P&J Column 9.6.16
Who can forget those immortal words: “Float like a butterbean, sting like a flea”
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the sports pundit who’s not afraid to play the man.
I felt dead sorrow for Andy Murray this weekend when he got beat in the final of the French Open at Roland Barrows. I fair thought he had a chance until I seen he was up against his old menaces, Novak Shopping-list. I says to the lovely Melody when we sat down to watch it, I says, “I fair think Novak’s got Andy’s number”. Melody turned around and says to me she says “probably, they’ve known each other for years!”
You have to feel for tennis players. It’s a very gladiola sport – one athlete pivoted against the other, nowhere to hide, no team-mates to rely on, and not even the possibility of sliding in and halfing an opponent that’s miles better than you, which I always found was a great leveller. They say that tennis is a mental game, which makes me wonder if I could have made something of it myself, because I was always known for being a mental player.
Mind you, Andy started great before fading, so there are a lot of positives that he can take into Wimbledon. If he can just get more first serves in, rule out the unforced tremors, and slip a ground-up packet of laxatives into Novak’s barley water, then I think he’s got every chance.
Mind you, the disappointment what I felt when I heard Andy had lost the tennis was like nothing like the disappointment what I felt when I heard that Muhammad Ali had passed away. Muhammed was more than just a boxer; he was one of the great light-on’s of the 20th Century. He was the most amazing physical specimen I ever seen, and I’ve shared a dressing room with Doug Rougvie. No-one could never forget Ali’s way with words, like when he said he floated like a butterbean and stung like a flea. And he managed to mix politics and sport too, something that very few people manage to pull off. Apart from Sebastian Cocoa. Mind you, if Donald Trump was to take up boxing, I reckon I’d buy a ticket for that.
I’ll always remember sitting up as a kid, watching the Thriller in Vanilla and the Rumble in the Jumble. Even now, remembering that famous ‘Soap-on-a -rope’ fight, it fairly makes the hairs on the neck of my back stand up a when I think about how Ali withstood that pounding from George Foreman. I know how agonising tangling with that man can be – I once caught my thumb in the hinge of a Lean Mean Grilling Machine.
PC Bobby Constable, Community Policeman (Retired)
I see a karaoke performance given in the Waterloo pub in Glasgow by Sergeant Jon Harris of Police Scotland has gone viral on the Internet. Sergeant Harris had been called to the pub to deal with a disturbance and having sorted it oot it wis prevailed upon to get up on the stage and belt out a version of “I Will Survive”, to a wildly enthusiastic audience. I canna help but think that something by The Police might have been more appropriate; but still, he could have chosen worse. “Can You Feel the Force?” would have been an error of judgment.
Opinion seems to be fairly evenly split on whether he should have done it or no, which is sad, but mair or less par for the course. Abody ayewis says they wint the police to show some common sense and exhibit a light touch, until we do, at which point they gets aa po-faced and accuse us o’ being unprofessional.
Fan I wiz oot on the beat, I wiz awyse happy to try something unorthodox to defuse tensions. I mind fan I wiz jist a young Bobbie, I came upon a right rammy outside the Star and Garter, fan twa loons were fighting ower a lassie. I decided that what they needed to get them back on good terms wiz a common enemy, so I wint aff wi the quine myself. The tactic wiz very successful – so much so that within minutes, the twa of them hid forgotten their differences and come thegither as one to kick in the windaes o my panda car.
