This Sporting Life

As the over-hyped Olympic Games get off to a start [at 8.08 on 08/08/08 in accordance with Chinese belief in numerology which seems to have survived robust doses of dialectical materialism], thoughts turn naturally to sport. I have hated it for most of my life. My time as a football fan did not survive a few freezing visits to the terraces at Brockville with my father in the late 50s, visits which cost him dear in pies and Bovril. True, I played golf and rugby at school [state, I may add] but simply because most of my close friends also did so. Six years as that lowest form of animal life, the second-row forward, were quite enough, and I soon abandoned a bag of clubs on the long walks I genuinely enjoyed taking. Only one loss can I think of from this: I couldn't do the customary father-son bonding over games; this was no bad thing in one repect as my son first supported Millwall. I know we lived in South London but.... He now plays American football which I don't understand and can't bear to watch when he's in action so things are not much better. All in all, if people are going to pit themselves against anything, there's always the natural world around us. Pictured are Mallory and Irvine doing just that, setting off in tweed jackets and felt hats for the summit of Everest in 1924 and last seen alive, 'going strong for the top.' We shall never know if they made it but that doesn't really matter.