Wannabe Wallabies

Getting Medieval on your Arse

The punishment for adultery in Medieval times was a very poor joke (see clip below).

Non-Secateurs Non-Sequitirs

Triple Jumping for Joy



A depressed-looking triple jumper.



Niffed netballers, hacked-off hockey players, pissed-off polo horsemen and horseladies. All sports people are prone to depression. But the worst afflicted have to be the triple jumpers. When you’re low, the last thing you feel like doing is skipping and that’s exactly one-third (33.33%) of the tasks demanded in the triple jump, otherwise known as the ‘hop, skip and jump’. Picture this scenario at an athletics meet:

‘What was that?’ demands the depressed triple jumpers’ coach after a sub-standard attempt.

‘I don’t know. Don’t feel like skipping. I’m fed up,’ retorts the triple jumper skulking off.

‘You hopped and then you jumped. You didn’t even make the sandpit.’

The triple jumper shrugs.

‘Look, if I don’t at least see sand in your socks by the end of play, you’re back where you started sunshine – I’m demoting you to the long jump.’

Stern, tense stuff. It’s difficult for others to recognise the signs of depression. Yet we could at least act to accommodate the bluesy triple jumper. If he can’t bring himself to skip, why not give him the opportunity to compete in a different event – the double jump. After all, you’re asking a lot of the long jumper to step up to triple jump status. It’s a quantum leap, if you like.

What’s the problem you might think. Nothing that a few drugs couldn’t sort out. After all this is athletics. Not that we’re saying athletes are susceptible to drugs; that athletes are mere junkies. No. They are most certainly not. Athletes have to be the fittest junkies. Take some uppers. That should fix the skipping problem. Nothing like an ebullient triple jumper.

But actually let’s stop and think this through. Forget the drugs route. And let’s make triple jump exciting and unpredictable. How? By allowing only athletes with a certain temperament to compete, athletes who might one day produce a personal best, another a performance so poor that when back in the changing rooms have no need to shake out their socks. Let us set up competition between the manic-depressives.

Track of the Week

Fart Imitating Life

The default singing accent in pop music is American. And for a reason. Had Art Garfunkel sung ‘Bright Eyes’ in a South African accent, it would have been quite a different song. Instead of a requiem, a lament, a tribute to a life passed, it would have been more about the passing of wind… the disappointment of the brief flame created by setting light to a fart (see clip for confirmation).

Familiar Faeces

The default singing accent in pop music is American. And for a reason. Had the band Tears for Fears sung ‘Mad World’ in a Scottish accent it would have been quite a different song. Instead of a soul-search for the meaning of life, it would have been about a sewage engineer trying to sort out a pipe blockage (see clip, below, for confirmation).

Track of the Week

Public Enema No.1

How the slightest change in singing style might radically transform the message of a protest song - from the dangers of swallowing spoon-fed propaganda, to the way an enema is applied.

Table Tennis Elbow

We think of people taking smack cocaine on dirty mattresses first getting into drugs smoking marijuana tablets; or accidentally sniffing Pritt Stick in Arts and Crafts lessons; or through preparing to compete in the men’s 100 metres. Similarly, table tennis is a gateway sport encouraging people to become addicted to the full-fledged ‘furniture-less’ tennis.

A tennis pusher grooming through table tennis.

But there’s more to ping pong. It’s a sport available as an indoors alternative, ideal for tennis-mad agoraphobics. And the table aspect of table tennis can influence and civilise the macro game. At the table we learn to say Grace, not to put our elbows on it etc, all things that John McEnroe could have learnt from. Wouldn’t it have been refreshing to hear at the end of a courteously played game, him asking the umpire: ‘Can I leave the court, please?’

Edward Jenner is a name that automatically springs to mind when you think tennis. But it was he who came up with injecting people with a little bit of an illness that the body could fight and guard against the full-fledged thing… plus he had a weak back-hand. Jenner would have sought to combat tennis elbow by encouraging tennis players to get their elbows a little bit achy in table tennis so they might be immunised against tennis elbow.

2012 Vision