I want to believe

So there I was the other day in front of the computer, preparing to write a serious piece on the Tour de France, when suddenly my vision got blurry, and I started to violently convulse, and then a brilliant white light surrounded me, and the next thing I remember I was waking up in a pile of hay in a barn some miles from my house, so then I staggered home and turned on the computer and saw, well...

But then, it's hard to think straight about professional cycling. Take this clip, for instance. To set the scene: as Laurent Fignon sprints to victory in Stage 21 of the 1987 Tour, the real story is further down La Plagne. Pedro Delgado, in yellow, has dropped the second man overall, Stephen Roche, on this final climb of the day. He has amassed a minute-and-a-half lead on Roche, which will probably be enough to seal victory come the end of the Grand Boucle....




Drama that appears so cheesily scripted that it could only be unscripted; adult, responsible human beings telling their brains to shut up for a few minutes while they push their bodies beyond reasonable exertion...this is sport.

Thing is, the following year, again in yellow and this time on his way to final victory, Delgado tested positive for a masking agent which, although on the IOC's list of prohibited substances, was, due to an oversight on the part of the UCI, not illegal for a cyclist to take. More recently, a shadow was cast over Roche's career when it was heavily implied by an Italian judge that he had taken EPO (the statute of limitations means it will never be legally confirmed).

Of course, the list of cyclists who have given themselves a wee dram o' blood boosting product or similar is presumably kept on a Kerouac-style endless scroll in the offices of WADA.

If one could see the matter in monochrome it would be easy to dismiss the whole caboodle and concentrate on trying to get one's kicks from that crucial Malaysian XI-Chelsea game. There is, perhaps, no valid reason to invest one's time in it. It may be part of one's summer routine, but then washing your hands exactly twenty-three times and counting to fifty and twirling twice before one dares to leave the bathroom is also a routine, and no-one is writing a blog post about how wonderful that is.

Sport may not be a religion, but it does engender its own blind faith. It is often manifested at this time of the year as a fan takes comfort in the boundless potential of a league table where every number is 0. But it also operates on the larger scale. When you see such thrilling fare as last Wednesday's stage, featuring three Super Category climbs, a leading group containing all of the top riders in the general classification, a series of cat-and-mouse mini-breakaways all hauled in before Carlos Sastre made his decisive move, Denis Menchov's crash when it looked like he was about to strike the definitive blow - all on the monstrous Alpe d'Huez, after six gruelling hours on the road - the suspension of disbelief becomes, if not automatic, then at least reasonably easy to accomplish.

Then you have to wonder if you've crossed the line between optimism about the system and genuine faith in what you are seeing on one side, and moral duplicity on the other. As the cases of Sminky and Fawn suggest, perhaps we are are due some portion of the blame. Though our consciences may be salved this time by the apparent consensus that Sastre is clean, the questions remain: by our perennial and seemingly endless capacity to roll with the punches, are we validating that very violence? Have we forgotten that we can just walk away?

Photo by rcvernors

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Diary of a Slave

Friday September 19

Today was even worse than yesterday. There was guy carrying a big bag of metal sticks. He carefully chose one at took it out. What he did then left me scars that will never heal, so long as I live...he handed it to me and told me to hit this little white ball that was perched on a peg in the ground. And there were thousands of sick bastards standing all around, all waiting for me to humiliate myself for their entertainment. It went on for hours. I must have hit that thing seventy times if it was once. You never imagine that you can be so degraded but...well, I know better now.

The worst part of it all is that afterwards we had to sit down and eat this dinner - not a little dinner either, but a massive one. I can hardly move for all the high-quality food I've been cruelly forced to eat. Tomorrow, I have to do it all again. Hopefully I'll survive another twenty-four hours and have the chance to write the next entry in my infernal journal.

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Excerpt from the official 2008 Olympics Media Guide

Why is there so much smog in Beijing?

This is not smog. It is merely a light mist, a purely natural phenomenon.


Sometimes there is the sound of something very much like a screaming man coming from some government buildings. What is this?

It may sound like the blood-curdling wail of a human being in extreme physical distress, but it is in fact the warm summer air whistling through the peculiar layout of the ventilation system that is used in all official buildings. The locals often jokingly refer to them as the "Houses of Terror," but this is not to be taken earnestly; it is simply a demonstration of the Chinese sense of humour which is a part of the warm friendly nature of the people which will make these Games an unqualified success. Do not concern yourself further with this.


How come this whistling sound is often accompanied by a power surge?

Are you Amnesty?


A suspicious-looking man seems to be following me at a discreet distance at all times and...

(thwack)

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The trouble with boys

Dearest sister,

It is in my annual state of hopeless confusion that I write to you once more. As you have already doubtless surmised, given the date atop this page and your boundless capacity to read into my soul better than I myself can, I have been left reeling by the annual visitation of that man who to you shall always have no appellation, but to me is known as François.

Please, darling Nancykins, do not judge me harshly. Be certain that your stern words of admonishment do so keenly resonate within my being each time I think of that man. You know how seldom I cast your better judgement aside on such matters. Nonetheless, however heartfelt your counsel, I cannot envisage such a scene in which your own heart could resist entering such a palpitatitudinous state as does mine on that first Saturday eventide of each July on which he knocks on the door of our home and announces: "Me voici".

I have made many prior efforts to define my feelings to you, almost entirely in vain. I fear that this is in some measure due to the incoherence to which François renders me; would that I could more completely detail the workings of my heart. However persuasively his recent misdemeanours stand as evidence, it not so easy for me as it is for you to suppress the memory of our initial happiness. Though I am aware of your immediate disquietude on hearing the news of our engagement to be wed all those years ago, I know you were able to reserve some portion of your heart for the residence of no small amount of felicity on my behalf, however tempered it may have been by suspicion.

To this day I am unable to credit my naïvété's tenacity. I marvel at how it withstood the years of François' many overseas jaunts whose details he was so reluctant to divulge, or how he would never allow me to look into the luggage compartment of his motor vehicle, or how he would often partake in a run in the middle of the night because it was "good for the blood", or his inexplicable stamina in the boudoir. I cannot believe that it was not until one night - could it really be a full decade past? - that I received a telegram from an officer of the law stating that he had been refused entry back into the country on account of the discovery of a vast quantity of illegal chemicals in that cursed luggage compartment.

As you know, the shame and indignity brought upon me by François' criminality rendered our relations irretrievably mutilated, and I forbade his return to our home. I quietly continued with my life, resolute in my efforts to consign every thought of him to oblivion. But it was a rude shock when he appeared almost exactly a year after the discovery of his wrongdoing. I opened the door to find him on his knees, his hands clenched together as if I were his God and he were pleading for his very salvation. "Please, my love, you don't know what my life is like. It is a Calvary, except there are only fourteen Stations of the Cross. I have twenty, plus a Prologue, every wretched year." If I am to be truthful, his desperate words were not necessary. Forgetting my previous twelvemonth's strife, I welcomed him back.

He informed me that he could only remain for three weeks at the most owing to his ongoing rehabilitarious treatment and his newly-found vocation teaching other young vulnerables not to get captured by the same traps which had so definitively ensnared him. On reflection, his evasiveness should have piqued my dubiety, but I was simply too happy for his presence in the house once more to question.

This became a yearly occurrence. It would appear that he believed me to be cretinous, because each July he would return and speak eloquently - a touch too eloquently - of his wonderful adventures and the fulfilling work helping to eradicate the scourge of toxic dependency. He must have thought me to be quite unworldly, so much so that I would be unaware of the existence of modern telegraphy and its resultant miracle of inter-continental communication. I knew full well of his real escapades. And yet, despite your total incredulity, dear Nance, I would utter nary a word about his egregiositousness.

In spite of the mounting exhibits of the intricate fabric of lies on which our love is based, my self-disgust can barely compete with the irrational desire which still pulses so fervently. I have yet to tell you what follows, Nancypants, for fear of the opprobrium which would surely rain down on me like so much leaden rain on the fertile meadow of my love - but in the winter before last, I travelled to Mexico, where François had informed me that he would be resting as part of his recovery; I was intending to supply a most romantic surprise. I searched the village he had named as his temporary lodging-place, but he was not there. I roamed the nearby pueblos, but no-one had even the merest knowledge of any gentleman by the name of François. I returned home to find an officer of our local constabulary, who sorrowfully informed me that François had instead spent his wintertide "shooting up," as the horrid idiom would have it, in the Dolomites. Needless to say (though I shall say it regardless), I did not mention this on François' aestival sojourn.

Before this letter is sealed I must make a confession, Wance, the likes of which I have never made in my entire life to this moment, and over which I have been procrastinating since this note's commencement. It is not merely blind love or the insane thrill of my heart which compels me to dear François: I feel a guilty frisson of curiosity at the constant possibility of his demise. Lest you think of me as a sadist of the highest order (or perhaps you wish to see the end of him too, I should wager!), I must stress with the utmost earnestness that I do not want to see him perish; such an occurrence would rend my very soul and make the prospect of a prolongalisation of my carnal existence frightfully unbearable. It is simply that the awareness that at any moment he could do something which would end his days on this earth sustains me, such as when he is descending one of the mountains overlooking our estate on one of his modern velocipedes and he travels precariously close to the edge of road such that but for a few inches of tarmacadam he would plunge to his doom down a sheer mountain face. Once again, Nancy, I do not wish for this to happen, but the knowledge that it may is invigorating in a way that perhaps your staidness would not permit you to acknowledge.

Supplementary to this is, I am almost ashamed to say, is the fact that I am quite fond of the drama that frequently portends when François' motor vehicle throws up a long cloud of dust along the path to the house every year. To know that one may awake any given morn to find officers of the law swooping upon the premises and arresting François for possession of this of breach of those conditions is, however I may outwardly weep and wail and curse whatever wretched deity would permit such grief to enfold me, something which illuminates my usually bleak world. I know, sis, that you are at this moment, on reading the previous sentence, pouting and muttering about what a silly girl I am, that I have an active life full of multifarious distractions. I cannot pretend that you are completely in the wrong, but such is the entanglement that is my weary mind these days, the opportunity to close one's eyes and imagine that one is a heroine in an inexpensive novella is difficult to pass up.

I must restate that it does oftentimes leave me quite angry that people, be they strangers, acquaintances or family, yourself included, should take it upon themselves to pass such judgement on my beloved, and that their dudgeon should be so profound. François is far from the only man on this earth who is troubled by such demons. The most popular of gentlemen, the sort that form the heart of a splendid soirée, who have an endless supply of party tricks and who could charm the stuffiest of Inland Revenue officials from a furlong away: it is they who often have the most to conceal.

I fear that I have yet again come to the end of another chapter in our correspondence and realised that I am as enveloped in my own meagre universe of melodramatic self-involvement as ever I was. Alas, it is getting quite late, and I shall have to conclude. Give my regards to Derek and Elisha and Tarquin, and see that Mummy is kept cool when the heatwave arrives, as it shall.

Love,

Sminky.

Photos (1, 2, 4, 5) by ©Scott BeLew (A.S.), Grufnik, Biff Bang Pow, John Spooner

3 from climbbybike.com

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Won't someone please think of blah blah blah

I meant to post this before, but Will Ferrell appeared on The Daily Show on Tuesday in a Chelsea jersey. On UK station More 4's transmission, they elected to blur the Fly Emirates logo, but declined to do so for either the Chelsea crest or Ferrell's face. Strange.

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Minimum security wing

Like a lot of the best things in life, FreeDarko confused the hell out of me when I first encountered it. In fact, several months into my readership, I still only understand a small fraction of it, and not just because it's about basketball. Nonetheless, it's fun to see something you only kind of understand being refracted through a strange lens, a misshapen psychedelic image of it being cast on the screen.

(In homage to FreeDarko, this post will be sprinkled with seemingly random Flickr photos.)

The jumping-off point of FD is the notion of 'liberated fandom', whose spirit was helpfully defined in a recent post as "Fuck where you live, who raised you, what's on TV the most. Make an exhaustive survey of the league and cling onto what moves you, even if it's a lost cause. That can be individuals, a team, or a subset of individuals on a team".It is a resonant and seductive idea, and has one wondering whether it can be applied to football.

The absurdity of deriving a goodly proportion of my enjoyment of football from the fortunes of a team which I've never seen play other than on the telly and who come from a city and country to which I have no connection, has struck me more than once. There is no particular reason to support them other than because my dad does (that's the how) and because I always have (that's the why) (and what does "support" mean here, anyway? Not to, like, totally blow your mind or anything, but aren't they supporting me more than I'm supporting them?). There is nothing substantial tethering me to Arsenal, and nothing about the tenuous ties that do bind me to them that wouldn't be present were I to follow any other club. The older I get, the more irrational it appears.

There is a progressive narrowing of the definition of fandom. When Saturday Comes' website yesterday posted an archive article about an advertising campaign for Sky Sports' Premiership coverage. The writer bemoans the depiction of a football fan as "someone who has abandoned reason", adding "the new stereotype suggests that you’re not a real football fan unless you’re incapable of conversing on any other subject". The piece was originally published in 1997, but its "howl of pain" is as appropriate today.

A product of this is the type of discourse that make the likes of 606 and many club-specific websites the kind of intellectual and spiritual black holes they are. Their essence is one big "my dad could beat up your dad, and by the way, your mum's a slaaaag" argument (though 'argument' suggests a dignity somewhat lacking) which raises any perceived slight into a gross injustice and every inconsequential victory into a triumph which exists, it seems, merely to validate the continuation of the playground stand-off.

Such vicarious boastfulness was part of the daily banter at the single-sex school I attended, fuelled by ignorance, playful bravado and the knowledge that there were no girls looking on and marvelling at our astounding level of emotional retardation. Then I left school and saw that the world was a mite too big and beautiful to be reduced to a little blue marble of hatred (of course, this reality didn't dawn on me all at once, and is still revealing itself to me now, as it no doubt will until The End). It contains more than can be captured by the throbbings of the teenage mind, or the pages of the NMfuckingE.

I think it's taken until my discovery of FD's handy two-word encapsulation for me to realise, but I believe I've been inching along the road towards liberated fandom for some time. It may be in small ways, probably laughably trivial to Bethlehem Shoals and company, but they feel significant to me (and hey, isn't that what matters?). There was the time I first encountered the famous Danny Blanchflower quote you see on the left-hand margin of this page, and how it struck me as as true and beautiful as anything I'd ever read. There was the odd feeling of lack of revulsion whenever Gianfranco Zola did something amazing in a Chelsea shirt. There's the strange emotional compromise whenever Robbie Keane scores for Spurs.

Last season brought it home. Even through the agony of Arsenal's season oozing into Eduardo's sock, I was somehow able to appreciate the battle between Chelsea and Man Utd to see who would become Kings of the Universe. By rights I should have been driven, as I believe the hip kids say, bat-poop insane by the inexorable march towards the execution chamber where the only choice would be the gallows or the chair. In 2007, I rejoiced at the averting of a Chelsea-United Champions League final with 007 seconds on the clock, for surely the world would have turned in on itself and shot through the resultant black hole to a universe whose inhabitants regard the Book of Revelation as an opera buffa. Last season, however (I think we can say "last season" now, can't we? We're currently in the twilight zone where it's impossible to say "this season"), even though Chelsea-United was the least desirable outcome of the semi-finals, and despite my loud announcements to whoever would hear me that I would simply refuse to watch the game, I watched it and enjoyed it. Maybe it was an acceptance of the futility of resistance, and that no matter how hard I wished, both teams couldn't lose. Maybe it was the chip on each shoulder balancing each other out perfectly. Whatever, I felt no bitterness, and appreciated the match for the good one it was (just don't try to tell me it was a classic).

That was merely the most dramatic revelation. I had long been aware of how much I am fascinated by Cristiano Ronaldo's Cristiano Ronaldoness and by Didier Drogba's ability to violently dominate the final third like a power forward does the low post. That's not to say that they give me unadulterated happiness, but I can put just enough of my Arsiness aside to wonder at them like any normal human being.

If this sounds like a pretty pathetic stab at liberated fandom, then maybe you're right. I half-suspect that my willingness to occasionally look beyond the enmity and final tables derives in part from those trophyless rocky expanses between the precious seams of silverware of the Wenger era. When you see your team miss late penalties in cup semi-finals and throw away the league in the penultimate game of the season and lose a goal lead in a cup final and your biggest rivals amass insultingly large points tallies and another rival uses a cheat code to give them infinite transfer funds and your team lose a goal lead in another cup final and two other Premier League clubs win the Champions League before yours - when all that happens, and it's too much to take in, you may get a bit deluded and believe that there may, just may be value in things other than winning. The glorious, sometimes idealistic-seeming footballisticism of Arsenal has been a gift to self-righteous Gooners everywhere, and in my particular case, it may have had some kind of influence on my way of thinking about the game in general.

It's a pretty thought on a pretty, drizzly summer's day to believe that beholden fandom, to borrow again from the FreeDarkonians, is a prison, a primitive condition, blinkers that were they to be discarded would allow one to see all sorts of hitherto invisible wonders. How romantic it sounds to be able to regard the world through purely aesthetic eyes. The tribal instinct is doggedly strong, though. After all, it is flexible enough to be able to be directed towards a private football-based concern based thousands of miles away. Even were one to try to will it away, it resists. When you're like me and you dither and procrastinate, it barely even has to.

(I've come up with a theory, just this minute. I'm not sure I believe it myself, and it's a bit on the bleak side, so if you don't like that kind of stuff, you can skip ahead to the next paragraph. It goes thus: life is about disappointment: suffering it, getting over it, trying to avoid it, worrying about its arrival. Disappointment is unpredictable and painful, and pain is a law unto itself. Much of being a supporter of a particular team is about disappointment; think how often a fan wears their years of cumulative suffering as a badge of honour. And this goes whatever team you follow: a fan of a bankrupt Conference team would no doubt look at pictures of crying Chelsea fans last season and scoff at their self-indulgence, but these things are relative. Following a team is facing up to the inevitably of disappointment, but in a controlled and manageable way such that it will affect you for a while but will surely dissipate quite quickly.)

The thing is, even as I grow increasingly able to discern the many levels on which football exists, the sense of partisanship seems not only to maintain itself but to swell, at least if last season is anything to go by. I'm still not sure if this is absolute, though. It may have been a result of the drama of Arsenal's season, ridiculous even by their standards. It was a little bit of a shock - just a little bit, mind you - to note the (temporary) abject disappointment that the Champions League exit left me, and the (mainly superficial) sickness caught from Arsenal's league chances sliding bit by bit into the sea, battered by waves of draws against lesser teams. It's not that these feelings had never appeared before, just that they were a tad more keen this time.

Say you did decide to become some kind of pure soccer beatnik. You would need the information to inform whatever values you now apply to the game. You would need to be able to see the game through a clear lens, with no distractions. We are all, these days, somewhat expert at deciphering the media's mixed messages. Even so, to find enough objective material from which to disentangle some truth is a fraught business, even when concerning a frivolity such as football. Even when you hack through the thorny scrub of hype and bullshit and get to watch an actual match, you still have to be on your guard to avoid the continuous misdirection of TV production: the constant cuts and close-ups we're assured will bring us closer to the heart of the game, the expert punditry feeding us pithy slices of nothingness.

Is it true that, as the great philosopher said, "if something's hard to do, it's not worth doing"? Before you even consider the 'how' of liberated fandom, you must look at the 'why'. Is the tribalism of supporting a team "just because" really something to be looked down on, something from which to free oneself? Does it preclude one from perceiving football's multifarious realities? Is it a childish response to the chaos of the city, to hide under the bedclothes and clutch one's blanky?

I believe, for what it's worth, that the graph of my fandom will approach "liberated" but never quite reach it. I suspect that there is a happy medium between it and the more common variety - or, should I say, I hope there is. Maybe I am just chicken for not trying to relinquish my strange bond to a foreign football team, and maybe I'm cool with that. It's at this point that it would be wise to remind oneself of the absurdity of the world, and that the proper reaction to all of this is probably to shake one's head and laugh. If it's true that not all beliefs are equally valid, perhaps that is the most valid of them all.

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Summertime's here and I've got no hassle, I could be a goth on a bouncy castle

No smart-arsery, no ham-fisted satire, no quixotic attempts to figure out what it all means. Just a silly dance in front of the telly, a post headline half-inched from Birkenhead's finest and a gammy-limbed salute (the gammy limb being the season's must-have golfing accessory) to Pádraig Harrington, once again winner of the British Open. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to skip merrily in the woods for a while. Tra-la-la la-la la-la.....

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OPINION: Cycling dopes could learn from the beautiful game

So, another July, another set of drug scandals at the Tour de France. Every year we hear the same old news about a rider implausibly accelerating away on a Category 1 climb and winning the stage, only to find out a week later that it was driven by a little more than grit and determination. Tour de France? Tour de Farce, more like!

Thank God for football. While the upcoming Olympics will no doubt flounder in a sea of positive tests, football continues to prove itself to be the true Beautiful Game, as Pele once called it. The great thing about football is that there is no pill you can take that will make you play like Maradona. There is no injection that will give you the ability to do seventeen consecutive stepovers, or get confused by your team's zonal marking at set pieces.

Cycling has been riddled with doping for generations. To be a professional cyclist is to automatically be indoctrinated in the pernicious ways of the covert laboratories that corrupt sport with their evil substances.

Football has no such culture. When was the last time you heard of a footballer failing a drugs test? Granted, they are not tested anyway near as regularly or thoroughly as cyclists, but that is because there is no need to - there are no drugs in our game. How do we know? Well answer me this - when was the last time you heard of a footballer failing a drugs test?

No, footballers don't need illicit chemicals to help them through a season of 50-plus high-intensity matches, plus major internationals every other summer. They get by on guts, heart, pancreas, appendix and other internal organs. They get by on pride and devotion to their fans, as seen every time they kiss the badge on scoring. The strongest thing these lads ingest is Lucozade Sport, which replenishes lost fluids and electrolytes 33% more effectively than water.

I for one will not be watching this glorified contest between the clients of criminal pharmacologists. Roll on the new footie season, where the participants will run 12km per game on nothing but spirit and passion.

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Irish sport, in stamp form

(Click on the image for a better view of our national misery, you voyeuristic bastards.)

This week saw the issuing by An Post, the Irish national postal service, of two stamps by the artist and sculptor Graham Knuttel on the occasion of Ireland's participation in the forthcoming Olympic Games in Beijing.

The one on the right depicts a member of our coxless four rowing crew just before they cross the line to finish fifth in their semi-final, setting a new national record in the process. He wears a scowl, at once born of the essential determination of the Olympian and the defensiveness that he must pre-emptively adopt in order to brace himself for the disappointment felt by the viewers back home. He knows that despite the thousands of hours of toil he and his team-mates have endured in the last four years, with meagre resources and nominal support from the Exchequer, all the while holding down full-time employment or education, and competing against professionals who have practically infinite wherewithal to allow them to spend as much time as they want in physical, mental and technical preparation, the people of Ireland will wonder why the crew failed to even make the final, let alone win a medal. The national airwaves will be ablaze with phone-in shows dedicated to discussing whether we should be wasting any tax-payers' money on such a bunch of losers. He will not go to London in 2012.

In the background is a decaying tree in a lush, green field. This stands for the withering of the rower's dreams in the midst of the grand celebration of human vitality that is the Olympic Games. The field also symbolises Ireland, with the tree as the Irish soul which, in these post-Celtic Tiger days, knows the price of everything.

The second stamp is similarly detailed in commentary. The first thing to note is that the female shot-putter is looking towards the top-right hand corner of the stamp, as if in disbelief at the price (82c for a stamp?!). Secondly, she is practising at home in Ireland. This is because she has failed to qualify for the Games; in fact, no Irish shot-putter did. The nation shrugs and turns on the Gaelic football (as symbolised by the Macgillycuddy's Reeks in the background, a mountain range in Kerry, Ireland's foremost Gaelic football county). The image is ambiguous: is she in training for an attempt to reach the next Olympics, or has the lack of recognition for her almost Stakhavonite devotion to her discipline driven her to bash herself over the head with her own shot?

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Like, wooooah, man

When your computer messes with your head:

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What summer is all about

Y'see, this is why you wade through acres of transfer rumours every day.

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Exclusive! Excerpt from 'On the Efficacy of the Pre-Emptive Intervention', from the New Journal for Modern Psychiatric Research

...of the ectoplasmic clean-up operation thus required.


Case study 2

R., 28, is an economic migrant who moved from South America to Europe in 2001. After a spell living in France, he took up a well-paid position with a Barcelona-based company in 2003. Here, he flourished: he excelled in his job, was very popular at work and quickly gained a wide circle of friends in his new home city. Colleagues speak of his can-do attitude and incredible ability to problem-solve, and the company's productivity, which had been at an all-time low just before his arrival, reached unprecedentedly high levels within three years. Friends and colleagues alike were charmed by his winsome smile and easy-going manner, and his array of party-tricks kept many a soiree entertained long into the night.

Quite suddenly, however, things changed. Friends date this alteration in R.'s mood from a holiday he took with some fellow countrymen in Germany in the summer of 2006. R. has never spoken to his friends about what exactly happened on that trip, but they believe that whatever transpired had a significant impact on his emotional well-being. Far from being the inspiring leader of old at work, he appeared to lose his enthusiasm for the job. He started to appear withdrawn and listless. He got into a series of rows with a senior colleague and his output slumped. He put on weight. Always something of a party animal, he would spend more and more time in nightclubs, where despite the almost constant presence of his famous grin, in the words of one friend, "the sparkle had gone out of his eyes".

Things got progressively worse. R. began to speak of his desire to leave Spain. Then in the spring of 2008, his boss suggested to R. that it would be best for him to leave the company, and that in light of the excellent work he had done in previous years, he would have the option of being discreetly transferred to another branch rather than simply having his contract terminated.

Around this time (R. is unable to recall whether it was before or after the meeting with his employer), he was approached by a man claiming to have the "answers to all my problems", firstly by means of a series of phone calls, and then by rendezvous at various Barcelona eateries. This mysterious figure represented what he called a "group devoted to the attainment of the ultimate transcendental journey to the most righteous centre of truth and love".

Investigation by our researchers has uncovered more about this group based in an affluent part of west London. It grew out of a small church founded in the early twentieth-century, one of many such communities which sprung up around Britain in the late Victorian and early Edwardian eras. They worshipped unassumingly in their temple for the better part of a century. In the early part of this decade, a new leader suddenly and still mysteriously to outsiders came to prominence. His provenance is uncertain, and few have seen him, but our researchers have come across anecdotal evidence seeming to prove that he hails from Russia. Former members of the group claim that the inside walls of the temple are adorned with large banners bearing images of the Leader's smiling face and the words "OURS IS THE WORLD". The group's central doctrine is that one day soon, the entire population of the world will be destroyed save for the members of the church, who will travel with the leader to Heaven, which will have descended from its celestial location to an area of the Russian republic of Chukotka in eastern Siberia.

R. recalls feeling especially vulnerable at this time and how the offer to join the church was consequently especially tempting, particularly given that the church were promising to offer him untold riches should he do so. As he planned to pack his bags and move to London, he was invited to what he believed to be a party by friends in Barcelona. On entering the premises of the 'party's' host, he was almost immediately informed by his friends that the gathering was, in fact, an intervention. They had heard about R.'s meeting with the church's envoy and were very alarmed at the prospect of his joining what they believed to be a dangerous cult. They confronted R. with their belief that he was thinking of joining the group, which he denied. They voiced their concern at his deteriorating mental state, something which R. attempted to refute. His friends then made him listen to music which contained subliminal messages urging him not to join the church.

Despite his efforts to sabotage this tactic, they persisted. R. proved quite resistant. He at first tried to reason with his friends, claiming that the church was entirely benevolent, and that their primary function was to stage free recitations of classic numbers from the musical theatre for the homeless. He then tried to bargain with them, saying that if they let him go he would move instead to Manchester. When this failed, he decided to threaten them, saying that he would call up his brothers and that they would bring 'goons' in order to forcibly break up the intervention.

Eventually, R. cracked. Through tears and mucus, he said that there was an offer on the table from a large Milanese multinational and that he would take it. He said that his friends were right about the London group, and asked for their forgiveness and understanding for how he had behaved over the previous two years and for causing them such deep concern by almost joining the church. The next day, he set off for Milan.

R. claims to be sincere about his forswearing of the Anglo-Russian death cult, and has agreed to ongoing counselling and monitoring of his psychiatric state for the foreseeable future.

The case of R. is a clear demonstration that despite the controversy of the practice, the pre-emptive intervention can be a very effective weapon in initiating the corrective process in one suffering from potentially devastating extreme mental trauma. However, if not carried out with due care and professional supervision, the effects can be unintentionally dire, as our next example shows.


Case study 3

C., 23, left his home on an island off the coast of Africa for a new life in the northwest of England...

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Up With People

Rejected title 1: Stop me if you think you've heard this one before

Rejected title 2: Jaysus, it's been what, nearly a week now? Let it go, man



Were I at all consistent, of course, I would right now be curled up on my bed, sobbing self-pitifully about the passing of yet another cataclysmic sporting event. I should be cursing the gods for denying me (not 'us', mark you - 'me') just another little taste of their private stash of 'for special occasions only' ambrosia. I should be writing very bad poetry. The Shins should be playing in my headphones. Sure, I'd come to terms with it, for one must. But predisposed to the nauseating shudder of sports-induced melancholy as I sometimes am, I would need to ease myself back into tepid normality.

This is different, though. That tennis match has left me like a python who's swallowed an entire gazelle in one go. There's no feeling sorry for oneself when one has had the privilege of seeing that. There came a point during it when you just surrendered yourself to its will and allowed it to take you wherever it damn well pleased. I looked forward to it for weeks before it appeared on the Order of Play, confident (though secretly with held breath) of its inexorability. I had dreams of being awed by its splendour, only for it mock me for my lack of ambition. I am a happy fool.

So I write this not with the laptop tilted at a near-90-degree angle, propped against the pillow. This is not a lament for a briefly intense but now extinguished romance. This is a celebration, a meagre offering of appreciation, a gurgle of contentment. You're still getting the bad poetry, though. And I'm listening to the Shins anyway.

Actually, no: let's change the soundtrack to something more suitable:



That's more like it.

Let us pray.


Yeah, there comes a booming sound...

I'm currently reading Simon Barnes' The Meaning Of Sport. Well, skimming, really - partly because the book's division into 158 numbered sections invites it, and partly because I'm trying to read about ten books at once, thus giving due attention to none. In any case, there's one piece that struck me as I read it today: it's a quote from Paul Westphal, former coach of the Phoenix Suns, following an NBA finals demolition at the hands of the Chicago Bulls and You Know Who Scored 55 Points in 1993. Of Jordan, Westphal said (this is in section 82 if you're following, folks) "He inflicted his will on us".

It used to come from underground, uh-huh...

Barnes expands: "not just a matter of physical ability. It was his ability to seize an occasion and to do what he wanted with it that was so perfectly devastating". It is, if I may be so bold, Simon, that and more.

Now it emanates from a kind of welfare state of the soul (yeah baby, of the soul)...

Sport is about the body like Hendrix was about the plectrum. It's one percent perspiration and ninety-nine percent inspiration. An athlete's physical gifts are but a lot of dumb gristle without the brain to put them to use. In the long term, it is the mind which drives one to utilise these finely-crafted tools and hew the body, slowly, into a glorious living sculpture. In every case, of course, the body eventually screams in ultimate protest to the mind: sometimes after it's been gainfully and plentifully employed, sometimes with cruel prematurity. Either way, it would have nothing to protest about had it not been paced and cajoled and coerced by its owner. Talent is inert unless instructed otherwise.

Not that sweet, sweet soul / Let's be certain of the deliberate monologue...

In the immediate term, in the irreversible moment, in the theatre or arena or battlefield or whatever it is, the mind is what matters. Especially at the most rarefied level, it is a contest of wits. One mind is trying to peer through the keyhole of the other, to see what's going on behind the locked door - to perhaps see some kind of pattern which might reveal to it what the other mind will do before it itself knows. At the same time, it is steadfastly guarding itself from prying eyes, keeping watch in case its own secrets leak out. In this exalted world, technique and physicality become mere analogues of the will.

As sure as if it will fall across you, unto you...

And by some quirk of nature, the visible manifestation of this encounter happens to be wonderfully pleasant to watch. In justifying our love of sport, we may invoke the greatest practitioners and the most beautiful shapes they make, but the same pleasure can come watching a pair of Wimbledon-watching enthusiasts play on a tennis court streaked with the long shadows of a late June evening, or an under-10s football match on a muddy winter's morning.

Will most certainly leave the doing, the doing undone - come on undone, come on undone...

What was beautiful about Sunday was that two great minds, two human minds, each forced the other to go places minds rarely go. Federer has played better matches before, but sometimes it seemed not so much like pushing through an open door as the door disintegrating by his mere presence in the room. Why this could almost be considered his greatest victory is that he met an equal (I'm not claiming that Nadal is absolutely equal to Federer per se, just that he was at least that in this case) who raised the stakes to ridiculous levels - and not only matched them, but himself raised them in counter-attack. Nadal would do likewise, and Federer would again respond in kind. Just as one man thought he might have the whole thing figured out, he would quickly be rebuked for his impudence. They achieved the feat (if you exclude the first two sets) of always being one step ahead of each other.

(Of course, you can substitute Nadal's name for Federer's in much of the previous paragraph.)

We are doing and we are screwing up our lives today, up our lives today...

If you are apt to think from time to time about why exactly you devote much of your time to watching and pondering on sport, you will at least once have an out-of-body experience and look down at yourself and wonder what the hell you're at. It probably won't happen in the throes of a great match; it's more likely to be during a god-awful one, say, or maybe while writing an overwrought blog post. To a non-dogmatic mind, it cannot be called unreasonable.

It's this we've chanted; it's this we've planted:...

Sport is played by humans, possessed of the same matter as you or me. One feels squeamish about using the word 'hero' to describe a great athlete: they don't save lives or make them materially better. Some people, I'm told, manage to go their whole lives without being bothered about the presence of these athletes in the world. Anyway, you're supposed to grow out of believing that an Anders Limpar poster in Shoot magazine is a representation of heroism. No, sportspeople are people too. They do their job in a heightened state, routinely pushing their minds to levels we ordinary Joes rarely experience in our workaday lives. The ways this is physically represented - bashing a ball back and forth across a net, kicking a synthetic bladder around a field - may appear trivial when looked on from a certain angle. But I don't believe they are - as we've touched upon already, there is no shame to be had in being moved by the dance, or swept up by the improvised drama it often provides. And underneath the show-stopping superficies, there are ordinary human minds thinking extraordinary human things. It may be that these things are bad qualities, and this we must accept as part of our lot. When they are good qualities, we can claim a stake in them too: these athletes' greatness is an embodiment of what we as a species can do, what one as an individual can, maybe, just maybe, do. We're not just observers of the game - we're playing it, too.

Come on, progeny...Come on, progeny...Come on, progeny...Come on, progeny...

Simon Barnes has also talked about how society has "come out of the closet" with our attitude to sport in the last couple of centuries; we are at last open about the value of the sporting instinct (which, by the way, Barnes believes is mammalian, not just human). I count myself lucky to be around in such an age. Perhaps it is rather safe and de-humanising to experience all this vicariously through others more willing than you, be they real flesh-and-bone people in front of you or what are essentially characters in a television programme. Perhaps. I'm also thankful that I live in a part of the world where going to such extremes is an option and not a necessity. I'm thankful to be part of a species that can create such conditions, when it really puts its mind to it. And I'm thankful, in my passive-consumerist, too-comfortable-in-my-ass-groove way, for those who excel and let us see them do so.

Doo-doo doot-doot-doot-dooo doo-oo-ooooo....

(Next time on Sport Is A TV Show: All-time top 10 John Terry dick jokes!)

Photo by Kevin In Canada

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That new book smell

I was happy - confused, but happy - when Arsenal spent god knows how much on Franny Jeffers.

I almost literally danced around the living room when the teletext headline told me that we'd signed José Antonio Reyes (I say 'almost' because...well, if you saw me dancing you'd know).

And now it's finally here: the package from Amazon that I ordered some months ago, that was somehow always 6 to 8 days from arrival. It may offer a profound insight into the human condition; it may be a thrill-a-paragraph page turner; I may junk it fifty pages in, slightly embarrassed about buying it in the first place. But let's not worry about all that for now - just open it up and breathe it in.

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Our song

As I convalesce after having my brain surgically repaired following repeated sweet assaults over a seven-hour period on Sunday (this is looking like becoming a series: Over-Emotional Reactions To Major Sporting Events), perhaps it's time for some sober reflection on Sunday's events - though there may still be traces sloshing around my bloodstream (way to kinda mix metaphors, F.!).

Maybe the old-timers are right and things ain't what they used to be. I'm not about to make any grand proclamations about where the Nadal-Federer rivalry fits in among the greats of yore (besides, I already somewhat slyly did so on Sunday night). It's all too easy believe you're in love with the last pretty thing you saw, as we know from painful experience.

But I for one am not all that bothered about the issue. It's not that I don't have a sense of history - I quite like to think the contrary is true - but I wasn't around when Borg and McEnroe, or Nicklaus and Watson, or Ali and Frazier were duking it out. One can read all the books and watch all the sentimental retrospective documentaries, but to run with a theme expressed several posts ago, the vital charge that gave these contests their essence faded with their passing. Sure, as long as those who witnessed them are around, their presence will linger, and their remains won't fossilise. But practically, they're gone.

Nadal-Federer, on the other hand, is alive - living, breathing, rampaging (flexing, grunting, adjusting the precise position of the bottles in front of the chair, sprinting to the baseline, bouncing the ball...bouncing...bouncing...bouncing..., etc.). We were there at its birth and we're proudly watching it grow into the leader of the pride.

To re-iterate: this is not a cover version of 'history is bunk'. The past is not something to be dismissed, nor to patronisingly pat on the head and say "I love hearing your war stories, Grandad, now here's your mashed bananas with your sleeping pills mixed in, there's a good soldier". But you have to step away from it and see the present in its own light. It's perhaps easier said by a relative novice such as myself than done ; no doubt as I get older I'll accumulate such memories as to be unable to resist pitting them against one another for my affections. As it is, I'm enjoying this here and now, on its own terms, for what it is rather than what it isn't.

At the risk of contradicting myself, on some level it is about its relation to times past. The oldies had their great occasions to savour, and they've told us about them often enough since that we at once feel due awe at their enormity and an anxiety that maybe these things really do belong in memories and other more mechanical data retrieval systems. Now that something comes along that our minds and hearts tell us bear some correlation to these tales, we instinctively put it in the same volume and decorate it with the most florid language we can find. But this is ours, something that has taken root in our hearts and is blossoming as we live and breathe. This is the verse we'll come back to and linger over. This is the song that was playing when we our eyes first met, and luckily it wasn't Coldplay or Maroon 5 or some such.

It needn't be oppositional, of course. Those who've been around the block more often can still revel in it. Indeed, their experience will probably allow them to take it in more fulfillingly should they wish it to be so. In the case of Nadal-Federer a consensus seems to be forming that this is indeed the acme of tennis history.

The caveat in this is that we're all still a bit dazed after Sunday and even the wise are not necessarily exempt. We need to see how it plays out over the next few years and then let it ferment for a while before we call it. It certainly feels like we're seeing something seismic: Federer appears to be on the wane, and he is certainly faced with a novel (for him) predicament, whereas Nadal improves and has proved that he can pass muster on unfamiliar territory. But Nadal might remain allergic to the plains of Flushing Meadows and Melbourne Park, or his knees might give way; Federer could show that he really is the greatest champion of them all by staring the monster down. All I know is that it's happening now, and we're watching.


Some points I'm still too woozy to develop properly:

• Tiger Woods is extraordinary, and watching him in full flow is a privilege, but I wish there was another human being who could properly and consistently challenge him. It must be a bit embarrassing for the other golfers that Tiger's toughest opponent is his own cruciate ligament.
  



• Margaret Court apparently hated every opponent she faced. Mike Tyson wanted to eat his adversaries' babies (or was that Drederick Tatum? I literally can't remember which). The latest issue of World Soccer contains a feature on the greatest derbies in football, reminding us how much football is driven by bitterness, whether stemming from sporting-political slights or profound social faults. By all accounts, Rafa and Roger get on very well. Their rivalry is based on their encounters on the court and a deep mutual respect. Lest I come across as some kind of hippy or 19th century French aristocrat, I'm not saying that football should shed its feuds; they are intrinsic to the game, for good and bad. It's just nice to know, especially when the meeja are ever keen to play up any perceived animosity in certain sports, that such greatness is capable of emanating purely out of sporting deeds rather than fighting talk.
  



• On a similar tack, all those 'there are no personalities in sport anymore'-types can go hang. Nadal and Federer may be uncontroversial, respectful of their opponents and no doubt tend to sickly stray animals they find on the road. They may not swear at umpires or smash their racquets over line judges' heads. But seriously, watch that match again and tell me that all that matters. Sure, it would be a shame if all athletes really were match-winning automatons (which they of course are not, despite what some say). But take John McEnroe, someone I admire greatly: did it not get a bit boring the 932nd time he threw a hissy-fit? 'Personality' is not the be-all and end-all. Again, watch that match.
  

God, this blogging lark is easy. As long as a sporting event of major significance comes along, say, every week or so, I'm sorted...

Photo by andrew.wheeler

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Notes on Everything

I'm going to try to refrain from using the 'B' word in this post, but I fear it will be like eating a doughnut without licking my lips...I wish I'd paid more attention in religion class because I bet there are some killer metaphors I could steal...Federer probably feels like shit right now, but if ever there was honour in defeat, this is it...Federer looked like a little boy lost at Roland Garros a month ago, and frankly it was a frightening, in a small way, like an old certainty beginning to crack. One could say it humanised him, but that would be patronising - just because we're incapable of such greatness doesn't mean we can put it down to some kind of otherness. Nonetheless, it was kind of endearing. Perhaps there was a possibility of him going the same way at two sets down here. Thank God he didn't...Did you know, children, there was a time when a spell of 39 consecutive games without a break of serve (not including tie-breaks) signified nothing more than the tiring, eye-aching dutifulness of the habitual sports fan, rather than a proxy journey into the inner wonders and eternal weirdness of the human soul?...In an alternative universe, this match is still going on; what's more, we're all still watching it...I thought for a moment that God must hate tennis, but he's really just a hell of a dramatist. That rain was a classy touch, no?...I hope there's a disclaimer on those tickets, otherwise the All-England club are in for a torrent of ECG bills...When you think about it, aren't humans amazing? I don't know if one can say we've invented these rituals or had them thrust upon us by our own innate beings, but either way it's inconceivable that they shouldn't exist. Perhaps there's a bunch of aliens out there, existing in a state of transcendence far beyond our imaginations, and they're laughing at us and our silly little stickball games. But you know what, Zlorbazoids? Screw you. It's ours, and we like it, and I feel sorry for you that you'll never get to know the feeling of watching a cross-court backhand winner on a television screen and involuntarily gasping as a result...It's sometimes a bit of a shock to see the global viewing figures for the biggest sporting events and to realise that only 0.001% of the earth's population was watching, and that the world is still turning...Was I the only one who felt a twinge of inadequacy while watching this?...Most of the match was predictable; you knew, or at least had a strong hunch, that as soon as it looked like one man had found the poison, the other would immediately find an antidote. 'Predictable' is often used as a euphemism for boring, apparently...Good guys wear white. Angels wear white. Tennis players following the strict attire regulations of the All-England Lawn Tennis & Crocquet Club wear white...The alternate attempts of each player to manipulate the space of the court in baseline tennis is a thing of wonder when executed by these two, and particularly so when carried out with such controlled power. Simon Barnes likens tennis to a duel. I'm proud to live in an age where we have a bloodless substitute for sword-fighting. Fencing doesn't count, from my voyeuristic armchair view. Tennis is what fencing looks like in super slo-mo...Nadal's passing shot at 7-7 in the fourth set tie-break!...Federer's backhand winner at 7-8 in the fourth set tie-break!...Federer's roar when he won the fourth set tie-break!...It's said that in the future, scientists will be able to work out how this match got better and better and better the longer it went on...Not to generalise, but I kind of turned against the crowd when they laughed at the French umpire's tripping up over the word 'challenges'...Rafael Nadal prised the sword from the stone today...Sport as substitute for nuclear Armageddon: Federer and Nadal fire every weapon in their stockpile at each other so we don't have to...Or should that be Nadal and Federer?...This is fucking ridiculous...I wasn't born when the Thriller in Manilla happened...Rafa's OCD rituals are quite sweet, aren't they?...Tit-for-tat replay challenges...Sitting on my sofa, hundreds of miles away, even I was intimidated by Roger Federer's serve...I have a pain in my neck from shaking my head so much...Are footballers just a big bunch of wusses? If they cry at losing a penalty shoot-out, how would they cope in a tie-break, or with being 7-7 in the final set of a Grand Slam final?...I haven't eaten in, like, twelve hours...It is a skill to be able to withstand the crashing waves of silence in the seconds just before a serve in a Wimbledon final...Usually in any sports tournament, you would like to see some upsets along the way. This time, even forgetting about the benefit of hindsight, who in their right minds would have wished for that?...What's a Euro 2008?...Oh, sod it - 'Beauty', and all derivatives thereof...Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, thank you. Just, thank you.

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Inside the Rumour Mill

The Guardian's Barney Ronay takes us where the magic happens.

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See Your Future With The FIFA-Registered Fortune Teller

Come in, my son. Please sit down. First you must cross my palm with silver...How much? About 15% of what you have should do the trick.

Thank you. I shall now gaze into the crystal ball - let us see what lies ahead for you, young man...Oooh, I see a man...a man of Latin appearance. He's beckoning to you...yes, he wants you to follow him. I see you on a plane, very plush - must be first class! You are heading south for a life in the sun. And what's this...I see money - riches beyond your wildest dreams! You're waving it the face of your former friends as if to remind them what fools they have been to have trusted you. You don't need them - you'll have many new and more exciting friends where you're going.

Yes, I see them now. There's a big welcoming party for you, full of television cameras and press photographers. You're going to be famous, revered around the world for your fabulousness. It's the life you always dreamed of.

Ah...the crystal ball is showing me what's happening a little further forward in time now. Yes, it's next spring...oh...oh dear. It's not looking so good, I'm afraid. You have scored but three goals, two of them in a cup rout of a hapless lower-league team. Oh no - your friends are saying horrible things about you behind your back. Strangers are giving you dirty looks in the street. And the graffiti...I just hope you don't learn the vernacular. You are miserable, rattling around your new eight-bedroom villa, all alone except for your posse, your domestic staff and your huge piles of money. No, this is not good...

We're going forward a little further again...You have moved on, onto a new city in a new country and...wait, you're moving on again and...hold on, you keep hopping from city to city, country to country, job to job. You stay in one place for a year, maybe a year and a half at most. You are ill at ease, young man. You are troubled, yet you maintain a defiant face throughout, for you are still talented and very, very rich. You do not care for the feelings of others.

Aha! I'm seeing a very clear vision now! It is the final of a major international club competition. It is goalless, deep into extra-time. There are many tense and worried people in the stadium. Wait, there you are! It's the 119th minute and you are standing on the touchline waiting to come on...now I see a penalty shoot-out...it's 3-2 to the opposition, it's your team's last kick and...yes! You're stepping up to take it! You place the ball on the spot and take several steps back. You're running up to the ball and...

Oh dear. The crystal ball is fogging up. Oh well, some secrets the cosmos must keep to itself. Of course, you could always pay for another go...no no, I definitely said 17.5%...

Photo by misplaced in the city

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Wait 'til our PR man hears of this

Shortly after the dawn of creation I mentioned that I had ordered a bespoke About page from a professional blurb writer. Thing is, it didn't turn out too well. My suspicions were first raised when what was supposed to be the finished article flounced into my inbox. Instead of a lovingly-crafted paean to the hallucinatory transcendence of my wee corner of the blogitorium, I was instead confronted with the back-cover scrawlings set to accompany a DVD to be released in time for the new season calling itself Tim Lovejoy's Footie Freaks!!, which threatens us with "hilarious howlers, barely believable barnets and ker-razy Colombians who shoot players who score own goals!!" (it seems this tendency towards double exclamation marks is deliberate).

Before undergoing professional hypnotherapeutical treatment to ensure I feel like vomiting should I ever wander within purchasing distance of a HMV special offer rack, I contacted the writer to inform her of her mistake. Not four minutes later, I received the correct document. Alas, I was to be disappointed; as I proof-read it thoroughly before its intended publication (contrary to my usual practice, I hear you snort), I was struck by its similarity to the previous incorrectly-forwarded literature. In fact, so similar did it appear (it read practically the same, except for details such as names) that I immediately dispatched an email to this 'expert' scribe seeking an explanation. It turns out that it was produced by way of an automated blurb-composition program employed by all of the major publishing houses. The 'writer' enters a few keywords and it spews out a piece of tender, fat-marbled propaganda ready for market. Mine had somehow got mixed up with a batch labelled 'sport' and 'wacky'.

I, of course, demanded my (sizeable) deposit back. Needless to say, I'm still waiting. The company must be owned by the same crowd as Setanta.

Stuck for a solution, and even contemplating writing the About page myself (the blog equivalent of speed dating), I decided to procrastinate awhile by googling my own name, as you do. Amid the glowing references to my acclaimed 2002 theological treatise "WWJS: Who Would Jesus Support?" (answer: Partick Thistle) and the hilarious Photoshopped images with my head on the body of someone wearing a Chelsea jersey (if you're reading this, kerry_dixon_4eva, I know your email address and I'm gonna spam your account seven ways to Tory-boy hell, mate), I came across a rather cutting review of this very site. No, cutting doesn't do it justice: you know that scene in the Itchy & Scratchy version of Fantasia where the cat chops the mouse up into millions of tiny pieces? Well, that doesn't do it justice either. It slashed straight to the heart of every dream, every pretension I have for Sport Is A TV Show, and in doing so presented a sadly accurate picture of what you see before you. I cannot think of anything better to say that I might present as an About page, so this will have to suffice until I've swept up what shards of my previously blog-swelled ego remain on the floor of the forest of despair in which I now find myself. I haven't provided a link or reference for the review, so shaken has it left me. In any case, here is the full the full text in all its sickening glory - it's harsh but, I think you'll agree, fair:

------------------------------------------

...
NEXT UP is Sport Is A TV Show. This new blog on the block is a receptacle for the sports-based witterings of one 'Fredorrarci', about whose site information is as yet scant. We can, however, rustle up a rough sketch from what he's divulged so far.

It's obvious that his adoption of an Italianate pseudonym is a compensatory device, an attempt to sub-consciously deceive the reader into an anticipation of continental sophistication. One can understand this wish, given the half-digested mush he serves up. And we are presuming it's a 'he', given his apparent fascination with a certain not-very-popular Merseyside beat combo from whom he has stolen the image which accompanies the site's header, as well as his borrowing of their work for several post titles and, our music correspondent tells me, possibly even that very nom de plume - this band tend to attract a certain kind of slightly nerdish and socially deficient male football fan.

If you're looking for the merest modicum of insight into the world of sport, you'd best look elsewhere. His football worldview encompasses little but simplistic and reductive arse-drivel. You know this before you read a single post - it is telegraphed by the inclusion of that tired old Danny Blanchflower quote about "glory" and "style" in the sidebar, a sure sign of an insufferable self-styled 'soccer romantic' if ever there was one. Perhaps he'll develop a vitality-consuming opium habit and die a suitable death, strung out on his flea-ridden bedsit floor, reeking of laudanum, damning the gods for the invention of the three-man defensive midfield screen. One hopes so. It's how he'll want to go.

Fredorrarci has employed the common trick of the desperate new blogger of piggybacking on the presence of a major event, in this case the European Championships. This has ensured a steady stream of material on which to base what he would doubtless call his 'musings'. The posting of almost thirty articles in less than a month of the blog's existence certainly impresses the innocent tripper-upper-over. A basic perusal of said posts, however, swiftly disabuses one of such notions. His Euro-analysis can be summed up by either of two statements: "Yay! The team I wanted to win won, and I'm so happy I must rashly enthuse about it in my spiffing new blog!!!"; or "Boo hoo! The team I wanted to win were shown up for the woeful inadequates I, deep down, feared them to be - in fact, perhaps that's why I identified with them in the first place - by a bunch of horrid big beasties, and I'm going to pour my little romantic heart into my spiffing new blog!!!". It displays the emotional continence of the sissy kid at the birthday party who can't find a vacant chair when the music stops. He claims to be in his twenties. Presumably he means in dog years.

And, woe is us!, he supports Arsenal. Once he's wrung every last drop of nonsense out of Euro 2008 - his latest post on the subject was a typically pseudo-profound pool of spew on how "life is transient" because he didn't VCR any of the tournament's games - it seems the blogosphere will be subjected to more of the same ill-considered menopausal claptrap, given that he has hitched his wagon to the most dysfunctional, self-deluding and self-pitying team in all of sport. Be afraid, web watchers.

One thing that this lake of Euro-induced tears has drowned is the idea that 'sport' - remember, Fredorrarci? The first word in your blog's title? - includes anything other than 'The Beautiful Game', as he probably has tattooed on his buttocks. So far there has been a solitary post about a sport other than football - a six-word missive about a tennis match which seems to mistake itself for the very essence of wit. It looks more like a "memo to self: must post about other sports!!!". How much he does veer from the oh-so-well-trodden path of soccer blogging remains to be seen, though I obviously wouldn't recommend it.

Punctuating the mood swings are intermittent stabs at what Fredorrarci must believe is humour. I would be more apt to call it 'humour-like substance', or better still, 'not humour'. I struggle to get across the precise ghastliness of these follies. Imagine if the late Alan Coren, instead of being one of the English language's greatest modern wits, had been a lobotomised Arsenal-supporting halfwit who spent most of his time daydreaming about how clever he could be if only he didn't keep daydreaming about how clever he could be, and who would bang his head violently and repeatedly on the desk before composing a piece. Imagine that, but slightly worse.

There is barely room to declaim on the many crimes against style perpetrated by Sport Is A TV Show, so I will grudgingly limit myself. His fascination with italicising every other word does little but enrage the reader and proclaim "I have read Catcher In The Rye at least once". Then there's his indiscriminate use of parentheses. This habit almost encapsulates the spirit of the blog, but not quite; Sport Is A TV Show is not so much an aside to the blogosphere as an actor leaning forward and vomiting into the orchestra pit.

The site's title was no doubt meant to convey some deep truth that Fredorrarci must have spent some minutes pondering. It is perhaps more revealing than he intended. It offers the pathetic image of one who perhaps invests too much meaning and emotion into what is, after all, a moving collection of pixels on a screen. He would be as well off re-enacting the battle of El-Alamein with clothes pegs for all the significance it has, yet here he is, narcissistically uploading his every cerebral flickering on the subject like it was worth a damn. It almost makes you feel sorry for him. Then you read on.

I would advise Fredorrarci to go play in the traffic, except he's unlikely to see any.

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Photo by jafine211

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People take pictures of the summer just to prove that it really existed

It was with a jolt that I flicked on page 302 of Ceefax on Monday morning to find that they had already done away with their special Euro 2008 index. Way to punch me in the solar plexus, guys. It's been so nice to indulge for a few weeks without having a great big headline about a hot new Peter Crouch transfer rumour clobbering you over the head and dragging you back to its cave. I know the party's over, lads, but couldn't we just pretend, just have "BEAUTY IS TRUTH, TRUTH BEAUTY" on the top of the page for a few days?

Of course not. We haven't even been allowed the grace of that hazy minute between dream and reality when the two magically merge. Instead, the radio-alarm of life shakes violently with the din of a Five Live newsreader blaring "DECO HAS COMPLETED HIS MOVE TO CHELSEA".

It occurred to me while reading Brian's latest piece on The Run Of Play - particularly "'remembering' is a hybrid act that marries suspicion to the consultation of an external repository" - that I had not recorded a single minute of this tournament for posterity. For as long as I can remember, I've videotaped the final of major international tournaments, plus re-runs of particularly fine matches. My supposition was that I would, on some dreary day, feel an urge to transport myself back to an evening filled with drama, passion and no little splendour. Perhaps I would one day show my grandchildren how football used to be back in the good old days by digging out the old video machine from the attic and playing them the 2006 Germany-Italy semi-final ("would you believe me if I told you that this chunky 'cassette', we used to call them, could only hold three hours of video footage?").

But I honestly can't recall the last time I did actually fire up the wheezing VCR to watch one of these classics. The attraction is just not there. You can hardly marvel at the way the script was written before your eyes when you've already seen the ending. It would be patronising to act surprised at the twist in the plot when you've been silently reciting the preceding lines to yourself. If you're honest with yourself, you just want to see the explosions (and nod sagely at the expertise of the pyrotechnicians, of course). I have more than once accidentally inserted the tape of the Spain 4-3 Yugoslavia game into the machine; on discovering my error, I would resolve to watch the whole match, but after five minutes would grow restless and fast-forward it to the 88th minute.

I knew all this, yet would persist in my efforts to cryogenise these events. It may have been a pathetic hang-up left over from childhood, where these things really did seem to matter, because your worldview was defined solely by your own perceptions and feelings. If you were lucky enough, as I was, to have a blissfully untroubled youth, you could easily live in the fantasy that sport was the most important thing in the universe. I was just a bit slow in growing out of this (though traces remain and occasionally surface) and accepting, in Brian's words, "that even at its greatest, it’s one part of your daily life, something you make room for, something that fits in with everything else"; or as someone else may have put it, it's a TV show.

Looking at photos of some past special occasion is an unsatisfactory experience. It's a natural impulse to want to capture the spirit of a wonderful day in a way that you can later conveniently recall, but a photograph never succeeds in this. It can never present what you really felt, only generate a second-hand copy that doesn't match the purity of the memory that plays back when you close your eyes.

So, this time I didn't do it - not through prior resolution, but simply because it never crossed my mind. One could say that being all broadbanded up now means I have no need, seen as I can access these Precious Moments at the buffering of an embedded clip whenever I choose. (Also, throughout the tournament BBCi showed highlights of the previous day's games plus a loop of every goal in the competition thus far - instant nostalgia!) I like to think of it as a belated acceptance of the transience of sport, and indeed (adopts voice of Jim Hacker when giving a self-important speech about freedom or some such to Sir Humphrey) life itself. It's also to recognise that even though a football match is a slowly unfolding drama built on ebb and flow, on the tension between stuff happening and not happening, your recollection of it usually consists of a coalescence of the glory and the boring (even the best games normally have some dead air in them) into something perhaps even more beautiful that the original, and that it's probably wise not to disturb it. After all, it's the party that stays in your mind, not the trip to the off-licence.

Photos by chasing twilight and maddiesnapsthecamera

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