For
my A-Z challenge this year I'm taking a look at sports. Olympic ones,
ancient ones, weird ones and some just non sporting sports. I'm not
athletic or even particularly fit but there are some sports I enjoy
watching and in composing my posts I've come across many that I'd never
heard of. Join me in a sporting journey from the comfort of your couch
(or wherever else you're reading this) and thanks for stopping by.
Well there are no Olympic sports starting with P. So I'm going for Paddling. There are lots of ways to paddle but at the moment I feel like one of those ducks that looks serene as it glides across the water but under the surface it's feet are going nineteen to the dozen.
Yes I'm slipping behind. This post wasn't even scheduled for today. It didn't exist before today. None of my subsequent posts are ready - yet!
I so wanted to be organised and ahead of myself with the challenge this year to give me a real chance to visit other bloggers taking part. Last year I scraped to the end by the skin of my teeth. In my defence I was coping with the very premature birth of my first grandchild and his two anxious Mummies. The month of April passed by in a bit of a blur.
A year on and Nathan had done really well, his Mummies are (a bit) calmer but he's still partly the reason why I'm now playing catch up. I look after him 2 days a week now and although it is a joy it is also exhausting and my two favoured sports at present are walking (often miles in an effort to get him to sleep) and weightlifting - he's currently just under 10 kg/22 lbs so I definitely get a workout on Tuesday and Thursdays! This only started recently so I'm hoping that I'll gradually get used to the early starts etc.
But it doesn't give me much time for Polo, Paddling or Parachuting. God didn't give us wings for a reason, or webbed feet and even though Polo is played on ponies that's still a big animal charging around a field. When asked recently how many players in a Polo team, one of our family members (who I will not name and shame) suggested 15. Can you imagine 30 horses charging around a field with all their riders swinging mallets around? An invitation for carnage!
Of course you could combine Paddling with Polo and play Canoe Polo. Or not.
Or why not try Pickleball - apparently a combination of Badminton, Table Tennis and Tennis and is played with, wait for it, a paddle!
Enough waffle for today. I'm off to try and preschedule some more posts before full blown panic sets in.
For
my A-Z challenge this year I'm taking a look at sports. Olympic ones,
ancient ones, weird ones and some just non sporting sports. I'm not
athletic or even particularly fit but there are some sports I enjoy
watching and in composing my posts I've come across many that I'd never
heard of. Join me in a sporting journey from the comfort of your couch
(or wherever else you're reading this) and thanks for stopping by.
There are no Olympic Sports that start with O so I'm going with Orienteering. Now I used to think that this was a bit like doing a Treasure Hunt, with a map and a compass being prerequisites plus the set of clues.
Apparently it's a bit more sophisticated than that: Orienteering is a group of sports that requires navigational skills using a map and compass
to navigate from point to point in diverse and usually unfamiliar
terrain whilst moving at speed. Participants are given a topographical
map, usually a specially prepared orienteering map, which they use to find control points.
Hmm moving at speed? While working out which way up to have the map, finding North and then working out the clue? Yes I'm one of those annoying people that turns the map around when necessary like when travelling south. But I do have quite a good sense of direction and I'm pretty good at remembering landmarks. Very useful when you visit somewhere like a Westfield Shopping Centre with umpteen car park entrances and you need to get back to your car!
You could even go Car Orienteering. There are lots of different types of Orienteering and different types of event such as team events, relays, short courses, long courses, night courses etc.
There is an International Orienteering Federation and World Competitions are held. Attempts have been made to have the sport included in the Olympics but so far these have been unsuccessful. Can't imagine why. After all, I think it would make for a great televised sport or maybe not, oops the camera positioned over there is a good indication the control point must be nearby!
Anyway I'm happy with my car and my Satnav to get me from A to B so no Orienteering for me.
There aren't many interesting O sports at all - a couple of unpronounceable Martial Arts (there seem to be endless varieties of Martial Arts with or without weird or just plain evil sounding weapons) Oztag which is just a variety of Tag Rugby played in Australia and then the daft sounding sport of Offshore Powerboat Racing. Well it's hardly going to be Onshore is it? The clue's in the word boat!
Sport can be overcomplicated at times! I'm off to practise napping.
For my A-Z challenge this year I'm taking a look at sports. Olympic ones, ancient ones, weird ones and some just non sporting sports. I'm not athletic or even particularly fit but there are some sports I enjoy watching and in composing my posts I've come across many that I'd never heard of. Join me in a sporting journey from the comfort of your couch (or wherever else you're reading this) and thanks for stopping by.
Nordic Combined is the only Olympic Sport starting with N. The events that are combined are Cross Country Skiing and Ski Jumping. Two very different disciplines. Cross Country must need a lot of endurance. Getting across 10 km of snow is no easy task. However, although you probably get warm once on the move, as I've discussed before I don't like being cold so I won't be giving that a try. Moving on to the Ski Jump. Well the view down from the take off point looks positively scary. With two long wobbly strips of laminate to land on? It's certainly not for the faint hearted (counts me out) and maybe you need to be just a bit mad to take part. My weak ankles would probably disqualify me too if I needed any more reason to walk away. I can't claim a fear of heights because that would be lying. It's just the idea of sailing out into open air with no safety net doesn't really appeal.
Ski is actually a Norwegian word from the old Norse word Skid - a split length of wood. (Probably why the Norwegians are so good at these events.) These days fibreglass, aluminium alloy, steel or plastic form the laminate material. The event has been included in the Olympics since 1924 when the first Winter Olympics were held in Chamonix. Up until very recently women were not allowed to compete and even in the most recent Olympics they only competed in a team event not individually.
I can't honestly say that watching Nordic Combined is something I've done much of. I've occasionaly seen the highlights of the Ski Jump when the Olympics were happening but it's definitely not an event that I'd be recording to watch later if I missed it.
So let's move on to an N sport I have experienced - Netball. Going to an all girls seconday school not playing Netball would have been extremely unlikely. I quite enjoyed it although I wouldn't say I was very good. I was certainly not a good enough shot to be put in either of the shooting positions, not big enough to be the Goalkeeper so I usually played Centre or on the Wing. Either way I did a lot of running around. My other lasting memory of playing Netball was when a large group of us - mainly family and a few in-laws thrown in were playing, which meant it was mixed teams, with many of the men not fully understanding the rules, like no contact and staying in your designated areas. It was a bit rough and I ended up losing my glasses at one point. Fortunately they didn't break but my sister-in-law's brother took a lot of stick for hitting a woman with glasses! But it was all good fun, just!
Other N sports that sound funny are:
Northern Praying Mantis - a Chinese Martial Art (it's all in the hand shape!)
Ninjutsu - a Japanese Martial Art and
Neppis - a competitive outdoor sport played in Finland, simulating race driving using toy cars. Sound more like playing than sport to me.
But the one N sport that really made me shudder was Noodling - the catching of fish with bare hands, especially Catfish. I'm not going to list all the dangers linked to this sport, I know some readers may be squeamish and losing fingers might seem bad but compared to drowning it could be a bearable price.
Me, I'd like to keep all my fingers and be able to breathe, I wouldn't be touching this one with a barge pole!
Bring Me Back by
B.A. Paris
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
A young British couple
are driving through France on holiday when they stop for gas. He runs in
to pay, she stays in the car. When he returns her car door has been
left open, but she's not inside. No one ever sees her again.
Ten
years later he's engaged to be married; he's happy, and his past is
only a tiny part his life now. Until he comes home from work and finds
his new wife-to-be is sitting on their sofa. She's turning something
over in her fingers, holding it up to the light. Something that would
have no worth to anyone else, something only he and she would know about
because his wife is the sister of his missing first love.
As
more and more questions are raised, their marriage becomes strained. Has
his first love somehow come back to him after all this time? Or is the
person who took her playing games with his mind?
I loved B A Paris' first book "Behind Closed Doors", I also enjoyed the next "The Breakdown" but I was disappointed with this third novel. It started well with a good mystery to draw me in but the middle just got quite boring and as other reviewers have mentioned there are a lot of Russian dolls mentioned. (I'd love to do a word count on how many times!)
In its favour I did keep going until the end. It's not total rubbish and if you enjoy a book that's playing mind games you might enjoy it. But there is too much focus on the mind games. The timeline gets a bit wooly too. And the ending, well no spoilers but not particularly satisfying and the situation with one of the main characters? Just not credible.
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