High life | 5 May 2016

 

 New York

I went downtown to Katz’s the other day and had a pastrami sandwich that made me want to shout. God, it’s good to be bad and eat bad, but not necessarily act bad. That’s the trouble nowadays. People take care of their health, eat properly, exercise obsessively, do mental gymnastics such as crossword puzzles, and then go out and act like slobs, use the F-word non-stop and talk with their mouths full. If I hear one more time that 60 is the new 40, I will punch the first octogenarian, male or female, who crosses my path. Some buffoon who recently took up tennis has written a book about how this might stop him from getting cancer. I said might, because the poor man doesn’t guarantee anything, especially being able to get down and scoop up a drop-shot. The drop-shot, incidentally, is the stroke most employed in veteran tennis. I gave up the game about five years ago because of arthritic ankles and back. Judo and karate I can practise without too much pain, but not tennis. Mind you, after reading about this man’s quest to become Federer in his mid-sixties, I think I might pick up a racket again. The trouble with tennis is that it’s a difficult game. If it’s windy it becomes really hard to enjoy. If one’s opponent has a clumsy sort of game, ditto. Veteran tennis is cagey and I always had trouble getting into the groove because oldies don’t provide the pace that is a prerequisite for a counter puncher like myself. The game at the highest level is now a bore: bang, bang, bang — and more bang. Unless they speed up the courts, which will encourage players to start crowding the net, the game has lost one veteran viewer, yours truly. Along with the EU and the UN, the most useless body of well-paid sycophants is the Tennis Integrity Unit, the anti-corruption body that has come under increased scrutiny this year on account of its ineffectiveness and obfuscation.