Another Postcard From The Edge Of The Armchair Olympics
A lot of people don’t like the Olympians’ bios. bit of the Olympic coverage, but mostly I do. ‘Cos I like the “human story” better than I like inhuman ones – “Lassie“? What a load of old rubbish! (“Woof! Nnnn Nnnn!” What’s that, girl? The children are trapped in the mineshaft which is about to collapse and we need approximately 8 people and some anxious bystanders to get them out?” “Woof !”) At 31 though, I’ve still never managed get past page 100 of “Greyfriars Bobby“, on account of my hair-tearing and heaving sobs: why did your master have to leave you, good, dear, brave wee Bobby? God, the pain of that book marked my childhood just as surely as the letters on Bobby’s master’s cold grey gravestone. Wait a minute… (muffled sobs and large woeful nose-blow).
O(sniff)K. All better. ‘msorry. I haven’t been this publicly emotional since a childhood ballet concert when I was Purple in the rainbow and suddenly felt, with moments to go, that the pressure of trying to convey the quintessence of purple to the assembled parents was just a little too much. However, the show had to go on, legs had to be broken and I went on to be a purple triumph! I tell you I was like a sublime wee bruise, 1-2-JetEEEEEing-3-4 across the boards. But I’m not just boasting. I know that’s true ‘cos my granny said I was really, really good and that I’d really captured what it meants to be purple. Happy days, happy days.
Olympic bios. then. Tugba Karademir’s story is a great one. The first figure skater ever to represent Turkey, her comfortably middle-class parents left their homeland for Canada, where it was easier for Tugba to pursue her ice-skating dreams. Once there, her dad had to take multiple menial jobs to pay for the skating-tuition, struggled with the language and culture, and eventually had to return to Turkey to try and make some money. Karademir won’t win but she got a PB in her short program and skated a clean long program and I’ll bet her parents’ hearts were exploding watching her represent her country at the Olympics after all their sacrifices to get her there. It’s hard to imagine the pressure she must have put upon herself too and just fascinating to watch the whole human story unfolding on the ice. Without the bio. I don’t think I’d have been right there willing her to land every jump and twiddle every spin.
On the other hand, I don’t want to hear too much. If third man in the Swedish men’s 4man bob-sleigh team has had a harrowing time with his ingrown toenail, call me stony-hearted, but I don’t want to know. Nor do I want to be unexpectedly plunged into a segment called “Groin Strain: My Struggle With the Adductor Magnus”* as I settle in for an evening of extreme human achievment in sports. Can curling be said to be an extreme sporting achievement or just extreme janitorial achievement? That’s a puzzler. But curling eh? Makes me proud to have a Scottish heart beating within my breast!
And they, the NBCizons, often take it too far. Irina Slutskaya (dear me! These crrrazy Rrrussians and their crrrazy names) suffers from vasculitis and has to skate to pay for her mother’s treatment for kidney disease. Dramatic enough, one would have thought, and not in any need of gratuitous embellishment, but NBC also thought we should know that her tongue piercing was a sign of her “spirit within” (NBC news). Would that make my brother’s eyebrow piercing an immodest display of the spirit without? I hadn’t known he was such a himbo. Does his wife know?
Right, the ladies’ freestyle skate is on and Slutskaya, Cohen and Arakawa promise to put on a fantastic competition. And who can’t love Emily Hughes? Am putting Problemchildbride on ice for the night and am off, with a gleeful single toe-loop across the kitchen, to the Sofa Olympics.
* My own current sport,hobby or pastime injury is still a rather painful slippage of the sidebar. I’m resting it at the bottom of the page for a bit before I perform some aggressive html surgery. That’ll happen right after I read “Aggressive HTML Surgery For Dummies”.
February 27th, 2006 at 11:42 am
This entry was most enjoyable as it revealed that purple features on your tapestry of life like many other folk – those going thru’ purple patches*, those butterfly enthusiasts spotting a purple emeror or those (un?)fortunate enough to be ‘born in the purple’.
Haven’t come across anyone who has personified purple before even tho’ purple has featured in our family life in yesteryear.
Now there’s no Winter Olympics to watch, I’ll miss some of the atmospheric commentating that was provided with the ice skating. However, if I feel the need to revert to some of those pleasant experiences, I’ll just turn up this entry and relive those moments you’ve provided.
Best wishes
Grandpa Bear
*Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable tells me that this phrase goes back to Horatio (no not Nelson) in the first century BC. So continue the centuries long tradition of enjoying all the purple patches that come your way.