72. Let's make it more interesting

 

I no longer play any kind of sport.  I’m too old, too fat and neither of my legs works in the manner for which they were designed.  

I played my last ever game of rugby when I was 29; my last ever football match when I was 34 and the last time I played cricket was in 2004.  I could still play darts, pool, or skittles but none of them is a sport.  They are games.  

What is it about an activity that makes it a sport and not a game?

I used to think that a sport was something that couldn’t be participated in while the contestant was smoking or drinking alcohol.  I no longer think that works because I can remember several works-league, 20-over cricket matches I played in when I saw a fielder in the outfield having a smoke.

I was guilty once myself of drinking beer during a rugby match.  That so incensed the referee that he booked me.  The fact that it happened during a ten-minute hiatus while a seriously injured player was being treated and the beer was offered to me by a spectator did nothing to assuage his ire.

This is a better distinction, I think:  A sport is an activity for which a participant must change into different footwear.

That consigns bridge, chess and possibly even golf into the “game” category where they belong.

The only time I have ever rung into a radio phone-in programme was while listening to an interview with someone who had recently become a Chess Grandmaster.  Throughout the discussion, chess was referred to as a “sport”. 

“If chess is a sport,” I said (I don’t know how many people were listening at 2:15 in the morning), “then so is doing crosswords, playing Monopoly or Scrabble or Poker.  Any activity that you can do while drinking pints of beer and smoking a pipe cannot be called a sport.  Chess is a game!”

You probably think that settled the matter and you would no doubt be amazed to learn that it did not.  They both told me that I was wrong.  Idiots!

Nowadays I only watch sport on television.  I won’t go to watch live sport.  If I were given tickets to attend a sporting event I would not go.  You see so much more on television.

Watching sport on TV allows you to realise just how things could be improved:

Athletics

Usain Bolt false started in the 100 metres of the World Championship recently and was disqualified.  The watching world was denied what they were all looking forward to with such excitement and anticipation. 

The solution:  Let them all run and afterwards, disqualify anyone who set off too early. Retrospective disqualification is what they do with drug tests, and it would work with false starts too.  Everyone benefits and the only sufferers would be the cheats.

Boxing

Why are there rounds?  When two rutting stags attack each other, they don’t pause every so often for a rest and a drink.  When drunks have a brawl outside a pub on a Friday night, they don’t stop every three minutes to discuss with their mates how things are going.  Boxing should stay as it is but make the contestants fight for up to 30 minutes without stopping.

Cricket

Things have changed considerably since the Laws of Cricket were written.  When the height of the wicket was decided the pitches were never covered and they were often soft and spongy.  The ball would rarely bounce over the top as it does now, when the soil is dry, rolled and compacted like concrete.

Make the stumps longer and so make the wicket higher.  And while we’re about it, to redress the balance between bat and ball (the advantage these days is far too much in the batter’s favour), add a fourth stump.

Football (Soccer)

Where to start?  0-0 draws.  Whatever the pundits say, 0-0 draws are not good.  If you are in the crowd watching the game live, a 0-0 draw can be very exciting but remember that I am writing this as a TV viewer.  

When I heard the Arsenal had beaten Chelsea 5-3, I was eager to see the recording of the game but had it ended 0-0, it wouldn’t have mattered how dramatic and exciting the analysts told me it had been, I’d have been up those stairs and asleep before it started.

Make the goals bigger.  150 years ago, the average goalkeeper was five inches shorter than his counterpart today.  To make up for this 7% increase in size, make the goals 7% bigger too.  Now, they are 8 yards wide and 8 feet high  (7.32m x 2.44m).  Increase them to 8 metres by 2.5 metres.  It’s a bit more than 7% but that should do it.

Formula 1 Motor Racing,

Watching Formula 1 motor racing on television is one of the most boring things there is.  In bordometry terms, it is only beaten by NASCAR racing. Some drivers may be marginally better than others, but the cars are the stars.  

Whoever has the best car will be in pole position. 

Whoever is in pole position will be first out of Bend 1 and,

Whoever is the first out of Bend 1 will win. 

Once the cars have negotiated the first bend, the race, from a spectator’s point of view, is usually over.

I’ve got the answer.  Instead of 24 cars lining up and then following each other round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round for two dull boring hours, how about putting them into two groups of 12?

Group A will race clockwise, and Group B will go anti-clockwise - two start/finish lines on opposite sides of the track.  Paint a white line down the middle of the track and tell them to drive on the left (just to annoy the Euro Zone members’ teams).  Then we’ll see how good their judgement is and their driving skills are when faced with oncoming traffic.  That could be really exciting.

Golf

Golf is a game of two distinct parts: golf proper and putting. 

When watching on television, the interest is in the tee shot and the approach to the green.  Once the ball is on the green, I go and make a cup of tea.  The hole is too small!  It is 4¼ inches in diameter and it is that size by accident because that was the size of the first ever golf-hole-cutting machine. 

(It’s a similar situation as with the standard track gauge of railway lines.  They are set at 4 feet 8½ inches because that’s the gauge standard set by George Stephenson on the Stockton and Darlington Railway when work began in 1822.  It’s a bit late now to widen it.)

The primordial (in golf time) golf-hole-cutting machine was made and in use before the rules of golf were established in 1891 and since then that size has been set in stone – except it isn’t of course.  Unlike railway tracks, the rules of golf could easily be amended to make the hole bigger and watching putting on television less dull.

If putting is so interesting, why don’t we have putting competitions on television?   Because nobody would watch it, that’s why!  How many viewers would watch "Celebrity Putting" or "Putting with the Stars"?

Rugby Union *

A total mess.  Probably broken beyond repair.  Collapsing scrums, forward passing, crooked feeds, constant offsides and referees who can literally decide the result of a game with one arbitrary whistle blast that no one can see the reason for except for him.  Introduce a referral system as they have in cricket with a maximum of three refused referrals a game.

“Excuse me, Sir,” the England captain may say to the referee.  “Sorry to bother you Sir but I believe that French chap with the beard might have been just a teeny-weeny bit in front of the ball just now when he received the pass that led to the try.  Could I refer it to the match official please, if it’s not too much bother of course?”

*  Thank goodness some people are paying attention. 

Since this was written more than 10 years ago, Rugby Union has now introduced a TMO (Television Match Official) for international games.  The TMO can only rule on exactly what the referee asks them but they can direct the referee’s attention to foul play by speaking to him through his earpiece.

Skiing

Watching slalom on telly can be quite fun because sometimes they fall over and may even break a leg or two, but downhill racing is boring.  Any activity against the clock runs a high risk of bordomness.

I would like to see the Downhill Race be just that – a race.  Let the competitors go off in groups of 8.  No clock and the winner and runner-up go through to the next round until we reach the final 8.  Just like in athletics.  Fantastic!

Squash

B O R I N G !  It must be the only sport where spectator interest wanes as the quality of the players increases.  The court is too small for top professional players.  Sadly, there is no answer.

Tennis

Why two serves?  It’s ridiculous.  It’s worse than golf.  Two different sports: tennis and serving.  Scrap the second serve now.  It’s analogous to someone being allowed a second penalty kick if the first one missed.  Ridiculous!

I’ve got some revolutionary ideas for chess, bridge, scrabble, backgammon, tiddlywinks, Hungry Hippo and Twister too, but as they are all games and not sports, I’ll keep them to myself – for now.

 

71. AMAZING!

I pressed the key to post my piece, “Disappointment” last week and thought to myself,

“That’s it.  I’ve nothing more to say.  I lead a dull and dreary life.   I’m not likely to experience anything interesting, let alone anything worth writing about for a few months or so but maybe I’ll have a memorable Christmas and I can write about that.”

Then along came X Factor!

Caroline and I got back from eating out at half past nine on Saturday evening.  Caroline went straight upstairs to catch up on lesson preparation and I was left alone to flick through the television channels. 

As I came across X Factor I heard one of the judges, who was speaking about one of the performers, use the word “AMAZING” three times in one breath.  I was going to write that it was three times in one sentence but she doesn’t really speak in sentences.

I was so intrigued that this morning, with nothing at all useful or constructive to do^{*(see below)}, I found the programme on ‘Catch up TV on demand’ and played it through.  I fast-forwarded through the acts and listened only to the judges’ comments.  I kept a tally of the use of the word “AMAZING”.

The result was AMAZING.  It was a programme lasting 1 hour 56 minutes.  Take out the time used up by the introduction, the post performance interviews and 16 acts and you can work out that the time that the judges spent talking about the presentations was approximately 25 minutes.

Ready for the bombshell?

Between them, the four judges managed to say the word “AMAZING” 26 times in 25 minutes.  That is a rate of 1.04 “AMAZINGS per minute” (a.p.m.).  I believe that could be a world record.  1.04 a.p.m. over a sustained period will take some beating! 

They were in fantastic form right from the start.  They finished their comments on the first singer at a sprint and had reached 7 a.p.m. in the first 50 seconds until the American judge, who obviously had not completely understood the Judges’ Code of Conduct, cocked it all up by failing to say “AMAZING” even once but they completed their comments on the first female singer with a rating of 4 a.p.m.

With hindsight the comments on the first singer were fairly poignant as she was discarded the following evening while competitors who had barely rated 0.7 a.p.m. were kept in.

Kelly Rowland, the American, made up for her rather broader, more flexible and imaginative vocabulary than the other three judges to some extent by calling the singer, “Baby Girl”, an epithet she was to employ twice more in the course of the evening.

After 20 minutes of the show the count had reached 6 a.p.m. and things were looking good.  Then Gary Barlow, who could possibly still benefit from losing a few more pounds, found the pace too swift and faded badly. 

Not so Louis Walsh.  He was in sparkling form and halfway through the show he appeared to have built up an unassailable lead, with six AMAZINGS ahead of Tulisa who was on four.

But I strongly fancied Tulisa.  She is much younger and has considerably more staying power than Louis who was giving away good looks and more than 35 years in age to her.

I was right.  She stormed through and won at a canter with an individual a.p.m. of 1.76 – a personal best I believe.

This was the final tally:

JUDGE	AMAZINGS
Louis Walsh	8
Tulisa	11
Kelly Rowland	3
Gary Barlow	4

I think that performance was very good.  But more than that - it was also astounding, remarkable and almost astonishing.  It was mind-blowing, just about incredible and certainly miraculous.  It was wonderful but most of all it was truly AMAZING.

That was more of a fantastic performance than you can possibly imagine because these were comments on all 16 acts.  In six to eight weeks time, when the rubbish has been voted off and only those with true talent remain, I can only guess at the sort of rates they may achieve.

When it comes to the Final Night, Tulisa will just sit there repeating the word “AMAZING” over and over again.  It’s going to be *******.

^*Apparently there are loads of things I could have done.

October 25^th                        I watched it again tonight on 'Catch up TV'.   Tulisa is still streaking ahead.  She really is the Frankel of the judging world.  Her skin is almost the same colour as his winter coat.

October 30^th                        What’s going on?  Only four usages of “AMAZING” this week.  Perhaps Kelly’s absence disconcerted them or maybe they are saving themselves for a big flourish soon.  Her stand-in was hopeless.  Tulisa’s getting browner but the a.p.m. is sliding alarmingly.

November 6^th                        A pretty lacklustre performance all round.  I’m becoming more interested in Tulisa’s pronunciation of “world” as “welled” and “girl” as “gell”.

November 13^th                        The a.p.m. was 1.04 at the end of week 1.  It has dropped steadily, week by week.  There was a slight revival this week led, of course by Tulisa and Louis but I really don’t think that the other two are entering into the spirit of the occasion.

November 20^th                        The fight back begins!  It was led of course by Tulisa.  It was a staggering performance this week from the nonpareil of the cliché.  Kelly seems to have given up altogether with an overall a.p.m. of 0.21 over the 7 weeks but Tulisa’s a.p.m. is now at 1.33. 

November 27^th                        The overall average of a.p.m. dropped this week and I think that the reason is fairly obvious:  three of the judges have more or less given up.  Tulisa wins for the eighth week in a row.  She’s unstoppable!

December 3^rd                        They were all very subdued this week.  Tulisa’s lead was so immense before the start of the latest round that the others all seemed rather downcast and restrained.  Gary won but it was a hollow victory because with a remarkable series a.p.m. of 1.20, Tulisa is in a class of her own.

Overall Series Result

	AMAZINGS per minute
Louis Walsh	0.45
Tulisa	1.20
Kelly Rowland	0.28
Gary Barlow	0.43

70. Disappointment

To be disappointed, your expectations have to be thwarted and until a few days ago I don’t think I had ever been disappointed.  Sometimes, of course, things haven’t turned out as I had been hoping.  

I suppose that when Norwich City Football Club, a 3rd Division South side, lost to Luton Town in the FA Cup semi-final of 1959, it was a disappointment but really it was more of an anti-climax after the wonderful run they had enjoyed up until that point.  Of course I was saddened, but that wasn’t real disappointment as I had never expected Norwich to win.  I just hoped that they would.

I thought that the general election result of 1979 was regrettable, but its inevitability prevented it from being a disappointment. 

I have just been watching England play against Scotland in the Rugby Union World Cup.  England played appallingly.  I can’t say that I’m disappointed because England have been awful for the last three games and I wasn't expecting anything better but I am certainly frustrated and dissatisfied. 

Last Tuesday I had my last golf lesson.  I shall have no more.  It’s not that I no longer need them, far from it.  The sad fact is that I have gained nothing from those lessons.  I realised on Tuesday that after six lessons I am worse than I was before the first one and I have made no progress at all.

I am genuinely disappointed.  Six weeks ago, I told you in ‘Bon Mots’ that I had visions of playing golf regularly and often over the coming years.  I expected to.  It would give me something enjoyable to do with my copious leisure time but alas it is not to be.  I wrote that, “I am not quite hopeless but I’m certainly bad.”  That is not the case anymore.  I am definitely hopeless and I am consequently, for the first time in my life, genuinely disappointed about something.

However, I am much better off than Sophie who was only 12 years old when in 2004, she experienced deep, scarring disappointment.

Sophie was a pupil at Fortismere School and one of my students.  Her parents are from Cyprus and her grandparents still lived there.  Sophie told me that they owned and ran a family restaurant in Paphos.

Caroline’s parents own a house in Paphos and before moving to live in the Cayman Islands, Caroline and I would go to stay in their house during August when the temperatures were highest and her parents sought refuge in the cooler climes of England.

One morning in August 2004 when the temperature had reached 39°C (102°F) and it was too hot to do anything outside, I sat under the air conditioning unit inside the house, with the Paphos edition of Yellow Pages on my lap and looked for the restaurant.  I thought I found it and later that evening we went there to have dinner and discovered that it was indeed the right place.  

When I told the who I was, Sophie’s grandparents were absolutely overjoyed to meet us and they made a huge fuss, plying us with unlimited amounts of food, wine and Filfar – a Cypriot liqueur made from oranges.  By the end of the evening, we were well and truly filfared.

They told us that Sophie and her parents had moved up into the Troodos mountains to escape the heat, but they would all be back on Sunday for Grandpa’s birthday party.  

He was to be 80 and we had to come too.   It was a lunch party that would start at around eleven in the morning.  They insisted that we came and told us how surprised and delighted Sophie would be to meet her teacher.

I wasn’t so sure about that but it would have been rude and even churlish not to say “yes” to the invitation and so accept it, we did.

We didn’t want to arrive too early and so we turned up at noon.  I parked the jeep and we went in through a gate in the middle of a long wall that ran along the side of the courtyard.  Directly opposite us and at the end of a ten-metre path was a long series of tables with about 60 people in total sitting along both sides.  Facing us, with two empty seats in front of her, was Sophie.

Grandpa saw us and let out a welcoming yell.  60 people looked at us and started applauding.  I was very embarrassed.  I gave Sophie a little wave and smiled at her.

Sophie certainly looked surprised but not at all delighted.  She nodded towards me and gave me a sort of half smile.  Caroline and I took our seats opposite Sophie and her parents and for the next seven hours or so we had a wonderful time.

It was just getting dark when I found myself talking to Sophie alone for the first time since we arrived.

“What did you think when you saw me come through the gate and walk down the path?” I asked her.

“I was surprised but a bit disappointed,” she said.  “They told me to sit there in that seat and keep an eye on the gate and I’d get a nice surprise.  So I did and then you came in.”

“Oh, I see.  I’m sorry.  I wouldn’t have come if I thought you’d be upset.”

“Oh no, that wasn’t the reason,” she said, before adding wistfully, 

“I thought I was going to get a donkey.”

Now that is a degree of disappointment that neither you nor I can imagine.

 

69. Raspberries

Caroline calls me a “raspberry”.  

In rhyming slang, “raspberry ripple” is a cripple.  Enfield Borough Council, which is more politically correct, nicer and much kinder than my wife, officially classes me as physically disabled and as a result I am entitled to have and to use a “Parking Card for Disabled People”, more usually known as a Blue Badge.  When displayed on my car’s dashboard, it allows me several parking concessions.

I am allowed, obviously, to park in disabled bays in public, supermarket and office car parks but I am also allowed to park on single and double yellow lines anywhere in the country except in the four London boroughs of City of London, Westminster, Camden, and Kensington and Chelsea. 

I always aim to use the disabled bays in car parks.  It is not the fact that they are near to the building that makes them essential for me; it’s the fact that they are considerably wider than ordinary parking bays.

When I bought my current car I intentionally chose one with only two doors. If I open the door as wide as it will go and slide the seat back as far as it will go, I can swivel on my bottom and simply step out. This procedure is reversed when entering it.

The driver’s door of my car is wider than the door of a 4-door saloon and therefore more space is needed to open it fully. Once out of the car I can walk fairly comfortably across the widest car park and back again.  As far as I’m concerned, disabled parking bays could be positioned anywhere in a car park.  They do not have to be close to a door but they do have to be wide.

There is a £1000 fine for the improper use of a disabled parking bay but that fact does not act as any sort of deterrent and I get very cross when fit and able people park in disabled bays.  If there is no blue badge showing on the dashboard and I come across the driver, I often say something.  Usually the person concerned is embarrassed and apologetic.  Sometimes they are not and sometimes they are very aggressive. 

“If you wasn’t a fucking cripple I’d beat your fucking head in.” 

This was the witty riposte from one charming lady recently. She certainly doesn’t suffer from L’esprit de l’escalier” (see Bon Mots) but that’s not exactly what I’d call repartee.  Often I am told to simply, “Fuck off.” 

I heard of a woman who has leaflets printed that look something like this: 

YOU HAVE TAKEN MY PARKING SPACE.

WOULD YOU LIKE MY DISABILITY TOO?

She leaves one under the windscreen wiper of any vehicle parked in a disabled bay without displaying a badge.  I suspect that the therapeutic effect they have on her is of more value than the effect they have upon the recipients.

I did some research at Sainsbury’s in Winchmore Hill on Saturday morning.  There are 24 disabled parking bays.  At 11:25 they were all occupied and so I had to drive around until one became free.  Upon inspection I found that 9 vehicles (8 cars and 1 van) had no badge showing. 

There is a highly visible notice at Sainsbury’s informing the shoppers that the Car Park is continually monitored and there is a £60 fine for people who park illegally in those bays.  Absolute nonsense!  In the eighteen months that I have been using those bays I have never seen anyone carrying out a check and I’ve never seen a ticket on a windscreen.

I also know that it is nonsense because for the three months I was waiting for my own application to be approved and following advice from my doctor, I parked in them and I was never challenged. 

Many people are in possession of a blue badge but only because a family member is disabled.  Those people are not entitled to use the badge unless the disabled person is a passenger in the car. 

It is also illegal for a disabled person to wait in a car in a disabled bay while a non badge-holder goes shopping or whatever it is they are doing.  I bet you didn’t know that!

We are having roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for lunch today and I discovered that we only had one egg.  I called up to Caroline who was working upstairs.  “I’m going to Sainsbury’s.  We’ve only got one egg.”

As soon as I said it I flinched because I knew what was coming.  In her Edith Piaf voice:

“Are you sure you need to go?  Isn’t one egg un oeuf?”  It’s her favourite joke and sadly, she never tires of it.

I went anyway.  As I got out of my car in a disabled bay at the supermarket a young man in an Audi pulled into the bay next to me, got out and strode off towards the store.  There was a blue badge on the dashboard but this guy was about as disabled as Usain Bolt. I had a brainwave.

You probably don’t know this either because you never see it but on the reverse side of all blue badges is a laminated photograph of the cardholder, his or her signature and the expiry date - of the card, not the cardholder.  (Oh dear. I’ve just checked on the Death Timer website and there’s not much in it.  In fact the card should last longer than me)

I took a twenty-pound note from my wallet called out after him, “Excuse me!”

He stopped. 

“Would you like twenty quid?”  I asked, holding it towards him.

“Yes,” he said.

“You can have it if the photograph on the other side of that badge is of you.” 

Guess what?  I’ve still got my twenty pounds.

68. Bon Mots

I’ll bet that you have often thought of something clever or witty to say to someone, seconds, minutes or even days too late for it to have any relevance or impact.  How many times a week do you come up with a pithy or witty comment but long after the moment has passed?  

It happens to me all the time.  I am regularly thinking of the suitable rejoinder I could or should have used but never in time for it to make the required impact.

The French have a name for this.  They call it “L’esprit de l’escalier” which translates as “staircase wit”. In other words, it is something that you only think of on the way up the stairs to bed.

Of course, when I get home and enthral Caroline with the story of an interesting episode from my day, I alter the facts a little so that instead of the anecdote ending, “… so I nodded and walked away,” which is what really happened, I tell her that what I actually said was, “… yeah, and I’ve got a Morris Minor!”  

Oh, how she laughs and I’m sure that she thinks to herself, “How lucky I am to have such a clever, sharp and quick-witted husband.”

Yesterday, something happened that enabled me to get in my retort at exactly the right time.  It wasn’t exactly quick-witted or spontaneous as I had been brooding and planning for more than two hours before the opportunity arose to say what I did.  

I warn you now that you may think that I don’t come out of this in a very good light.  If you have never met me, you may have formed the impression that I might be a nice person.  I am afraid that you will see now that I'm not.

My liver doctor told me some months ago that I should take more exercise and he suggested that I join a gym.  I did and I hated it.  Unhappily, I am contractually locked into membership for a year and I have to continue paying the monthly subscription until next May but I’ve stopped going.

Instead, I have started having golf lessons. Tiger Woods and Rory Mcllroy both started their coaching at the age of 18 months.  I am 64!  

I was aware of the warning given by PG Wodehouse: 

Golf, like the measles, should be caught young, for, if postponed to riper years, the results may be serious. 

I will continue for the foreseeable future though, because of something that was said by A.A. Milne:

Golf is the best game in the world at which to be bad.

I am not quite hopeless at golf but I’m certainly bad.  When I began and before I realised quite how bad I would be, I fantasised that I would be going round with respectable scores after a month or two and then would rapidly rise through the listings of a club to become a leading player within a couple of years.

After all, how difficult could it be?  I had spent over forty-five years whacking a cricket ball around and occasionally hitting it in the middle of the bat too.  

The cricket ball, weighing 5½ ounces, travelled towards me at speeds of between 50 and 90 miles an hour, was often swinging or swerving through the air.  Sometimes it was deceptively flighted.  When the ball hits the pitch, its onward path is not always entirely predictable either.  It can spin, veer either way, rear up or even keep unexpectedly low.  

Sometimes on a bad wicket (and I played on plenty of those) there was a real risk of injury.  12 players have died playing cricket since 1932.

No one has ever died from a golf injury but there nearly was a fatality in the spring of 1964.  The first time I ever hit a golf ball in anger was at Lowestoft golf club.  My friend, Richard Savage, was a member there and having been playing for a few years he was already a good golfer.  He suggested that I gave it a try and took me along to give it a go.

I teed up and whacked it as hard as I could but caught the ball with the toe of the club.  

Twenty feet away and at an angle of about 50° from us was a metal flagpole with the Club’s pennant fluttering proudly from it.  The ball hit the pole and rebounded back, head high and  right between us.  It came to rest some seventy yards behind the tee.  One of us could have been killed and so I nearly made history.

Unlike a cricket ball, a golf ball just sits there, motionless, looking up at you smirking and asking to be walloped.  How difficult could it be?  The short answer is, “Very.”  

As Caroline said to me two years ago after a disastrous attempt to cut my hair , “Cutting hair is a lot like golf – they’re both a lot more difficult than they look.”

My fantasies may not come to fruition for a reason other than my golfing ineptitude, however.  

I don’t think I like golf club members.  

Hang on, that’s not entirely true.  I have several friends who play golf and obviously as they are friends, I like them all – but they are men.  It’s the Lady Members with whom I think I would have a problem.  The ladies at this golf club all seem to be clones of the same prototype.

The first time I walked through the clubhouse on my way to the Pro’s shop for my first lesson, a woman stopped me.  

“Are you a member?” she demanded abruptly.

“No, I’m not,” I said and walked on.

Yesterday, on the same journey, I was intercepted twice and by two different women.

“Do you want something?” said the first one who was leaving the building by the door through which I was about to go in.

“No,” I said coldly and walked on past her.  Ten seconds later, as I left the building through the sliding glass door on the other side, yet another “lady” stopped me.

“Anything I can do for you?” she enquired.  I grunted negatively and walked on.  

My golf lesson went worse than usual.  I was inwardly fuming and instead of paying full attention to the advice I was being given by the Pro, I kept thinking of responses I could have come up with.  

We played a few holes and afterwards my legs were aching, my ankles were hurting and I was tired.  I sat on a chair on the terrace overlooking the first tee to rest before hobbling to my car.  

“Can I help you?”

Not again!  There she was.  Another stern-faced, middle-aged, sun-bronzed, grey-haired, heavily made-up, overweight, scowling harridan.  She was standing over me with that look that, after years of practice on her husband, was meant to intimidate.

I looked up at her and smiled amiably.  This was the moment I had been waiting for.  I couldn’t believe my luck.  Just when I had honed the perfect response, here she was – yet another interfering, officious busybody and she had walked right into my trap.

“No thank you my dear but perhaps I could help you.  Shall we see if we can find your Carer?” 

That is what I had planned to say, gently and with a look of genuine concern.  Except that’s not what happened and it’s not what I said.  

I really intended to.  It wasn’t that I chickened out.  She deserved it.  In fact, she probably deserved a lot more than that but maybe I felt sorry for her.  She obviously had nothing more interesting or fulfilling to do with her empty life than to wander about the terrace on a sunny afternoon searching for strangers to accost and harass.

“No thank you,” I said, “I’m just resting after a lesson.”

What a wimp I am. 

67. Will you spell that please?

Some time in June, Caroline decided that life in the private sector was not for her and she really wanted to go back to teaching.  After ten years of advising teachers how to teach effectively and informing schools how to organise their affairs, she wanted to see if all the theories and techniques that she had been advocating actually worked. 

She would return to the role of main scale teacher that she last performed nearly twenty years ago.  I think it’s rather noble and admirable of her - but barmy.

“Look at this,” Caroline said to me one afternoon in August, just before she started her new job.  “How do you think I pronounce that?”

I looked at the piece of paper she was holding and the word she was pointing at: Gerewarifucha.  It was one name in a list of names. 

Caroline told me that this was the name of one of the Year 7 maths class she would be teaching.  I could see the potential difficulty.  A lot hinged on the way she pronounced the last five letters.  Should the ‘ch’ be as in “church”, or as in “chasm”?  There’s also a boy called Xavier Kuntis.  She has decided to pronounce Kuntis to rhyme with Spoontis.

I suggested that she should do what I did some thirty-five years ago when I had to call the register in a class I had never come across before.  As I was calling out the names, I looked ahead and saw that someone was called, “Kamaljit”.  I recognised that this was an impending problem.  How should I say it so that it sounded nothing at all like “Camel Shit”?  My solution to this looming disaster was to deliberately leave it out.

“Is that everyone?” I asked breezily, when I had finished.  “Did I miss anybody out?”

“Yes, me,” said a tiny girl.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.  “What’s your name?”

“Camelshit.”

Some Irish names are only there to confuse and make life difficult for the English.  The first sixth form class I ever met at Creighton School had in it a girl called Badb.  She let me try about six times to get it right and eventually told me that it was pronounced Bibe, rhyming with jibe.  In later years I taught Niamh, pronounced Neeve and Cian, pronounced Keen.

Hindu and Turkish names often caused me problems.  Pronouncing them as they are written is usually the right way but it always made me feel uneasy. 

Ufuk is a Turkish name and there is only one way to say it but the secret is to say it in a tone that does not make it sound like a statement or a question.

We had a Japanese girl at the school some twenty years ago called Fuku but she was never put in the same group as Ufuk.  I was worried that if they ever came too close to each other they might behave like magnets.  The outcome could have either been highly embarrassing or even, possibly, repelling!

Some parents are so far off the wall as to be possibly certifiable.  I told you in “Poetry in the Raw” of the school in Cayman that had twin brothers both called Jamal Whatmore after their father.  I never met those boys and nor did I ever meet the brothers Lord-Peter and Sir-Paul Rollinson that a friend of mine tried to teach.  Apparently, they both (egged on by their mad mother, I suspect) insisted on being called by their full names.  My friend always referred to either one of them as “Rollinson”.

I went to visit another school once for a discussion about something or other with the Headteacher.  When I arrived, he wasn’t ready to see me. 

“He’s having a tather difficult meeting,” his secretary told me.  “But he shouldn’t be much longer.”

Eventually the door opened and out came a huge woman with tattoos all over her shoulders and neck.  Behind her was a boy aged about 11, wearing a tracksuit and with a skinhead haircut.  As they walked away the Head called out to him.

“This is the last time, Spike.  If there’s a next time you’ll be excluded.”

Spike!!!  That poor kid never had a chance.  Some people shouldn’t be allowed to breed.  Are some parents so insensitive that they don’t foresee the problems that they cause for their children? 

I was at school with Vincent Drury and his younger sister, Victoria.  I have to initial something at least once a month.  I bet Victoria was keen to get married.  I consoled my mate Paul Drummond by telling him that the reason Vicky would never go out with him was because of his surname and he told me that she wouldn’t go out with me in case she ended up as a car!

Caroline once taught A-level maths to a class that included an Indian boy called Hardeep.  How could that ever be a problem?  Easily! 

Every time she said his name when calling the register, the rest of the boys sang the next words of the Bee Gees song “… is your love, how deep is your love?” 

She tells me that they were perfectly in tune and even after a couple of years they never tired of it.

Caroline was a student at Birmingham University and students there obviously found little to do in their spare time as she and her friend Gabi collected the names of students doing name/appropriate courses.  They knew:

Sue, who was reading law,

Beryl, who read geology,

Carol and Melody in the music department,

Mark, who was studying to be a teacher in the education department,

Oscar reading drama,

Esther, who was studying chemistry (look it up) and best of all

Nick, who was reading applied criminology.

This ‘game’ started when Caroline found that in her maths group there was a Max and a Min - an English boy called Maxwell and an Indian student called Minesh.  The rest of the group insisted that they always sat together with Max on the left and Min on the right.

We never played that game at Durham but I did study geography with Clifford Hill.  By shortening his first name you have two geomorphological features.

Caroline met the class with Gerewarifucha in it today.  She did as I suggested and left her out as she read down the list.

“Is that everyone?” she asked when she had finished.  “Did I miss anybody out?”

“Yes, me,” said a girl.

“Sorry,” she said.  “What’s your name?”

“Gerry.”

“Is that your full name?” asked Caroline.

“No, but I’m always called Gerry.”

“So what's your full name?”

“I don’t really know.  It’s a long name and nobody ever uses it.  I don’t even know how to spell it.”

When I was five and in my infants’ class and had disappointed the teacher, she would refer to me as ‘Terence’.  I was ‘Terry’ only when I was good (which was most of the time, honestly).  

I have suggested to Caroline that if Gerry ever achieves less than she could or if she ever misbehaves in any way, she should convey her displeasure by calling her ‘Gerry-Wary-Fucker’.