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Eddy Says
Eddy Says: Random thoughts from the arm chair
By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 28 June 2010
So, you’ve all been watching the World Cup, right? I say that like it’s obligatory, most of Team CMU haven’t watched any of it. We’re very good at keeping up with all things music, less good with all things football.
However, this time round we’ve been able to keep track of the main developments via Twitter, largely through Eddy’s impassioned outbursts, which I’m sure many of you have seen. Through him, we’ve got all the ups, all the downs, and some of the casual xenophobia thrown in too.
But it’s all come with a spirit of global friendship, and has, actually, made Eddy even more internationally minded than normal; and acutely aware of how our desire to support the underdog comes to the fore at times like this. Especially when your own team is doing so badly.
So, this week Eddy considers the bad and the good of World Cup fever.
The past fortnight week I have been mostly making bold, sweeping statements loosely based on racial stereotypes, and offending people in the process.
This is something, that, in all seriousness, I’m becoming increasingly aware of during the World Cup. I’m not preaching here, more trying to show self-awareness. I have a terrible habit of grand sweeping statements and watching the World Cup brings out the worst in me. Of course it all spills out onto Twitter, so apologies if you’ve been offended, and biggups if you’ve got in to this peculiar spirit and enjoyed the daily tongue-lashings.
I’ll confess to loving the catastrophic situation which the French team found themselves in, just because of every moody bastard waiter that was rude to me and my girlfriend in Paris earlier this year. As the ball swished against the netting, I found myself swearing in particular at one specific son-of-a-bitch who put a menu in front of his face and actually had the fucking gall (or is that ‘Gaul’) to make rude gestures at us, via the next door table, when we ordered some duck ‘a bit pink’.
Elsewhere, when Nigeria lost you could find me complaining that we’d all be getting harsh parking tickets as a result. When England played that shocker against Algeria, I got more retweets than anything I’ve ever put out there, when I pointed out that I could have “filled my motorcycle helmet full of bees and sat in front of a freshly painted wall” for pretty much the same experience.
I offended a nice Uraguayan by pointing out, after that ludicrous decision to disallow England’s second goal against Germany on Sunday, that loads of Germans had moved to South America in the mid to late 40s, and that the referee’s Grandad may have been the proud owner of an Iron Cross. It was just a mixture of historical fact and humorous conjecture, not meant to offend at all…
Cheeky stereotypes aren’t the only thing that come out during times like this. I always say to friends “never play football during The World Cup”. Because of the beneath-the-surface tension, people are too keen, too excitable, and tackles are made far too hard, leading to many more injuries than a normal week. Lord Fader, of The Loose Cannons, is painfully aware of this, as his last Sunday afternoon kickabout left him on crutches.
But these, and the other negative manifestations of the World Cup are, for me, far outweighed by the positivity, the unbridled joy, and the generosity of spirit. For example, I saw an Italian football fan hug a Kiwi after their match, when I watched the highlights on the iPlayer. Has a Spurs fan *ever* hugged an Arsenal fan throughout history? Has a Celtic fan ever eyeballed a Rangers fan and given them a great big man-hug when the team have drawn in a cup competition?
Just as I thought I was drowning in my own bileousness, I realised something. In the middle of a ten hour journey back home from a Losers live gig in Aberystwyth earlier this month, it dawned on me that there was, as with all things, a positive side to World Cup Fever.
New Zealand, my newly adopted side because England were performing so awfully at the time, were facing the World Champions, Italy. As our ‘tourbus’ sliced through the Brecon Beacons, the Kiwis went 1-0 up against the might of The Roman Empire. As I was punching the roof of the transit minibus, I realised that the World Cup is more about the positive things, the underdogs having their day. I’m forever showing love for ‘losers’. Always cheering for the African side to triumph, or the amateur team to kill the giant. That’s the real beauty of this competition, having a snapshot at the lives and cultures of little nations and showing them heartfelt, unfettered love and support.
The Losers ethos is perfectly reflected in The World Cup – underdogs championed, unsung heroes sung loud and proud. When Mexico beat France, in emerald green, I thought of all the t-shirts currently being worn by every Irish man or woman on planet earth, that reads ‘Anyone But France’, and felt my one sixteenth of Irish jump for joy. When the Kiwis scared Italy shitless I remembered that Maoris have fifty different words for ‘family’ and are among the kindest most noble people I have ever met.
As I cheered Ghana on, I remembered that one of the nicest people I’ve ever met is Ghanean, and I remembered my accountant is from a Ghanean family too, I got in touch with both of them to big them up and wish them luck, and was overwhwlmed with the positivity that the World Cup was instilling in me.
So this week, aside from the thinly veiled racism, nationalism and xenophobia, I shall also be practicing openess, unity, internationalism, harmony, generosity of spirit and the embracing of foreign culture. The vuvuzelas shall cease to be the source of annoying sounds that kill the match vibe, in my mind from now on they will be a dvice for creating a glorious and unique atmosphere, an aural barometre of the collective crowd’s emotion…
I shall be enjoying, and getting involved with my every pore, a competition which demonstrates, literally, that despite the fact we all look different, think and act different, wear different clothes and like different music, we are the same. Vive La Difference (as those French twats would say – haha, see what I did there ;). Enjoy the rest of this wonderful competition and maybe see you on Twitter during one of the games.
Now I’m going to call an old German friend and congratulate them, and catch up and roar with happy laughter.
Eddy xx
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