Monday, 28 April 2025

Things not as they should be

I’ve been a boxing fan for years, despite or maybe because I have precisely none of the attributes required to enter a boxing ring.  In recent times my allergy to cliché means I find the pre fight hype and antics of the boxers a total turn off.  The same pantomime has been going on for decades, its just boring, stop.  Everything I despise was on display in the weeks prior to the Benn vs Eubank fight but this wasn’t what got me chuntering.  Nor was it the totally fake rivalry manufactured around the fact that their brilliant fathers had a couple of tear ups thirty years ago.  The problem is the two should never have shared a competitive ring in the first place; one has fought at super middleweight and the other started off as a light welter.  If both were at their preferred weights there would be twenty one pounds difference.  So to make this fight viable the weight was set for 160 pounds with rehydration clauses that meant neither man could enter the ring in peak condition and any advantage the bigger man may have would be nullified.  In a notoriously brutal and potentially lethal sport this can’t be right but if there’s money to be made then corners will be cut until somebody gets badly hurt.  I didn’t see the fight but heard it was a good one with both boxers showing class in the fight and after and it was nice to see their dads embrace.  The weight drained winner spent twenty four hours in hospital and I hope there isn’t a rematch.


Resolution by Irvine Welsh

I love Irvine Welsh and will always read whatever he writes but honestly Ray Lennox is not a character I warm to.  I liked ‘Crime’ but ‘Long Knives’ less so and this is just more of the same.  The plot is hard to follow at times and the writing isn’t always up to this author’s usual standard, a bit lazy if anything?  The social comment (with which I strongly agree) seems a bit contrived when it appears.  But as ever there is plenty I do like, the dialogue is great, there is darkness and humour, when things speed up I couldn’t resist the reading and the conclusion is satisfying.  But what this book didn’t do, (like its predecessor) was suspend my disbelief.


A treasured friend left us this week, we will remember her laughing loud and dancing without a care.  This song is for her.