Yes, Friends, as sports fans, have YOU got a local sports stadium that makes YOUR toes maybe tingle, when you remember "the lads", and their heart-breaking defeats and their triumphant victories over the years?
One thing's for sure - you can't keep stadia (to use the official plural term) out of the headlines, can you! Look at this morning's Onion News, and there's practical nothing else in it but "stadia stories", would you believe, which is totally mad !!! Check out page 94, if you want proof !!!!
It's all a bit "over-the-top" isn't it, but let's hope that those Somali Pirates get picked up and brought in for questioning, at the very least, when they try and transit the Suez Canal perhaps with that iconic stadium still "in tow" behind them (!).
Let's hope the Navy is feeling "on the ball" and "up to the job" this morning - just saying!!!
[That's enough whimsy! - Ed]
But for sure, all those "stadia stories" bring a brief hint of a smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois this morning, here in semi-carnivorous Liphook, Hampshire - that's one story that's not open to doubt!!!! And we're still laughing when we take our near-daily walk over the "hallowed turf" of local soccer heroes, Liphook United, which is mad!
It's actual our first "near-daily" walk for over 2 weeks, after Lois put her back seriously out one crazy Thursday night, and it's amazing how quickly we can get "out of shape" - witness our slightly puffy, and exhausted appearance, to put it mildly, as we gaze into the windows of the semi-abandoned, dilapidated, so-called "club house", keen to check the team selection for the upcoming "needle match" with deadly local rivals "Southsea Sports", teams neck and neck in the so-called "relegation zone" of the East Hampshire Premier League - exciting times!!!!
Although the right to call the squad's "clubhouse" 'dilapidated' might be challenged by some, it looks to me as if it's already lost most, if not all, of its "lapids" - in this humble blogger's eyes at least, to put it mildly!
I've always had the secret dream of being a sports journalist, and as Lois and I survey the slightly seedy stadium, I remember some of the classic reports on rival team Neasden United by the sports journalist supreme, the famous E.I. Addio, in lifestyle magazine Private Eye, back in the 1970's - remember those?
Addio certainly set the bar high for sports "journos "ever since, didn't he! Here's a typical match report from back in the day, when the Neasden 'lads' were playing local rivals Dollis Hill:
And Lois and I remember how, after that unpropitious beginning, the match and its disappointing result were a foregone conclusion - oh dear!
Marvellous stuff, though, wasn't it!
They don't write match reports like that any more, do they!
[At least something there to be grateful for, perhaps ! - Ed]
And looking at those pictures of Lois and me this Wednesday morning, treading Liphook's "hallowed turf" etc etc, I can't help feeling that we certainly look a bit "puffed out", as we "power through" another morning of tightly-scheduled appointments - a visit to our NHS doctor's surgery to pick up a urine sample kit for a routine annual check-up, and also somehow finding time to drop into the nearby Coop mini-supermarket for a few essentials - busy busy busy!!!
Now retired for an incredibly stressful 20 years, we wonder how we ever found the time to go to work, back in the day!!!!
another manic morning for us - queuing at our local NHS doctor's surgery
to pick up a urine sample bottle for a routine annual health check, somehow
also finding time afterwards to drop by the local Co-op Mini-Supermarket
for a few "grocery essentials" - busy busy busy!!!!
Busy busy busy!!!
And I start to daydream - perhaps even Yours Truly could get myself a less stressful life-style if I could only land a typical "old codger" job at the local newspaper, the Liphook Herald, reporting every Saturday on "the lads" and their "footie" matches, from the bar of the so-called "clubhouse", which would give me, for free, the perfect "by-line" - QUOTE "special report from Colin, our man at the clubhouse window" UNQUOTE.
I wonder....!
One thing's for sure - I wouldn't have wanted veteran BBC reporter John Simpson's job, who's been reporting on the world's trouble-spots for an incredible 60 years as we find out from the man himself in last night's special documentary, "John Simpson - 60 Years at the BBC".
What a different world it was, back in 1966, when Simpson joined the BBC as a fresh-faced young 22-year-old. His first impression was that BBC was still "stuck in the 1930's", and still dominated by veterans of the wartime reporting days of World War II, he tells us tonight.
In those days, incredibly, it just "wasn't done" for reporters to ask politicians questions outside of scheduled press conferences. However, rookie reporter Simpson, hadn't been told this, crucially (!).
And when asked to cover a rumour that UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson was thinking of calling a general election, Simpson found that Harold Wilson reacted with irritation, and indeed reacted physically, when Simpson dared to try to breach the journalistic code of the times, just as Wilson emerged one morning in 10 Downing Street.
Boiling over with indignation at what he saw as the "subservience" of the world's press, Simpson decided to act - the young scamp !!!!
However, Simpson wasn't allowed to complete his question, because Wilson unexpectedly "turned nasty" on him - oh dear!
Yikes!!! Poor Simpson!!!!
And it makes me have second thoughts about a possible "late-flowering" journalistic career for Yours Truly, covering Liphook United home matches. I certainly wouldn't want to be "walloped in the stomach" by any ageing, tight-lipped, ashen-faced 'supremo' such as Neasden United manager Ron Knee (59).
That kind of "walloping" could prove fatal at my advanced age haha!!! Just saying!!!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzz!!!!!!
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