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 darts, 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.

 

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. 

31. Loose Ends

No constant theme this time and a few loose ends to clear up.

When I was in Miami having various tests a couple of months before my transplant, I had a haircut. My hair had grown very long as I had decided to have one last go at the sixties, student look and had let it grow long and completely cover my ears. I thought I was looking pretty cool but Caroline didn’t and was nagging me to get it cut.

She got her way when one of the drugs I was taking in preparation for my transplant had extraordinary side effects upon my hair. It started to grow in all directions and it looked quite silly. It appeared as if I were standing too close to a Van de Graaff generator. 

A trip to a hairdresser on Miracle Mile, 15 minutes with an electric razor set at #3 and my hair was tidy once more although I looked like an American GI. I also thought I looked 20 years older but I no longer looked like a clown.

Two haircuts later, back in Prospect Reef, Cayman, Caroline came home with top of the range electric clippers and announced that we would save loads of money as, from now on, she would cut my hair for me. “It’s easy,” she told me. “It’s not styling - just clipping. I did my neighbour’s cocker spaniel once.”

I sat in my wheelchair, in front of the television, watching cricket while she got on with it.

“Oh dear!”

“What have you done?”

“Nothing,” she said, nonchalantly. “Nearly finished.”

There was silence for a minute or so. Silence - except for the buzz of the clippers.

“Do you know what?” she said thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Cutting hair is a lot like golf.”

“Really?” I said. “I don’t see how.”

“Well, they’re both much more difficult than they look.”

That took a bit of digesting but suddenly the penny dropped.

“What have you done? Get me a mirror!”

When she eventually allowed me to look in a mirror I realised that ”Oh dear,” was hardly a strong enough expletive. I had a two-inch wide bald streak right down my head, just off centre, almost an inverse ‘Mohican’.

We were due to go round to Paul’s house that evening. “I’m not going,” I said. “You go. I’m not.”

“Don’t be silly. No one will notice.”

“What!? Won’t notice? My head looks like a lay-by off a main road.”

“You could wear a hat.”

“I don’t want to wear a hat. It’s ninety degrees out there. Nobody on the island is wearing a hat. I’ll stay at home.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll cut it all to match. Then it won’t look odd.”

“Aha, so it does look odd. People will notice.”

I stayed at home. Sorry Paul if you’re reading this but that was the real reason I didn’t come. I hadn’t been out in the sun too long at all.

Hair grows slower when you’re older and it took nearly a year to grow out.

************

Further to life in Islington: This morning when I went into “Sweet” for my breakfast, I met a young man who was wearing a skirt! Yes, a skirt. It wasn’t a kilt although I suppose that it was cut a bit like one but it was not plaid or tartan. It was monochromatic, light purple. Of course he was speaking fluent French to the girl behind the counter and that fact cheered me up a little. Perhaps he is French.

When I told Caroline about him she was very excited and was full of admiration, wanting to know its length; whether he was wearing a belt; what footwear he wore and how he was dressed above the waist. When she realised that I couldn’t answer any of those questions, she became exasperated and appeared to get fairly cross, even going as far as to call me, “hopeless.” 

I have quite enough problems with my own clothes and spend plenty of time on my own appearance, like checking that my zip is up, without making a detailed study of the clothes worn by other men.

I know I’ve been out of the country for five years but is this what we’ve come to while I’ve been away?

***********

Further to the making of tea (Chocolate pastry, August 7th): I read yesterday about White Tea that sells for £57 a pot. It is a tea made with buds and in some cases, very young tea leaves, which are sun dried or dried by steaming – though I don’t really understand how something may be dried by passing water through it. 

According to the article it is brewed at 85°C and never with boiling water. It is said to be good for the skin and low in caffeine and that probably means that it is low in taste too. I think I’ve probably discovered some more of the Emperor’s new clothes. £57 a pot! That guy in the skirt probably drinks it while chatting in French to his broker. I expect it’s very popular in Islington.