On Poetry And Football

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

Well I've finished (presumably thanks to my wait in the Bar and Grill on Sunday) Poetry Of The Thirties edited by Robin Skelton. It was the first poetry book I'd read for decades and I had forgotten that you have to read these books slooowly so that every word and meaning is captured. In the beginning there was a great deal of rereading so that there was a better chance of understanding what was being written.

Even so most of the poetry made me just mentally shrug my shoulders. As if I was saying, "is that all there is"? The vast majority of verse in this book aroused me to a state of depressed boredom.

There were, of course exceptions. John Betjeman reminded me why I liked him all those years ago. And if someone offered me a volume of the poetry of Lewis MacNeice I wouldn't be sniffy about it. On the other hand I really,really didn't like W H Auden.

And then there was Dylan Thomas. I don't want to read another Dylan Thomas poem again. I want to listen to them. He was the only poet where that thought occurred to me.

The next "car book" is this.

Clive James - Glued to the Box

This is the third volume of his TV critism between 1979 -1982. Should be fun.

So to the evening's football. It was the first opportunity since the Euro 2016 tournament began that I had the opportunity to wear this.

England

The wife watched the Wales game against Russia whilst I watched England Slovakia. Clearly she had the better time than I did with the dragons winning 3-0 and being top of their group. Although she did ask after eighty minutes why the game hadn't finished. I explained that it was football.....not rugby.Still genuinely was pleased for Wales. I've said before that in my view football was the bigger club sport here and if they continue to do well then that might be the case at a national level as well. And the Welsh Rugby Union would only have themselves to blame.

For me despite the ITV "Brexit" commentary - everything England did was good against weak Slovakia - England were disappointing. Slovakia just dug in, having obviously checked the durability of their Puma football shirts first.

Their goalkeeper seemed to follow the lead of his Swiss counterpart yesterday. Dressed luminously suggesting he too would be cycling back to his base afterwards.

But the commentary. "England fans are staying with their team" was one gem. What did he expect them to do? Suddenly support Austria? We also know the power of words. Slovakia were like "a boxer on the ropes" according to Glenn Hoddle. Had that been England then words like "disciplined" or "dogged" would have be used.

Will always believe....but was not encouraged.

Until the next time.