Well, now I have seen the “Book of Kells” (13 to 15 centuries old), an original copy of the Magna Carta (eight centuries), the Roman baths (two millenia), and Stonehenge (maybe five millenia). All that just this week.
For local people in these environs, “same old, same old.”
What’s new is the latest football news - one of the world’s most talented, and most expensive players - Carlos Tevez - is being kicked off his current team.
Tuesday night, Tevez refused to come off the bench in a very important Manchester City game (Champions League) for whatever reason, and now the team, which will pay him something like $10 million over the course of this season, feels he cannot suit up for them anymore.
I have only heard of one similar situation in North American pro sports. Eddie Shack says in his biography that one night when Montreal’s John Ferguson was, “hot and after me,” that he refused a Punch Imlach edict to, “Get out there,” in crude and not uncertain terms.
No repercussions for Shack - and no headlines, either - but Tevez, an international star in the world’s most popular game, is now a serious problem child and the story is on the front page (and the front page of the sports section and the lead story on television) everywhere in Europe.
Here I am astonished and bemused by the overwhelming historical spectacles we face daily and unable to keep up with sports that count, like the last thrilling week of the baseball regular season, and all that is on everyone’s mind here is one spoiled multi-millionaire.
Meanwhile, at home, the Smoke Eaters are a work in need of serious progress, or at least that is what the results show, and will play a couple more games before I can contribute my calming demeanour to the atmosphere of Cominco Arena, once again. And no word yet on the name for the new team bus.
It has been amazing, if tiring, (walking, walking, walking, for one thing) to tour as we have the U.K. Couldn’ t have imagined it and wouldn’t have missed it, not for almost anything.
But I can’t wait, either, to get back to mountains and hockey and home. Crossing my fingers and toes that the Smokies will have a win before I arrive. And that the house is still standing. And that the baseball playoffs are as exciting as the final weeks of the season have been. And that the PVR functioned as intended.
Till next week.