there a famous sporting Karen Bradley...?

I did wonder whether Picture Number 1 might be a boxer simply because he looked so surprised. Number 4 (I thought) resembled that Princess who’s pregnant (but because I didn’t watch “The” Wedding I remain a little bit vague about what that pair actually look like, as I think I mentioned earlier...) but I didn’t know whether or not she was also a sportsperson. I was pretty certain that Number 5 might be a racing driver judging by his overalls and, obviously, Number 10 is Andy Murray - who I do actually recognise because he’s been around for a while now, but also because of a documentary I saw about the Dunblane thing. I suppose that if you’d made me pick out which one I thought was Bradley Whoever, I would have gone with Picture Number 7 (but only because there’s something vaguely familiar about his face...)

I suppose, if I had been interested enough, I could have found out by a swift internet search (If I’d known their names, or could have been of a mind to...) or by sitting through hours and hours of sporty self-congratulation on a Sunday evening but, really, I couldn’t be bothered because that sort of awards show isn’t something I’d ever want to watch.

Instead, I went to bed at 8.00, hoping, perhaps, that someone else might just take a moment to fill in the blanks, but when I got up (rather ironically to listen to the cricket), the lack of further overnight correspondence meant that I could only surmise that nobody else knew or cared who they were either, which is, at least, encouraging.

So, in the absence of any further information, I’m going to go with (Top Row) Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb; (Lower Row) Harpo, Chico, Groucho, Andy Murray, Zeppo and Gummo.

Unless you know any different...?

Just for the record, and to perhaps prove whatever point needs making here, I’d have got 12/12 for the following bunch if anyone asked... ;-)

IF THE SHOE FITS

I’m sleepy.

Last night it was my turn to wake up in the middle of the night and be totally unable to get back to sleep and consequently spend hour after long dark hour pondering the imponderables, mulling over the big questions, those matters of life, death and taxes and watch the red LED numbers on the radio alarm clock dance their less than merry dance ’til dawn.

The mind can go to some dark places as you lie there thinking, and those thoughts are more than likely to be exactly the kind of thought that would keep you awake even if the stifling heat of another airless night wasn’t already doing so, but the mind can also look into some very crazy corners, too, and you can find yourself asking the sorts of questions that you might not feel compelled to ask in polite society, or if your mind was slamming down the safety defences and putting itself into gear before you find yourself opening your mouth.

But there are questions that need to be asked and, as I’m sitting here typing away and the mind is still away with the fairies and still trying to work out whether or not we successfully managed to get that hi-tech device known as a kettle to function correctly this morning, I can go ahead and ask them, risk the wrath of an unforgiving world as it collectively sucks in its breath and says “You can’t ask that…”

You see my mind has ventured into the choppy waters of considering the Paralympics, and those are waters into which you should only dip your toe with the very greatest of care so as to not cause offence. These are waters in which the wrong choice of phrase can land the phrase-maker in very hot water indeed, and so we must tread cautiously and plunge headlong with the very greatest of care.

However, it’s a question that bothers me and so I feel that I ought to ask it, if only to get a satisfactory answer. You see I’m not very well up on how the mysticism of the Olympics works. As far as I understand it, the “spirit” of the Olympics is “passed on” from city to city during the closing ceremony of the Olympic games and so the “magic dust” that was handed to and sprinkled upon London back in 2008 has now been given to Rio de Janeiro and so, presumably, no longer hangs over the south of England.

Two weeks later the Paralympics begin.

Does this mean that the “Olympic spirit” has left the country before the Paralympics occur? Or does the Paralympics have its own separate “bubble” of Olympicity that exists in a kind of parallel world to the “main event” and that countries could bid to host them separately from having the Olympic Games themselves? In which case, why isn’t the Paralympic “torch relay” going from town to town and, perhaps more to the point, why doesn’t the Olympic closing ceremony happen after BOTH sets of Games have been completed…?

Otherwise it’s just a matter of convenience that the host nation just happens to have built a load of state-of-the-art facilities that the Paralympics can be held in. I mean, the Winter Olympics now seem to exist in a completely separate and distinct universe to the Summer Games, so why isn’t the Paralympic version treated with quite the same reverence…?

I told you that it wasn’t a “comfortable” question…

Mind you, it could have been worse. Ever since Channel Four have been running their little pre-Olympic “moments” with the athletes I’ve been wondering about the running shoes of athletes with only one foot and, whilst I accept that it’s a very “awkward” question, I’m assuming that they have one very specialist, very well designed shoe designed for them and they don’t just simply get a pair “off the peg” as it were and throw one away or have to come up with some kind of an agreement to “pair up” with an other athlete with the opposite problem to deal with the “other” shoe…?

I told you that I hadn’t engaged my brain yet…

My mind has also ventured into darker waters and noticed that whilst the Olympics were on and attempting to show the world the very best of all things British, the main news story for the last week or more, on the rare occasions when the media could be bothered to mention such things existed, involved the death of a child and one of the very worst manifestations of family life in our allegedly “broken” Britain, so perhaps my cynicism is inappropriate and I should not be making light of the great achievements made in the name of the mighty juggernaut we call “sport” over the past few weeks.

After all, without such things to distract us, none of us would (or should) be able to get that much sleep if we allow a society to develop in which such things can happen…

29-17-19-65

It was all going so swimmingly. Right up until the last few seconds when the numbers stood at 29-16-19-64 there was still a hope that there would be balance, some kind of even-ness to their beauty. After all, all it took was one of the numbers in either column one or three to jump across (not that this was likely) and there’d be a perfect set of even numbers (either 28-16-20-64 or 30-16-18-64) and the statistics could rest easily for all time in their even-tempered symmetry.

Then, at the aptly named eleventh hour, column two got an additional number and chaos was allowed to reign, and, because it was the very last opportunity, that very chaos was going to reign forever (or at least until the disqualifications start to roll in - they have been known to take back medals a decade later, you know...). All four rows of odd numbers that sent a chill right to the very heart of this observer who now knew that whilst everything had come together spectacularly well for the team (and jolly well done to them for that), the numbers were not going to be happy.

They never are when they’re forced to be steadfastly “odd” and the numbers… well, they do not lie.

Happily, the Olympics in London managed to pass by with very little in the way of hitches despite the doom and gloom predicted even during that miserable first few days when the seats remained almost as empty as TeamGB’s medal-wins column. For myself I was, of course, never a fan, and managed to avoid the event for at least a week before being tempted to take a little peek at a tiny bit of rowing.

I think perhaps that I was full of fear. With the announcement of the “win” back in 2005 came the devastating tragedy of the bombs the very next day and, because I am a very nervous sort, the kind who is easily terrorised by fear (and, if they make you change your lifestyle then it seems that they do win…), and also because I am a very poor soothsayer (any predictions made in these pages are hardly likely to provide “Nostradamus-like” ructions three centuries hence), the whole notion of a “world event” happening in my country in this political climate quite frankly terrified me.

As we can now see, nothing that bad actually happened. The Games have been consigned to history and we can all relax and get on with our lives.

History is, in the end, what these things tend to be about. We can of course celebrate our victories and achievements at the time they happen but it is in the crucible of time passed that most things are eventually judged. “How can Rio top London?” Well, in exactly the same way as London “topped” Beijing and Beijing “topped” Athens, and so on, and so on.

As people, we very much live in the “now” and find that whatever is going on right this second must somehow be “better” than anything that has gone before simply because we are experiencing it and it has the heartbeats and pulses of people who are alive right now and not just on some old videotape or picture book.

But history is an unforgiving dictator. In fifty years or so, many of those athletes we have so recently enjoyed getting their successes will be very much the same as the elderly folk who were recently dredged up from the last London games in 1948 by those investigative reporters seeking yet another “angle” and who then got looked at in a very peculiar way by the forward-looking, youth-oriented media, as they implied time and again that they were a veritable “Who’s that?” of once household names... and considering the impossible notion of how it could be even plausible that these old and unfamiliar faces had once been great athletes and well-known names and were now almost so very forgotten...? How, they implied, could this possibly be...?

History is, after all, about the big names and players of the game. We recall the Alexanders and the Napoleons and all but ignore the rest of the population apart, perhaps, from their numbers. They are destined to be little more than the “thousands” in an army, or the “tens of thousands” of victims of an epidemic and little more, except, of course, to those they were once known by, who also fade into obscurity in time’s unforgiving furnaces. 99.99% of all of the people who have ever lived seem to live their entire lives and die without anyone really noticing they were ever there. Series like the rather wonderful “Horrible Histories” seldom talk about anyone other than the well-known figures of the day and the lives of ordinary people are only tackled in the most general way (unless of course they achieved a “stupid death”) because that is, unfortunately, the way of things. Armies may consist of thousands of the great unwashed, but it is the Generals who get remembered or those who make an exceptionally brave choice and are awarded a medal for doing so.

Medals again, you see…? Medals seem to guarantee at least a line in the history books to prove that you were once here. This is why we can see the appeal of getting a medal at the Olympics. Suddenly you’ve done something. Suddenly you can have your moment in the spotlight when the whole world is looking at you and knows your face if not your actual name. Suddenly the world knows that you were once alive and the very best at doing whatever it was that you did in your glorious moment in the sun.

Because fame is a fickle beast. Most of us fail to realise that names as “world famous” as perhaps Madonna or David Beckham will eventually fade back into obscurity. Many of the most well-known and almost universally adored faces of early Hollywood movies who were at the time absolutely the most famous faces on the planet, people like Mary Pickford, or Douglas Fairbanks, or even more recent ones like Cary Grant, can just extract a look of bafflement when presented to later generations nowadays. It is a very rare person indeed who survives to become an “icon” for more than one generation, and, more often than not, this is because their “talent” (or perhaps their “notoriety”) was snuffed out far sooner than even they might have expected it to.

It may be difficult to imagine a world where no-one knows who David Beckham is – or was – but it will happen far sooner than you think, as it did to those massively famous Victorians who once had the world at their feet but whose names now mean absolutely nothing at all; Sarah Bernhardt, Little Titch, or General Tom Thumb. How many could pick out their picture now with that much certainty…? But once upon a long ago, each of them had the world at their feet.

So, my friends, seize your moment in the spotlight, embrace it and enjoy it. Enjoy the fact that people will see your face and know who you are because one day this too shall pass and the spotlight will shine somewhere else and someone might very well be asking “whatever happened to” you, or come calling at your lonely door having been told that, yes indeed, the old man or woman living down there in the basement flat once ran faster than anyone else had ever run before, “but you wouldn’t know it to look at him now, would you…?”

BIPOLARLYMPICS

I suppose, in the end, I had rather a “bipolar” relationship with the recent Olympic Games as it generally grabbed much of the rest of the world into its sticky paw and had it “gripped” and mesmerised by its sheer bulking juggernaut-like presence. Perhaps, like an occupying army, eventually it just wore the resistance down.

It is, after all, very difficult to prove a negative and whilst there’s seldom anything more tedious than someone going on and on about something that they have seen in person (“I was actually there…!” – Yawn!!!) there’s something more fundamentally tiresome about someone constantly bleating on about what they didn’t do when everyone else was, as I found out when I had to ask recently who the “balding bloke in the suit” was, and it turned out to be that Prince who the rest of the world (it seems) saw getting married a while back…

“Yes, we get it…” comes the fatigued response “How very different you think you are…”

Ah well… “Curses...!” etc., as my old friend and mentor in the ways of the arts of fair play, a certain Mr Dick Dastardly, might have muttered under his breath...

Still, having been firmly fixed inside the “anti” camp for most of the last seven years, mostly because I know how tiresomely single-minded my fellow countrymen and women can get about all things of a “sporting” nature, I managed to avoid pretty much all of the “moving spectacle” of the bit of fire being shunted around the countryside and never really felt as if I was missing out on all that much.

A bit of banter in the office and a few pithy words published on the internet and I was happy enough that I felt aware that it was going on and could talk about it but had no need to engage with it. Similarly, the much talked about opening ceremony happened whilst I was on holiday and trying to get some sleep and it’s becoming increasingly apparent (a recent edition of “Media Show on Radio 4 said that the viewing figures are teetering on the brink of thirty million) that I might very well be one of the few people left in the country who hasn’t seen any of it, and, from what people have been saying, that might turn out to be something that I might very well regret in years to come.

Certainly I’ve had conversations that started along the lines of “From what people are saying, I actually wish I’d seen it now…” as I roll my eyes skywards, slap my forehead, and try not to point out that the option was actually available and a choice was made which seemed perfectly reasonable at the time…

Ho-hum…

In the end though, it really is the broadcasting juggernaut that breaks you down and finds you weeping in a corner saying “Make it stop!” as the fiercely gung-ho, enthusiastic and blatantly partisan presenters find any possible avenue to get you “interested” and “involved”, no matter how reluctant you might be.

If you switched on a TV set at all, especially out here beyond the edge of reason where our “FreeView” is limited to whatever signal strength is evolutionarily strong enough to bounce through our relay transmitter, the whole event was, quite simply unavoidable, even if all you wanted to do was switch on and watch a bit of news and find out what was going on in the world.

“Sport” it seemed was the answer to that, and it was wall-to-wall on most of the channels which we usually visit and, as that “Media Show” item explained to me (because every programme had to have some kind of “Olympic slant” during that period, it seemed…), there was “live streaming” across twenty four channels if you had the right kind of equipment to receive such an onslaught, as well as being online if that really wasn’t enough for you.

Even if you went across to a “non-BBC” channel the adverts would be along within minutes bombarding you with as many tenuous Olympic tie-ins as they could and encouraging you to cheer on the really ghastly-named “TeamGB” whilst cramming as much pizza down your throat as was humanly possible, or wrapping your child in “Union Flag” nappies, or necking back enough alcohol to knock out a show-jumping horse.

Do the horses get medals too, I wonder…?

Incidentally, I went to Tesco the other evening and the “Go TeamGB” signs were everywhere as the Great British Public waddled around the aisles cramming their trollies full of cheap beer, pizza and crisps. I did wonder – briefly – where they wished this “TeamGB” to “go” to, but, as I walked around, I mused that wherever it was, very few members of this particular segment of the “team” were likely to be going there very swiftly…

You simply could not escape from the vice-like grip it had on the schedules, and, as the six minutes of actual competition which I actually did not “channel-surf” away from (now there’s an Olympic sport I could try out for…), or just read Teletext over, turned out to be those two rowing race finals that “TeamGB” won, I think I did okay, really, and I hope that they got a lot out of my particular contribution and input to the national team’s efforts.

In the end, though, as it once had been with the cricket all those years ago, it was the statistics that finally drew me in and got me talking, sneaking along at the last like the double-dealing do-badders they are. Oh, I couldn’t really give a monkey’s about “Gold” or “Silver” or “Bronze” but those funky little numbers on those pesky little tables started to gain my attention, and it was to them that I was drawn time and again as the sixteen days drew to their inevitable end.

Drat! Drat! And Double Drat!

STAYING IN

I mentioned recently about how I had been running the risk of emerging from my chrysalis and threatening to go out rather than remaining in my safe little cocoon. Well, that may very well be the case and I’m sure that I’ll be reporting the horrors involved in that anxious little exercise on some other day once I’ve managed to process them.

Or not, obviously…

But, for the most part, “not going out” remains the default setting, even though the whole raft of thoughts that spring to mind when I’m merely sitting inside my little house and sensing the forces of entropy slowly ripping both it and myself to fragments probably mean that I really should NEVER be allowed to stay in at all.

However, because the written words are still trickling rather than flooding out of me, my mind has to go somewhere to get its fun and to keep its little grey cells from setting into stone, and so it tends to need to ever-so briefly spark off on all manner of topics in some kind of vague attempt at keeping me sane.

Sometimes it is so very pleased by the thoughts that it has triggered that it spends a good solid ten minutes persuading me back into the shady and sordid world of “microblogging” so that I can store the thought there being happily ignored for later use, which is why sometimes “random-seeming” and “seemingly pointless” thoughts suddenly pop up for no very good reason in my TwitWorld stream.

Just the same as everyone else, then…

Either that or I’ll end up “favourite-ing” something interesting sounding just so I can easily find it again later on when I don’t actually get around to reading it or when I mention to someone that I saw something “interesting” earlier but then struggle to find it when I need to and the moment gets lost.

I am actually naturally averse to “favourite-ing” (not least because of the ghastly word composite it creates) because it really only encourages them…

But random weekend thoughts (“I wonder whether Freddie Jones was ever tempted to utter the old actor’s joke “Toby or not Toby...?” when his son was born...?”) …or bizarre fragments of conversations about books that amuse me enough to want to write them down (“There can’t be a hand gesture for “smut” because it would be far too rude...”) …or couch-based responses to TV ads (“Is the answer to the SubWay question “By exploi...?” [PHONE RINGS] Sorry, that’s just my lawyer saving me from myself…” – Yep, I bottled out there, didn’t I…?) or even the programmes themselves (“Not convinced Geoff Boycott didn’t “play for the team”. I just don’t think that the team realised that his stickability was what was needed.”) sometimes get immortalised for no very good reason that I can think of afterwards.

That last remark reminds me at least that the cricket has returned to keep me distracted, even though my hopes of “my” team’s success on that score are unlikely to be satisfied after the drubbing that they received from South Africa at the Oval. Perhaps that’s where my admiration for “stickability” like Geoffrey’s came from…? Who knows? I am aware however that this generally soggy summer has not meant that I’ve been quite as “involved” with the cricket as I usually am. Some days it’s been a struggle to remember that there’s actually been a game scheduled which is, to say the least, unusual for me…

Perhaps it’s just been the proliferation of “other sports” this year that have pushed the game of cricket even further down the list of things that the nation shows any interest in.

This, of course, has led to a proliferation of reasons that I shouldn’t be allowed to stay at home with my mind unfettered by the babble of anything other than those fabled “media sources” because it just makes me ranty when I hear obvious madness like that spouted on Radio 4 by Kris Akabusi as he burbled on about the “Olympian Gods” for no very good reason or when the BBC News spouts some drivvle like a description of a family travelling “All the way from St Helens” to be “part of the National conversation”

“Eh…?” says my brain. “Did I hear that properly…?”

Meanwhile I did crack at the weekend and finally found myself  watching some rowing as I channel surfed looking for “5Live Sports Extra” on my television. I have been known to quite enjoy watching a bit of rowing and there seemed to be a race on so I saw the last minute or so of it and “Team GB” won a gold medal. A few minutes I was channel hopping again and did the same thing and got the same result.

“This getting gold medals lark seems easy” I thought, “I don’t know what everyone was complaining about. They’ve just got two of the things and I’ve only been watching for less than six minutes…”

I decided to quit whilst I was ahead and went back to Headingley for the rest of the day.

Other matters have come along to test my ire, however. Like the person on TwitWorld complaining that he’d witnessed two different parents on quite separate situations on the same day describing Northern Ireland as being part of Great Britain (Tssk! The things that rile people, eh…?) but then I did notice later on that the BBC website did change it to “Great Britain and Northern Ireland” on their “medals table” thing. Ah yes, the “medals table…” finally there’s something to get my statistician’s heart thumping. It’s all about the numbers, you know…

But then TwitWorld is a peculiar place. Something only has to be briefly “trending” for someone to go and snaffle a few thoughts and turn it into a news item. Similarly, there only has to be the slightest whiff of “outrage” (even misguided outrage) for a mighty organ like The Guardian to back down over its perfectly legitimate use of the word “niggardly…”

Back in the so-called “real world” even staying at home can cause me to risk first of apoplexy when it becomes readily apparent that I’m going to need a PhD in “Recycling” to successfully sort out our rubbish in future... but that kind of thing, I fear, is the kind of thing I should only really rant about in another place…

I really should try to get out more.

HE LOVES ONLY GOLD

I’ve kind of avoided commenting upon the London Festival of Hoops lately not least because it’s obviously not really my “thing” and nobody seems all that much interested in what the naysayers have to say at the moment when all the media attention seems focused on putting a positive spin on the whole wretched thing, but a comment from an old friend of mine who struggles along with more than her fair share of problems put it into a whole new perspective.

In her point of view, millions of pounds have been invested in those who are (almost by definition) the most “able-bodied” people in the country, whilst those who are “less-abled” (by means of illness or injury or any number of other reasons), face cutbacks to their services and benefits and almost unimaginable hardships as we strive to keep the country’s budget under control.

Yet somehow the necessary billions were found at the back of some sofa somewhere to pay for this sixteen-day blowout, presumably by making the assumption that all of those long-suffering people were somehow trying to screw the system and didn’t actually have anything wrong with them at all.

And that’s not taking into account the millions spent on advertising to link almost any product – no matter how inappropriately - to “the games” somehow upon the assumption that we’re all utterly fascinated by it all, and creating a TV schedule that can only either suck you in to the whole ghastly business or leave you watching old reruns from a time before the world went mad.

Still, the DVDs are getting a hammering and the recording backlog on the DVR is having inroads made into it, so “yay!”

Naturally, you can’t ignore the fact that, in the seven years since London accidentally “won out” to Paris, the whole financial system has managed to spiral into the kind of chaos which was totally unpredictable on 2005, but somehow when you see that the same old wealthy faces are still enjoying pretty much the same benefits of the system that they always did, and going shopping instead of sitting in the corporate seats that they’ve managed to wangle for themselves before heading back to the yachts bought from the personal profits made by mishandling the money the rest of us have earned, it’s truly hard to believe that they have made anything like the sacrifices that everyone else seems expected to, and you can’t help but wonder whether less of their tax money was spent on the shindig than that of the average working shmoe…

Meanwhile, my own countrymen seem to be failing to cover themselves in glory, and I’m not just referring to the medal tally, because when I use the term “countrymen” I don’t mean the bizarrely-monickered “Team GB” which seems designed to once again imply that “we’re all in this together” despite the fact that I’m not running or jumping anywhere, and the only medal I would ever be likely to win is if they offered one for sitting in an armchair reading a damned fine paperback, but then that bizarre use of the word “we” whenever a sportsperson achieves anything has always bewildered me.

Ah well, I suppose “we” did all invest in supporting “them” in “their” training programmes…

No the “countrymen” to whom I refer are those who seem to think that it’s okay to abuse a young lad who was trying his best for “only” managing to gain a fourth place in a world class field as if that’s simply not “good enough” even though by even being in that event he’s achieved far more than the vile abuser, sitting in the safety and comfort of his dark and distant room is ever likely to…

But then, this ridiculous notion that only gold really matters in these types of tournaments has been growing over the years to an almost ridiculous level, not least because our beloved media seem to only value those who achieve the “star prize” and almost dismiss (or at best grudgingly accept) the “also rans” as if the whole country is existing in some kind of grotesque parody of a school sports day attended by a population of those most vile of creatures, the “competitive mums and dads”…

We seem to have been infected by a modern British disease that seems to make us believe that winning at any cost is all that matters and that second and third place is almost dismissed in a – let’s not forget – world class field. I was reading some of the backlash to this small but irritating tale when one of the most vocal critics tried to defend his position by suggesting that this idea that second or third place is “good enough” is a “British disease” in itself, which is the point that I decided that I really, really didn’t want to have to deal with a country full of people like that any more and decided to have nothing more to do with it, and went away back to my armchair and paperback and decided to put myself into training for the “disgusted tutting” tournament, should we ever have one.

I do wonder, however, whether there’s this idea going around that, by being “host nation”, you should automatically be guaranteed a slew of gold medals but, unless you’re one of those supreme sporting nations like Russia, Australia, America or China, that seems highly unlikely, and they would, of course, have probably got their huge stack of medals no matter where the games were held.

I sometimes think that this is why people seem so eager to attract the Footballing World Cup back to these shores at some future date, almost as if by merely hosting that it would automatically guarantee a win for the home side, no matter how poor they actually were, just because that worked for England back in 1966.

So they tell me.

Presumably that is to dismiss all of the hard work involved in actually being any good at what you do, and, ultimately, as we continue to endure this whole wretched business of this carnival of “Running, Jumping and Standing Still” I kind of think that we may have begun to rather miss the whole point (or “spirit”) of the entire exercise…