Our wonderful sport really is only a game

Well, what can I say.. how are you all? Could never have imagined writing a column on such a horrible, scary subject which helps to put our passion for sport into perspective.

Facing the threat of coronavirus, which will see so many deaths and good local businesses going to the wall, it’s a reminder that in the grand scheme of things our wonderful sport really is only a game.

But our clubs and the camaraderie that brings, is another matter and while we’re rightly missing all that we perhaps have to look to a time when all this will be over. Life will return to normal, although at the moment it doesn’t feel like it.

How many of us have vowed never to take such simple pleasures for granted ever again? Saturday afternoons of sport, emails of your reports dropping into my inbox, six pages bursting at the seams.

Can’t help thinking there’s a lesson in this somewhere - you really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

For me the excitement of who’s where in the league, good performances and bad ones, nail-biting finishes and whitewashes has too easily been replaced by the thrill of securing an online shopping slot, the triumph of eeking out a teabag over three cups - just in case supplies dry up, and getting just one more slice of bread covered with the final scrapings of the margarine tub, which would otherwise have long since been acquainted with the recycling bin.

I’m learning lessons all the time - this really is how we should have been living. How easy life is when we know there will always be plenty more where that came from.

My bananas are all wearing little silver-foil caps as if they’re half way through a highlights appointment at the hairdressers and potatoes are a series of experiments lined up in a darkened room so they don’t take root before the next delivery. Life used to be so straight forward.

I may be slightly eccentric at the best of times, but ten days into self isolation it already knows no bounds! My usual list of your pictures for the week, what’s going where, results and word lengths has somehow been invaded by one of expiry dates for what’s left in my fridge!

I’m always so busy being busy I don’t have time to do anything. Maybe this is a bit of a wake up call to take a step back. At the weekend I sat out in my garden with my (extra weak) cuppa just watching the lack of world go by. When would we ever do that?

There has to be some positives in all this. How many friends have we all made the extra effort to get in touch with this week, just to check they’re OK. And how touching is it when those we wouldn’t expect make offers of help.

This crisis is bringing out the best - and also sadly the worst - in people. I think it’s a long way from being over, but it will be, just not now.