Saturday, November 02, 2013

What Is This Thing Called Curling?

AlwaysThrowing
HackWeightVille


Had fun on the Twittmachine this morning with B. von Schulman and V. Jobson gently dissing the ever increasing blandness of 'The House' on the MoCo's Radio One.

B. v. S. decided to switch to a documentary on Elizabethan England.

Me, I figured that a Coronation Street marathon would be more interesting and/or valuable.

And then V.S. told us to get off his lawn (!) and stop talking politics while the curling was on the Tee Vee....

****

Curling?

Freaking curling?!

The following is pretty much all I used to really know about curling...

When I was a kid it was the only 'sport' that actually encouraged smoking while playing (remember those tin ashtrays that sat in those wrought iron stands next to the benches where you sat when you weren't sweeping?).

And then.

Well.

The Weakerthans educated me...



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7 comments:

Danneau said...

What was it those Beatles were doing in Help! in the Alps(?) Imagine the perplexity of a Bay Area refugee when Sally's boyfriend Tom asks me over coffee in the not-even-officially-open student union building out on Point Grey if I want to go curling with them. Whazzat? What the hell do you mean? Is this some kind of hairdressing joke? Am I being hazed here? Arrived home much later, mildly more educated, a tad closer to canuckhood and a face full of smoke and rye. Rather a different sort of culture clash. Thanks.

RossK said...

Danneau--

The rye.

Ya.

I forgot about that part too.


(fantastic story - thanks)

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Anonymous said...

Yeah for any sport that distracts the boys from Bambi and booze weekends.

RossK said...

AnonAbove--

Not sure what curling actually distracts anybody from, exactly.

Except, maybe, sweaters that aren't bulkier than cotton bales.

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Norm Farrell said...

My reaction, before reading comments, was about the drink that went with the smoke surrounding curlers.

I remember leaving Powell River with 3 other kids and one adult chaperone, headed for the BC Boys High School Curling Tournament. The first stop made by our chaperone was the liquor store where he asked what we needed for the weekend. To that old prairie boy, booze and curling just went together, even if you were 16-17 years old.

RossK said...

Norm--

Ya.

I'd forgotten about the booze...Clearly, you can see the game really wasn't something I was overly familiar with as a kid.

.

Anonymous said...

SH here re my unattributed comment:

Anonymous said...
Yeah for any sport that distracts the boys from Bambi and booze weekends.

3:39 pm, November 02, 2013

Years of living near the autumnal volley of gunshots up in the Okanagan hills has cured me of my snobbery with respect to some sports and activities.

Anything that replaces blood sports, and leaves meadow and woodland creatures to their own eases my troubled mind.