Ok I’ll admit that there are a few hings that annoy me. Fund Managers exorbitant charging rates, Town Council Planning Committees, Meghan Sparkle, modern cricket gamesmanship, the ‘professional’ football foul, smoking, tasting menus, Iranian international diplomacy, Boris Johnson, Ben Stokes, Chris Evans, Matt Wallace and that Guiliani chappy.
I see in the US now that over half the money in equities is in tracker funds. Doesn’t that quite smack in the face and rather undermine the principle of the whole sector? Yes. Seemingly some journalist chap threw darts, when blindfolded, at the stocks list and they outperformed more than half the funds advised by Hargreaves Lansdowne, that large and respected investment platform.
My money is staying on the horses.
Now, in my day cricket was a gentlemanly game played with smiles and decorum and all that. But now there is a lot of back chat out on the field. It was discussed at the last Test Match and some buffoon commentator tried to justify it on the basis that he thought it was integral to the competitive spirit.
Lordy me. Can’t you have a competitive spirit without goading the opposing captain for being gay?
Again. Lordy me.
The ‘professional” football foul is one of the main reasons I don’t like footy. That and it nearly always being 90 minutes of tedium. At least rugby is only 80 minutes and you get lots of breaks when they haves scrums.
And that’s another thing I should have added. The scrum put-in must be the laughing stock of the century. And what about the poor wee hooker? He’ s now basically redundant and just spends half the game sandwiched between 14 sweaty bruisers collapsing upon him in most instances. Who’d be a hooker?
Now, this tasting menu fad is getting a bit out of hand. As that food journalist Raynor said rather aptly at the weekend ‘tasting menus are like double maths, something you have to endure and pay for after’.
Yes last time I think I paid £80 a head, without wine and remember being decidedly hungry after.
But it’s a very hard game this restaurant business as I’ve found out. I now fully get John Cleese in Fawlty Towers.
And of course, the funniest sketch ever in screen comedy ‘ my dear, what do you expect to see out of a Torquay bedroom window? …. giant roving wilderbeasts, the hanging gardens of Babylon?’
Now that is funny.
Bill Bryson and Frank Skinner take note.