Day Six: In Which I Don't Watch Football

Sunday morning, and after a bit of a cheeky lie in (you will get used to those), which I will pay for tomorrow, I went for my customary Sunday Lunch with my friend Matt. I've never been a fan of pub food, it all seemed a bit redolent of school dinners in the past, but I have to say that, relatively speaking, I've never had a bad meal at a Wetherspoon's pub, and their Sunday lunch is excellent value. I'd ask for a freebie for saying that if anyone was reading this. Sometimes we go to mine for some afternoon TV afterwards, as I have a much bigger TV (and a really big dog, in case any burglars are reading this), but on this occasion he wanted to flip over between the Rugby and Soccer football matches that were on, so we parted ways.

You might be asking why I just didn't generously invite him to come watch those at mine as well. The answer is simply that there is no way I'd have stayed silent while he did. I'm sure my constant interruptions would have become wearing. That or I'd have had to sit chewing off my own foot out of sheer boredom.

I am not a fan of sports. In school it was part of that macho bullshit that, for now obvious reasons, I didn't want to be part of. I'm not competitive as part of a team, I'm dyspraxic, I didn't and don't feel any kind of a bond with team games and have zero interest in them. In fact, that's not true, I have negative amounts of interest in them. Single person games; tennis, and snooker, and so on, I have a passing interest in. I shall watch some of the Olympics later this year. But team games I just don't get. And whilst American Football,rugby, Polo, and so on I can see the interest other people have, I can understand the attraction, that game the Americans call soccer, and the rest of the world just calls football (the rest of the world being right, in this instance) really arouses my ire.

I just don't get it. Yes, I get it's quite difficult but initially accessible. So is self harm. Why do people put themselves through it? It's expensive, the people overpaying are overpaid, those watching are often the least able to afford the huge prices, nothing is ever settled, the player's aren't local, it's all either about who has the most money or the most luck or a combination of the two, the games are interminable often with nothing being reflected in the score lines at all, everyone might as well have stayed at home and picked their nose for two hours.

In Rugby, stuff happens, tries (is that the plural or not, I don't know?) are scored and converted, there is activity and scores changing all the time. In football, some people run one way, and then some people run the other way for a change. They aren't racing each other or anything, just running up and down. In the terraces people start cutting lumps off each other out of sheer boredom, and on the way home they vandalise a shop or two out of sheer frustration. It's sheer damn insanity, and I'm afraid I just do not get it. Please don't try and explain it to me, It will not go well. Just be aware I think you are all goddamn loonies.