Something Else

So I wrote an actual article for a website. It’s got paragraphs and everything. Some of you may recognise it from a post I wrote a few weeks ago, but I put some more words at the end because I was told that real articles are a bit longer than posts.

The other difference is that some people appear to have read it.

That’s Zamora

West Ham didn’t slip away through the trapdoor into the Championship. Having scrounged a pair of points from a potential 24, they hurtled through it. They smashed it. There are splinters of trapdoor wood all over Wigan. And now it is time for West Ham fans to establish their coping mechanisms, to find the silver linings in the clouds of relegation.

There are more games to enjoy. More midweek ones too, so we don’t have to watch Holby City. We might actually win some. Or at least have the chance of winning some. We won’t wake up ahead of a trip to Stamford Bridge or Old Trafford or Anfield knowing that the best we can hope for is to avoid humiliation.

And we get to go to Ipswich. The home of the Ipswich Transport Museum. And Hollywoods nightclub. And the Regent, the largest theatre in East Anglia. We also have the opportunity to relive the moment that Bobby Zamora helped haul us out of the Championship in the first place.

There’ll be more of this. I promise.

Fire In Babylon

As a beloved blogger and respected internet voice of cricket I was invited to the premiere of Fire in Babylon, the film documenting the dominance of the West Indian team of the 1970s and 80s. Or in more simple terms, my friend had a spare ticket. Hugh Grant was there. I didn’t see him.

It’s an enjoyable film, if not exactly life-changing, as Mark Nicholas the enthusiastic compere for the evening would have it. Put on a Charles Colville narration, slip it into a Sky lunchbreak and you probably wouldn’t notice the difference. Perhaps one aspect that distinguishes it from your standard ESPN fare is a bewildering succession of methuselan rasta men waxing incomprehensible about the former glories of their team. This includes a film-stealing turn from Bunny Wailer, one of Bob Marley’s Wailers, who appeared more concerned about various trespassers in his garden. Or at least I think he was.

Afterwards Nicholas hosted a Q & A session with four members of that celebrated West Indian side: Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner and Gordon Greenidge, who is younger now then when he played test cricket. We learnt that Greenidge was late on stage because he had to do a shit, Holding thinks that today’s parents are rubbish, and that there isn’t a chair in the world that would comfortably accomodate Garner.

We also found all about Nicholas’ views on the degeneration of Caribbean cricket and his thoughts for its future. Which is of course what we all came to see.

Seve Ballesteros

They should erect a bronze statue of Severiano Ballesteros in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. For if anyone made us happy and proud to be European then it was definitely he.

Perhaps they should cast it in this pose. Legend.

Rhythm Is A Chancer

Rhythmic gymnastics is one of only five Olympic sports that has sold out all its sessions in the first ticket drive for the 2012 Games in London. Far be it from me to question one of the events under the great Olympian umbrella, but really? I like ribbon as much as the next person, but really really? Isn’t it just women dancing with stuff?

Perhaps Britain is home to a covert community of rhythmic gymnastic enthusiasts. People who gather cravenly in underground car parks to throw a ball in the air, do a roly-poly, and then catch the ball again.

See. It’s easy.