Don’t speak to me of horse racing. Ever since Mother Nature mercilessly cruelled my ambition to be jockey with a mid-teens growth spurt, I can barely stand to look at a clotheshorse, much less the real thing. Just as a retired boxer cannot sniff even the slightest scent of liniment oil without his chest swelling with regret, whenever the spring racing carnival comes around I find myself thinking of what might have been.
Continue reading “A Day at the Races, A Night on the Tiles”
Month: November 2012
Hard of Earring
It’s Bono’s fault. In 1987, the lead singer of U2 unwittingly created the template for young men who saw themselves as inwardly sensitive and poetic. In the music video for their song ‘With or Without You’, Bono wore a leather vest without a shirt and had a ponytail. He also had pierced ears. Suddenly, wearing a ponytail and getting your ears pierced was a way to tell the world that, just like Bono, beneath your adolescent exterior lurked deep pools of untapped emotion. And while such young men may, indeed, have seen themselves as inwardly sensitive and poetic, the world at large simply viewed them as idiots. I should know – I was one of those idiots.
Continue reading “Hard of Earring”