Going for Gold – or maybe for the Bridport…

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Dorothy Parker, Team GB, University Challenge

It’s said that the average British athlete will have trained for six hours a day, for six days a week, for twelve months.

Could this dedication be applied to our writing? Obviously lesser mortals have to factor in jobs, families, trips to the supermarket, walking the dog and finding time to watch University Challenge. Writing also requires different disciplines, although the astute Dorothy Parker considered it to be simply ‘the art of applying the ass to the seat’.

Maybe there are lessons to be learned from the magnificent Team GB about persistence. What couldn’t I achieve if I determined to write even for one single hour a day, for six days a week for twelve months?

 

 

To medal or to podium?

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medal, neologisms, Olympics, podium

Every four years we have to get used to two new verbs: to medal and to podium. Those of us who feel we disapprove (even if we’re not sure why) can comfort ourselves with the thoughts that (a) they are used, and it’s usage that counts in English, and (b) they only seem to be in use when the Olympics come round.

But as they are verbs, how are we to we spell their different verbal forms?

‘Medal’ is easy. We can look at ‘pedal’, and using its forms we can get to

• He, she or it medals (What kind of Olympian qualifies as ‘it’? Best scrub that.)
• We are medalling
• You medalled.

These sound right, and they look right.

But how do we conjugate ‘podium’?

• He or she podiums: fine.
• But are we podiuming, or podiumming?
• Have you podiumed, or podiummed?

‘Podiumed’ looks as if it ought to be pronounced poh-dee-oomed, and ‘podiuming’ as poh-dee-oo-ming. But the double ‘m’ in ‘podiummed’ and ‘podiumming’ looks bizarre.

Is there a word in use we can copy, like ‘pedal’ for ‘medal’? How about ‘drum’? That would take us back to ‘podiumming’ and ‘podiummed’. Which get worse every time I look at them.

One answer is: Fortunately these are synonyms, so if you really have to write one of these sporting neologisms, use ‘medal’.  Only use ‘podium’ in speech ….

‘Journeyman’

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Ben Smith, football, Hereford

One genre that has not featured in this blog till now is the footballer’s memoir.  Journeyman, by Ben Smith, is one such, but not what you’d expect, one of Premiership salaries, visits to exotic locations, rubbing shoulders with celebrities, all ‘as told to …’.  No, Journeyman is at the other end of the scale. Wages are hundreds of pounds a week not tens of thousands.  The book’s subtitle is ‘One Man’s Odyssey through the Lower Leagues of English Football’. 

Ben Smith was on Arsenal’s books as a schoolboy, but like many others he didn’t break through to the big time.  The books recounts his spells with Southend United, Reading, Yeovil Town, Hereford United, their arch-rivals Shrewsbury Town, Weymouth, Hereford United again, Cambridge United (briefly), and Crawley Town, with spells on loan at Kettering, Woking and Aldershot Town. As a Hereford United supporter I relished his account of some of the memorable games my son or I attended – such as a heroic win at Leeds United in the FA Cup, and the exciting afternoon we spent at Brentford in 2008 which clinched promotion to League One.   

One brush with the stars in the football firmament is his account of his match at Old Trafford when Crawley Town were drawn away to Manchester United in the FA Cup – an occasion that deservedly gets a whole chapter. 

Here you can read the realities of life in these lower leagues: the grubbiness of pay negotiations, the sometimes eccentric behaviour of football managers, merry dressing-room japes, and the ever-present risk of injury.  The account of Ben’s dislocating his shoulder makes painful reading.  Interestingly, not much is said about the fans, though when writing about a visit to Luton Town he writes “The crowd is right next to the pitch and you can smell the pungent aroma of beer, burgers and fag breath – the way football ought to be.” 

Interspersed with Ben’s times at the different clubs are extracts from his diary from 2012, when his footballing career has ended and he is working as a teacher at a secondary school.  This he hates, and he is frank about his failings as a teacher.  

He has an easy to read style.  I saw that he had a column on football in a recent edition of The Big Issue.    

Journeyman, published in 2015 by Biteback Publishing Ltd.  ISBN 978-1-84954- 854-0  RRP £12-99