Let’s talk about sport. Not football. I’m not having anything to do with that at the moment, its just… gone off my radar. Horrible game. So instead let’s talk about ‘other sports’! Oooohhhh, there are loads, apparently. Not that many are that good or demand our attention but trust me, the world is full of sport, you just have to pick the right one. And in fact the two that have drawn my attention are the two that I simply ‘can’t watch’. Don’t ever watch. Yet like seeing the results, particularly when ‘we’ win. I’m talking of cricket and Formula 1. The ‘long games’.

On saturday a weird thing happened. I sat in front of the tv for an hour of the Test match. Cricket. In case you didn’t know. That never ever happens. But I watched the end of the lunchtime football and as Liverpool won at the final whistle, I fell asleep. And woke up an hour later with the test match in front of my very, slightly opening, eyes. So as I slowly regained consciousness I watched 3 or 4 overs. And it was… totally… errrr… amazingly… hmmm… nothing happened. 10 minutes, 20 balls bowled, 2 runs scored, brilliant. Paint drying. Yet I (in theory) love cricket. Love the scores, love the statistics, love the fact that the very next day we won the 4th test against World number 1 team, India and have now taken the series. I love watching that final wicket fall, I love watching their rather arrogant but quite brilliant captain lose a stump. But I’m just not prepared to sit there for 4 days waiting for it all to happen. Does it count as ‘watching cricket’ if you’re asleep? I think it bloody well does!

Then again yesterday Lewis Hamilton won a grand prix. Nothing unusual in that, its what he’s paid (totally obscene amounts of money) to do. But it was in Italy and he beat off two home-grown Ferraris to claim the victory. In one case simply knocking it off the fucking track. Good riddance. It was like Mad Max comes to F1. Again, I can’t watch the whole ‘thing’. Its dull and repetitive, though being a petrol-head I can listen to it on the radio just for the VVRRROOOooommm. And what they show on the 10 o’clock news is sufficient. A 30 second snippet showing the start (Hamilton in third place behind the 2 Ferraris), the crash on the first lap when 1 Ferrari died and then Lewis going past the chequered flag and wasting half a gallon of champagne. The 5 hours in between is my sad and tragic loss.

So Lewis won! England won!! Who cares about football?

Yours miserably

A xxxx