Skydive: a splurge

Creative writing class nonsense ahoy!

***

So we strapped ourselves in and our group leader made a bad joke about not dying and this didn't ease my nerves at all which by the way were all over the place because there was a chance I could die even though I knew the death rate was only 0.02% that still sounded bloody high to me but anyway up we went and the higher and higher we got the lower and lower my stomach sank and then Josh was sick which actually made me feel better because I felt bad but I didn't feel that bad but then in no time at all we were at proper altitude and our group leader opened the door which made all the air rush out and caused a right racket and then I was strapped to my jump-buddy Rachel who was a total pro and made me feel instantly at ease - not - and before I knew it it was my turn so we shuffled to the door and Rachel gave my hand a squeeze which was trembling like an old person's but before we could jump our group leader stuck his boot into my back and would you believe it kicked us out and I think he got fired for that and Rachel gave him hell when we landed but anyway I shrieked and my belly flipped and I think I could hear Rachel swearing as we tumbled and tried to steady us because we were in a right spin but I couldn't be sure because the air was shouting in my ears and I was shrieking pretty loud too and then all of a sudden we were stable and had stopped accelerating or something and it was actually an amazing feeling and I couldn't stop laughing by the way and Rachel must've thought I was a right nut and then she opened the parachute and it yanked us up or that's how it felt at least and I knew then there was no chance I was going to die which I'd forgotten about anyway...

RANT: Football, Referees and Learning to Talk About Something Else

RANT TIME

After having a debate with my mate over whether Fernando Torres dived in the Chelsea-Utd match earlier today using slow-mo replay to try and discern whether he had any justification to go down, I reached a fucking amazing conclusion (this ain't aimed at you Ollie; it's been brewing for a while):

If after mulling over slo-mo replays for ten minutes and still not reaching a definitive answer then IT DOESN'T FUCKING MATTER IF THE REF GOT IT RIGHT OR WRONG BECAUSE HE'S ONLY SODDING HUMAN. People - fans, pundits, managers, journalists - don't  understand this.

(For what it's worth, he dived)

There is literally no point discussing it, and there is literally no point in chastising the referee and accusing him of being in Alex Ferguson's pocket, because sometimes refereeing is an impossible job. In fact, I can think of few jobs that are more difficult. The marginal calls come thick and fast, decisions have to be made near-instantaneously without the benefit of replays, the pressure of the fans, the players' ploys to con him, the going over he can expect in the press and on Twitter and on Match of the Day if he makes a mistake - all these add up to one of the most ridiculously difficult professions ever. Seriously.

So, if a player goes down and it's not clear whether he had any justification to even under close examination, ignore it and move on; nothing can be done. The referee certainly isn't at fault. If a player is a foot offside when a ball is played through and he scores, ignore it and move on. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to make such perfect judgement every time? I heard about one example where some officials showed a room full of journalists a clip of an offside call from the linesman's perspective. They only got to see it once, and had to vote on whether it was offside or not. Nearly every single one got it wrong; the linesman who made the decision on the day got it right. So if these highly trained hawk-eyed ladies and gentlemen can't always tell, then no one can tell. So don't worry about it. These things happen. Such is football.

Another downside to analysing every aspect of the officials' performances is that Match of the Day and such like become tedious debates about marginal calls. This is the most boring possible thing to debate. "Oooh, if you watch carefully you can see there was contact" opines Mr. Hansen. "But it was minimal at best" retorts Mr. Dixon. "But there was contact". Enough. Talk about the actual football please. It's quite an interesting sport and there's a lot to analyse and discuss.

/rant


N.B This is somewhat moot after what I've written above, but whatevs. 'Contact' is not enough to call a foul. Football is, strangely enough, a full-contact sport. That means you are expected to take knocks and nudges and just get on with it. If the challenge makes contact with the attacker but is not heavy enough to fell him, but he goes down anyway, that is still a dive. We laugh/throw rotten vegetables at players who take a gentle touch to the face but go down like they've been punched; the same applies to feet and knees coming into contact with opposition legs.

Training

This is another of the spontaneous writing things. I've used 'we' because in my creative writing lecture she made us write in the second person plural. I don't really get why; it seems too limiting, having to keep the voice as a group the whole time.

***

We have this ‘do and die’ attitude, this endless well of machismo, which drives us to batter our bodies into heaving, crumpled heaps, legs and lungs burning and hearts pounding. After it’s over we curl up on the track as if praying, and it feels like we’re trying not to die. Sometimes we vomit as our bodies go into recovery mode, central nervous system fried, but we are not in the least bit embarrassed. We’ve seen it all before.

Running – sprinting, specifically – scratches some sort of itch that we all feel deep within us. It must be an addiction of sorts: even though Tuesday nights always seem to be cold and wet, we nevertheless turn up and batter ourselves for an hour and a half, then depart, feeling exhausted but satisfied. Purged even. This ritual is repeated three further times each week (excluding gym sessions). Strangely, the more you commit the stronger the hold it has over you; it feels inescapable. Everything comes second to training – university work, our social lives, holidays, everything – but unlike recreational drugs the mental pleasure we get from sprinting never diminishes.

I often wonder if any of my peers have any notion of what I put myself through; any notion of what it’s like to have exhausted yourself so thoroughly that you are able only to stagger like a drunkard back to the start for the next rep; to be overcome by nausea and puke on the grass; to wake up the next day with muscles that cause you agony with every movement. And to enjoy doing this, to suffer alongside friends, to savour the morning after’s dose of muscular pain because you know it is the pain of improvement. My housemate greets me, ‘Oh hi, Malcolm, how was training?’ ‘Yeah, alright, got soaked again’. She has no idea.