Soccer is amusing, but not through playing or watching.

Among the inconsequential annoyances that I gain amusement from by inflicting on other people, by far the most entertaining is by mocking those people who think that soccer is important. 
This sentence contains two irritations to soccer supporters: my assertion that soccer isn't important and secondly that it is called soccer. The usual response is "It's called football, you bastard!" Look, I couldn't give even the remotest of shits what people call the game, I just say this to get a rise out of people. However, I am genuinely of the view that soccer just doesn't matter.

"Oh my God, I tripped over a lump in the pitch
near another player. I'm fucking dying."

Because of New Zealand's national sport being the oval ball code, rugby, the natural assumption by the offended party is that I take this view because I am an adherent of said oval ball code. This is somewhat true. I played rugby inconsistently but enthusiastically for around twenty years and have spent many happy hours cheering on local teams both live at a ground or on television. It is the reason why I have a long list of injuries and of happy memories. However, I enjoy creating friction with round-ball adherents because they are just as fanatical as militant feminists, fundamentalist Christians, or even fundamentalist atheists for that matter. I know that they will not be swayed in their (incorrect) opinion and I enjoy the journey of taking them from annoyance to purple-faced invective with absolutely no intention of changing their minds.

Footballists, or as I shall name them, Soccerites, abjectly refuse to accept that staring slack jawed at a screen of a game being played on the other side of the earth, where there is a distinct prospect of a scoreless draw, is completely absurd. Honestly, nil all is a result? The offended Soccerite may point toward a five day cricket test ending in a draw, but there will be hundreds of runs scored and dozens of wickets taken. In the entire history of international rugby there have only ever been 19 scoreless draws, none since 1964. When you sit down to watch even the most dour game of rugby, there will be points scored. When you sit down to watch a game of soccer, a nil all draw is as likely as there being a result.

Soccerites are impervious to the obscene notion that their purchase of each season's kit funds the astronomical salaries of the players. Yes, pay them a good salary, but are they really worth tens of millions of dollars? The highest paid footballers are on over US$1.3million per week, the equivalent of 1,219 full-time nurses, all for flouncing around a pitch, kicking a ball at a goalkeeper and being stretchered off when their hairspray gives out. Sorry, but there's summat wrong wi' that. In 1966 England football players were paid £60 per match. How on earth did it get to be as perverse as this? I realise soccer isn't alone and sits amongst basketball, boxing and golf in the colossal salary stakes, but it certainly creates a high benchmark in paying super-fit nonces to flop around on a field while pretending to work. Ask yourself, if you were building a utopian world, who would you pay more money to, the soccer player or someone putting you back together after a severe car crash?

Then there's the diving. Soccerites believe the comical dives of players who are stretchered off only to return minutes later to the field of play. They howl with righteous anger at the real or perceived wrong of their opposition, or scream their disbelief and denial that their player even touched the guy. This mirrors what occurs on the pitch. When a referee makes a decision in a game they are surrounded on all sides by gesticulating, slavering, overpaid ponces who shove, abuse and scream at the referee. This is sanctioned by the soccerite despite there being absolutely no tolerance for this in any other sport. The only time most cricket players will address the the umpire is to enquire after the state of their health*. When emotions run that high in a game, it's a sign it's being taken far too seriously. Let's not forget the impressionable children who watch this game. They will do what their heroes do.

Now that's worth a dive.

Then there's the teams these people support. They're usually English Premier League teams, sometimes Spanish La Liga teams and are usually chosen for the most tenuous connections. The Soccerite often hasn't been to the city, seen a game at the ground, has had no relative from that town and often has no English blood at all. Often it's just because they're almost certainties to win their championships. I recall seeing one Soccerite tear his shirt off after his team lost the championship, vowing to support the team that won... there's loyalty. I support the Tasman rugby team because I was born there. I support Canterbury and the Crusaders because I live there. I support the All Blacks for both reasons. I could support Hull City in the EPL, having a parent born there and having gone through the ordeal of living in such a colourless city, but I can't be arsed because it would involve potentially having to watch a game and definitely having to talk to a Soccerite about the game.

Then there's FIFA. John Oliver does a better job of picking FIFA apart than I ever will and he makes a good point that the acceptance of corruption on this global scale by those who participate in the game is utterly ridiculous. Seriously, Qatar to host the next World Cup? Good luck with that one.

Then there's the name. Soccer. Not football. Or rather, yes, football. 
I was having a beer the other night with a couple of blokes who also happen to be Professors of Law. In mid conversation a chap who I believe to be the most vehement Manchester United supporter walked past and I refused to let the chance to let the soccer dig go by unused.
"Hey Charles," says I, "... soccer isn't a proper sport."
"It's f-----g football, you c--t." he replies. Then one of my learned off-siders says:
"Well actually, it is soccer as well. It's a contraction of the words Association Football and despite its corruption, it is a perfectly acceptable piece of colloquial parlance."
"F-----g what?" says Charles before turning away and stalking off muttering the letters UC. 
In addition to my learned off-sider's argument, I contest that it may well be called football, but it shouldn't have exclusivity over the name as there are other competitive sports that involve contact between feet and balls**: rugby union football, American football, Australian football, arena football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, Harrow football etc. Calling soccer football invites ambiguity - "I went to watch the football last night." "So did I, the Crusaders pants-ed the Sharks in Christchurch. It was fucking brilliant." See? Rugby union football. Calling it soccer is a clear way of saying that the person in italics, who wasted ninety minutes watching a game with no scoreline and where no-one got hurt, was watching association football. 
Another argument the Soccerite will summon is that only the Americans call it soccer. The crushing response, particularly if the particular Soccerite is English***, is "Yeah, and they're better at it than you." 

Soccer just isn't important enough for me to be bothering with, but I retain the right to mock it and its acolytes. Stick your soccer... you blouse.

*(I paraphrase John Clarke)
** Yes, I did that on purpose.
*** And the Russians, the Danish, the Swedes, Nigerians, Japanese, Australians, New Zealanders and so on,

I am soooo not negative, Liz you're completely wrong...

If you're happy and you know it...

I have been told that in general my blog posts are angry expletive-riddled rants by my friend Liz, in whose own blog on family the entry on her children learning the word vagina had me helpless with mirth to the extent that I may have weed a bit. In this post that boils with the irony of me negatively declaring that I am not negative, I say to you Liz, you're wrong. Wrong wrong wrong: I do like things; I can enjoy the sunshine without saying "We'll pay for that later"; I can feel contented; and I can live and let live. Here's why. My beloved Attila the Wife and I went away for the weekend and it was bliss... bliss interrupted only by her forcing us to go for a bike ride in gale-force winds for "a half hour tootle."¹

I don't offer recommendations lightly, but this one is
worth your left one.

A week ago Attila the Wife explained deliberately and slowly, so that even I could understand, that we were due some time away together as normal husbands and wives do. I couldn't help but agree because in this Attila has a point. If it were left to me, a trip away would be as far down the road as The Twisted Hop, maybe The Brewery, Mitre 10 Ferrymead if we are feeling expansive. When it comes to going out to places other than the pub, I am "...hopeless"² We wouldn't have stood a show of going to other places mentioned in this blog were it not for the careful planning and forethought of my beloved. So with this in mind, Attila took the proverbial by the other proverbial and booked us accommodation for a weekend away in tropical Little River. Now Little River isn't the most exotic location you could think of for a weekend away. As a town it is mostly unremarkable but for the art gallery. It is rightly seen as a stop for a pie before the rigours of the drive over hills that sit between it and equally tropical Akaroa, or as a place where those who enjoy recreational riding (not me) begin their odyssey on the rail trail back toward Christchurch. But then Little River now boasts remarkable accommodation that had Attila literally squealing with delight. SiloStay appeared on television to an enraptured wife who vowed then and there that we would sample the delights of temporary living in a purpose-converted grain silo, and so we did. We pottered half an hour out of town on Friday night, arriving to a literal warm welcome. The conversion from steel silo to living quarters was remarkable and we were delighted with our find. The photos here do the place a bit of justice and we found that Little River was a grand wee base for a tourist-incursion into Banks Peninsula without feeling too far from town. We really cannot recommend it highly enough.

Saturday saw our venturing take us to Barry's Bay to buy cheese and for a three course dinner at The Trading Rooms in tropical Akaroa. Students of this blog understand that I have a longstanding ambition to be one of those peculiar old men you see in a gentleman's club beside a fire in a wingback chair, gibbering incomprehensibly to themselves. When I have reached that vintage and I have a balloon of brandy in one hand and a cigar or a pipe in the other, amid the waffling about "...extraordinary thighs she had on her, looked like someone had filled a latex condom with sausage meat...", I shall be reminiscing about the pork terrine, the duo of roast lamb and a crème brûlée that left me speechless. The matched wines completed the picture (dry riesling, Cotes du Rhone and Beaumes de Venise)³ and as Attila and I walked arm in arm along the Akaroa waterfront in blissful, full-stomached satisfaction, I wouldn't have swapped positions with anyone, anywhere. It was that good and made better by the excellent company of Her Majesty the Wife.

So there, you see? All good positive stuff.

¹ Bullshit. It was closer to an hour of wind-blown misery, but I thoroughly enjoyed having a bloody good moan about it.
² The word hopeless is usually preceded by "You're fucking..." and applies only from the perspective that there is no hope for me.
³ Our grateful thanks to our wonderfully talented hosts Kathryn Curtis and Stephen Gilchrist.