Gertsamtkunstwerk

Tempus fugit

I seem to be neglecting my reputation for blogorrhoea. I would love to woo and wow with you a dazzling parade of amazing things I have done. I have to say, the past few days have been enjoyable but not necessarily exciting and wooful. Dashing around at work - my task for Friday afternoon was to do a to do list, mainly to ensure I hit the ground running when I return after New Year. I didn't get that far.

On Thursday, I was at a social event where I was the only blogger present, yet there was a semi-intelligent discussion on blogging. There were two people present who claim to know Tom Watson.

Saturday was a TV day - firstly, Manchester United beating Manchester City by a comfortable three goals to one. Classic comments from yours truly. "That Ryan Giggs, he's turned thirty now - he's past his best." Ten minutes later: "Ooh, Ryan Giggs - he just gets better and better." Ha ha!

In the evening we watched The Pianist a stunningly moving film, set in the Warsaw Ghetto in the Second World War. At two and a half hours it is not a short film, but it never seemed to drag. I will definitely say a big-up to Sky Box Office. I would be surprised if such a film would be available to hire from my local home entertainment shop.

Sunday was Sainsburys, which was extraordinary quiet and really rather unhassled. In the evening we watched the Sports Personality of the Year. There was not a single award with which I disagreed. The highlights of the evening were the awards to the rugby team, (it was wonderful to see Jonny Wilkinson's face when Martin Johnson was announced as runner-up - the look of dread on his face that yet again he is back in the spotlight - he earlier had the grace to admit that he knows he looks uncomfortable in the spotlight - I'm sure he's getting used to it and will grow into his iconic role) and the crowning of Steve Redgrave - a truly deserved award, for his longevity, and for his tremendous achievement in winning gold in five successive Olympics, especially, latterly, with considerable medical challenges. Of course, something like that is always going to favour a recent winner, but, objectively, it would be difficult to find a more worthy winner. And doesn't he always look so proud when he receives accolades!

It was also excellent seeing the awards to Michael Watson and Lance Armstrong.

But the overwhelming moment was seeing the '66 team and the '03 team pose together (and George and Ben Cohen being asked whether there was a young Cohen with a talent for cricket...!)

Rugby parade

If you click, it'll take you to some more pictures from the day

Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

Woooooot :)

I have a wonderful wonderful wonderful picture on my camera of Jonny holding the William Webb Ellis trophy. I also have a fab photo of 'Sir' Clive Woodward.

Unfortunately, I'm buggering off out of town for a couple of days so the earliest you'll get to see it is Wednesday.

I went to the parade. I'm a bit hoarse from singing *that* dirge. ButI can assure you that sinews were stiffened. It was jolly good. Mind you, I couldn't get to Trafalgar Square.

Rugby is for toffs, really

In England,  rugby is deeply symbolic of class divisions. I say England, because I don't mean Wales, and I don't think I mean Scotland. I don't think that I mean that golden but relatively sparsely populated area of Gloucester/Bath either.

I don't want to place too much emphasis on the effect of one's childhood: still, I think it can be quite crucial in forming interests, habits and prejudices.
I grew up in a strange place at a strange time. The Borough I grew up in is the only one that has a Premiership football club, a Premiership rugby club, and a Test cricket ground/County Championship 1 team. When I was a teenager, we had the best non-League football team in the land. We also had two decent standard athletics clubs, two half decent ice-hockey teams and Britain's second best ice dancers. Yet, our local radio had Rugby League as our second sport.

Traditionally, rugby was played at grammar schools, and football at secondary moderns. That was very much the case for the boys I grew up with. Indeed, the three state grammar schools that many of my male friends used to attend still promote rugby above football.  I suspect that is unusual.

I haven't really done any research for the area in which I now live, but would happily place a bet that rugby is the preserve of the independent school sector. I see my cousins' old school still has rugby fields, but I expect it's a rare thing in the state sector.

Rugby can be a problem. Many of my contemporaries were pissed off at compulsory rugby - they were musical instrumentalists and refused to risk their hands in what to them was a display of macho brutality. My brother was not fond of rugby. By his time, they were more liberal, and he chose cross country rather than rugby.

The rugger buggers at University were notorious and deeply unpopular. Most of them were public-school educated louts, with a supreme belief in their superiority, which included displays of public nudity in the Buttery, physical harassment of disabled students, and trashing of the Portland building. If there was one event worse than an inter-University rugby match, when we entertained the thugs of Loughborough, Leicester and Sheffield was the Inter-Universities Mining Engineers Rugby Match. Run and hide.

Rugby gets very little coverage on TV compared to so many other sports, and, especially, football.  Most people have busy and/or fulfilled lives, and lack the time or inclination to follow closely every sport on the box. It's easier to follow football, because of the blanket coverage. How often do you walk into a pub and actually see a rugby match on? You generally do in my local, because there's a critical mass, and the middle classes flock from all over South-West Brixton Hill to congregate, mightily pissing off the Chelsea-borderline BNP contingent. But I can't remember ever walking into another pub and seeing rugby.

As I have said before, I am not a great rugby fan, but I grew up with it. My father, educated at minor public schools, much preferred it to football, which he tolerated for the sake of us three.  Most Saturday trips out in the winter would involve passing the playing fields of the then Sale Grammar School for Boys (now a hideous modern estate of aspirational homes for Classic FM people - they even renamed the Cock Robin to the Manor House...I feel rant).

I'm a girl, I don't have to understand the offside rule, and I get confused about when a penalty is awarded and when it's a scrum, and I still think it's four points for a try, and this World Cup has seen me show more interest in rugby than I have for years - although I did watch bits of the 99 World Cup.  I'm not pretending otherwise.  You probably won't see many more blog entries from me about rugby. Maybe I'm cynical - who's interested nowadays in ice-skating, be it of the Curry-Cousins or the Torvill and Dean variety. Does anybody even give a shit that Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell would rather race in a four at the Olympics in Athens?

I would imagine that once the Victory Parade and Public Holiday, Sports Review of the Year (well, three of those awards are shoo-ins!) and New Years Honours are out of the way,  Jonny Wilkinson will continue to be an instantly recognisable celebrity, much like Steve Redgrave or Paula Ratcliffe. But there won't be a significant increase in people watching rugby, live or on telly.

Horizontal weekend

Have you ever noticed that when the bleurch hits you it hits on a Friday? It makes you spend all Friday evening, mosts of Saturday and most of Sunday in a horizontal position, in bed or on the sofa?

And come Sunday evening you have a nasty feeling that you're no longer bleurchy enough to miss work tomorrow.

Cough cold earache. Sore scabby blister on neck.

Fingernails bitten to the quick.

Aussie rugby jokes

I know, you've seen them all before...but the Evening Standard has published them.

He might be all we've got...

...but he'll do!

A few choice links:

Jonny Wilkinson from the BBC last week
Who's rugby's hottest hunk? asks today's Observer

Jonny's Times column from yesterday.

Famous Males has a selection of photos, with a promise of more to come: I want a picture of him psyching himself up to take a penalty (or a conversion, if only...) - which I reckon will become an iconic image.

And the important links:

Wilkinson kicks England to final, England back to their best, England into World Cup Final, Jonny Wilkinson kicks England into the final

Go, go, go, Jonny, go!!!

Wallabies destroy All Blacks

Well, bugger me backwards with a traffic cone. Who'd ever have thought it? The Kiwis were never really in the match. Not the most entertaining game of rugby ever, but thought provoking.

I don't really get emotionally involved in rugby. I enjoy it as a spectacle but wouldn't claim to be any sort of expert - I don't even understand half the rules. Still, I'm going to be so up for England-France tomorrow. I know all the world outside England want France to win, but I might even be digging out my England flag.

...coming for to carry me home

Subtitle: Go Johnny!

We were lucky. Still, you make your own luck, and as well as, in theory, creating a slightly easier path to the final, it also means that the big matches will be on Sundays, which will be good for Jimmy who works Saturday mornings.

Next match a week tomorrow against Samoa. It's at half nine but I think that's when the clocks go back, so it's like half ten.

Curtis clinches open

Sometimes, to triumph in a great world-class sporting event just requires class. And breeding. Probably good genes as well.

Well done, Ben!

Wimbledon

It's that time again. I don't pretend to be much of a sports fan. I suppose I like stuff, but most of the time I can find better things to do with my time. when I was a youngster it was a treat to have hours of Wimbledon coverage. You felt for two weeks you really could really get to know about the game. All those lager than life personalities. And Bjorn Borg. But seriously, was it a Golden Age, the Nastase-Connors-Borg-McEnroe-Cash-Becker Days. And Martina Navratilova, what a star? They used to play tennis in those days.

I get annoyed by the people who become instant experts for a fortnight but couldn't tell you who won the French Open, played just the other week at Flushing Meadow. I get really annoyed by the pubs advertising that they have tennis on the TV. Pubs, FFS - in the old days it was a time for men to escape down the pub while the women watched it on the TV indoors. When all houses just had one TV. As mine does now.

In the old days we all had our favourites. I was a McEnroe/Cash/Becker girl. My sister went for Borg/Wilander/Edberg. Andrea at school for Connors and that French geezer. It didn't matter what country they were from, they were our boys.

My cousin and her son, my godson, share my view but from a completely different angle. They are both good club players. He plays for the county, and has had commercial sponsorship. He'll be old enough to play in the Boys tournament next year, GCSEs permitting. I don't know if he's good enough.

They go to all sorts of tournaments in the strangest of places, where the star is the British number five and an unknown Croatian. My cousin gets annoyed when people say "Why does Tim Henman always lose?" "He doesn't," she says. "He wins plenty of tournaments that you've never heard of."

But it doesn't matter whether Tim Henman wins Wimbledon or not. He's not very good. Get over it. It'll be The Open (Golf) soon. I don't especially want Tim Henman to win. It doesn't make me unpatriotic. Okay, maybe I'm a hypocrite. (My appetite is whetted for the Rugby World Cup in Oz in October. Did you know that the England Rugby team, right now, is the best sporting team ever to have come from these Isles? The Aussies are still favourites, but never mind that!) I dislike the fact that Wimbledon has been turned into this excuse for waving the Union Flag - until Rudetski is knocked out, then he's a Canadian.

We will never be any good at tennis until it stops being such a class-ridden game. As I say, my godson is old enough next year to play in the Boys tournament, but he's from a background where GCSEs matter. A very modest background for a tennis player - his father's a teacher, his mother an ex-teacher now working in Local Government. I'm not sure that we need to be good at tennis. I just get bored by Wimbledon bores who suddenly become experts.

Of course, I'll watch some of the TV coverage. I like the Mixed Doubles. I'm right off the men's singles, especially all this crash-bang-wallop stuff. Bring back wooden rackets, I say.

I remember when tennis was fun to watch..