THIS SPORTING LIFE

I have just been watching the FA Cup Final and, bless them, Arsenal beat Aston Villa 4-0 with a devastating display, a first half goal by Theo Walcott followed by three in the second half from Alexis Sanchez, Per Mertesacker and Olivier Giroud. Villa played below their best and never posed much danger. This is a 6^th Cup triumph for Arsenal’s master-mind and manager Arsène Wenger capping a most distinguished career. Well played The Gunners!

Alexis Sanchez scores a peach of a goal to make it 2-0

I am a moderately interested armchair TV spectator of sport but had no discernible sporting talent in my vigorous youth, never winning even a school cap where I rose merely to the gallant 2^nd rugby XV and the much less gallant 3^rd cricket XI. I was however a whizz at billiards and shove-ha’penny!

If I were a serious contemplative type, (thankfully I am not), I would worry about the integrity of sport in general and football in particular. I doubt if the FA Cup Final itself was “fixed” but it cannot be denied that The Beautiful Game’s image has been recently besmirched by the accusations levelled against the sport’s senior ruling body FIFA, presided over by the 79-year-old Swiss Sepp Blatter. Sepp himself is no doubt as pure as the driven snow, but he may have been a tiny bit negligent and lacking in curiosity about large sums floating around senior figures at FIFA. Certainly the US Department of Justice and the FBI have been galvanised into action, charging 6 FIFA officials and 8 others with corruption.  We may well learn more as the weeks pass.

79-year-old Sepp Blatter and 51-year-old Linda Barras

Sepp himself brushed off this scandal and was re-elected President, although much Press comment was derisive. He seems calm enough and has an enviable line in girlfriends, so he must have hidden qualities. There have been rumours about odd goings-on at FIFA for years but all is idle gossip until something is proven in court.

Football has long had a bad reputation. Match-fixing had to be stamped out in the 1930s and now with vast salaries for players, eager to capitalise on their relatively short playing careers and advised by a motley crew of agents, the temptations are huge. Key people like managers and referees are often the target for bribes – it was famously said of talented Brian Clough that “he liked a bung” and even manager George Graham of Arsenal in 1995 was dismissed for accepting £400,000 from a Norwegian agent. Professional football players, often tattooed rough-necks, are not the types to respond to Establishment pleas to “play a straight bat to life” and the ethics of players in Continental Europe, Africa and South America hardly bear thinking about.

Football is by no means the only sport tainted by corruption and the taint goes back many centuries. Cheating at the Ancient Greek Olympics was rampant and offenders had in penance to pay for the erection of a new statue to the gods – hence the multitude of statues. Mind you, athletes competed in the nude, so they could not hide their bribes up their sleeves, though of course where there’s a will there’s a way. Horse racing is said to be “the sport of kings” but doped animals, bent jockeys and blind stewards are certainly not unknown. Cycling, greyhound racing and athletics have been beset by “performance-enhancing substances” and even the tranquil world of cricket has been rocked by scandals of match-fixing and spot-betting, notably seeing the dismissal of Hansie Cronje, captain of South Africa, and the imprisonment of 3 Pakistani players including captain Salman Butt. At the bottom of these scandals usually lurks a fetid group of bookies, grown powerful by the globalisation of gambling and the lure of easy winnings. Energetic and watchful regulation is necessary in every sport.

Yet I will continue to watch golf, football and 6-Nations rugby as McIlroy, Arsenal and Scotland (fitfully) strive to delight. I will dismiss from my mind thoughts of Swiss graft, or Emirates match- fixing influencing the results of my favoured sports. As Orson Welles in the role of Harry Lime observed: “In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” Even in modest Scotland we produced Colin Montgomerie, Dave Mackay and Gregor Townsend – beat that, Zurich!

SMD

30.5.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

LAND OF MY HEART FOREVER

As the great P.G.Wodehouse observed “It has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.” The British of England, Wales and Ulster have been exasperated, and Scots like me embarrassed, by the tendentious wails and complaints of the resurgent SNP, always asking for more, like a plague of tartan-clad Oliver Twists. I apologise unreservedly and say to my fellow-Scots “Lighten up, Jimmy!” and above all “Dougal, count your blessings!”

 For Nature and God Almighty, (if that elusive gentleman is ever at home) have made Scots the most fortunate of people.  I need not dilate on the lovely rivers, the heathery moors, the extensive wooded glens and the majestic mountains; nor need I remind you of the considerable glories of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen or Dundee; nor of the joys of Angus Beef, Tay salmon, McSween’s haggis and Scotch whisky – a Glen Grant malt, a Famous Grouse blend and, for high days and holidays, a Chivas Regal or two will do very nicely, thank you. To round off this fine tally, the country is rather lightly populated by European standards and you are in no danger of tripping over and bumping into those awful Other People you prefer to avoid. We Scots are truly blest.

For otherwise we could be starving in Asia, fearful in the Middle East, exploited in Africa or mugged in Latin America. The sour, pinched faces of the SNP members of Parliament are laughably inappropriate. Scotland is a fun place, a safe place of friendship and hospitality, a great place to work and play. Scots like to laugh and should face the world “sunny side up” dispensing cheer to those less fortunate. Famous Scots in history, David Hume, Adam Smith, James Boswell, Rabbie Burns, Walter Scott and R. L. Stevenson were convivial fellows and later James Barrie and AA Milne gave untold pleasure to children the world over. We must not turn our back on this proud heritage and let us join in the popular songs of Harry Lauder or Andy Stewart and the raucous comedy of a host of others like Billy Connolly. Whatever Nicola Sturgeon may say, we were born to be happy.

SNP pin-up girl Mhairi Black

I doubt if the SNP play anything, even the cacophonous bag-pipes, other than to sound a lament, a dirge or a dismal pibroch. Do they toss cabers, do they indulge in curling, do they breathe in the ozone by playing golf on the many wonderful links courses of their country? Of course they abhor these convivial past-times, much preferring to pose for their “selfies” and to abuse the privileges of the Westminster House of Commons. There they are out of place, especially the likes of Mhairi Black, 20 year-old victor over Douglas Alexander. As Dr Johnson remarked, á propos an expulsion from Oxford, “A cow is very good in a field: but we turn her out of a garden”; I hope for a gradual attrition of the SNP phalanx and that at the 2020 election they are diminished to their usual deservedly irrelevant status and they can return to their kailyard.

Meanwhile I suppose we will suffer the inescapable toe-curling embarrassments from the SNP members but essentially they are baying impotently and already too much has been conceded to them. It is well said that we know when a plane-load of SNP Parliamentarians arrives at Heathrow: the whining continues even when the engines are switched off! Let us always remember that the “real” Scotland is quite different – outward looking, cosmopolitan, appreciative of English virtues and proud upholders of the United Kingdom.

SMD

27.05.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

EUROVISION SONGFEST!

Last night was the unmissable musical night of nights when 27 nations, of 40 entrants, compete in the famed Song Contest final (60^th Anniversary, no less). To qualify, the nation has to be a customer of the European Broadcasting Union, which takes in all of Europe but also embraces Mediterranean littoral countries like Israel and far-flung former Soviet countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. This year a wild card was issued to the Australians, apparently avid fans of Eurovision, who could watch breathlessly on their Sunday morning Fosters beer-swill (9 hours ahead of this year’s hosts, Vienna).

The 2015 Eurovision Logo

The Euro-Songfest is rather looked down upon by the intelligentsia as camp, kitsch and ineffably bland, but it is great fun; I suppose I have been watching it for most of its 60 years and accordingly have to endure the epithet of “twat”, so freely dispensed to viewers by our superior denigrators. The Contest does have its baroque side, I admit, and those hoping for 25 minutes of sublime baroque music following the Eurovision signature tune (Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Marche en rondo from his Te Deum) are to be disappointed. But Conchita Wurst, the Austrian bearded transvestite, last year’s winner and a ravishing hostess tonight, looked fetchingly baroque first in her purple-spangled trouser-suit, later in a svelte green frock and flashing mascara eyes – not at all like any Wurst I had encountered hitherto.

Britain’s chances of a win were slim indeed. The jaunty song Still in Love with You performed by lively Electro Velvet was just not likely to appeal to the national juries, who currently prefer dramatic and “anthemic” fare. Moreover, the Eurovision juries have formed blocs, the Scandinavians and Baltics, the old Soviets and the Balkan states, who tend to vote for each other. Greece and Cyprus normally exchange 12 points each and this whole system now leaves friendless Britain and France without a prayer. Ireland sometimes does Britain a favour, but sadly Ireland itself (remember the golden age of Dana and Johnny Logan?) was eliminated in the semis.

The bookies, those wise prophets, fancied Sweden, Russia, Italy and Australia and I personally put my little mite via PaddyPower on Russia, whose A Million Voices, belted out by toothsome Polina Gagarina sounded like a Eurovision cert to me, if the juries could draw a discreet veil over Ukraine and Crimea. Political feeling does play a subconscious role and some in my family hoped that Greece, whose song was not too bad, would pick up sympathy votes after her brutal Eurozone bullying.

In the event, Greece polled rather feebly, but ignominiously bringing up the rear were the UK (5 votes) France (3) and Germany and Austria (the dreaded nul points), which speaks volumes of the disdain of much of Europe for her rich North-Western members. The winner was Sweden, whose song, Heroes, was rather poor but whose act was reinforced a trifle unfairly by some clever special effects. My favoured Russia was second and Italy, with a rousing rip-off of The 3 Tenors and Andrea Bocelli, a distant third.

Triumphant Mans Zelmerlow of Sweden with simpering Conchita

Most of the songs were pretty dreary with a surfeit of soulfulness; for example my normally keenly alert wife was lulled into a profound slumber during the first 14 numbers, despite the Austrians’ baby grand piano bursting into flames, and was not much revived by the second 13. The audience was noisy, cheering every turn and frenetically flag-waving – they were either well-drilled, well-paid or well-oiled. All but 5 of the 27 songs were sung with American-English lyrics, probably ill-understood by their singers, though no doubt prudent commercially. The French, Spanish and Italian entrants naturally sang well in their native language as did a bald-headed Romanian warbler and a slightly shaggy Montenegrin named Knez, said to be big in Podgorica.

Did the Contest advance the Brotherhood of Man? The theme of the year was “building bridges” and I suppose the reverence accorded to bearded Conchita and the news on the night that devout Ireland, once a by-word for a reactionary society, had voted strongly in favour of gay marriage in her referendum, pointed to some sort of progress. Certainly the world has much changed since the first Eurovision in 1955 and though the bloc system was much in evidence, a noisy night in Vienna is much preferable to “All quiet on the Western Front”.

SMD

24.05.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

GETTING UNSTUCK

Two months ago I wrote a piece “Getting Stuck” confessing I had failed to complete reading Middlemarch by George Eliot and had given up after a modest 150 pages. I am happy to be able to report that, after reviving myself with re-reading two of my favourite political biographies, I returned to Middlemarch and completed its 838 pages yesterday with much satisfaction, tinged with a dash of exasperation.

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

Those readers who responded to my original article were unfailingly polite and sympathetic; they talked of their own problems with Cervantes, Dostoyevsky, Melville, Gibbon and Victor Hugo. One Scots candid friend told me that Virginia Woolf (herself an opaque writer in my view) had declared that Middlemarch was “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people”. As for my labelling heroine Dorothea Brooke “a prig”, he countered by claiming that Dorothea was “just about the sexiest heroine in Victorian literature” – an epithet to which I would not subscribe! He said he was about to dilate upon my immaturity but generously retreated out of respect for my reaching my 50,000 pageview hits target, as many of my pieces had amused him. He said we did not agree much on politics, religion, the American Way or the British public school system but despite this formidable catalogue we remain warm friends. There is no doubt that he stung me into action as did those silent readers, many of whom I know to have literary interests, whose reproaches were all the more cutting for being silent! So to Middlemarch I returned.

Middlemarch, published in 1872, is by common consent a great novel – some say the greatest of all English novels. Its sweep is broad, describing the fictional Midlands town of Middlemarch during the run-up to the Great Reform Bill from 1829-32. The various sectors of society are described, landowners, manufacturers, professionals, tradesmen and rustics. The action revolves around the love of Dorothea Brooke, first married to the desiccated scholar Casaubon, for the enigmatic Will Ladislaw but extends to the ambitious doctor Tertius Lydgate, who marries pretty but shallow Rosamond Vincy. The love of Fred Vincy for plain but admirable Mary Garth and the ruin of Methodist banker Bulstrode at the hands of sinister John Raffles provide diverting sub-plots and a rich gallery of subsidiary characters.

Eliot writes best I believe in her depiction of the marriage of Dr Lydgate with Rosy Vincy, her self-centredness and his weak submission ending his hopes in frustrated disappointment. The central romance between Dorothea and Will is well described but quite what the attractions of Will are I find hard to discern, though he does have artistic and journalistic flair. Dorothea, with her high aspirations and scrupulous emotions, would in my opinion have been much better off with Lydgate, supposing he had the courage to dump Rosy, if that had been possible. I still reckon Dorothea to be an exasperating prig, who would drive any normal man potty, and my lack of sympathy for her is my main obstacle to unconditional enjoyment of the novel.  

George Eliot herself was much braver than her heroine Dorothea. She lived in sin for 20 years with married philosopher George Lewes and made no secret of her free-thinking opinions. In time she was accepted by Victorian society and this “horse-faced blue-stocking” in Henry James’ ungallant phrase, took her place among the finest of English novelists. I am glad I got unstuck and finished reading her masterpiece.

SMD

20.05.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015

RUBBING THE RABBIT'S FOOT

I imagine that none of us is wholly rational, that we exercise little well-hidden rituals at critical moments and are touched by what the outside world calls “superstition” which I prefer to regard as “extra comfort”. The wholly rational person is a dull dog devoid of that crazy poetry bubbling away under our immaculate stuffed shirts. So let’s rub that rabbit’s foot for luck, mind you ideally it should be a left hind-leg foot, shot, not trapped, in a cemetery of all places, for maximum potency – a rare rabbit indeed.

A silver mounted Rabbit's Foot

Luck is an elusive companion: Lady Luck can change our lives and open up new opportunities so it is worth courting her and chasing away all obstacles. Naturally we marshal our lucky numbers idly to play the lottery in a vain dream of riches. We avoid walking under ladders (normally mere prudence, but allegedly not to disturb a 3-sided figure symbolic of The Trinity) and certainly we cherish mirrors, those reflectors of our inner selves, as cracking one brings a whopping 7 years’ bad luck. Help your prospects painlessly by looking over a 4-leafed clover, hanging up a horse-shoe upside-down and keeping your fingers crossed.

Black cats, associated with dreaded witches, have had a mixed press. In Scotland, seeing one is a happy omen but in most places a black cat crossing your path is a harbinger of bad luck. All over Europe, especially in the South, there is a fight against supposed evil spirits. The cursed Italian village of Colombraro only has to be named for the local peasant to scratch his privates, the received remedy for chasing away hobgoblins (and probably innocent passers-by as well). In Greece a whole industry revolves around The Evil Eye, an envious malignant stare, and how to repel it.

Antidote to The Evil Eye

Thus many doorways, walls and charm bracelets will be adorned with the blue stone carrying an eye to chase away the evil spirits left by ill-disposed visitors. Even the Orthodox Church attacks the Evil Eye (Vaskania in church Greek). At a wedding the congregation will spit silently to protect the bride from The Eye and new-born babes get the same treatment, odd, but all well-meant. On New Year’s Day, a pomegranate will be smashed over the threshold to bring the house good luck accompanied by the daily ritual of a 3-times sign of the cross over the breast. To illustrate the power of superstition, the Greek Church is currently controversially parading some relics of St Barbara (Ayia Varvara) lent by a Catholic Church in Murano, Venice. The Orthodox took them round a leading cancer hospital in Athens yesterday to the protests of the solidly secular SYRIZA government, who preferred the patients to receive modern drugs instead. 

We may smile at these goings-on but we Westerners are equally beset by Myths and Superstitions, although we do not recognise them as such. We worship The Wisdom of Free Markets, we revere The Cult of the Sacred Euro, we cringe at The Global Warming Horrors – all mythical bogeymen of no real substance.

My calendar tells me it is the 13^th tomorrow, a dread date to be avoided globally. I will hurry to publish today so everything will then be alright...........Touch wood!

SMD

12.05.15

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2015