Tennis Elbowed

 I lack the sport gene. I'm not having a go at you. I know you probably like sports, most people do, even people I like and admire. The deficiency is mine. It's like colour blindness or an inner ear problem, or the dyspraxia I'm certain is lurking undiagnosed in the neurones in my brain, and might well be a contributory factor here. 

But it's true - like the music of Bob Dylan, Saturday Night Prime Time television or taramasalata, I can't see the appeal. Stephen Mulhern, what's he for? In the same way I will never be impressed by anybody's watch, car or holiday snaps, and will never flick through one of Clarkson's stool-assisting paperbacks, I don't get it. These are things I cannot see value in, other than monetary value. I understand the watch and the car are expensive and you're doing well and I should be impressed by that. I realise Mulhern has gone a surprising distance for a magician who looks like a gene splice of Ant and Dec. Bob Dylan has made some good records, mostly in the sixties, but the appeal of the work he's  completed during my actual lifetime is discreet. That goes for Van Morrison too. 

But sport. Sport. I'm utterly sport-blind. 

I'm in the dining room at 11 O'Clock at night, because Susan likes tennis and I can't be in the same room as it. I'm sure tennis isn't actually worse than cricket but there's not much in it. There are so many levels of dislike, so many layers disgust. 

I don't like the quaintness. I don't like the (recently repealed) underwear rules for Wimbledon. I don't like the pink faced fatties gorging strawberries in the crowd, grass stains on their spreading arses. I don't like the glum Aryan perfection of the player's girlfriends and boyfriends. I don't like the unnatural, robotic behaviour of the Ball Persons. I don't like the visors/headbands/baseball caps, or their shitty sweatbands. I don't like the grunting, or the effrontery of their air punches a hundred times in every match. I don't like the stupid scoring system. I don't like the panto crowd over-laughing at anything slightly out of the ordinary, and the "you-don't-have-to-be-mad-to-work-here" shrugs of the blazered functionaries. I don't like the stench of privilege, or the pissed catcalls from the hill, as another half bottle of fizz rolls down its banks. I don't like that after playing three hours of tennis, the winner has to come over and be interviewed by some posh sod about the game they just played, even though they didn't see it. I don't like that the games are three hours long, like the one between Andy Murray and some Greek Adonis, that's sent me scuttling into the office. I don't like the sound of the balls on the rackets. I'm not keen on the Princess of Wales' dress. I don't like the perennial joke every time it rains at Wimbledon, which is every time, that Cliff is going to turn up and have a singalong, aha ha ha. And I didn't like it when Cliff turned up when it rained and had a singalong. 

I don't like that there is an appropriate fruit for a sport. Like those morons who can't watch a film in the cinema without eating popcorn. 

Most of all I don't like it because it affords me no joy. I don't find it thrilling. I find it sad. It's sad there's a loser. That someone might be the best at knocking a tennis ball really fast at another player in their entire country, but when they get to Wimbledon people tell them they aren't going to win, and ageing pundits isolate their weaknesses and are damningly pragmatic about their chances. And when they lose, fuckwits on a sofa somewhere who can barely lift a remote control, dismiss them between slices of semi-masticated pizza, as "losers". I don't like sport's cruelty. You all do. Of course you do, you sociopathic pack-hounds. 

Remember that girl who won something by surprise and she was a press darling because she was pretty and British and actually won something, and then she had injuries and started to get overtaken by the pressure and didn't want to do an interview immediately after the game and the press - and the Sport of Tennis in general - turned on her, calling her a prima donna? Yeah, that's sport. That's what sport does. Try being a football manager when it's not going well. They'll eat you up. 

Imagine training your entire joyless existence becoming the fifth best at tennis in the world. Fifth best out of billions. And still a loser. 

I don't need that negativity in my life. 

Also, fuck your barley water. 

On the plus side, Clare Balding is a very effective presenter. That's it.