Progressive Thoughts - Day 11

There is one British band carrying the torch for Progressive Rock into the future and are bringing the genre to the masses. That band is Muse and today’s song is one of their classics. It is called Survival and was the official anthem for the London 2012 Olympics.

It’s a great song that illustrates the drive to achieve a sporting triumph and characterises the desire to keep on striving to reach your goals.

When I was a young lad, I used to watch sport and dream of achieving similar goals. I was hindered slightly because my eyesight is so poor that there are certain sports I could only dream of attempting.

Take football for example – or if you are American, I mean “soccer” ( I will try not to rant about the sport that you guys call “football” because, don’t forget, I am endeavouring to be positive in 2017 and not antagonise anybody – besides, you have enough on your plate with Donald Trump!).

To play football, you need good eyesight and I can barely see the other players on my own team let alone the bloody ball. I did try playing football in my spectacles a couple of times, but each time I ended up in pain. One time, the ball hit me full in the face and the frame of my glasses pierced the skin above my eye giving me a nasty cut more reminiscent of boxing.

I tried repeatedly to play without them but failed. One time, the goalkeeper cleared the ball in my direction and I ran forward to where I thought it would end up. My fellow team mates yelled at me – all I could hear was my name being called. Sadly, I thought they were expecting a pass the moment that I plucked the ball from the air, like a professional footballer would do; the truth is that they were yelling for another reason. I looked up into the sky and the ball hit me full in the face almost breaking my nose. I fell in a heap on the floor and the opposition players almost collapsed in laughter.

Another game I tried was rugby, which is more like American Football – but much more violent and with no added protection.

I regarded rugby as legalised bullying and in order to thrive you needed to have good eyesight (fail!), be big (fail!) and be strong (fail!).

I was fast, and could run when the ball somehow found its way into my hands but sadly my other flaws let me down and I ended up breathing mud having been flattened by angry meatheads twice my size and weight.

Cricket was another choice and I could play with my glasses on. The problem was that the ball is constructed in Hell and is a small hard missile hurled at you at ridiculous speeds and, if it makes contact, can cause huge pain.

Athletically, I was okay. I was quite fast and excelled in 100m, 200m, long jump and triple jump. My stamina was also high thanks to trying out cross country running so I was a very competent distance runner, doing well at 1500m and 5000m.

The field events were a challenge. I opted out of trying to throw a hammer, discus or javelin in case I impaled the sports teacher, although at the time I wouldn’t have been too sad because he was a sadistic rugby player (and a complete bastard) who hated me for some reason.

My sports teacher

I’ve tried a few sports over the years such as tennis, swimming, table tennis, badminton and hockey but my love was always football and I carried on playing five-a-side well into my late 30’s before finally giving up and joining a gym to keep fit.

Now, in my mid-50’s the only sport that I can excel in is walking – and I love to do that alone with my iPod as a soundtrack.

I would dearly have loved to have been a professional footballer but God had other ideas; you can’t play football if your eyesight is worse than Mr Magoo’s.

If all of the rumours about the afterlife are true and one day I end up facing judgement I plan to ask the following questions:

Why the bad eyesight? 

What did I do wrong?

And before you ask, yes I did try contact lenses and I almost threw up over the optician’s suit.

That would have been most unpleasant.

Golf Is Rubbish

It’s official – golf is rubbish!

I apologise to any Scottish people who may be reading or any sad individuals who love to watch or play this so-called sport, but that’s the way I feel.

I’ve always wondered what the point of golf is and in order to educate myself I’ve done some research.

My conclusion?

Golf is DEFINITELY rubbish.

First of all, golf is described as “sport”. But it isn’t really a sport, is it? If you describe the act of walking around a golf course with a bag full of bats, occasionally whacking a little white ball in the general direction of a little hole in the middle of a mown area of grass, anything other than utter tedium then you are quite frankly delusional.

So what is golf? What do you need to be a golfer? What qualities should you have to be able to endure watching or playing this monotonous, mind-numbing, dreary and pointless activity?

Here are some things that golfers need to know:

An expensive set of golf bats

Golf bats (or “clubs” as golfers call them) are just metal sticks with a lump at the end that is needed to hit the ball. These bats come in different forms:

A wood – a bat with a wooden stump for whacking the ball a long distance.

An iron – a bat for hitting the ball smaller distances.

A hybrid – an abomination produced by the union of a wood bat and an iron bat – for Libran and other indecisive golfers.

A wedge – a bat to hit the ball short distances from sand for example (a sandwich or is that "sand wedge"?).

A putter – a bat to hit the ball into the hole – “put” the ball in the hole if you like.

Golf bats cost a bloody fortune and they usually come in a big heavy bag. It might be good exercise to carry such a bag around a golf course – but golfers, being lazy old men, usually employ what’s known as a caddy (or “slave”) to carry them round for them.

Stupid clothes

People who like golf have no dress sense whatsoever. These men and women wear the most ridiculous trousers – presumably so that other golfers can aim at them on the golf course.

Golf balls

Golf balls are tiny and difficult to hit. When you hit them up towards the sky you can no longer see them. Neither can TV cameras. All of a sudden you see a golfer swing his bat and the next then, spectators (and the golfers themselves) are searching the clouds for any trace of their ball. And then, when the ball lands (amongst other lost golf balls) the golfer can claim that the one nearest the hole is his, even though in reality, the one he hit is probably stuck in a tree or has landed in the middle of a lake that is conveniently located in the middle of the fairway.

All golfers are therefore cheats.

Lots of money

Golfers are usually businessmen who like to grease each other’s palms and give each other funny handshakes while strolling around batting balls into little holes and cheating. To become a member of a golf club you need to wait for approximately one year on average and then pay a fortune to stay there.

Knowledge of weird words

Golf terms are funny. Here are some I discovered, with translations:

Par – apparently each hole has a an average number of shots taken to bat the ball into the little hole. This is called the par – for example – this is a par three hole.

Fore – when aiming at the other golfers, you are supposed to shout “FORE!” to them to warn them that you have batted the ball in their general direction. I think you are supposed to do this before the ball actually hits them.

Bogey – one over par for the hole – NOT something that comes out of one nostril.

Double Bogey – two over par for the hole – NOT something that comes out of both nostrils.

Birdie – one under par for the hole – NOT a little bird.

Bunker – a conveniently located lump of sand meant to trap balls – NOT somewhere to hide.

Albatross – three under par for the hole – NOT a big bird with massive wings.

Driver – A big bat for clobbering the ball – NOT a man to drive lazy golfers around the course on those little buggy things.

Follow through – Part of the action when a golfer bats the ball – NOT an accident when farting.

Conclusion

Clearly some people like golf. These people have lots of patience or are excited by watching paint dry or studying grass as it grows.

Normal people think it is a waste of time. I have had to endure a golf championship in the company of Mrs PM’s dad who likes golf. I was comatose by the end of it. Some guy called Tiger Woods won it – I thought he was just a rich man who had been caught doing naughty things – I didn’t realise he was a man who spent all of his time whacking balls and being paid a fortune for it.

“What do you do for a living Mr Woods?”


“I hit little white balls in the general direction of other people on a nice patch of grassy land and then at some point put the ball into little holes. I have a big leather bag full of sticks (or “bats” if you want to use the technical term). I also wear stupid clothes and am paid enormous sums of money for it. And I get the odd birdie – but that’s another story.”

Crikey – how hard can that be? And he earns a bloody fortune.

I think I may take it up.

Actually, on second thoughts, I won’t.

There is no way that Mrs PM would let me wear those ridiculous trousers.