A ball on a hedge! Oh come on.
What is that even about?
Jul 302010
News of a gig
performance, sports
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Jul 092008
For the seven people listening, if you’re free on Sunday, a comedy performance thing – featuring probably Guernsey’s greatest living badminton photographer, Robin Ince:
THIS SUNDAY
Jo Brand, Jo Neary, Jo Enright, Tim Minchin, Ed Byrne, Milton Jones,
Steve Merchant, Mark Steel, Mat Holness, Dan Antopolski and Robin Ince
will be performing at the Bloomsbury in a special benefit night for
William’s Fund.
Perhaps my favourite of Robin’s photographs:
Jul 062008
Idly tennis surfing in afterglow of Nadal victory. Ended up on this page, documenting the quotations of Miloslav Mecir, who used to be one of my favourite players but on this evidence has yet to break into my top ten epigrammists. It’s hard to say which of these quotes I’m going to be using the most over the coming days:
“I had expected a close match, and I did not know how the first day would end. I’m glad Domino won the important first point.â€
“I had a feeling that this is our strongest team. I was very satisfied with both of our guys today.â€
“We saw three days of world-class tennis, and in the end the better team won. I congratulate Croatia.â€
“I have had a big problem with my back since Christmas. Doctors gave me some infusions but it did not help me a lot. I started with special exercises but doctors do not recommend a long flight.â€
As Miloslav Mecir says…..
Jul 062008
What Nadal says to Federer, in Henman’s words: “If you go there I’m going to go for it from the word go.”
I’m watching this on a matchbox sized screen on the BBC website. It’s like being back in the 1950s. I’m sitting on two pillows. It’s that exciting. And I have a slightly low chair. Come on Rafa!
You'd better believe it...
sports
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Aug 112007
Geoff Ogilvy has been talking a pretty good game at the PGA. Tiger Woods is out in front, having just shot a record-equalling round of 63, and on every one of the 7 occasions in which he’s been leading after 36 holes, Tiger has gone on to win. Still… according to Ogilvy:
“It’s not that ominous. Tiger Woods, he’s just a good player. He does pretty well when he leads for two rounds and even better when he leads after three. So I guess that is kind of ominous.”
We agree then. It’s ominous.
“If you have got someone to chase, maybe you play a bit freer. Maybe it’s a good thing.”
It’s not a good thing. After all:
“He’s the best front runner in history, probably.”
Ogilvy bogeyed the last two holes:
“It’s hard to talk to a guy after splaying the last two holes — a little bit annoyed. I’m happy where I am.”
So he’s happy.
“I’m pretty happy.”
Although earlier:
“I wasn’t happy, hitting bad shots, missing putts, doing silly stuff, then I felt something with the putter on the 12th and hit it close on the next and all of a sudden you’re back to one-over and it doesn’t seem bad.”
But then:
“I realised I was having a pretty good score. That’s when I gassed it.”
So has be blown it? Can he catch Woods? Ogilvy thinks so. Sort of thinks so…
“At some point he’s not going to win. At some point he’s not.”
That’s it. Keep saying it, Geoff.
Faith in the power of metaphor
sports
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May 232007
It’s a big one. Feel up to it? As metaphors go, this one is as mighty as the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and about as stretched as Stretch Armstrong. Let’s do it…
What is “God’s GPS†all about? Today, sophisticated golf courses provide golfers with GPS systems on their golf carts to allow each golfer to know where they are on the course, in relationship to the pin. This of course allows them to choose the proper club, because the GPS system gives them the exact distance to the cup.
Colossians 4:5 instructs us to be wise in the way we act toward outsiders, so that we can make the most of our opportunities, to advance God’s Kingdom. Much like the game of golf, effective evangelism starts where people are in relationship to God not where we would like for them to be. Different folks, need different strokes! In the game of golf, club selection is everything! If you are looking for a spiritual GPS system to help you engage the different kinds of folks you meet on your day to day “golf course†check out GodsGPS by clicking on the link below.
Here’s that link, just in case you’re a 9 iron short of the “green”. Watch that “bunker”!
Jeff Gordon overhauls Dale Earnhardt
goodness me, sports
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Apr 302007
Things get pretty wild in NASCAR. Wild and confusing. Here’s what happened at the weekend: top NASCAR driver, Jeff Gordon, won a race, and overtook former (and dead) top NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt, in the all-time NASCAR winners list. Full report here. (Not that I’d recommend reading it. If you can garner anything more from it than what I’ve just outlined, I’d be impressed).
After the race, in a heady mixture of fury and beer, NASCAR fans threw their empty beer cans at Gordon. Gordon wasn’t best pleased. But clearly he’d cheered up later that night when he was caught on a fan’s camera phone, full-on kissing his NASCAR teammate, Jimmie Johnson. Neither have deigned to make a statement – but Southern NASCAR fans aren’t happy. They’ve never like Johnson – and now this. How is Jeff going to explain it? Was he drunk? Over-excited? Showing off? Is bored already of his new wife, Ingrid Vandebosch, whom he met at a “croquet event”? Was he giving two fingers to his sponsors? Or his faith? Did he know someone else was watching? Was it all played out for the benefit of a third party? Had he taken something a little stronger than beer? Or did he simply find himself stuck in a situation in which he didn’t know what to do? Has he reconfigured it in his own head as something different from what it was? Are Regis and Kelly going to have him back? Are Quaker State going to boot him out? Is it all over for Jeff Gordon?
“Is it over?” he radioed his crew. “Is it over? Is it official?”
Nobody knew after two separate accidents on the first lap of a three-lap shootout to the finish froze the field and had NASCAR scrambling to make sense of the finish.
Gordon, who was 14th on a restart with 10 laps to go, stormed to the lead a second before NASCAR called a caution after David Reutimann’s engine failed and dumped oil all over the track.
It set up a three-lap sprint to the finish, but NASCAR makes only one attempt to complete it. If caution comes out, the race instantly ends. So when Elliott Sadler bumped the back of Greg Biffle to trigger a wreck, the race was effectively over.
But Tony Stewart was knocked into the wall far ahead of that accident and went spinning down the track into the inside wall. He was fuming as the field passed by him under caution, angrily gesturing at Jamie McMurray.
The fans, meanwhile, figured out that Gordon, who tied Earnhardt last week in Phoenix, was the victor and reacted with the shower of beer cans. The debris cut Gordon’s celebration short, he didn’t do the customary celebratory burnout, instead dodging the cans as he headed straight to Victory Lane.
It was fan reaction Dale Earnhardt Jr. had tried to stave off earlier this week when he asked his fans — who dominate the Talladega grandstands — to throw toilet paper instead of beer cans out of safety concerns.
Zizou: poet, footballer, god.
sports
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Jul 092006
I love him like granite. Him and his eyes and skull. Ah, Zizou, vous avez une tête de pierre, et vos pieds sont lumineux, comme tient le premier rôle. Manly Zizou. Stern Zizou. (I call him Zizou because I know him quite well. We smoke hookah pipes together sometimes on a Tuesday).
What Zinedine Zidane did in the world cup final, I worry that people won’t understand it. What he did was say: this is where I am, this is who I am – and this is who I will be. I will determine my own future. This is my legend: I will write the end of it.He wrote his own legend. He is a poet. He didn’t hurt the other guy. He winded him, knocked him down and took himself out. Removed himself. Wrote himself.
Self-created. His own god. Only the gods know when they will die.
By the time the world cup was won, he was hip deep in a stream, fly-fishing. Or puffing on a hookah, thinking about stuff.
He won’t kick a football again.
Unless he fancies it.
LuÃs Figo! LuÃs Figo! LuÃs Figo!
sports
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Jul 042006
Defeat can be sweet when you have no scruples about switching allegiance. We watched the match in Bar Estrela over cockles, cod cakes and Sagres – and slumped into our cockle plates when Ronaldo slotted home. But the slump lasted about 75 seconds before we were jollied into celebration. There was no escaping it. We sang round the lampposts. LuÃs Figo! LuÃs Figo! We chanted his name across Vauxhall Bridge Road, and waved our Portuguese flip flops at the night sky.
In the semis, we face France. Shouldn’t be a problem. Not with Deco back in the squad.
Aaah, Gazza...
bad things, goodness me, sports
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Jun 052006
From an interview with John Barnes in the Independent today:
What was the daftest prank you ever saw Gazza play in your years with England?
There are too many to mention, a lot involving air rifles. But I’d say the single silliest was watching him throwing hundreds of bars of carbolic soap from a 20th-floor hotel window in Albania into a field of chickens. Bobby Robson walked in while he was doing it and even he was laughing.