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.

Dear Australia

Dear Australia,

I recently wrote a letter to the United States of America but I’ve just realised that I haven’t been in touch with Australia for ages. I last came to the big island down under way back in 2005; that’s ten years ago.

Anyway, how are you all doing down there?

Are you still trying to play cricket?

And rugby?

You’ve got a long way to go to reach the high standards of England, but I truly hope you keep trying. Beating Australia at sport is sweeter when you really try.

During my last visit, I tried my best not to upset you guys but I may have failed. It was quite badly timed on my part because England had just won the Ashes again and I found it difficult not to gloat. We stopped off in Hong Kong on the way to Australia and when I encountered a bunch of Ozzies in a lift in the hotel, I simply couldn’t resist mentioning cricket.

“My God! You’re a bladdy POM!!” said one woman, before her husband tried to make excuses for your cricket team’s total ineptitude with pathetic statements like “We let you win.”

This brings me nicely to my first point:

Why on earth do you call us “Poms”?

I have done some research on this but it seems that the origin of the word has drifted out to the ethers of time. Some people say that “POM” is an acronym for “Prisoner of (Her) Majesty”. say that it is short for pomegranate because, apparently, our pale skin colour matches that of a pomegranate when exposed to the sun down there. I can vouch that this might be a possibility as its damned hot on your side of the world.

Now I don’t mind being called a Pom to be honest. I have looked up some derogatory terms for Australians but because each and every one of you is a close friend, I won’t stoop to such depths of name calling.

I’ll just refer to you as Ozzies.

The one thing I like about you guys is that we share a similar sense of humour. I know that I can chat with an Ozzy and exchange meaningful banter without any offense. On the contrary, I think we both thrive on it.

Because we’re all mates together, I have a confession to make. I really worry about you guys.

When I was there, I discovered that you share your immense country with the most poisonous monsters on the entire planet.

How did that happen?

When I was there, I was on constant red alert for snakes and spiders. My first day on a beach in Port Douglas was marred by the fear of a crocodile racing out of the sea to grab my leg and drag me beneath the waves. I stepped back from the sea, watching the beautiful sunrise with half my mind on the undergrowth in case an eight-legged freak leapt up and sank its toxic fangs into my arse.

One thing is for sure, I didn’t walk into the sea – that would have been suicidal. The thought of encountering a box jellyfish, irukandji or blue ringed octopus put paid to any ideas of sampling the delights of the Coral Sea and the Great Barrier Reef.

I discovered that even the bloody platypus is venomous!

I did get the chance to cuddle a koala though. What a lovely creature that is. The one I held was very clingy, which made it awkward for me to smile, as my photo was taken, mainly because the creature smelled as if it had just had a monstrous shit.

Koala: "You stink as well, mate!"

Still, I can’t complain.

I did visit some great places; Port Douglas, Cairns, Brisbane and Sydney with lots of great places between Brisbane and Sydney, including Hunter Valley where you tried your best to get me drunk on your fabulous wine.

I even tried Vegemite, or as I like to call it, Marmite substitute. Next time I’m Down Under, I’ll bring some Marmite with me, just for you guys to try. I bet you don’t like it.

I particularly loved Sydney, despite scarying myself shitless climbing the giant coat hanger dangling over the harbour. Even that was amusing. The banter between the Brits and the Ozzie guide was, as you would expect, light-hearted and funny. The two American’s in our climbing group didn’t get the sense of humour, especially when the Ozzie guide addressed the group saying:

“So we have a fairly mixed bag of people; four ‘Stralians, four Poms, two from Japan and two Americans. Sorry about the Americans, guys.”

The Americans laughed but then frowned because they simply didn’t get the humour. I heard one of them say:

“Did he just insult us? And what’s a Pom?”

I would have explained but I was absolutely shitting myself.

I should have listened to the advice of the cashier at the start.

“I’m scared of heights,” I said.

“Well leave your fear on the ground,” she said with a smile.

One other thing; whenever I go to America, I’m often asked whether I am Australian.. I certainly don’t sound like an Ozzy.  You’ll never hear me referring to a dunny or a didgeridoo and the words “Fair Dinkum” will only ever cross my lips when I am trying a poor impersonation of you guys.

Anyway, I miss you guys – your beer, the banter, the weather, the beaches, the strange town names (Bong Bong, Humpybong, Jimcumbilly, Mount Buggery, Poowong to name but a few). And I love your openness and honesty.

One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen was how an Australian steward on a QANTAS flight dealt with a stupid passenger. I’ve seen two passengers do the same stupid thing, i.e. stand up to get something out of the overhead locker when the plane was about to race down the runway to take off. The first was on a Cathay Pacific flight; the second, as I mentioned above, was on a QANTAS flight.

On the Cathay flight, the lovely stewardess, still strapped in the seat, shouted in the nicest possible way:

“Sir, sir – excuse me sir. Please sit down! We are about to take off.”

The result was that the fool ignored her and almost brained himself when the aircraft accelerated.

On the QANTAS flight it was a different story.

The steward, a typical Ozzy bloke, told it as it was, screaming at the top of his voice:

“OY – SIT DOWN YA BLADDY IDIOT! WE’RE TAKING OFF!”

The idiot sat down immediately. We were sitting right next to the steward and chuckled.

“STREWTH!” he said, still angry. “WHAT A PHARRKING MORON!!”

I loved that.

Anyway, I hope to see you all soon, when I can claw enough money (and patience) for the lengthy flight to the other side of the world. We have a few other places to visit first, but one day I’ll be back, hopefully when we’ve just kicked your arses at cricket again.

In the meantime, here are a few photos I took of Sydney:

And finally,  here’s a song for you:

I bet you've never heard THAT before.

Yours sincerely,

                                                              

Plastic Mancunian

Beaten Up In The Name Of Sport

If somebody said to you:

“I want you to go onto the pitch and spend the next eighty minutes being pounded, mauled, savaged, mangled, battered and generally knocked about. Now GET GOING!!”

I can guess that you would probably say “No way, you psychotic arse!”

You would be justified in saying this or something stronger.

Sadly, for me, I had no choice; I had to obey.

At the age of 11, I started on my first day at Walsall’s only grammar school, a school with an immense reputation for excellence and scholarly achievement. My parents were proud as I had managed to earn a place using my intelligence, i.e. I passed my 11+ exam with flying colours. I had reached a pinnacle of achievement and I joined the ranks of the elite – or so I thought.

I came from a working class background, where kids swore (in some cases it was their first word). My mum didn’t work and my dad worked in a factory. We struggled on and we coped. I had somehow emerged from the working class shadows and was on my up. From an early age, I yearned to be a footballer; my dad took me to my first match at Fellows Park, Walsall to watch what would become my beloved Walsall FC. I was hooked. At junior school, I was elated to make the football team briefly, even though I was so short sighted that I could barely see the ball. I loved football.

Imagine my horror when I discovered, after all my hard work in the exam, that my new grammar school played rugby and only rugby. There was no football. Any round balls that made it into the school were mutated into eggs with maximum prejudice.

I had no choice! Rugby was going to be my sport whether I like it or not. And I didn’t like it one little bit. I was gutted. I wanted to leave and go to the local comprehensive school. My dad told me in no uncertain terms what I should do. I stayed at the grammar school.

I enjoyed watching rugby, particularly the Five Nations (as it was then) and I cheered England until I was hoarse. But play rugby? No chance!!

Why?

Well let me tell you. People say that football is a sport for gentlemen played by thugs and rugby is a sport for thugs played by gentlemen.

I say that rugby is a sport for thugs played by thugs.

I still remember that fateful day when I stood in the September rain in the autumn of 1974 with the other poor wretches staring at the mud bath that was to become my worst nightmare over the years.

The PE teacher, himself an amateur rugby player for Walsall, was a giant compared to me. He was also a total sadist. And he didn’t like me. Why? Because I was a cheeky little git.

In that first lesson, he tried to teach us the basics of the brutal game. His words went in one ear and out of the other. Over the weeks, he taught us how to tackle, how to run, the basic rules and tactics. It wasn’t long before he uttered the words that chilled me to the very marrow of my bones:

“Right – we’re going to play a game.”

I was small for my age, a “late developer” my embarrassed parents told friends. Not only was I short – I was as thin as an anorexic rake. Whenever I walked past railings, people said “Now you see him; now you don’t”.

You can imagine that rugby was never going to be the best sport for me.

I looked around at my school friends and saw the first signs of change. The bigger lads began to mutate into Mr Hyde. Knowing grins spread across their sadistic faces. One or two pairs of eyes settled on me.

Before I go on, I have to tell you something. I was a cheeky little bugger at school. I would not allow teachers to get the better of me and I certainly didn’t allow the big lads to bully me; I always tried my best to get the better of them by humiliating them by exposing them as buffoons, which was quite easy really. I certainly couldn’t take them on in a fight – that way would have been madness. At times I was a real arsehole at school.

As I’ve said, my sadistic PE teacher didn’t like me either (mainly because on more than one occasion I accused him of being a meathead). When he picked the teams, he had already decided which players that were going to be in the elite “First XV” – and I wasn’t one of them.

Sadly, that meant that I ended up in the “Second XV” or “Third XV”, i.e. the “also rans”. Worse, the sadistic PE teacher wanted them to bond as a team – so he pitched them against the rest.

I did have one thing going for me; I was fast – in fact I was one of the fastest kids in the year, despite my height.

I was also fearless (for “fearless” read “stupid”). I found myself facing the “First XV” when the whistle was blown and within seconds I would invite pain, goading the biggest kids on the other team with taunts like:

“OY! FATSO!!! I’m surprised you’re not sinking in the mud with that fat arse of yours! Hippos like mud and you look so at home in it, you fat arsehole!”

What, in the name of all that was holy, was I thinking? The “fat” kids weren’t fat at all. They were bruisers and they were fast. They had muscles where I didn’t think muscles existed. Even their muscles had muscles.

As you can see, I was a supercilious little shit with a big mouth and, because of my arrogance I thought I could outrun them all.

I was wrong.

In the early days I used to catch the ball and get rid of it immediately but then I became cocky and kept it, my insane ego telling me that I could outrun these fat lumps, score a try and get the glory. That was my biggest mistake.

Picture the scene.

Straight from the scrum, one of my team mates has the ball and throws it along the line as we advance. The bulky bruisers advance. The ball is passed to me.

Through blurred eyes, I can vaguely see the post ahead. Looming in front of me are three or four bruisers, most of whom I have verbally abused in the past week or called “FATSO” in a moment of madness at the start of the game. But I am fearless; I am fast and I can outrun these lumbering hippopotami with ease.

One minute I am running; the next I am not. One of the hippos has caught me and lifted me up in the air. I am travelling backwards at a rate of knots and at the same time, my head is hurtling towards a deep puddle of thick, viscous mud. I crash to the ground with the full weight of a hippo on top of me. I am still clutching the ball, somehow. Several things cross my mind:

(1) That bloody hurt.

(2) That really bloody hurt.

(3) That really, really, really, really bloody hurt.

(4) Bloody hell, I can’t breathe.

(5) I must get rid of the ball before another hippo arrives.

(6) My face is a little too close to that puddle of mud.

(7) I wish I hadn’t called the hippo “Fatso!”

(8) Oh shit! Here comes another hippo.

Before I know it, the other hippo has leapt on top of me, and the first hippo, incensed at my suggestion that he may be a little overweight, has grabbed my long hair and rammed my face into the puddle of mud.

I hear the words:

“That’ll teach you to call me Fatso, you little shit!”

Let me tell you one thing. Breathing and swallowing mud is not a pleasant experience, particularly when you in agony and being sat on by at least two huge bruisers. When the hippos finally get off, I am lying in the mud, soaking wet, filthy and my face is covered in mud. I spit out a pint of liquid mud and pull half a pound of turf out of my teeth.

I hear the PE teacher shouting at me:

“Get up and get back into position!”

I stand up and look around. Before I know it, somebody has passed the ball to me again.

“Oh no!!”

I am too slow. One of the hippos flattens me again and once more I drink a cocktail of mud, turf and filthy water.

And there are still 70 minutes to play.

Every game of rugby I took part in was the same. I walked off the pitch battered, bruised and broken. The bullies couldn’t lay into me normally but did so “legally” on the rugby pitch, incensed by my piss-taking.

On one occasion I was actually tackled so hard that I was almost knocked unconscious. Thankfully, the sadistic PE teacher took pity on me and sent me staggering back to the changing room.

For five years I endured this ritual torture.

I hated every last second of it.

When I reached the sixth form, I had the opportunity to drop the sport (if you want to call it a sport). Mind you, I had filled out a little bit then and also grown. I was actually taller than some of the hippos so I reckon, had I continued playing rugby, I might have been able to exact my revenge.

I chose a more sedate pursuit – kickboxing!

Not really!

Some people look back at past traumatic experiences and say “it wasn’t so bad.”

To those people I say this:

Play rugby for five years. Find a sadistic PE teacher who hates you, add a pinch of arrogance and foolhardy piss-taking of the biggest lads in the year, be clever and tell the PE teacher that “rugby is a game for brainless meatheads”, stand in front of your nemeses on a rugby pitch and call them all “fat useless oafs” and, after you have quite literally been dragged through the mud and beaten for 80 minutes, tell me that “it wasn’t so bad”.

Mind you, I guess I deserved everything I got.

As much as I hated playing the game, I still like to watch rugby, particularly the Six Nations. I love to cheer England especially when they kick a bit of Aussie arse. I will be watching and cheering during the next World Cup, that’s for sure.

But to those hippos that so ruthlessly made me drink mud as a child, I have just this to say:

“OY FATTY!!! I am still faster than you, you mal-coordinated lump of blubber. The only reason they put you in the scrum is because they haven’t built the crane yet that could lift your fat arse off the pitch!”

I have changed – honest.

Australian English

In Australia, I would probably be called “The Plastic Pom”, although maybe such a title would better serve an Australian living in England.

For those of you who don’t know, Pom is a term of endearment that our Australian cousins like to call people from Britain. It’s a bit of a weird name to be called and, from what I’ve read, nobody really knows where the name originates from. Some say it comes from POHM, meaning “Prisoners Of His Majesty”; others say that it is short for pomegranate, derived from the colour that pale English skins became when exposed to the sun down under.

Either way, I like the word, though I’m not sure that I like being called a Pom to be perfectly honest. As far as our Australian brethren are concerned, we simply call them Aussies.

All this shows that there is healthy banter between our two nations. We are fiercely competitive but to be honest I think we like each other, probably because we share the same sense of humour; I certainly haven’t met a bad Australian.

When it comes to sport, Aussies are insanely jealous of us because we beat them repeatedly at most sports. Well, sometimes anyway. Well – rarely if I’m perfectly honest. Nothing is sweeter than kicking Australian arse at cricket or rugby. Recently Britain inflicted a fabulous Australian bum kicking in the last Olympics, causing outrage down under. We won a magnificent 19 gold medals, compared to a pathetic 14 by team Australia. Of course, the Australians claim victory because, of the 19 British medals, 6 were won by Scottish and Welsh athletes making the real result: Australia 14 England 13. This is quite clearly a desperate and pathetic argument – we kicked your arses my Aussie friends.

Sadly, in rugby and cricket, we have limited success against them, and apart from beating Australia in their own back yard to win the Rugby World Cup in 2003, we don’t have much to shout about.

Anyway, the point of this post is not to gloat about sport; it is to differentiate between the way English is spoken in Britain and Australia. And boy do Australians have some strange words

Here are a few examples:

Ankle biter - a small child
Arvo - afternoon
Barbie - barbecue
Bathers - swimming costume
Billy - teapot
Bingle - car accident
Blue - fight (“he was having a blue with his wife”)
Bonzer - great
Cactus - dead (“this bloody machine is cactus”)
Chook - chicken
Cobber - friend
Daks - trousers
Digger - soldier
Dinkum - true, great
Docket - bill
Drongo - stupid person
Dunny - outside toilet
Franger - condom
G’day - hello
Grog - booze
Hoon - hooligan
Jumbuck - sheep
Liquid laugh - vomit
Matilda - sleeping roll
Moolah - money
Mystery bag - sausage
Ocker - oaf
Pommy - Englishman
Porky - lie
Rip snorter - fantastic (“It was a rip snorter of a party”)
Roo - kangaroo
Ripper - great, fantastic
Rotten - drunk
Sanger - sandwich
Seppo - an American
Sheila - woman
Shonky - dubious
Skite - boast
Spewin - angry
Sticky beak - nosey person
Strides - trousers
Swaggie - tramp
Tinny - can of beer
Tucker - food
Whacka - idiot
Wowser - a prude

Another one of my favourite phrases is a pommy shower, yet another reference to Brits but good nonetheless. What does it mean? Well, imagine that you’ve been out boozing all night and then have to go to work the next day. Obviously you still stink of booze so you try to mask the smell by drowning yourself in deodorant; hence a pommy shower.

Some other good phrases:

All over the place like a mad woman’s breakfast – in a state of chaos.

Park a tiger on the rug – vomit

I could kick the arse off an emu – I am very healthy

He’s got a head like a robber’s dog – He’s ugly

I was very surprised to see that a lot of British and Australian slang is very similar; the words may vary slightly but in essence they are the same.

One final word that has me a bit stumped is Manchester which apparently means household linen; it brings a whole new meaning to the Plastic Mancunian. I’d love to know the origin of that one.

Finally, have you ever watched Australian rules football? I swear it is the most violent and crazy game I have ever seen. If anybody can explain the rules to me feel free. I recall watching it for the first time in the 80’s and to me it looked like a bunch of Australian thugs running around on an oval pitch and kicking seven colours of crap out of each other. In the game I saw, one guy was sent off for excessive violence and, when heckled from the crowd, launched himself at the guy before being dragged off to the dressing room. The commentators shrugged it off as a normal event saying “Boy – he must’ve been pissed off!”

Yet in England, when Eric Cantona, having been sent off in a game of football, leapt into the crowd and karate kicked a fan, there was universal outrage with the commentators, pundits and newspapers condemning him in the most vehement fashion. I’ll bet the Aussie guy’s antics went unnoticed and he had a tinny in the dunny before he went home.

I’m looking forward to my next trip to Australia, which unfortunately won’t be in the near future. It gives me plenty of time to practice Australian English thankfully, though a Pom impersonating an Aussie in his own back yard may precipitate a fight rather quickly.

By the way, Aussies, if you are reading this post, I hope you’re looking forward to having your arses kicked in the Ashes this summer. Of course, if the results go your way, I will make an excuse, just like you did when we battered you in the Olympics.