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Alright, mush? You probably don’t need reminding but today marks the 41st anniversary of Libby Riddles becoming the first woman to win the Iditarod Dog Sled Race. While dog sledding – or mushing – may be far from your mind in this spell of balmy weather that we’re enjoying, let us pause for a moment to contemplate Libby’s achievement.
Imagine if cactus, not grass, was the most abundant plant on Earth. It would make rugby a whole lot more interesting. It’s one of the many blessings of this planet, though, that nature has given us the perfect playing surface for all manner of sports, from bowls to cricket to football to golf to horseracing to tennis. All we have to do is keep it level and cut.
Do you ever talk to yourself? Ever have those conversations where you get quite cross with yourself? To the point where you’re not sure which part of you is entitled to be cross and which part should be contrite?
I woke up in one of those moods today, so I went on a fast thinking walk, as Winnie the Pooh would call it, so see if I could sort out my head.
The human body is a phenomenal thing. I’m not just talking about mine – yours probably is too. But there are certain functions that still need explaining.
I’m nervous. I feel that, just by writing that word above, I’ve committed myself to something enormous. I might as well have written ‘Life’ or ‘Time’. Water is such an amazing, multifunctional thing, how could I ever expect to do it justice in a short and – it has been said – flippant blog? I’d need a whole documentary series at least (hello any commissioning editors out there?)
My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, or emptied some dull opiate to the drains one minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. Ahh that post tax return feeling. You can’t beat it.
Many moons ago, when we were young and free and we used to go for drinks in random locations wherever the car of whoever was driving came to rest, we found ourselves in an upstairs bar in Leatherhead, the room beneath which had just been hosting Bullseye on the road, with Jim ‘Bully’ Bowen himself.
Now, across the bar from us, the after party was in full swing. (more…)
I arrived on a video call this week in the middle of a discussion about the meaning of ‘afternoon’. Sean, quite reasonably, was saying he’d always interpreted it to mean the period of the day after noon, noon being midday. Tracy, however, was saying she always regarded afternoon as the period of the day after lunch – 2pm onwards in her case.
Here’s a word that has fallen from grace somewhat in recent years. When I was a lad back in the 70s, the idea of personal grooming for blokes was as alien as straight trousers and 24 hour electricity. Beards were straggly monstrosities for collecting beer and peanuts, not carefully crafted facial topiary, preened with exotic oils. Sure, there were ads for Brut 33, which did require Kevin Keegan and Henry Cooper to strip down to the waist, but men in pants adorning the pages of glossy magazines? Nah.
Every day’s a school day, as the saying goes, and it’s a wonderful privilege of being alive that you’re never too old to learn. Facts that seem obvious to some people from a young age can evade others until much later in life.
For example, I must have been in my 40s before I learned that if you start one key to the right when touch typing, it all comes out in Welsh.
