Only a year to the Olympics, and I haven't a THING to wear...I was briefly involved with some "planning discussions" about the Cultural Olympiad.My suggestions that throwing paintbrushes long distance , and sculpture-tossing ought to be featured resulted in looks of a stoniness not seen since Medusa had a bad hair day. Oh dear, we are all going to have to be jolly enthusiastic about this, aren't we? Tessa Jowls is already sounding more and more like our Sports Mistress at Queen Mary High School. We are going to have to play up and play the game, show team spirit, and quite possibly, take one for the Gipper,or up the Khyber or one of those baffling expressions. I am going to need a note from my Mum for the whole of 2012.
I have sporty people in my family. My Mother, when not tapdancing and terrorising Fazackerley on a bicycle, was a superb tennis player. Ferociously competetive ,she was all set to train as a sports teacher ,when Hitler got wind of this and war broke out. Alongside the plastic toucan clocks and revolving Babycham lamps that Dad was given by brewery sales reps (he was Social Secretary of the local British Legion),the sideboard dipped under the weight of Mum's cups and statuettes. It seemed that she had beaten seven shades out of everyone in the North West at something or other. My Dad's sole darts trophy sat forlornly in the middle. They tried to make a big thing out of my swimming certificate, but no-one was convinced.
Tall, hideously clumsy,and wearing specs like pub ashtrays, I was never an asset to a team. At school,long negotiations would take place; "If you have HER, you can have two of our good ones". At Queen Mary, in an obscure nod to the Celtic origins of most of the students, we played "Shinty", a form of hockey so savage as to be outlawed the second that people stopped playing football with human heads. Clue given in the name ; the objective was to take a large curved stick and rush, hollering, at the shins of one's opponent.I don't know what happened after that because I had my eyes shut. Girls regularly had their noses broken. Especially if they wouldn't play. Me and a girl called Fat Eileen (I don't suppose she was christened that but you never know, she is probably a supermodel now..) were desperately in love with the cloakrooms. We would burrow under the coats and hug the radiators, me trying to read with a torch.She would root through coat pockets, looking for a stray Spangle, and practice her recorder in the toilets.
When I left school, I did much the same thing at parties, trying to avoid sex. Too much like P.E for me , I thought, with the same insistence that it was good for everyone..As it was the Seventies, you couldn't even just mark the opposite team , you had to play with your own side as well.
At least at University there was drink to take the edges off. I might have been great at the Shinty, had I been allowed to go on raving drunk. I bet that was how it was originally played.
So it worried me when we all started talking about "Arts, Culture and SPORT",as if they were part of the same thing. I thought the idea of the first two was to provide an alternative to the latter. But I wish it all well, in a vaguely benevolent fashion. I can afford to now,as I doubt anyone will be keen for me to take part. I hope they remember to include a nice fusty cloakroom at the Stadium, for the reluctants dragged along by sporty spouses and parents.With a very hot radiator and a dispenser for (pre-dusted) Spangles .
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