I just saw a headline regarding England’s loss to Sri Lanka in the ICC World Cup match of 21 June. Somebody was grousing about one particular player. England’s captain Eoin Morgan refused to make Mooen Ali the scapegoat for England’s loss. (He is the Captain, for Heaven’s sake. If he won’t stand up for his mates, he has no business being the Captain.)
Morgan Refuses To Blame Mooen For Collapse
“We didn’t deserve to win.”
That pretty much said it all. But somehow, some way, there has to be somebody to blame. Oh please. I’m on my way to becoming an ex-fan of cricket. OK. Stupid commentary is as popular as Sport itself.
That said. It is 2:19 AM. I couldn’t get to sleep. Maybe I’m jazzed up from working out. But last night (Thursday night/Friday morning) I worked out at the same time. Sleep was not a problem. But tonight, sleep had yet to come.
I came back downstairs, put the clean dishes away, moved the dirty dishes from sink to dishwasher. Now I am watching an English urban explorer show us a disused railway line neat Manchester. His Midlands accent is thick enough to slice. But he’s better than anybody on American television.
The people trekking about the countryside in England, America, Ukraine, and other places with metal detectors, or just a simple webcam on a “selfie” stick talking about their corner of the world do so much for improving my understanding of the world. They are true teachers, in my opinion.
I suppose what’s up with me is a true sadness about modern times. So much has been discarded. Some of it, maybe even most of the machines of the past, were obsolete, yet not totally. A passenger train was/is a dandy way to get somewhere. Nostalgia is about the pain of loss. “Progress” is a highly subjective term.
The Grand Budapest Hotel, that delightful film of a few years back was about mourning a lost world. In its fictional way, it was more honest than another film nostalgic for a lost world, Gone With The Wind. The antebellum South was a cruel and brutal world. We all know that. Yet Vivien Leigh and Hattie McDaniel were damn good actresses. They could con us into thinking it wasn’t.
Maybe what we really want in life are “do-overs”. We hope that one day we’ll get it right. The “it” can be a marriage, Thanksgiving Dinner, the England vs. Sri Lanka ODI limited overs match. Sometimes, I think the mind doesn’t know the difference among them. Nor does it care.