Monday 7 October 2013

Bespattered girls


In the light of FIFA moving the upcoming football World Cup in Qatar from Summer to Winter (when the temperature drops to a pleasant 35 or so degrees), someone has come up with the brilliant idea of moving the Glastonbury Festival to the Winter as well.

The reasoning behind this suggested move is that it would turn back the clock in terms of making the event more of a memorable endurance test and right of passage, as it used to be in the old days. Glastonbury has turned from a mud-fest with sparse facilities into a venue most favoured for corporate jamborees, along the lines of Glyndebourne or Henley Regatta.

The last couple of Glastonburys' have even been virtually mud-free, thanks to unseasonably good, Summer weather, and I have missed the sight of bespattered girls turning up - gurning - to our pub on the following Monday or Tuesday. I've had to bespatter them myself this year.

Nobody is - any more - asking why on earth FIFA awarded the hosting of the World Cup to a country where - in the Summer months - you can fry a steak on the tarmac of any road, even in the shade. The Economy, stupid.

Like Formula One motor racing, the sport (I should say 'game', really - only fox-hunting and shooting are traditional 'sports') of football is saturated with oodles of money, and in order for the governors of FIFA to stay saturated themselves, they have to cosy up with a few oil tycoons whose oodles out-oodle all the other oodleaires in the world put together. They've got a minus-20 degree artificial ski-slope in the desert there, with real snow, for heaven's sake.

In Formula One, the tyre manufacturers, Pirelli, are coming under attack from the drivers for supplying tyres which degrade too quickly, and often even blow-out on 150 MPH bends, putting their lives in even more danger than they were already.

Nobody is - any more - asking why this company is, all of a sudden, making inferior tyres to the ones they made only a few years ago. The Economy, stupid.

The huge TV corporations which spend trillions on the rights to televise the event worldwide, were becoming bored with tyres which never failed, because infallible tyres make for poor TV, where the races are dominated by a combination of good drivers and good cars - all going round and round until the end of the race, with the outcome usually predictable from the start. Everyone - despite what they may say in public - likes a good crash.

Money, money, money, money, money......

19 comments:

  1. I thought the Pirelli man was terribly laid back and rather jolly about that blow out yesterday, which looked absolutely terrifying to me.

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    1. He said that Pirelli can't win - also he is due to retire, so he can afford to be relaxed.

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  2. Young Gareth Bale's salary of £300,000 a week for kicking a ball about, does seem a tad excessive.

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  3. It's not known for how long Pirelli will supply tyres to Formula One, is it ? Actually { apart from the money politics }, the race yesterday was quite exciting, for a change, except boring old Sebastian Vettel won AGAIN !! There was the tyre blow-out plus a bit of spinning that sent a few cars careering off and lots of overtaking at the end.
    ..... and, I think that I'll come up to your pub next Summer and get splattered ..... a bit of splattering never hurt anyone !! XXXX

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    1. I'll start accumulating spatter material now, then.

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  4. I'm brick paving tomorrow. The scholarship ran out last week.

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    1. Just trying to work out what the time in Oz is now. That has to be one of your most cryptic comments, or I'm being thick again.

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    2. I really am - and it really did.
      Does that help?

      It's three weeks until my book comes out and I'm working for a landscaper/brick paver to tide me over financially. Not bad work. I'm learning heaps and I'm sore as fuck after sitting at a computer for the last year.
      I have this book launch thingy to organise too.

      This has nothing to do with your lovely post, sorry.

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    3. Oh, that's fine then. I thought you were fibbing. I am really looking forward to the signed copy, but I really want to pay for it - you will want me to too, the first few weeks after the launch.

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  5. Yesterday's Sunday Times had a very interesting article about the World Cup -- coming to the same conclusions as you ... Big time bribery and corruption. Who's surprised?

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  6. Tom
    I am seriously thinking of a bath visit
    Would u be on for it?

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    1. Oh yes. Give me date and time, and I will give you full attention.

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    2. P.S. Please put a capital letter on the word 'Bath' in future, so there's no confusion about some Turkish joint you have in mind.

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    3. I had a friend at whilst studying Architecture in the early eighties who spent a great deal of time frequenting Turkish baths under the guise of research for one we were designing at the time. The stories he told involving hirsute gentlemen, oil and dark corners remain with me to this day.

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    4. Dark corners remain with me to this day also, Em. I think that is just the human condition (ers).

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  7. I have never been a fan of racing but I am a fan of yours. Therefore I'll pretty much read anything you've written and each time I learn something I didn't know. Don't let it go to your head.

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