Blue Is The Colour.

Let's address Robyn "Da Bobbin' Pin" Cairns here. I just came across her tweet about not finding anything interesting in soccer and to be honest I don't blame her.

I used to think soccer was a dull and dreary sport. I played it in primary school because it was compulsory for us to play at least one sport a term and all my friends were doing it so I decided to join in. My gigantic frame wasn't quite built for it and to this day i still have the co-ordination of a cow falling down a staircase when it comes to playing. I honestly didn't see what was so great about it. It's not like our National team is any good. The last time I heard of them doing anything worthwhile was when we won Afcon in '96 and I was still quite very young then. I just remember my dad making a fuss over something or other and I was off playing in my ever vivid imagination. It was just another thing that people passed the time with. What's so great about watching 22 men run around after a ball? They kick it around and no one ever scores and it's just a waste of time. A game is a whole 90 minutes!? In that time, you can chug through a good few chapters in a book, drink close to 7 beers, you can try, fail and try again with a lovely lady. It's even worse when they play extra time. Didn't you guys have enough time to flounder around the field, why do you need more? Why you gotta do me like this? That's and extra half an hour on top of that lifetime you've just wasted and then when you idiots fail to get anything past a man in a bright coloured jersey and oven mitts, you're gonna go and do a penalty shootout. WHY DIDN'T YOU JUST START OFF WITH THAT AND SPARE US ALL?!!! Logic, right?

That's how I thought for many years. No matter how much I tried to give it a chance, I just couldn't. That was until 2010 happened. We all know that June 11th, 2010 to July 11th will forever be the be all and end all of that year. That was when South Africa (us homies) hosted the World Cup. Going into it I was like ah you know, so what. It's a big deal and what not but it's for the economy, not for me. I wasn't too phased. When the opening match came along - the one where Tshabalala scored a cracker of a goal that put him on the map - I was more concerned about the case of beers we had and the pink bra I sneakily had a close up with around the corner. We scored the opener and we drank and then everything is a fuzzy memory after that but it was nice. It was festive. I then went on to watch a few games. We'd just gotten a new TV and that thing was as clear as poes, still is. I happened across a chap named Didier Drogba. Now that's not such a big deal. He's just another African player hoping to get his rocks off at trying to win the tournament and fail just like the rest of them. He plays for the Ivory Coast, the best team in Africa at the moment. He's a big man, he has a hand, he looks right. What drew me to him though was that he was playing with a cast on. He'd broken his arm somewhere along the way leading up to this and instead of sitting out of the tournament, he was on the field being a nuisance to the opposition defence. I thought that was pretty bad ass. Here's this chap, leading his team from the front and he's basically an invalid. I asked Ben about him - Ben's been up soccer's arse since he could walk, basically - and he told me that Drogba played club football with Chelsea. I didn't know what a Chelsea was. The only knowledge I had of anything remotely Chelsea was that they had some tasty buns. I went on to find out that they were a London club - I like me some London - and that they had recently won a few trophies with a charismatic Portuguese man as their coach. We went on to go through the month of 2010 and once it was over, I was quite interested. I started watching Chelsea play that season.

And now I'm here. Tweeting about every single goal they score, making remarks about the weird things they do and being an all out dick to Ben because he supports Arsenal - one of Chelsea's London rivals. I think I'm involved in football talk about 57% of the week now, which is a big thing. I watch a game about close to 4 times a week and I watch Premier League talk shows every day. I start my day off with Sky Sports News because it has the hottest female anchors talking to me about Chelsea. I watch as many Chelsea games as I possibly can, often opting to not go anywhere that day just so I don't miss it. I don't know how it escalated to this point. I mean all I did was see a man with a green cast on and then all of a sudden I'm singing Blue Is The Colour around the house after a win. I'm not the biggest, most knowledgeable soccerman, I leave that for the professionals like Ben and Mattian but I do know as much as I can about my team. See for me, it was never about supporting a team. I started watching because I saw a man I admired and followed him to his work place. Drogba is probably the biggest African hero. In fact, he's one of the biggest in the world.
Everyone knows what a great person he was on the field, leading Chelsea and his country to many memorable victories but he's also made a name for himself off of it too. He's invested over 2.5 Billion dollars in humanitarian money, which is a kakload if you consider that we still struggle to donate 5 bucks to hobos. He's built a hospital for the sick. He built schools and he even stopped a civil war. That's a big deal. For me, it was never about finding a team so I could be part of the social club of claiming to be a sportsball watcher, I just liked what I saw at Chelsea. They were lethal, did what they had to do and had a hero up front.

Once you find a club that appeals to you, it is impossible to not be drawn in. It's like falling in love. In fact, that's what it is. You cry during the triumphs and you cry during the defeats. It's an emotional rollercoaster ride that will take you far and wide in the space of 90 minutes. I go through a series of emotions during a game. I get mad bleak when they score against us and the next minute I'm doing burpies from excitement and elation after we score. I have done actual burpies after a goal. It's just something I can't seem to do much justice t with these words. Think of the one thing that you truly love, how it makes you feel at any given moment. How you feel when you're with it or when you're doing it or when you're eating it. For many people, that's what watching their team is like. It's a weird thing to think about, I'm a little like "what?" right now as I write this but that's what it is. Something you can't perfectly understand until you're deep within it. I tell people all the time, don't try just jump into soccer and say that's who you'll now support just because they're on. Find something to relate to. Find a common ground. Identify with something or someone on that pitch and that will never ever steer you wrong.

I hope this has shed some light for you there Bobbhino because it just made me all the more happier to be a Chelsea man.
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I Have A Crush.

Yesterday afternoon, I went down to Durban to meet up with my dad at his offices. He wasn't in, he was down in the South Coast and so I had to wait for him to get back up. This was a little bit of an issue because the offices were closed and so I had a few hours to kill and absolutely no capital to expend.

I decided that the best thing for me to do was just walk around. I often go on about how great I think the city is, I know it's not the safest or even the most visually alluring place but I've always enjoyed going around it. My dad's offices are just down the road from City Hall, which I think is the most beautiful building in the whole city and it also has the triple whammy of housing the library and the Natural Science Museum. I'm in love with that building, let me get that out of the way early on. It's a little weird, I know, but that to me is one of the most spectacular sights we have in our city. Just being around it makes me feel so much happier.

I decided to kill time in the library. The last time I went to the library, in 2009 or so, I got mugged outside the library steps so going back was a little bit ugh but I figured that I'm no longer that little kid and if anyone so much as tried with me, I'd probably just have to kill them and bury their body underneath a hawkers table or something.

It felt great to be in there. I think the library is one place where time seems to never ever set foot. The biggest nod to technology they have their are the computers that students were using for their various projects. I saw this little homie, probably in grade 4 doing his project with all his little books out and next to him was a university student going HAM on some paper. The place was full of students going at it and I felt good inside, you know. It felt good to see that there are still quite a few people taking their schooling seriously. Often we see, and mistakenly, glorify the wasters and the slackers. Everywhere you look these days people are up to their eye-teeth in procrastination. I'm no different. I have a few good hours of work I need to do but here I am lying on my bed, typing out this post and criticizing my fellow wasters. Okay, I'm not that much of a waster, I do my fair share of necessary work but still. Anyway, I spent a good half hour trying to find a good read, coming across so many and then having the difficult task of trying to pick one. Did I want to read up on Hemmingway, see what was up with Mussolini. Did I want to go deep into the glits of Bowie or just really get stuck into some twisted thinking with Freud. Eventually I settled on something lighter but closer to home with Lewis Hamilton's autobiography. Being in that library just felt good, regardless of if I was reading or not.

Today though, today was special. I met up with my dad in Pinetown, we went through to Hillcrest and then back down to his office. He had a meeting and it was pointless going home and then comung back so we decided to chill around the city center and mill around. We went in search of lunch and had the most greasiest Mc Donald's burgers known to man. I'm willing to bet that Mc Donald's on West Street is the main reason why so many fat people hobble around town. Okay, I wont say it's the main reason. KFC probably is. There are more KFCs in town than there are Indians in KZN. Mc Donald's is just trying to muscle in on this fat making business so I guess now that I think of it, I get why their food is double fried in oil and butter. After that over indulgence in fat, we went off to City Hall. I don't know what it is about that building but it just does things to me. I can never go past it without gawking and drooling. I don't know who designed it - I'm gonna find out soon - but I hope they were given a key to the city and a house in every posh suburb in the land. It stands out in the mix of everyday dreary buildings. It's a regal looking thing. You can see the years in it and that gives you a sense of genuine appreciation. I'm a sucker for a nice looking structure and one there is by far the best.

We went to the museum, the one place I've been meaning to check out and it honestly didn't disappoint. The last time I went there was on a school outing so many, many years ago. It was cool then and about a hundred times better this time. When you're a lightie, everything is new and exciting. Your eyes go big and you marvel at the scary animals on display and get excited by it all and then finish it off by forgetting everything in a sugar induced coma. For me this time, it was exactly the same, bar the coma. I had to play it cool though because my dad was there. I didn't wanna be seen running around like this group of school kids we found in there but I swear if he wasn't there, I'd have been knee deep in the thick of things. I got to really appreciate it though. That place has been there forever. I remember I went there when we came down to Durban on holiday from Joburg. There's the big elephant head on the wall as you climb up the stairs and my dad was carrying me and like shoved me at it and I freaked my life out. It seemed real and I often thought it was. The fact that the municipality has keep it going, devoid of public funding in the form of ticket take-ins or anything is something to marvel at. I don't know if they've put in that many new displays, I couldn't quite remember so far back but for it to still be standing is something.

I know the museum isn't the coolest place for people, it probably isn't the coolest place I've ever been to. It seems an odd day out and a bit geeky but for this 20 year old kid right here, it was nirvana. There are a lot more places I wanna visit again in the city. I'm a little ashamed I've been sleeping on these true gems but if there's anything I have a lot of right now, it's time and the need to explore.