Sunday 13 July 2014

Badgers and Pub Teams

As I watch the hedgehogs out across my lawn, the summer nights have become very hot and sultry.  Their walk looks almost laborious as they mooch about looking for slugs and snails.  In contrast, the bats overhead look so cool as they glide, twisting and turning effortlessly through the summer nights picking off a myriad of moths and insects in these sultry summer nights. 
The Badgers appear from their sett looking tired and relaxed, almost sleepy.  And when you see the British Badger in his natural habitat, so at home in his surroundings, there can be few animals on earth that look more cute, cuddly and just downright adorable.  
The Badger cull will, I fear, soon be upon us once again despite overwhelming scientific evidence which states time and time again that the Badger cull is futile and totally pointless and does not realise any of the objectives in stemming BTB in our cattle herds, which makes the destruction of these animals criminally insane.
As we get to the finale of the 2014 World Cup Final you’ve seen billions of pounds poured in to a tiny part of Brazil leaving the Brazilian government 11 billion in debt to show case to the world the most expensive pub team on record for their performance was mediocrity on every level.  But to be fair, so were many of the other teams that were present.  None more so than our own England. A working class sport light years out of the reach for affordability of the dirt poor, working class people that represent 98% of the country which hosted it.  A world cup full of Vidal Sassoon hair styles and bodies covered in tattoos.  The cost of the hair styles and tattoos, the hair lacquers and gels would go a long way to alleviating the problems of six and a half million homeless people on the streets of Brazil. It would go some way to ending the sniffing of glue from plastic coca cola bottles from kids as young as five and six years of age. 
The pundits on all media fronts spouting nonsense of the 'best world cup ever.'  What football games have they been watching?  What pieces of heart stopping skill have they witnessed?  I have watched the same games and so have my friends and the conclusion from the people I have spoken to is of cataclysmic disappointment. 
We seem to live in a world where the irreplaceable wonders and beauty of nature are merely played lip service to.  The deprivation and destruction of it goes on hour by hour, day by day, week by week, month by month and year on year.  Depletion of world species and wild habitats find it harder and harder to gain favour with the world media.  May be our beautiful game should go the the same way so we wouldn't have to endure all of this false hype and nonsense along with  these vain, egotistical, moderately talented young men.
The great names of the past that defied description, Pele, Eusébio da Silva Ferreira, Johan Cruyff, Diego Maradonna, Alfredo Di Stefano and our own Gordon Banks who seemed to play for the pride of their shirts and you could not help but feel sure they would have played for their respective countries for free, for the honour of representing them.  Something has fundamentally changed within our beautiful game.  The Premiership full of overseas players, our big clubs in overseas ownership and the absurd roles played out by the sponsors.  Little wonder our National team on a good day would struggle beating Cheltenham Town. 
And my advice to all the pundits who watch this average play week on week and feel that they have to dramatise and scale up to the eighth degree each action of this mediocrity,  to justify their gravy train existence is to surely commentate accurately and honestly on what we all see rather than the sheepish nature of what you want to see.
As I got to the end of my football rant, I received a phone call from Tony Francis who used to present some years ago a favourite programme of mine, Heart of the Country.  This was obviously the cue to bring my football rant to an end..
Please watch my short film of the Badgers up at their sett getting ready for the final, Argentina versus Germany.












No comments:

Post a Comment