 |
| Surname of the nearer player is Twelvetrees |
Younger daughter’s husband is Gloucester born and bred and has supported the city’s rugby club since the year dot. He talks wittily about being a fan to the point where I mentioned I’d like to join him some Saturday afternoon.
Why? I’m not much for crowds even at symphony halls. I understand rugby but am far from obsessive. Perhaps because my major interests – writing fiction, learning to sing, speaking French, reading – preclude social contact. This Christmas I received tickets for the local Derby – Gloucester vs. Bath - from daughter Occasional Speeder who promised to drive me, find parking and sit by me for comfort.
I was ill before the game started, got more ill as it progressed, and went straight to bed when I returned home to sleep for a full twelve hours. Enriched by what I had seen.
The second half was lively and Gloucester won. I’m glad they did but in one sense the result was incidental. The memorable action occurred on the terraces. I knew rugby supporters drank during the game but had no idea to what extent. Just before the game started, the empty seats nearby rapidly filled with middle-aged men wearing Gloucester’s cherry-and-white, who had clearly been whiling their time at the bar. Each carried two quart-capacity plastic jugs full of beer (ie, half a gallon per man). Enough to get them to half-time, I surmised. How wrong I was. Within twenty minutes they were getting up, disrupting the seated fans and off for refills.
One wearing what he claimed was a pith helmet (It wasn’t.) managed to miss one of Gloucester’s tries.
I should have been irritated but perhaps mild delirium made me less judgmental. Cheerfulness reigned and nobody got hurt. It occurred to me I lead a very Casaubon life.
It's good to see a post here. I had been wondering how you were feeling. You made me laugh out loud, "perhaps mild delirium made me less judgmental." I think I need to be a little more delirious these days, minus an afternoon watching sports. Perhaps a bit more reading of the latest news will do it. Take care there.
ReplyDeleteRobin Andrea: Don't necessarily rule out team sport, at least for an afternoon. Sport is also sociology and sociology is people and how they behave. People you wouldn't normally come into contact with. Before the game TV had made me worry about "fans en masse" - albeit mainly those who follow soccer. Very shouty, very adversarial. Seeing them in the flesh revealed them to be as exotic as visitors from Mars. Not least in the way they used language, recycled a thousandfold from words and phrases used in TV commentaries.
ReplyDeleteI was lucky in that I had my daughter beside me and I was able to bounce my observations off her, seeking as I always do to make her laugh, Occasionally I wondered whether I might be overheard and challenged. As it was I was ignored. Perhaps because I not only felt toxic through illness, but looked infectious. Wearing my shield, my buckler by my side, I was protected by bronchiectesis.
Neither my husband nor I are sports fans. Never have been. However, every single member of my birth family are raging sports fanatics when it comes to their favorite teams. I've learned to enjoy their goofy exuberance, their passionate loyalty, and their good cheer. I think they find me and Tom more odd than we find them.
ReplyDeleteColette: Think of the other side of being a sports fanatic; some cry when their team loses, grown men, even. The emotion seems to be real enough, a long way from goofy exuberance. We would say (or at least, think) the reasons seemed trivial but the physical manifestation cannot truly be distinguished from reaction to a death in the family. Are the cryers misguided? Should they get a grip? Or is all emotion part of a single spectrum?
ReplyDeleteMy husband and my youngest sometimes go long distance to see a game. The late Professor Rubin of Chapel Hill always laughed and said Cooperstown (Baseball Hall of Fame) was wasted on me. Have to say that I enjoy watching people so would relish that part of a game.
ReplyDeleteCasaubon! Surely not. You have the soul of a maker, and he, well, did not.
Marly: That's an almost impossible compliment, I hardly know where to look. I'm sure you are right about the raw material. As I mentioned I find sports commentary so unbearably cliché-ed I watch TV games with the sound turned off. And yet these same worn phrases, transformed into communication for those who don't communicate very well, take on a sort of innocence. As if such spectators have rented a separate frontal lobe and a voicebox for the duration of the game.
ReplyDelete