UP until recently a GAA pitch had more lines on it than Gordon Ramsay’s bake. You’d have thought that any sport played on a surface that includes a large and small parallelogram as well as a hefty array of standard straight lines would think twice about adding to the mix. But it’s the GAA. The simple and obvious is never an option.
Without going too deeply into the range of new rules that have seen pencils bitten to a stub on sportsdesks from Derry to Dublin, there’s now a large semi-circle above the existing semi-circle on the 20-metre line and any shot which dissects the posts from outside this new semi-circle is worth two points instead of one.
Squinter tried explaining the rules of football and the pitch markings to his Portuguese son-in-law during a big Championship game a few years ago, and while the lad gamely stayed on board for the explanation of the basic carry, pass and score rules, when Squinter started addressing the lines and boxes, his eyes suggested was pining for the sun-soaked soccer pitches of the Atlantic Oeste.
Throw in the fact that Squinter himself wasn’t 100 per cent on some of the information he was dispensing about the laws and the markings, and it’s clear that rather a large bucket of caution was required before deciding to get out another bucket of paint.
HERE'S a gift card Squinter got for Crimbo. There’s forty quid on it and Squinter has tried without success a few times to buy stuff in one of the 125 shops and restaur-ants in which the card is accepted.
Well, obviously Squinter hasn’t tried to buy stuff in a restaurant because that’s not how restaurants work, but he has tried on the occasional shirt and an odd pair of trousers without making a decision to purchase.
Saturday was different. Squinter saw and liked a couple of shirts in a sale which the card would have covered with the addition of a few extra quid. So off to the till he went, in a shop over whose name we will draw a kindly veil of silence, for reasons that should become clear.
The young woman swiped the card in the reader, paused and then swiped it again. Then she examined the back of the card for 10 or 15 seconds before informing Squinter that he couldn’t use the card in the shop. Why not?, asked Squinter – the shop’s logo is there on the front as clear as day. Yes, she came back, but this card is for online shopping only. Squinter furrowed his brow and looked sad and confused, as he supposes all male shoppers of a certain age must look to a young woman.
And so, in an attempt no doubt to ease his discomfiture, she told him that this happens all the time. In fact, she added, she hasn’t a clue why they sell hard-copy gift cards for online shopping. What’s the point?, she wondered aloud. All that happens is that people like you come in and spend time buying stuff and queuing, only to find that their time’s been cruelly wasted.
Then she turned over the card to show Squinter the relevant line in tiny text: ‘This card cannot be used directly in restaurants or shops.’
So here’s what happened: Somebody bought the gift card in a shop. Nobody in the shop told her that it couldn’t be used in shops. Then that somebody brought it home, put it in a card and gave it to Squinter on Christmas morning. Squinter took it out with him, spent the designated amount and brought card and items at the till. Only to be told to go away,
Nicely.
Which begs the question? What’s the gift card for? Who needs a hologrammed piece of cardboard for a cash gift that can be sent via email or text? And who needs to spend 40 minutes in a shop and five minutes in a queue only to the told your present’s in cyberspace?
Is it lines or detention for education bosses?
THE Department of Education made a decision to give a state school in Derry a quarter of a million quid for a new football pitch because the old one was unusable for health and safety reasons.
Or at least, that’s what the Education Authority told Garrett Hargan of the Belfast Telegraph deep into Friday night when most people were three or four cans or glasses in and getting ready to hit the hay. The EA was responding to Garrett’s eyebrow-raising story about the school being given the money for a new pitch without even having asked for it. This while other schools in Derry – and more widely across the North – were being turned down for urgently-needed works.
But then a strange thing happened. The EA – on receipt of receipts – decided to mark its Late Late Friday essay and ended up giving itself an F. Because the pitch wasn’t, as the EA had told us, surrounded by black and yellow warning tape marked ‘Keep Out – Danger of Death!’ It wasn’t protected by security fencing with guards and dogs patrolling the perimeter in order to ensure that no-one was killed or injured on it. In fact, the pitch is in full and happy use – a regular community hub, going by the reports in print and online.
So what are we looking at here?
Well, quite simply, the people in charge of education allocated a large sum of money to a school for a new pitch either i) without knowing the condition of the pitch to be replaced or ii) knowing that the pitch was usable but telling us otherwise. It’s something of an understatement to point out that neither of these contingencies reflects particularly well on the people involved.
While it would hardly be the first time politicians and their civil servants have known one thing but said another, it continues to be the case that this is not the way to do public service. But the more benign explanation is actually the more damning – if the money was allocated without knowledge of the condition of the facility it’s to be spent on ‘fixing’, what would that tell us?
Well, it would tell us that the children and teachers these people are in charge of could tell them a bit about the importance of homework; and it would tell us that the people involved haven’t been paying attention in Due Diligence class.
