Sunday 8 July 2012

Over on Twitter @caroleagent

(aka as Carole Blake - authors' agent) has been complaining that tennis has delayed a screening of Shakespeare's Henry IV. That was followed by squeals, squeaks and tweets of outrage from other Shakespeare-not-tennis fans.
I wonder if they realise how lucky they are that the screening was merely delayed and not cancelled altogether?
Consider us poor Aussies. If you are sports fan there is a veritable feast of sport on at present. There has just been "the other football" (soccer) - for which the truly keen get up in the wee small hours  There is tennis. There is the Tour de France. There is rugby. And there is football - "Aussie rules football" that is. If you want to watch television you watch sport.
Apart from a mild interest in the psychology of the game of cricket I am not interested in sport. I have no desire to sit and watch a ball being hit or kicked or batted or hurled or bowled or knocked. I do not care if Australia wins or loses a sports match or how many medals they win or lose each Olympics. It simply is not important to me.
My father and brother are the same. My father never went to watch any of my siblings play sport. These days he does not even know if a cricket match is being played and he considers "Aussie Rules" so dangerous he would have it banned. My brother endured watching his own children play sport when they were very small. As soon as they were old enough to realise he actually loathed doing it they told him not to bother. He would cheer at the wrong time. It embarrassed them.
A friend of mine has been borrowing piles of DVDs from the library recently. She has several knitting commissions and, while she can watch television and knit, she cannot read and knit. "There's nothing to watch but sport!"
I thought she was exaggerating. There is the ABC - taxpayer funded. The SBS(Special Broadcasting Service) - partially taxpayer funded. (It receives some income from advertising.) There is a community channel with limited hours and an eclectic selection of programmes. There are the three commercial television stations.  I checked all of them. The community channel was talking about sport. The other stations were showing sport. There was nothing to watch but sport. 
Thankfully I know how to switch television off and read a book - or write one.

3 comments:

Miriam said...

Usually when you write about sport, I agree with you. But Wimbledon tennis takes precedence over everything. Doesn't it? ;)

Anonymous said...

I am hibernating until the worst of the sports season is over! Bob C-S

widdershins said...

Oh for a choice of sports to not watch! ... they call it hockey, but it's the 'ice' variety. It's everywhere, all the time. This country would collapse if there were no hockey!