Open Writing

Have you noticed how the nights are growing longer, and how Saturday nights seem the longest of all? ‘Match of the Day’ is in full lurch again. As soon as I’ve performed my little jog to the only catchy thing about it, the signature tune, out comes my book or down goes my eyelids.

‘Watch, watch this,’ pleads my sporting partner, blind to my boredom and fully alert since he has snored his way through my scintillating early evening commentaries. Reluctantly and without altering my ‘get lost’ expression, I painfully raise my lids. A man with a gleaming shoulder length perm and immaculate white shorts, favouring a sexy seam-slit, selects a suitable place in the grass and spits on it. Marking time with his chewing gum he jogs rhythmically down the field backwards way.

I was reared on a claret and gold diet of ‘props’ and ‘hookers’ cheering on giants with such unlikely names as Meek and Valentine. Footballers certainly look prettier and tidier nowadays, with their clinging shorts and tousled curls. ‘I find this style much easier to manage, a perm is much less bother, I have to wash it every day during training’ one frizzy-head cooed on TV.

Of course all that water with daily baths and showers must present a problem. Some enterprising make-up manufacturer could probably earn millions plus the players’ undying gratitude by introducing other useful products. Moisturiser to smooth away all those wrinkles caused by having to peer short-sightedly at the goalmouth that is always in the wrong half. Hand-cream to repair the ravages wrought by excessive ball handling. Strong polyurethane based varnish for fingernail protection during all the exuberant mate-lifting following a goal.

‘Well wasn’t it a deliberate foul?’ asks my distressed supporter. Aren’t they all deliberately foul, but no need to tell him, my attention has wandered, he’s not really talking to me anyway? This conversation is just between him and an unseen assenter who sits on his shoulder during all sporting events.

I can hear him talking to him while I make coffee. ‘See, watch that left foot, what did I tell you!’ he rambles on while the BBC produces another miracle – a television replay, during which some eager sidekick shoots and, it’s a goal! which naturally is replayed again, and again. It doesn’t matter if you miss it, former footballers arew paid to hold another inquest and we can have the same confusion once again.

Instead of becoming redundant at the onset of televised matches, announcers are rife in the field of sport. A ubiquitous commodity, they are there to point out everything you can see, things you don’t want to see and some can even give potted biographies about players you have never seen. With practice they often become masters of understatement.

‘They’re having to leave themselves exposed at the back’ one cried last week, which I confess quickened my pulse slightly.

So through these dreary months my sports lover and I agree to achieve our kicks separately. Me to my books, he to his box. We have even learned to exchange pleasantries meanwhile. ‘What do you fancy for supper, love, a ruptured elephant or a grilled snake?’ ‘Yes love, anything,’ says his lips but his glazed eyes tell a different story. ‘Blast, he’s missed again!’