There was a nice cartoon on one of the national papers this week, on the subject of technology in sport . . .
Cycling and athletics – Photo finishes
Rugby and baseball – Instant replays
Tennis – Hawkeye
Football . . . . . The vuvuzela.

Are you listening, Mr Blatter?

My next-door Catalan neighbours have moved out, after never saying a single word to me in more than nine years. I did, though, sometimes chat with their (Galician) chica. I expect my new neighbours will be at least a bit more friendly.

Talking of Catalans . . . I was wondering out loud the other day what the impact would be here in Galicia of the Constitutional Court’s ruling that Cataluña was free to call itself a nation. Well, we didn’t have to wait long. The Socialist Party of Galicia (the PSdG) has called for our new statute to refer to us as the “Nazón de Breogan” and to highlight our “carácter nacional”. Breogan, as you might expect, was a mythical Celtic king. Conqueror of Ireland, as I recall. Or maybe that was Brian.

In the Almerian town of El Ejido, the mayor has just been re-elected after a short jail spell and with suggestions swirling around him that he’s embezzled 170m euros during his 20 years in office. He was pictured in the papers surrounded by what looked like adoring admirers. Perhaps he’s a fan of Bacon’s view that money is like cow muck. No good unless you spread it.

Finally . . . My friend Alfie Mittington has pronounced on Sunday’s match, displaying – it seems – some Dutch sympathies:-

Now then, let us be bold and predict the outcome of next Sunday’s World Cup final! 

I will be watching it, to my great delight, with one of my godsons who lives near Ponteareas and whose parents, of Russian extraction, are not in the least interested in this match. 

Naturally, to keep on the good side of certain short-fused Galician gentlemen, I will remind the boy before things start, and also frequently during the game, that La Roja is but one more instrument of Castilian oppression and that the media hysterics which have been built around their recent success is a well-planned operation of imperialist lackeys to divert the attention of the proletariat away from the economic troubles of the Spanish Entity and their continued neo-colonial indoctrination of defenceless autonomous cultures. 

'Beware: for The Cobbler Cometh, my boy’, I will warn him, ‘Every good pass of these stoolpigeons in Red is but a manipulation of Zapatero and his soviet-Madrilenian clique!’

‘Yes, dedushka,’ the boy will nod patiently (he calls me granddaddy…!) ‘Now why don’t you go ahead and take your nap, as you always do? I’ll wake you up if there’s something to cheer for the Orange guys…’

Aaah! The natural wisdom of the young!

Will he wake me up and will I get to cheer?

Why, yes! I bet you he will. In fact – were I not so eager to preserve my small patrimony so as to be able to afford the charms of the fair Svetlana – I’d bet you 1648 to 1 that the Dutch will win!

Why 1648, Al? I hear everybody ask.

Well, because that is the year, dear children (and I remember it well) when the Peace of Westphalia was signed, which not only wrapped up the 30-Year War in Germany, but also ended the 80-Year War with a smashing victory of the tiny, mud-bespattered, herring-eating and gin-sniffing Seven Provinces of the Netherlands over the Immense Superpower Empire of Spain, where the sun never set and the impulse towards oppression never ran out!

Them ugly Dutch did it once… And they surely will do it again!

So put your money on those Orange-Utangs, I say, and you’ll be a happier man by Sunday midnight!


Meanwhile, let us also count our blessings for the Kingdom of Spain a.k.a. the Spanish Entity, a.k.a. as Them Castilian Bastards…

Probably for the first time in two centuries, the WHOLE OF THE POPULATION is happy and proud to be counted among the Reds! The two Spains for a short moment amalgamate to one big family…. No more bloodlust. No more urge to extinction. And an end to this perennial Peace-Is-Civil-War-By-Other-Means…

Who was it again that said sports fraternize? For once the word of wisdom wasn’t mine…. But I now subscribe wholeheartedly to the saying!

Alfred B. Mittington
[Former centre-field of FC Auxèrre-sur-Bloise]