A Joke Or Two 2023/24

I now identity as a donkey

My pronouns are he/haw

 

As a small child, my first exposure to football was watching a Scotland v England match on my grandfather's 14" black and white TV. When it finished I asked, "When are the men coming on?". I have never watched football since.

 

I remember being really interested in kicking a ball around as a young child, then I moved up a school and they had games lessons, as they called it then, and football was the main one in winter, they applied the rules so rigidly it totally put me off, you cant do this and you cant do that, I was around 7 at the time, all I wanted was to enjoy myself.

Never got into it after that, and dont mention cricket, oh I already did, too much standing around for a youngster.

I always liked gym and athletics, but schools always made them take a back seat to playing "games".
So I took up smoking instead, and the rest is history.

 

My favourite memory of playing cricket is this. It was a beautiful warm summers afternoon. As I was terrible at most sports, having zero interest in them, I always got picked last by the nominated team captain. This suited me fine. On this particular day I was a fielder, and put in a position where the ball was very unlikely to go. The logic being, the less I have to do, the lower the likelihood I'll mess it. Great.

So I spent the first few minutes standing in my spot, then sat down, then laid down and promptly fell asleep with the gentle sun on my face, a gentle breeze, and the aroma of freshly cut grass. It was bliss.

At some point I was awakened by lots of voices yelling out my surname. As I came to, still laid on my back on the grass, I just saw a small spherical object directly above, clearly on a trajectory for my face. So fast as lightning I sprung up, and promptly got out of its way. I think the other team scored several runs before I eventually picked the ball up and threw it in the general direction of main hub of activity. Several of my team very vocally expressed their disappointment in my performance and their contempt for me, but I didn't care. All I was bothered about was that the game had very briefly interrupted my afternoon snooze.

 

I had to play football at school. I hated it I always got picked last. Right after the lad with callipers on both legs (it was a brave man who would tackle him). One time I got 25 lines.
"The object of the game of football is to put the ball between the posts of the opposing team, not to stand leaning against the goal post talking to the goalkeeper." Etched into my memory forever.

 

It kind of amazes me how many actually hated football but were forced to take part while at school.

 

The point of physical education/games, whatever your school called it at the time was not to make skilled future sports stars. It was simply to try to ensure a new generation of kids grew up fit enough to join the army, just in case Germany decided to have a third attempt.

Ok. This might not be entirely true, but when I went to school they made us learn the German language. Both versions (east and west - yes they were different). Why German though? And why both versions? And why did they make us learn the basic politics of when and where to use one over the other? German languages, politics and geography, and physical activities we hated and had to do in all weather conditions, just a couple of decades after a war with a nation that had made two attempts already to take over Europe and North Africa. When I was at school, most people, if they travelled abroad, were going to Spain. Spanish is the third most widely used language in the world, way ahead of German, and for wannabe linguists it has common roots with a much wider range of languages. But my school made us learn two flavours of German. That and do sports we all hated in the worst possible weather to make us tough.

 

When I was a kid the most likely conflict was with Russia, W. Germany was already on this side of the fence. .

 

And because of that the British armed forces maintained a massive presence in...

Germany