You can't swing a cat in Yorkshire these days without hitting an Olympic Gold Medallist

This weekend I took my mum to the Dales for her birthday.  On the way home we popped into a tea shop in Burnsall and on the next table was Alistair Brownlee, the Olympic Triathlon Champion.

On these occasions I don't have the good fortune to have bloody Richard Curtis writing my lines for me, like he does for bloody Hugh Grant in Notting Hill when meeting Julia Roberts, so I just have to make up my own stuff.  I started out pretty well by congratulating him, and shaking his hand, and probably should have left it at that, but the longer I sat there, the more I thought how cool it would be to get a photo with him, and as I was between him and Ruth I thought she could probably get a picture of me on the sly, and he'd be in the background, and so I wouldn't have to bother him, but of course, she has bloody principles, which happen to include not photographing Gold Medallists without their permission, so she asked him for permission, and it all turned out okay, and we ended up with a better photo, but I also ended up losing any pretence of cool.

I'd only noticed him in the first place because the cafe owner was loudly making a fuss of him, and trying to get him to cycle round the Dales with his Gold Medal in a bum bag so he could bring it in and show her, and his brother Jonathan the Bronze Medallist was also there, but he had his back to me, and I didn't notice him, and it isn't that a Bronze Medallist isn't worth the fuss, because he most certainly is, and he won the Bronze Medal after getting a 15 second penalty for getting on his bike a nanosecond early, so he deserves as much credit as Alistair, and afterwards I felt bad that I hadn't congratulated him too, but I genuinely couldn't recognise him from only the back of his head, and there was another guy there who was tall and blond and thin, and he might have been in the Olympics too, but I didn't recognise him at all.

And after I'd got my photo with Alistair, a whole bloody family of people started trying to muscle in and get a piece of him, and the cafe owner was nagging him even more about bringing his medal in, and as we drove off, my mum and Ruth and I had a long and at times heated conversation about how to handle meeting Olympic Gold Medallists in tea shops, and this is sort of what I think after having that conversation.

For two weeks I watched the Olympics, and I found a lot of it genuinely inspiring, but the most direct connection I had with it was either shouting at the telly, or knowing that an Olympic Gold Medal winning rower's parents had killed my domestic animals (they are vets, so it was all above board, and I'm not looking to turn them in).

And now here I was, eating a scone, and there on the next table, also eating a scone was an Olympic Gold Medallist, and in these days of bloody Twitter and Facebook and bloody internet forums and discussion groups about every bloody subject under the sun, I wanted to acknowledge directly to that person, that they had done something remarkable, and that I had seen it.  Because to wander off into the car park of eternity without at least saying congratulations, would be a missed opportunity.

Wanting to get my picture taken afterwards was totally gratuitous, and for my own benefit, so I can tell everyone I know that this event took place, but hey ho, nobody's perfect.

And it may well be a total pain in the arse to be knocking around your own neighbourhood trying to do whatever you did before the Olympics, and having people constantly interrupting your scone eating or soap powder buying to shake your hand and get a picture of you, and a lot of those people might be tactless idiots who don't have any regard for your privacy or personal space, but in the middle of all that  are people like me.  Me, who was genuinely inspired by what I saw, and who didn't want to miss the chance to have a bigger connection to London 2012 than you can get from shouting at the telly. or from sending bloody tweets, whatever the hell they are.

So, if I see Kat Copeland next week buying some tofu in my local Tesco, or if I see Mo Farah in a train station one day, or Jessica Ennis in a launderette, or if I should encounter Chris Hoy buying power tools in a Scottish branch of B&Q, I will most likely take the opportunity to say to each of them 'Well done in the Olympics, you were incredible, and while I was sat on the sofa eating Wispa bars, you were totally inspiring, and I'm sorry if I'm intruding into your personal space, but I just wanted to wish you well, and while I'm here, can I have a photo please?'

Unless that is, I bump into Richard Curtis in the meantime, and perhaps he could write me a script for such occasions.  Because not only did I not win the Olympic Gold Medal for cycling, running, shooting or canoeing, I didn't win it for knowing how to talk to Olympians in the street either.

I won the World Cup, cried at Italia 90 and won a gold medal in the Olympics (sort of)

I once saw Gordon Banks at a service station, but I wasn't in the England team that won the World Cup.

I once saw Gazza and Brian Clough at some book signings, but I didn't cry in the World Cup semi final  (although I almost cried watching it on the telly) and I didn't manage Nottingham Forest to two consecutive European Cup wins.

I once saw Bradley Wiggins in Darlington at the start of a bike race, but I didn't win the Tour de France.

I used to have a hamster and I used to have a dog and both of them were put to sleep by our local vets.  And last week their daughter Kat Copeland won an Olympic gold medal in the rowing, but I didn't.

I made absolutely no contribution to any of these sporting events, but somehow I feel because of my teeny tiny bit of connectedness to the people who did, that this somehow reflects a bit of the glory onto me.

I live in a village that has got a golden postbox in honour of Kat, and I must remember to take my camera with me to Tesco in case I see her buying salad and I can get my picture taken with her.

And I never shout at the telly, but I shouted at the telly two Saturdays running because that brilliant little Mo Farah man wouldn't let anybody get in front of him in the 10,000 and the 5,000 metres.

And if the Buddhists are right, and we're all connected, then Mo was probably running round with water molecules and assorted atoms in his body that used to be part of me, so if you don't mind, I'd like to take a very small part of the glory for myself.  And for all of us.

No doubt if I'd had some talent and dedication and training and financial support, and if I hadn't eaten so much chocolate I could have done something big in the world of sport, but the fact is I didn't.

But someone did.  And I am tenously connected to them on some level.

And that's good enough for me!


Also, just as a footnote to my connectedness, I've been sporadically buying lottery tickets for about the last 20 years, and the most I've ever won is a tenner, and as a lot of these Olympic guys are lottery funded I probably paid for a chunk of one of those gold medals out of all the money I spent on totally not becoming a millionaire, so that's another reason why I should be up there on the podium waving my overhanging belly around and waving to the crowd alongside those little stick people with washboard stomachs.  

Why can't football commentators believe it when the ball goes in the net? It's the whole point of the game

It's FA Cup Semi Final weekend this weekend.

As usual one of them is on Sky and one of them on terrestrial TV, and to make it more convenient for people who like to get a multipack of beer in, they're both being shown in the evening (ish).  One on Saturday and one on Sunday.  This means I'll only be able to watch one of them.  I stopped subscribing to Sky years ago.  In fact, I wish I'd never joined.  Since they started pumping all that money in, the players keep getting richer while the fans keep getting poorer.  I think buying a Sky subscription just helps a few people get a lot richer, so I'm not in favour of it, although I would be if I was one of those few.  Only age and a lack of natural talent have prevented that from happening.

Anyway, the FA Cup semi-final weekend I remember most fondly is 1990.  This was pre-Sky.  Both semi finals were on the BBC, and they were on the same day (I think it might have been the first time this had ever happened, at one time they never showed them at all).  They were on during the day, and I watched them one after the other.  And they just might have been the best two back to back football matches I've ever seen. For the record Crystal Palace beat Liverpool 4-3 and Oldham and Manchester United drew 3-3.

It was as exciting as football gets.  I won't attempt to explain why.  If you hate football, you'll think I'm nuts, and if you like football you'll know what I mean.

The final was also pretty exciting.  Crystal Palace and Manchester United.  It finished 3-3 and it had to go to replay (this was before penalty shoot-outs on the day).  That same summer it was the World Cup, and Gazza's tears and Lineker's goals and Stuart Pearce's patriotism and Shilton's statue impersonations.  In those days, I still looked up to and respected the England team (except for Shilton) and Bobby Robson was there, and if we were disappointed watching at home on TV, losing in the semi-final to Germany or West Germany, how disappointed must they have been?  And when they came home, they were treated like heroes, because they were, because they were good, and they came so close, not like the last lot in 2010, who were run ragged by some German kids, so much so that instead of sharing the collective gloom of defeat, I was laughing by the end.  Ruth came in at one point, and she hasn't a clue about football, but even she could tell England were hopeless, and she was laughing too, at how easy the Germans were finding it to score.

Anyway, back to the FA Cup.  What I wanted to say was this.  And this is one of the things I still don't understand about football.  And about commentators in particular.  Why is it, that in a game where the entire point of the game is to score goals, it is considered amazing, incredible, unbelievable even, when goals are scored?  Especially when the game finishes 3-3 for example.  That means that 22 fit blokes have been running round aiming at the goals for an hour and a half, and they've only managed to succeed in getting it in there 6 times.  Sometimes there aren't any goals at all, and they don't even get a shot in at the goalie.  As I once heard Brian Clough say when he was being interviewed at Waterstone's in Middlesbrough.  The goals don't move.  Why don't footballers know this?

I suppose one answer to this question is obvious.  Not all 22 are kicking the ball the same way.  Half of them are trying to stop the other half from scoring. I'm sure my plumber would have had a lot harder job, plumbing in my toilet if while he was trying to do it, another plumber was trying to get in the way, and stop him.  Thankfully, that's not how plumbers work.  It's not usually competitive, once they're on site.

And I know the pitch is big, and the goals are small, and I know they even have a guy on each team whose job it is to stand in the middle of the goal and try and stop the ball going in.  And he can even use his hands!

I'm not saying scoring goals is easy.  I played football competitively about a hundred times, and I only scored about 10 goals.  4 of them were in the same game against a really crap team, and another 3 were scored in two games against a team of tiny kids who looked like they were playing in the wrong age group.  Another one accidentally went in off the back of my head and another one I scored after I'd had about 10 chances and missed them all, and I nearly managed to get the one I did get in saved and if the young boy chasing it as it trickled over the line hadn't tripped it probably wouldn't have made it.

So no, I'm not saying it's easy.  What I'm saying is that when it happens, it's not amazing.  It's not incredible, it's not unbelievable.  It's normal.  Some goals are amazing, but a few goals in the same game is not.  It's the whole point of the game.  Stop trying to make it sound better than it is.  Stop labelling things with adjectives.

It's like when somebody prefaces a story with 'It's actually quite a funny story...'.  These stories are never funny.  Another thing football commentators do during a good game, is tell you what a great advertisement it is for football.  No other sport does this!

In my opinion, the unintended consequence of saying how unbelievable it is when goals are scored, and of telling us what a great advertisement it is for football when the game is entertaining, is that by implication they are also saying that most of the time football is total crap.......

....ah well, that explains it then.

Clare Balding - can you do my funeral?

I accidentally watched the Boat Race today.  I was at my mum's house with a few minutes to kill while I waited for her to bring me a giant plateful of curry, and when I turned the telly on, there it was.  It was just starting.  I used to watch it when I was younger, but in those days I'd watch anything.

I thought it would be quite boring, but it was actually very engrossing, because the teams seemed to be very evenly matched.  Then about 10 minutes in, some bloody idiot swam in front of the boats, and only the quick intervention of the umpires, in particular the reserve umpire Matthew Pinsent, stopped the idiot from getting his stupid head cut off.  It was more consideration that he deserved.

In order to avoid slicing the guy's head off, the teams had to stop rowing, and then they had to wait another half an hour before they could restart the race.  The idiot went off to be arrested, smiling to himself.

Seven months it takes to train for the Boat Race.  Seven months of getting up at dawn, and training and practising, and dedication, and self-discipline, and self-denial.  And it was all ruined in a few seconds.

Immediately after the eventual restart of the race, Oxford got the end of one of their oars knocked off, and the race was effectively over.  Shame they didn't lose it in the guy's head half an hour earlier.

It was all unsatisfactory.  Disappointing, and sad.  The losers were distraught, one of them, completely spent with the effort of trying to make up for the missing oarsman, was unconscious and needed urgent medical attention.  And the winners were subdued.  There was no presentation.  No-one felt like celebrating.

And hopping around, on the quayside, with ants in her pants, was Clare Balding.  Doing that sports presenter thing of trying to make everything sound exciting, and better than it is, and getting reaction, and all that jazz.  It's been extra-ordinary, dramatic, unprecedented, she said.  I've run out of superlatives, she said.

The thing was, the occasion didn't need superlatives, it didn't need audio description, I wasn't sitting there with a blindfold on.  This was TV, not radio.  Everything that you needed to know could be seen, it didn't need spelling out to us like we were 5 year olds.  It was quite apparent that the Oxford team, especially the female cox, were absolutely distraught. It was pretty clear that all these people, who had given so much in preparation for this day, were just trying to deal with what had happened, in the best way they could, and shoving a microphone up their nose, and asking them for their 'reaction' and for the 'latest' didn't do anyone any favours.

She kept interviewing people, in that excited 'I'm a little puppy, please like me' way that she has, and at one point she segued clumsily from telling us about the 12 stone Oxford rower who was now unconscious, who was the lightest guy in the race, to the 17 stone Cambridge fella, who was the heaviest.  The interview with the 17 stone giant was made more comical, because she was at the bottom of some steps, and he was at the top, so it was like watching Gulliver's Travels.

Everyone she interviewed was polite, and tried to make sense of it all, even though it didn't really make any sense, and Matthew Pinsent pointed out, with as much disappointed dignity as he could,. that underneath everything that had happened, it had been a really good race.  Yes, Matthew, shame it won't be remembered for that first 10 minutes, when it was.

The whole occasion was like a wake, and watching Clare do her thing, was like watching someone interview mourners at a funeral.  'Oh, look here's Uncle Charlie, he's the lightest of the mourners at 9 stone 7, what did you make of the cremation, Charlie?'.  'Excuse me a moment, Auntie Maude, can I have your reaction to the choice of 'My Heart Will Go On', for the musical accompaniment to the casket disappearing into the furnace?'.  It was uncomfortable viewing.

I know that sports commentators and summarisers have got a job to do, but sometimes it feels like we're being treated like idiots.  It's not necessary to keep telling us how amazing and memorable and unprecedented and unbelievable it all is.  There's pictures.  Now and again, why don't you just let the pictures tell the story?

Anyone looking at the pictures today could plainly see the suffering in the participants, the sadness and the crushing disappointment.  Wouldn't it have been kinder, just to let them grieve in peace?