Week 335 – Antagonism Counts, Coubertin’s Rings And Horse Shit Is Never Plastic.

I follow on from Leila’s excellent Week 334 with the not surprising Week 335!

I have, all my life, been accused of being emotionless.

I mean, my auld gran told me that as she grasped onto life on her deathbed. I wasn’t best pleased as I was trying to watch ‘Love Story’ and have a bit of a giggle.

I’ve mentioned before that all human sad songs make me laugh out loud – ‘Mamma Teddy Bear’ and ‘No Charge’ being two of my all time pish myself favourites.

I also have never been forgiven for telling my wife on our wedding day that she looked ‘No bad’.

Royals dying or being killed by each other – We’d better not go there!

Rom-Coms make me feel sick and toddlers have never made me want to cuddle them, I prefer to run away.

I’ve never seen the appeal of a two year old eating. You get folks ‘Awwing’ and ‘Aaahing’ and saying things like, ‘He’s getting tore into that’. I’m more likely to say, ‘Get that open mouthed wee freak with food all over it’s face out my line of sight – It’s putting me off my pudding and giving me the boak!’

However, I do feel a sense of pride and happiness as I’ve been watching The Olympics. You can see dedication, elation, disappointment, relief, tragedy and reward all within a few minutes.

But most women could say the same thing with an other very different activity. Sadly, tragedy and disappointment would be more common than winning a medal!

When you watch the raw, pure emotion, that’s something that we could never express in words. Maybe it’s a human empathy thing but whatever it is, it’s very powerful.

Now I know that some folks hate sports and everyone to their own but the emotional realism is something that can’t be ignored.

It’s not like the false fury of the likes of ‘Gladiators’. The British version had one called ‘Wolf’ who would stare, trash-talk, get beat up by a skinny accountant and point into the competitors face and scream, ‘I’ll get you next time!’

I was in awe of the Triathletes. For me, if I wanted to travel that distance over water, land and road, I would only do so if I was going on my holidays. And using my own two legs would never cross my mind.

I’d never really watched Taekwondo before but there is something very entertaining about two folks trying to kick each other in the head.

It was interesting to see the Woman’s Skateboarding being competed by two thirteen year olds. I think that was over-advertised! But fair play to the kids, at least it would have kept them off the streets – Oh wait a minute!

I can’t think of many, if any stories about Olympians. For there to be so much drama, the book would be very short. The training chapters would consist of.

James got out of bed and ate a squillion calories. He trained for fourteen hours and then went to sleep.

The middle section would be:

On the day of the race, he ran / jumped / swam only concentrating on his training.

And the end would say:

He cried and went for a lie down.

That would be a terrible story. But in reality, the dedication, discipline and single-mindedness these athletes have is awesome!!

I wish all of them, all the very best!!!

Okay onto this week’s stories.

Only one new person this week, three old hands and me.

I normally say what topics we have but this week I’ll give a wee description of our writers. You can sort out yourself who is who.

We had: dedication, consistency, débutantes, privilege and returning.

To be truthful, apart from the débutantes by the very nature of them being a débutante, I could argue that they all have every one of those traits in one way or another.

As always our initial comments follow.

First up was the amazing and tenacious Rachel Sievers.

‘Paper Lined Tables‘ was her first story for us.

We extend our welcome, hope she has fun on the site and we want to see more of her work.

Rachel got us up and running on Monday.

‘This had something about it that made me want to read on.’

‘There is a charm about the writing and the writer.’

‘It’s very personality centric with quite a bit of depth.’

On Tuesday there was me with ‘Graham‘.

As always I thank Diane and Leila for all their help and encouragement.

I don’t get as many ideas these days. I used to have around eight stories waiting to be polished and tuned but I find my pickings to be at around four. And to be truthful, two of them are shite and need totally re-thought or binned, one is a follow-up that maybe is too close to the original and one I think I’ve got something.

But no matter what I have in the pipeline, I still get a huge kick out of being published. And who doesn’t live for a comment!!

The middle of the week was next and we had the ever present Yash Seyedbagheri.

He was next up with ‘Renaissance’ which was his twenty seventh story for us.

‘The difference between over-written and lyrical is difficult to put into words, but this is lyrical.’

‘What a lovely piece of writing!’

‘It’s easy to want this onto the site.’

On Thursday we had Thomas Elson for the third time with ‘They’re Asleep‘

‘I enjoyed the catch.’

‘The title gets it over for me.’

‘Not a wasted word.’

And we finished off with another new writer.

We extend the same welcome to Tabitha Pearson who was published on Friday with ‘Artificial’

‘The prose was witty and clever.’

‘There was an honesty to this.’

‘In my opinion, this is the way to write a story of this type.’

That’s us for another week.

To finish off, I’d like to go back to The Olympics.

First off here’s an idea that will go on the list of reasons for me not getting a knighthood. I would love to see all the winners take the knee on the podium when their national anthems are being played. This would be in recognition of all historical and present oppression that their country’s hierarchy have done to their own people and people of other nations.

I think that is a belter of an idea…But I don’t think it would be allowed – Which in a way – Proves the fucking point!!

Secondly, I was wondering if I could have competed.

I reckon I might have been good at hockey as I played a lot of bad golf. Daisy-cutters were my go to shot.

Weightlifting is something that I should’ve considered as my gran had shite balance. She was a big wee wumin.

And I reckon that I could do a very quick hundred meters, especially if one of those Kung-Fu Maniacs were chasing me.

I will continue to enjoy The Olympics unless, in years to come, one sport (That is a very, very loose, term that is completely wrong!) is included. And that is ‘Stick-Horse Dressage’. Those fuckers are mad. Mind you, that may be the year that I compete in and make a cunt of the shooting!!!

Hugh

Get a load of these Dafties!!!!