Sunday 14 August 2016

Impartiality


Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson (after R Justin won gold)

This, of course, wouldn't be ITBB without a bit of properly balancing praise for the BBC. 

I've very much enjoyed their Olympic golf coverage - though it's been very hard to find at times. (I've usually found it via the remoter corners of the BBC iPlayer). 

And I very much enjoyed Justin Rose winning Gold for Great Britain (and Northern Ireland) tonight.

My 84-year-old dad didn't think golf should be an Olympic sport. I've just phoned him. He's much more relaxed about golf being an Olympic sport now. And I agree with my dad.

All of which gives me the opportunity to post something that's also very ITBB: a poem that never fails to cheer me up:


Seaside Golf, by John Betjeman

How straight it flew, how long it flew, 
It clear'd the rutty track 
And soaring, disappeared from view 
Beyond the bunker's back - 
A glorious, sailing, bounding drive 
That made me glad I was alive. 

And down the fairway, far along 
It glowed a lonely white; 
I played an iron sure and strong 
And clipp'd it out of sight, 
And spite of grassy banks between 
I knew I'd find it on the green. 

And so I did. It lay content 
Two paces from the pin; 
A steady putt and then it went 
Oh, most surely in. 
The very turf rejoiced to see 
That quite unprecedented three. 

Ah! Seaweed smells from sandy caves 
And thyme and mist in whiffs, 
In-coming tide, Atlantic waves 
Slapping the sunny cliffs, 
Lark song and sea sounds in the air 
And splendour, splendour everywhere.

4 comments:

  1. If you want to spoil a nice country walk by playing golf as you go that's your loss! :)

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  3. Betjeman, a good man for poetic fantasy. Actually, he was seven over par.

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  4. I have found much of the BBC coverage of the Olympics embarrassingly jingoistic & OTT. Now,can this be the same BBC that can usually be counted on to be on the side of anybody and anything OTHER than its own country? eg they wanted Argentina to win the Falklands war, they routinely preferred the IRA to the British Army, & are strangely reluctant to call muslim terrorists anything other than 'militants' ? So, what is the explanation for their Olympics coverage? I suspect that the General Election & EU Referendum result have given them a well-deserved shock - they have realized that a majority of license fee payers are out of sympathy with their views. What they are doing with their Olympics coverage, then, is to offer a sop to the proles who pay them. If the BTL comments one reads after each of the Beeb's many lapses into PCism are anything to go by, it's too late: the genie is out of the bottle & the Corporation is no longer respected or trusted.

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