Human sacrifices and lunch time chats.

One of the worst things about not going to Church - yes, you do get free time on a Sunday - is that you increase the chances whereby religious types might try to convert you.

 

Now I have no problem with religious peeps per se, but having someone else's beliefs forced upon you - whether they be spiritual, political, dietary - is never enjoyable. That's a fact.

 

I do, however, enjoy hearing about other people's discomfort, and have lived through the ranting and rapturing from my brother in North Carolina - a hot bed of hot heads uncooled by Holy Water - who can't seem to go more than a day without someone trying to ruin his Sundays for eternity.

 

Well, I am disappointed to have to sacrifice that lamb for my own first hand, Apocalyptic Horse's mouth hell-like experience.

 

A woman who joined the Primary school staff this year, let's call her Miss Eve, has slowly but steadily been developing into a mental, as demonstrated by our conversation over the course of the last 8 months, which I shall abridge.

 

Genesis, where the problems begin.

Suspicions were aroused by the fact that she spoke very softly and lovingly to one and all, using words like 'love' and 'wisedom' a lot. Neither word, clearly, has any place in the classroom. But initially, I mistook her for something of a hippie. My original sin.

 

And whilst the poem she wrote for Leah was so lame even the recipient was unimpressed, the sentiment was rather sweet. She did a cover lesson for me once when I had to go home for a doctor's appointment with Leah: she was having a kidney scan, I think. She seemed to find that bonding. We have someone entered into some kind of a covenant.  

 

Exodus, where the law is laid down.

But that's how they start, isn't it? It's all How are you? How's Leah? to start with, and before you know it conversations are ritualistically brought to an end with...

 

"I'll pray for you."

 

Which I find terrifying and confusing. Don't Pray For Me. I don't drink for you. 

 

And then you innocently ask her what she's doing at the weekend, and she says, like it's normal, that she's having a 72 hours sceance (which I think is some kind of a prayathon) to give guidance and stength to the world's leaders. 

 

She asks me if I have 'a golden calf', which is weird.

 

Leviticus, where it all gets propery weird 

And then she asks for a picture of Leah. I show her one. How lovely, she says, but she explains she meant could I email her one. She'd like to put a picture of Leah on facebook next to her neice who also had a problem with a kidney, and because our church would like to offer them strength in their time of need. 

 

Oh no you don't.

 

I'm not fooled. I know what you're up to you loon. 

 

Human scarifice.

 

There it is, I said it. Every time you think a someone's just being nice and you should respect their views, you end up having to protect your daughter from being sacrificed.  

What is wrong with these people? And how do you get them and their knife sharpening, false smiling, cult gathering, soul catching, baby stealing antics off your back?

 

Advice, please.  

Once

Have you watched the film Once?


Well, do. It's magical.

Food is awesome.

Over and Out.

(Warning: this entry requires some knowledge of, or interest in, cricket)

Holding to Boycott. Warne to Gatting. Ambrose to Jones. Flintoff to Ponting.

From time to time a single over in a cricket match is so sensational, so reflective of the best of game, so packed with incident that it moves immediately from cricket field to cricketing fokelore

Well, kindly add to the list : Fergusson to Paterlini.

To those of you, and there can't be many left, who haven't read about it, or heard about it already, from the mouths of taxi drivers or landlords or soothsayers, here's the full story, straight from the Hurlingham Horse's mouth.

The context.

Hurlingham v San Albano. Traditionally a meeting of gentleman and hoodlums, where the blood runs high and the insults fly, where Northern grit overcomes Southern spite. This occasion, a First Division Declaration League match, was to be no different.

San Albano wins the toss and bat.

Opening the batting is a figure of controversy, one M Paterlini, perhaps Argentina's most talented batsman: a man whose strokeplay is as sweet as his mind is sour.

I came on to bowl the 11th over, with the score 43-1 (Paterlini 19no), of a game that was moving along surprisingly quitely and sedately. The key word in that sentence: was.

This is what happened next.

The Over

Ball 1: The loosener.
Paterlini has clearly seen this bowler before. First ball he dances down the wicket and smashed a straight drive down the ground, over the ropes, through the trees and half way across the fairway for 4. "Go fetch your sheeeet, Englishman," he thinks. 47-1

Ball 2: The reply.
Straight drive that! You can't. Cause it's a wide outside off stump. Bowler has a polite word to the umpire. 48-1

Ball 2: The second reply.
Short and wide, hit into the ground to the fielder. No run. Order restored to the kingdom. 48-1

Ball 3: The beamer.
High full toss, mistimed to cover. Called 'no ball' for height. Bowler has another polite word to the umpire. "Shut up and bowl," Paterlini tells Fergusson.

Fergusson shuts up and bowls. Paterlini not ready. Various comments pertaining to "Shut up and bat" are heard. Some verbal sparring.

Bowler is still whinging about the no ball.

Umpires meet, tell everyone to calm down. Bowler told to shut up and bowl, this time by his team mates.

It was never a no ball. 49-1

Ball 3: The mis-field.
Short and wide again, batsman mistimes to cover. One R Butta, combative Australian, fails to stop a ball that is barely moving. 1 run taken. Batsman laughs at fielder. 50-1

Ball 4: The single.
All round good bloke Tommy Frances drives a full toss to mid off and takes a single bringing the far more interesting Señor Paterlini back on strike. 51-1

Ball 5: The mis-field: Part II
Short and wide, Paterlini again mistimes a cut but picks his fielder. Ball once again passes through hands and legs of one R Butta. Paterlini, laughing, says words to the effect of, "You are sh*t" to fielder. Bowler agrees. Fielder goes mental (and white, and a little scary).

Umpires intervene. Paterlini and Butta involved in verbal sparring. Captains intervene. 53-1

Ball 6: The straight one.
Not only straight, but swinging, and fast, as Paterlini tries to flick it through the off side, off and middle stumps are splayed by a Younis-like inswinging yorker. Bowler screams like a happy, yet angry dog. Batsman walks off. Slowly. 53-2

Folklore people. Tell your grandkids.

Fools

I've just been invigilating an exam.

 

Some of the questions asked were stupider than a fictional American tourist at the Edinburgh Festival. "What time is the 1 o'clock cannon fired?" and all of that. 

 

One question in particular seemed to baffle them, for no reason I could fathom.

 

Rather than, as usual, give you the Top 5 Howlers, I prefer to describe in full the behaviour of one of the fringe members of the group, who rather nicely encapsulates the idiocies of the rest. If he were in a wildlife documentary, he would be a wildebeest; but one of those wildebeasts lagging behind, a little slow on the uptake whilst his wildefriends scarpered, the one with the flummoxed expression, about to be devoured by the predatory lions.

 

The question they were struggling with reads as follows:

 

A friend is coming to visit Argentina for two weeks. Write a letter recommending what he could do. After a couple of minutes, a hand went up. Tomás, it seemed, was confused. 

Do I need to put an address? he asked. I said, Yes. He said he didn't know his address. I said, Make it up. 

He sat there for many minutes, before writing

Buenos Aires.

in the top right corner.

Returning to my desk, no sooner had I started my marking before, out of the peripheries of my vision a little but now familiar hand go up again. 

Yes, Tomás? I ventured. Sir, what is the date? I pointed to what he had just written on the exam paper - 12th November - next to the word Date. Ah yes, he said, like some kind of academic who'd experienced a Joycean moment of epiphany.  

I returned to my desk. A minute or so later, the hand went up again. Confidently. 

 

Sir, can I invent a name? Which may actually have been rhetorical. I said, Yes. This time I waited by his desk, morbidly fascinated by where this would go. 

Once again, he sat there for an apparent eternity - like Oscar Wilde agonising over whether to add or remove a comma - before writing:

Dear Friend,

Reading this, I affirmed that he could invent a name. 

Yes, Sir, said Tomás, and then added, rather cryptically, I thought of one. 

Tomás continued: 

Dear Friend. 

It's Christian here. Your friend. 

Unfortunately the test was only half an hour, and that's as far as he, and the comedy, got. Pens down. 

Ah, the disappointment on his face. The genius he was about to unleash.

Cry for me, Argentina

So I've been in Argentina now for nearly two years, and, mostly in the desire to write about stuff that's original, I think this is the first time I've written about big Diego. It seemed a bit obvious, really. 

 

But sometimes you just have face the wobbling-bellied drug-addled inevitability that is Maradona in your daily life. So when the national team loses a few games, accusations of in-fighting amongst the squad are rife, you need a calming influence, right? A wise 'un who can cool the hot headed youngsters down with somesage advice.

 

Well, that's what most countries would do. In England they'd find a died in the wool racist, with whispy blond hair; a man who would talk fluent football, refer to the days pre shin pads and keepers' gloves, and he would do nothing at all except weather a media storm long enough for the FA to do exactly that, and then employ another foreign manager to do the job properly. 

 

Here in Argentina, you weather a crisis by calling on a man who is probably the worst behaved sportsman in the world. He's shot at reporters, he's single handedly responsible for 4/5th of Latin American deforestation (cocaine plants and cow-burgers), got so many drug offenses that even the Chinese couldn't keep up (hence his presence throughout the Olympics... in the changing rooms of Argentine Olympians, noticably the women's hockey team)

 

Many people in the UK have asked, is it like Gazza coaching England? Well, yes, it is exactly like that. Except he wouldn't be famous for crying, cause everyone cries over football here. I'm crying right now.

It is different here. In the UK, you can only be one thing or the other. Either you are idolised or vilified, sometimes in the same week (Rooney, Flintoff, Beckham, Corry etc). But Maradona is yet another Argentine paradox; he exists in both contexts - villain and hero, God and fool - simultaneously. Rather like living here itself: it does your head in, but you find you love it. 

 

And the guy is everywhere: his TV Parkinson format (but not style) show doesn't run anymore, which is a shame cause who wouldn't want to see Fidel Castro interviewed by a footballer? Pretty much every department store replays golden Maradona moments; the tourist favourite 'Maradona lookalike' down in La Boca must be a millionaire by now; even the British Embassy function room, with commendable wit, is called the 'Hand Of God' room, sporting a massive photo of 'that goal' opposite the bar. And last week he was shown on the tele wildly celebrating a Boca's victory. This is the national team coach, let me remind you, who openly talks about how much he hates River, and could 'never wear a River shirt' (cause there aren't any big enough, is the usual reply). 

But, the people who know their footy say the problem with the national team is that they're the 11 biggest egos in Argentina, and none of them listen to the coach. The only guy in the country that they will listen to is big Diego, so they want to use Diego as the mouthpiece to communicate the plan. 

 

Obvious problem is the guy, clearly, cannot help himself... He'll walk into the room with the tactics explained and agreed before hand, get carried away with emotion, do a quick line of coke, be 'inspired' and then you'll see the keeper playing centre midfield second half... (I'll be extradited within one hour of sending this email!)   

 

First match Scotland! How do you fancy their chances? 

My bet: we lose 2-3. 

Keeper to score second half hat-trick. 

Headlines. 

Brave Scots Felled By Mara Magic.