Thought for the Day, with Justin Webly, more or less Arch of Cant

Hullo,

           

Justin here. I write this in a Vale of Tears – not my own, I must confess, for my interest in tennis is but slight and made even more slight by the modern practice, mainly from the female competitors it must be said, of screaming when they strike the ball.

          

But the sadness presently gripping the young man with the wire in his ear and my lady wife stems from the defeat of one Andrew Murray by a similarly athletic chap the other day at Wimbledon. My lady wife and most of the female staff are inconsolable, but have so far refrained from calling Mr Murray’s conqueror a “foreign git”, as has the young man with the wire in his ear. Several times.

          

Personally, I view tennis as it should be seen; a gentle after-lunch activity to aid the digestion, undertaken in flannels held up by one’s old school tie, whilst the ladies float serenely about the court in freshly pressed pleated skirts and gleamingly white pumps, whilst cries of, “Oh, I say, jolly good shot Blanche!” drift across the summer lawns. And absolutely no overarm serving to the ladies. Not so now when this hitherto quite civilised pastime has morphed into a really quite savage, grunting, squealing gladiatorial confrontation.

         

And quite frankly, my lady wife’s obsession with the Scot, Mr Murray, puzzles me. As the date of the Scottish Independence vote draws ever closer, the light of my life grows even more angry at what she calls their “nerve”, referring to the independence supremo as “Toad of Toad Hall”.

        

She is of the opinion that regiments of our admittedly dwindling army be sent north to show the Scots their place, to clear the Highlands once again and corral the Scots workforce in and around nuclear submarine factories, or on floating towns near oil rigs. “Mc Titicaca”, she joked.

I have to admit that she does exhibit a certain paranoia when it comes to anything remotely un-English. So my heart lightened somewhat when I  heard her cheering our Prime Minister for his stand against the election of one M. Junkers as head of the European Union. She pointed out that in all probability, M Junker’s grandfather manufactured many of the aeroplanes which bombed this sceptred isle during WW2. Sometimes, her general knowledge astounds me. When I pointed out that plucky Mr Cameron lost the vote comprehensively, she said that when the United Kingdom (she stressed that bit) stood alone in 1940, the Germans had three thousand five hundred aeroplanes whilst we only had one and a half.

      

So there. My Thoughts for the Day. And where in all that, you may ask, is Jesus? Well, I suppose he would counsel forgiveness for the young foreign fellow who beat Mr Murray, and might well pray for a renewed understanding of the Scots’ psyche. At least they don’t have road signs in two languages like some I could mention.

Pip, pip

Justin