Watching Sport Vicariously          - 8/7/2014      <--Prev : Next-->


I begged and pleaded. I cajoled and entreated. At last I won a trip to the glorious Chimanimanis. It's not that HeehHoo did not want to go to Chims, he just had a weekend of armchair sport in mind.

As far as I am concerned one of the nicest things about Chimanimani is that there is NO DSTV!! But HeeHoo needed his DSTV this weekend of all weekends. I mean how could one possibly exist without DSTV when there is World Cup Soccer, Wimbledon Finals, the Silverston Grand Prix and Sri Lanka playing South Africa in Cricket.

I did understand his dilemma, of course, I am a dutiful and caring wife, but needs must, and a visit to Chimanimani was a definite 'Needs Must'!!

And so the Great Vicarious Sport Medley began. I hacked, planted and pruned and HeeHoo staggered between watching Federer and Jokovich on BBC Live sport on his iPhone, perusing the Grand Prix on Twitter with his old buddy, Kevin McCallum , the Star sports reporter in RSA, and watching Crickinfo to pick up the cricket news on his computer. I dread to think what his bill will be on Econet!!

The recalcitrant proteas were pruned, the azaleas were massacred, the gardenias were hacked, the pointsettias were persecuted, all to a litany of lyrical tweets and twerps!!

Many shouts of glee emanated from his computer from the veranda, (under the watchful eye of the Chimanimani Mountains,) which in turn egged me on to greater heights in my gardening.

Many excited voice-overs came my way as we watched together, vicariously, ball by ball, cricket on his iPad.

Many corners of Silverstone were turned and recounted lap by lap, as I hacked at the garden/jungle and he urged his Grand Prix champions on to greater heights!!

As dusk descended and the cold drove me inside, the supper preparations were liberally interspersed with running commentary on the valiant Jokovich/Federer Wimbledon Mens' Final. At 2 sets all between these two behemoths, I was subsequently exhausted by watching all this sport on a two inch iphone screen!!

The fire was blazing comfortingly as HeeHoo extolled ball by ball the exploits of the Grunting Greats, and then, horror of horrors, the internet went down!!

But HeeHoo is a magnanimous man, I know he will forgive me ...... eventually...........

"It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much." - Alain de Botton -