Swimming
BLISS has started swimming again. I'm
full of admiration, because although I quite like swimming, or, to be
more precise, I quite like hanging onto the side part-immersed in
water and doing the odd width (or length, depending on the size of
the pool) underwater, I am a public pool-ophobic. They bring me out
in ear and eye infections, and irritation. They're too cold, too. If
I want cold water there's the sea. It has its own wave-machine that's
always on, too.
Predictably, after just one week of
early morning swims, she's gone down with an ear infection.
Remarkable in itself, as, apparently, the water's dosed so high with
chemicals that it kills 99% of known lifeforms. She now has earplugs,
and goggles. Swimming goggles have evolved. I remember
national-health pink plastic framed things that would only ever be
worn by those kids with the perma-note excusing them any exercise
whatsoever, rendering them thoroughly redundant.
Well, not these bad boys. Hard as nails
Cool Hand Luke prison officer mirror-shades swimming goggles. I
wouldn't be surprised if she does not have the place to herself with
those on, everyone else scarpering in case they get their armbands
punctured or floats de-bouyancied. The aqua-aerobics class have
probably legged it out of town.
She looks like a futuristic
super-swimmer from a Marvel comic. Don't mess with Water Girl.
How much!?!?!
The winter olympics cost about $51
billion. That's a lot of money to spend when the only thing anyone
really cares about is the ice hockey, and the hosts (and favourites
to win) failed to pick up the gold at that. When there's all that
talk about the “obscene” money in football, for comparison, host
one winter olympics, and you could buy the Chelsea squad ten times
over, or practically every Premiership team. They draw huge crowds
and massive worldwide interest. Or you can go for the political glory
and waste it all on people sliding down things on a variety of
planks, tea-trays, and wheel-less go-karts.
When the highlight and talking point of
a $51,000,000,000.00 spend is the curling, which is, really, just
crown green bowls on ice, with added sweeping, you've wasted your money. The guys that slide
along and release the stones (see – technical terms unbounded
around here) must feel some satisfaction from their achievements. The
broom blokes though, it's like getting a medal for doing some
cleaning. They even get told when to sweep, and how fast, by the
slide and release fellahs who are running the show.
Our 2012 boast-fest cost (an admitted)
£9 billion, enough to buy every county cricket and test ground in
the country, and all the players, several times over. It also cost
the character of acres of East London, replacing them with those
sanitised, antiseptic, more virtual than reality-looking
'burb-scapes.
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