h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

What is it with the English, summer and balls?
Cricket balls, footballs, tennis balls, and graduation balls.
The gee-gees have finishing breaking their necks over the fences. The great washed and unwashed have realised, yet again, that watching them run round on a flat surface is about exciting as a grand prix without a crash. The cleavage and cream brigade have shown us that you can change the proportions of a woman by sticking something ludicrous on her head and we're now all bored.
Thank god for balls.
Take football, which we only get in the summer every other year. Year one world cup, year two no footie, year three European cup, year four no footie.
This must be one of the odd years even though numerically it is even. This summer we have footie. This summer we don't have a sea of geranium hanging baskets adorning our streets, This summer we are drowning in a jingoistic ocean of red and white flags.
Suddenly everyone is an armchair expert on the glorious game.

'Beckham is God!'

'Bloody Scholes he's playing like a big girl's blouse!'

'Run you tosser!'

'Oh no! Not Vassal! '

What the hell is Owen playing at?'

All this from the pragmatic female in accounts who barely musters a drop of perspiration when the footsie surges forward. Take out an 's' and she has a personality transplant.

Red, not a good fashion colour, is a disaster as a uniform. Hop filled bellies take on EU Mountain proportions, striped kaftanesque shoulders become the new erogenous zones, and pulling is confined to pints.

And then the ball goes out.

Beckham is relegated to tosser division. Shoulders appear in their full glory again. Women go back to white wine and weight-watchers, and every Greek and Portuguese restaurant in the Home Counties is boycotted.

Which neatly brings us to another ball game, cricket. Enjoyed by men and tolerated by women. Lost in fantasy the boys sit comfortably in their own space and revel in the inarticulate intellectual. Wind in the Willows for grown-ups. The women have their presence or at least a well-dressed semblance of it and are moderately comfortable cutting the cucumbers, checking out who is possibly having an affair with whose husband and covertly grooming the young lad playing second stump or something, (they really couldn't care less) for future adventures. And then rain stops play, which coincidentally moves us forward to the yellow balls of Wimbledon.

This has to be the greatest of all the summer balls. The grey green canopy covering centre court has to the BBC's most triumphant televisual achievement. Day after day we are enthralled by the summer break. Cameramen put in for the Wimbledon gig years in advance, knowing they can happily book their annual holiday and not be missed. Nothing happens, the rain comes down and the nation is enthralled. True, Henman will go out at some point, quite possibly Cliff Richard will be in the crowd and it's always good for minor royalty spotting. Thankfully we have the re-runs of years gone by when boys knew how to play, hair was the order of the day and shorts were moulded to the bits that matter.

And so we move on to the graduation ball. Tuxedos covering the future EU Mountain, Frocks that cling to pre weight-watchers curves, adrenaline spent, the high of achievement; the pulling of your three year fantasy.

Let's face it ball games are not about the balls, they are about the people playing with them.

Yeah, not bad for an aesthete.

I'd have had you down as more of a flannelled fool, though. More Henley and Hurlingham than Eurofootie. Can't see you up there on Henman's Hill, somehow, either.

Me, I'm a muddied oaf. In playing days, it was mostly about the subtlety of stud against shin, and the pleasure of the summer game consisted of mental cruelty to bowlers.

Nowadays, sport appeals with a precise correlation with how primal it becomes. And I'm going to have to add that it's a Lad-Thing. I haven't yet met a woman who understands sport at its purest level, that of sublimated war.

You gonna Post this? Take on Egon and Master B at their own games?

Pin

Actually I agree with the sublimented (whatever that means) war bit.
The stadium in Lisbon was pure Rome. Thought Charlton Heston was going to appear at any moment. That isn't sport...that is war.
Sporting favourites:
Archery (not as a spectator)
Track (I love watching other people sweat and they always have great legs)
and, yes, a good game of footie. Don't care who's playing as long as the game is good. (a rebellion against my rugger infested youthful influences along with the polo...mind you they were a bit fit...stop it boots thats history!)
Post? Perhaps...not sure I'm ready to join in again yet.
take care
boots

Oh splendid, boots

I don't know, though, I think the problem with say, football, is that women undertsnd the subliminal war thing a bit too well. That's why we cause disgust in our menfolk by feeling terribly sorry for the team/ country folk of those who lose. The price of men's games...

Abd me, I love formula one. I have a lot of probably spurious arguments for why this is so, which I won't bore you with as they probably don't convince anybody. Instead I suspect it's because I can tell who is going to win with a good hour or so to go and I find that very soothing. Actually these days you can usually tell who is going to win even before we start, which is even better.

Hi Solnushka.
Thanks for that. You're right we do understand it...the war games that is. Perfect footie teams
Bush
Blair
Koffie Annan
Colin Powell
Silly American war man (Rumpole or something)
Chirac
rest of the team comprsising of extremists from all sides of the political spectrums
versus
The common people.
Should be fun!
take care
boots

Ball games have always left me cold, physically as well emotionally. Memories of sodden games sweaters on tops of hills trying not to get hit by an exceedingly hard ball that was aimed directly at that tender bit of my upper arm might have something to do with it.

Now, I do like a good war film, but that is just fiction and having grown up surrounded by armoury and uniforms I know that real life soldiers are just as mortal as the rest of us.

I used to watch Formula 1 avidly until it was moved to ITV and interrupted by adverts just as it was getting interesting. Then I lost concentration whilst being bombarded with reasons to buy the latest floor cleaning system or nappies that can be pulled up (invariably down at socially unacceptable moments in reality), by the time we got back to the action I had lost concentration entirely.

But give me a Ball with a man in a dinner jacket, good and a half way decent band and I'm there!

Good call, boots.
(Now in AWW, where it belongs)

Just for future ref (aw, come on ref!), and since I'm being misquoted :

sublimate (v) = divert (the energy of a primitive impulse, esp. sexual) into a culturally higher, or more socially acceptable, activity [COD]

So "sublimated war" has a precise meaning, not at all 'subliminal'

(Aren't blokes pedants?)

Nope. Still works. Might be a more socially acceptable higher calling, but somebody still gets hurt. What I said.

Ohhh we like that. Nice definition, good word; will try and remember and use. What was the fish bit about though? cod? Cash on Delivery? subliminal message for Fish boy?
Take care
boots

He's talking about his concise dick.

Whoah! What ho Trout!
take care
boots