Points of view

Cheese rolling, Coopers Hill 2018

Here in the UK we have all sorts of quaint old fashioned traditions, things like cheese rolling in Gloucestershire, Morris Dancing (no cars were harming in making this post) and burning the Pope in effigy (it's actually worse than it sounds!). But not all of our traditional pursuits are ridiculous or dangerous, after all through our sporting endeavours we have given the World football, golf, cricket, rugby, and I am sure many others. But some never made it to the international stage.

Thank goodness the Atherstone Ball game is one of those that didn't make it. An annual event played every shrove Tuesday in the pretty midlands town of Atherstone, it all started in 1199 and doesn't appear to have changed much since then. The rules are simple, basically whoever is in possession of the ball at the end of the game (05:00 pm) is the winner, oh yes and competitors are not allowed to kill each other!  Since we are now in Lent we have just had the 823rd playing of the game, such an historic event of course gets widely reported, here we have two reports on the match, first from the BBC  Atherstone Shrove Tuesday ball game marks 823rd event - BBC News and here from the Metro https://api.metro.co.uk/video/brutal-end-atherstone-ball-game-2023-lads-hurt-annual-tradition-2882959/  Both reporting on the same event, but clearly from different perspectives.

There have been a few times when I have attended an event or sports game, and when I later read reports wondered if the reporter had actually been to the same event. On one occasion I read a review of a concert I had played in and it criticked a piece we didn't even play! 

I suppose the point of all this is that your view of something all depends on how you approach it, a quaint and charming tradition, or licensed thuggery ~ and of course it is the same in politics. Today Kier Stammer the leader of the UK Labour party announced his five core missions for government if elected, from my perspective they are a bit bland centerish Tory Light, to my brother they will be far left dangerous socialism ~ we approach from different points of view.

It has always been the case that people will approach events or situations from different stand points after all we all have different formative experiences and different attitudes, but it does seem to me that over the last few years views have become polarised and entrenched. I would like to see a bit more nuance, a bit  more openness to alternative views, a bit more compassion, and perhaps acceptance of the simple idea that sometimes "I don't know" is a perfectly good and rational answer.

A little bit of Finn Russell magic goes a long way

On Saturday Wales will be playing England at Rugby in the Six Nations, at the moment I am quite sure that one of my brothers thinks that England will win, and that the other thinks Wales will. For my part I just suspect that it will be the worst game of the championship. 

At the beginning of the Six Nations, I thought France were going to kick up a level ready for the World Cup and would win a Grand Slam, I thought the new coach Steve Borthwick would have an immediate positive effect on the squad  and England would win three matches, with Scotland fulfilling their usual role of promising much and delivering little. Clearly I was wrong on all fronts, maybe I was just approaching it from the wrong perspective.