Just For the record.

It has not escaped my knowledge that the football world Cup is on at the moment, despite me not having a television. It's all-pervasive, look, it's even on this blog.
I'm a man. I'm English, so therefore I'm wearing a red and white shirt and swallowing beer in between cheers and moans in front of a big screen?
Incorrect. I hope to see not a moment's coverage, nor hear or read about it, but, let's face it, such a hope is as implausible as hoping there won't be another Olympic games. ever.
Sporty just didn't happen for me. My dad was a keen cricketer, and hockey player, (that's real hockey by the way, the one without ice).
I just could never see the point of getting excited about chucking and whacking an inflated pig's bladder, wrapped in leather, from one end of a field to the other.  Oh, I'm sure there was a point to it, the first time a gang of marauders kicked their enemy's captain's head up the village street, but, hey, lads, all that's a bit passé now, isn't it?
The point of this post is to express my extreme disappointment in the U.S. team's failure  to knock England out of the competition.  Okay, it wouldn't totally have stopped the ad-nauseam coverage, but it would have de-smugged a whole heap of f**kwits.

I'm fascinated by the way corporate "sport" brainwashes the masses. People have blind loyalty for a team, so blind they seem unable to see that the team is just another big business corporate entity, where the people who make up the team are not team members, but employees, who are bought, sold, valued, devalued, traded like any other commodity. The guy you cheer for as a hero this time out, you'll jeer at in a year's time because he's wearing a different colour?
And when, I ask, did it become necessary that everybody out there is a heap of mobile advertising? That any company with enough money can buy space on the players?

No, no, no, he moans, stop right now... we all know the world's doomed and dumbed down, come on Soubriquet, calm down, take your medicine, there's a good chap. Look, nurse will be here soon with more tranquil pills. In the meantime, let me tighten the head-clamp, and pin your eyelids open.. oh yes, look, we're wheeling a television in now, won't that be grand?

What's that, fellow? mmmfmmmf? Oh, well, the gag's for your own good, and the shouting was disturbing other patients. I'll just turn the television on now. Football? Yes, that'll keep you entertained.

Another Bed

Edmund Dulac's illustration for
"The Princess and the Pea"
by
Hans Christian Andersen

There was once a prince, and he wanted a princess, but then she must be a real Princess. He travelled right around the world to find one, but there was always something wrong. There were plenty of princesses, but whether they were real princesses he had great difficulty in discovering; there was always something which was not quite right about them. So at last he had come home again, and he was very sad because he wanted a real princess so badly.

"One evening there was a terrible storm; it thundered and lightninged and the rain poured down in torrents; indeed it was a fearful night.

In the middle of the storm somebody knocked at the town gate, and the old King himself sent to open it.

It was a princess who stood outside, but she was in a terrible state from the rain and the storm. The water streamed out of her hair and her clothes; it ran in at the top of her shoes and out at the heel, but she said that she was a real princess.

‘Well we shall soon see if that is true,’ thought the old Queen, but she said nothing. She went into the bedroom, took all the bed clothes off and laid a pea on the bedstead: then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then twenty feather beds on top of the mattresses. This was where the princess was to sleep that night. In the morning they asked her how she slept.

‘Oh terribly bad!’ said the princess. ‘I have hardly closed my eyes the whole night! Heaven knows what was in the bed. I seemed to be lying upon some hard thing, and my whole body is black and blue this morning. It is terrible!’

They saw at once that she must be a real princess when she had felt the pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. Nobody but a real princess could have such a delicate skin.

So the prince took her to be his wife, for now he was sure that he had found a real princess, and the pea was put into the Museum, where it may still be seen if no one has stolen it.

Now this is a true story."

I myself would find such a pea-obsessed princess insufferable. If she would moan and gripe about one pea beneath twenty mattresses, then just think of how much complaining she'd do about everything else, every day, every night. 

I'd wait until the rain had stopped, and set her on her way again.  

And, in my way, I have been there, somewhat, and miraculously,  I have found my princess, (given the chance, she'll infiltrate my bed with toast-crumbs).
Though I buried a pea beneath the mattress, and saw the terrible bruise it gave her, she smiled at me, in the morning,  and made no word of complaint.
She's the one.