Blighter’s Wrock. If you’re a student of Dr Spooner you will realise this is not a stony, barren outpost to which cads, scoundrels and villains are permanently despatched; we have Australia for that. No, it’s that awful affliction with which most writers and authors will be all too familiar. Those despairing days when you stare at a blank sheet or computer window and inspiration there is none; that’s assuming you’ve even got to the point of opening the book or laptop. I fear, almost for the first time, this is a condition that has hit me in the last two weeks. There have been a few moments of inspiration but generally they’ve occurred at inconvenient moments and the ageing grey matter has dumped said thoughts by the time I could usefully employ them. Having got my excuses out of the way, here come my latest warped thoughts.
It’s quite possible, I suppose, that there are people out there who don’t know that it’s Masters week. This is not some international global recognition of the teaching fraternity. It is, in fact the glorious annual visit to Georgia (the American version) and the hallowed fairways of Augusta National; the annual excuse for justifiable tv addiction, for sofa-sluggery to make your professional couch potato look like a happy hacker, a high handicap amateur. There is heightened interest this year because Tiger’s back. Mr Woods hasn’t played for 15 months or so since redesigning the SUV he was driving at high speed and in the process coming close to losing his right leg. The fact he is even walking is pretty miraculous, let alone teeing it up on a very hilly course where he has won previously….. five times. He even shot 71, 1 under par, in the first round and had everyone drooling, but as I write he’s labouring in tough conditions in the second round. Of course he won’t win, but it’s always fun to hypothesise who might. I went for Collin Morikawa pre-tournament but he’s not inspiring much confidence as yet. Still, early days. Cam Smith, an Australian who putts almost as well as Him upstairs, is looking very good.
I learnt some distressing facts today. Daughter Tiggy had a singing lesson from Dasha, a Ukrainian singer and coach who has recently escaped Kiev to join her Mother in England. She’s a talented lady who has more than once been in the backing group for Ukraine’s Eurovision Song contest entry and she has performed all over the world, including in China, a country she fears and dislikes as much as I do. I digress. She said that whilst Moscow and St Petersburg are sophisticated and fun cities with citizens to match (on the whole!) the rest of the Country isn’t like that. For the most part they are very poor, uneducated, ignorant peasants in the thrall of the Kremlin, who seemingly spend half their lives spaced out on cheap vodka. In Ukraine they have intercepted mobile phone conversations from Russian soldiers calling their Mothers at home detailing how they are raping, pillaging and murdering the locals, using truly foul language and seemingly the Mothers and sisters back home are just cheering them on. The soldiers report, in disbelieving tones, how well these Ukrainians live with extraordinary luxuries and expensive bottles of brandy that they are happily glugging. The whole thing is so shatteringly appalling, I was so embarrassed that I had to keep apologising that NATO was still refusing to come to their aid. There is only one thing that bullies understand and that’s a show of force and determination even greater than their’s. Quite simply, when Pootin threatened that he would use nuclear weapons the West should have said “fine, the first one you fire we will fire back. The second one you fire, our second one will be aimed at the Kremlin”. But it needed a Maggie Thatcher to be saying it if it was to be believed……not Sleepy Joe sadly.
ADayInTheStrifeOf 