Some may be shocked to learn that there are still a few things I don’t understand. Excluding women, which only gay men really understand, there are some ‘sports and pastimes’ that I just do not get. Being extraordinarily Rumpsfeldian about this, there are those that I don’t understand but could if I tried and there are those which I don’t understand and never could no matter how hard I tried. In the first category I include Aussie Rules football and baseball, but the second category includes such pointless pastimes as basketball and F1 motor racing. To air my peeve about basketball first; as far as I can tell the game consists of tall black folks running from one end of a court to another and tossing a ball through a hoop. The other side then does exactly the same but in the opposite direction and this continues until the time runs out and one side has scored a hoop more than the other – typically 68-69. Now I do not doubt for a moment that great skill is involved in throwing hoops but the reason it seems pointless to me, is that both teams always seem to be good at it never missing a hoop and so the game is won or lost depending on the on the timing of the clock! But today I want to talk about F1 – which is big in Melbourne at the moment. Now as far as I can tell this pointless pastime seems to be about tearing round a track very fast, making a very loud whining noise and stinking the place out with petrol fumes and burning rubber. It would not be pointless, and bear in mind our hotel is host to about 100 Ferrari grease monkeys wandering about the place in their red overalls so I observe first hand; if the result was ever in any doubt. The first day was spent tearing around as a practice, the second day was spent tearing around to see who starts at the front, the third day will, I predict, be spent with all the cars following each other in the exact order they started unless one of them breaks down. So the whole pointless exercise seems to be predicated on the reliability of the car and there must be better ways of improving vehicle reliability that F1. As a nearby spectator (they also seem to dress in red overalls) you blink and you miss your team car and so just enjoy the lingering taste of petrol exhaust and rubber, and as a distant holidaymaker in Melbourne, one can’t avoid the scream of the massed engines ripping through the world's precious resources.
Pointless? – I should say so!
