When Suddenly It Does Not Matter

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So it's Thursday afternoon and I'm at work. Resigned to not watching or listening to the game, THAT game. England vs Wales.

Two pm and I'm expecting to do hardly anything for the next two hours. Have a small bottle of mineral water and just read a book. Today that book being the 1975 autobiography of Muhammad Ali, The Greatest.

The music coming out is from the speakers is a pop music station. So it has the effect of mugging my ears. There is news though. I catch bits but not of what I expected. The match has gone down the pecking order. The top story is that a Member of Parliament has been attacked.

From those bits  the MP is in hospital. You assume recovering. I carry on working. The music for those much younger than me returns.

Work in the next two hours turns out to be less busy than normal but busier than I had expected. Due I suspect to the stupid 2pm start time.

The Muhammad Ali book surprised me by beginning with a defeat. The time in April 1973 when he lost to Ken Norton. I remember the day well. Was a page boy at a wedding as I was a cousin to the bride that I've not spoken to in years (nothing to do with moving to Wales - everything to do with family disputes). It was at the subsequent wedding reception watching TV with the adults sometime between ten and midnight. Being awake at midnight for a nine year old is exciting anytime but I was awake watching an Ali fight. No school the next day. Can life get any better than this?

And yet he lost. And to Ken who? A defeat in sports can be crushing when you're a young fan, not infected by worldly cynicism.

(Incidentally that wasn't the only sporting event I watched at that reception. Earlier, much earlier, I'd seen the Grand National won by Red Rum. For me personally it's memorable because it's the only horse race that I can tell you who came second. It was a horse called Crisp. The reason why I remember it is that in the final stages it had such a massive lead over Red Rum you could have started a small holding with the gap. Yet catch up Red Rum did. Didn't understand it then, still don't now).

The other point, thinking about this now, is that with all the talk of violence on the television screens affecting children no one ever made this point about boxing. The idea of watching men (and at that time it was men) battering themselves was family entertainment at that time.

Anyway the book is a page turner. I'm gripped. Will chat properly once I've finished.

At a quarter past three I'm chatting to a woman. She tells me it's 1-1. Wales scored first then "the English" equalised. Obviously not a moment to tell her I'm English.

Sometime after quarter to three I hear two men chatting. "last minute winner........Sturridge". Then with diplomacy that makes English football fans loved the world over they high five. Later I learn they're off to Nottingham.That doesn't surprise me.

So England win but only just. Both teams still have a good chance of qualifying into the next round. Which is fine by me.

Then I hear the news properly.

The MP, Jo Cox, was not just attacked but was shot and stabbed in Birstall near the library. Worst than that at five o'clock it's announced that she has died.

A horrifying event then in a small town in the most domestic of settings in broad daylight.

And I when I learn much later details of her life on TV, a loving family life, a political career, her charity work you get the sense of a life as an unfinished novel. Because of her sudden death we have been robbed of an ending that would have been much different. I suspect that's the case for those who lost their lives in Orlando as well.

So football is important. Reading is important. But most of all...most of all....choose life.

Until the next time.