Early rising and your correspondent are like downhill ski racers and klister wax…..they don’t go together very well! (For the uninitiated, klister is the stickiest of waxes, that cross- country skiers apply to their skis to gain traction going uphill in warm conditions…it doesn’t glide so well going downhill!) In my case “early” is anything before 08.30. Having studied the intricate contours of my ceiling for two very early hours this morning, a slightly longer lie-in would have been much cherished. The gentle but unrelenting sound of the telephonic harp, with its accompanying vibrations, at 07.00 was therefore mildly irritating. It was my duty though, to take the indolent son and heir to early morning training for his attempt at a Sports Scholarship to Eastbourne College, the tests for which are a mere two weeks away. Imagine my delight therefore to discover that for him another thirty minutes between the sheets was far more attractive than running round a cold rugby field. Five minutes of persuasive argument from Alison (my wife) proved fruitless, but the damage was done, any further sleep a pipe dream. Safe to say that I was nudging 9 on the Grumpmeter (10 being the full-on volcanic explosion), but it was one of those morning where all four Grumpmeters (GMs) were in the red zone. Few words were exchanged on the short run to school.
Time then for my daily dose of the Today programme on Radio 4. There was all the usual guff about Brexit, interspersed with various highly emotional reporters reporting the demise of the highly emotional Andy Murray. He was, probably rightly, proclaimed as Britain’s finest ever tennis player (although Fred Perry did win three Wimbledon singles titles in a row) and various experts went on to suggest that he might even be Britain’s greatest ever sportsman. What tosh! How can you even consider that when you have the likes of Eddie the Eagle and a raft of England footballers bidding for the title?
More seriously, it’s a discussion my broadcasting colleagues and I have often had over dinner. Scottish colleagues cannot look beyond Murray, but we’ve had so many great cricketers, rugby players, footballers, athletes etc, etc, etc., how can you possibly say that a man who has won (only) three majors and Olympic gold (in a sport that’s not convinced about the Olympics) is better than all of them? What about Sir Steve Redgrave winning gold in rowing, (the most arduous of sports) in five consecutive Olympics? Or Lord Seb Coe, or Sir Mo Farah, or Sir Ian Botham (one of cricket’s greatest all-rounders ever) or Sir Bobby Charlton or Sir Nick Faldo (with six major championships) or…….and so on. Murray’s achievements are impressive because he’s done it in a sport where we had been reasonably pathetic for generations and it was largely down to his own immense fortitude, determination and never-say-die attitude that he succeeded. The argument also goes that he was competing against three of the best players of all time in Federer, Djokovic and Nadal. Were Laver, Rosewall, Hoad, Emerson, Santana, Newcombe, Roche, Borg, Connors, McEnroe, Sampras etc, “only average”? Comparing generations of sportsmen is frankly fairly futile, but in my book Sir Andy has been over-hyped by a Wimbledon-infatuated BBC and a press long starved of tennis success.
Sliding my soapbox back under the table, Callie (the 15 month old whippet lurcher) is gnawing at my ankles. Exercise can no longer be avoided. Squirrels of Butcher’s Hole be warned, Nimrod is about to be unleashed and it’s not your nuts she’s interested in….well not the beech nuts anyway.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 