Fun and games

29 July, 2014 (10:22) | All articles | By: Stuart Fraser

Sitting in the stands at Somerset’s County Ground, watching young batsman Lewis Gregory send England bowler Graham Onions back over his head for a six into the 14th row, watching my boys on their feet cheering, I wondered this: how did sport stop being so simple a joy, and become so unsporting?

Don’t get me wrong: the County Ground and Somerset v Durham in a 50-over match was as good as sport gets, and with free entry for children the club is to be commended for doing its bit for the old-fashioned values.

The unsporting bit, to me, comes from the vast and growing disconnect between elite sport and the great and good things sport can bring to the rest of us.

It beggars belief that we live in a country willing to pay a half-wit like Wayne Rooney £200,000 a week to kick a football, yet unwilling to invest £200,000 every week in new sports centre facilities for schools, towns and villages.

We should be ploughing the money we waste on elite sport into facilities that encourage and enable everybody to take part as well as sit on the sofa watching.

Every time my boys see live sport – every single time – they are enthused and desperate to have a go themselves. At primary school, my two are very lucky in the expertise, space and time available to them, yet for too many in other parts of the country, sport is crowded out of the curriculum and sports fields are sold off for housing.

Even more will be sold now that any old developer only has to mutter the mantra “affordable housing” to have every planning official and local councillor within 100 miles fighting each other to the death to win the privilege of saying “yes, yes, YES! Fuck the countryside!”

We are lucky that as a family, we can afford to pay club membership fees and tennis court subscriptions and football club dues and swimming pool charges so that our two can take part in sport. This brings them fun, most importantly, and then it brings them health. It will save the country a fortune in what it has to spend to keep my sons going in latter years – I hope – and it even keeps their old dad going as he lumbers around trying to keep up with the little bastards.

Yet we live in a country where Wimbledon pays millions to its elite players and soaks up a fortune in sponsorship, while our nearest tennis facilities are crumbling at the edges and leaking like a sieve. We live in a country that offers tax breaks to build, but no incentives to enable sports facilities. We live in a country where people pay £100 a ticket while wearing £100 replica shirts to watch £200,000-a-week stars kick a ball, yet kids in city ghettos are lucky to find a tin can discarded from the local food bank to kick against a wall.

How did we ever get it all so wrong?

Off games

That said, has anything on earth ever been so buttock-clenchingly dull as the Commonwealth Games and the BBC’s 24-hour cross-channel blanket coverage? Ever?

I went to Mr Harris’s double geography lessons on summer Fridays, waiting, waiting, waiting for the clock to crawl from 1.20pm to 3.15pm, but compared to the Commonwealth Games Mr Harris presided over an orgy of Bacchanalian delights. I sat through a John Major speech, bum as numbed as my brain, yet compared to the Commonwealth Games the PM and I were living in the last days of Rome. I’ve driven my car behind caravans and motorhomes on Cornish roads in the summer, and compared to the Commonwealth Games it was a coke-fuelled sexathon with a bevy of naked Swedish nuns in a tub of warmed custard. The Commonwealth Games. Jeez.

Off games, 2

That said, I don’t understand couch potatoes. Even though I am now the size and girth of Newport Pagnall, I couldn’t bear just sitting down and doing nothing.

With Son Number One in plaster beyond the elbow, we’re a bit restricted in what we can do at the moment. As Management is undergoing the usual end-of-term collapse, I’ve had lots of time with the boys, almost all of it sitting down – a cruise on the Tamar, a drive up the motorway, a day at the cricket, a few hours in front of a film.

So on Saturday I walked the dog the 100-or-so miles to the pub and back, just to be on the move. After being stationary, what a joy that was! The dog and I usually walk in the same woods, every morning, so it was great to have a change. And the scents of a summer evening – wild roses, harvest, buddleia! The colours. The views. And the oh-so-appetising smell of distant barbecues from tucked-away farms. The gentle hiss of a pint of Cornish Arvor disappearing down a parched and overheated throat. The sight of my crazed hyperactive collie arriving home and slumping down exhausted. Ice cracking in a tall glass or 12 of cold G&T. And to bed, windows open, summer night filling the room. What a wonder it is to have a summer!

Off games, 3

That said, I drove north on the A30 out of Cornwall on Sunday morning, and the boys and I marvelled at the unending line of caravans and motorhomes coming into the county. Where do they put them all? Where? Surely Cornwall isn’t big enough for all that shiny white plastic, all those man-made fabrics and towed-along minicars and 87-gear mountain bikes. Where do they go?

Music, maestro, please

Well. I know we old folk are supposed to dislike what we are now expected to call social media, but this week Twitter put me back in touch with an old friend, the songwriter George Breakfast. I met him in the early 90s when he was a bit fish-out-of-watered in South Devon, loved his music, and then, as you do, lost touch. But I’ve always had an eclectic mix of his songs from old cassette tapes to iTunes purchases and Bandcamp downloads.

Well. It’s about 2am now and I’ve been rediscovering a whole heap of George’s music, dating back to the 80s and his years in New York. It’s all digitally sat there at georgebreakfast.com waiting for you to discover what a fine, fine songwriter he is. Hole, Forest Song, Love Will Get The Better of You, Tina’s Café…  Even a joyous old Mumbo Gumbo album from 1990. Keep listening, and welcome Brother Breakfast to this place. Can any blog boast two finer musicians than he and Brother Fiddle in its happy band? I think not.

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