Post by Marcus Hake

While in the gym recently, one of the many tellies was showing the tennis. The subtitles were on, as is usual for the gym. I was giving it my very much divided attention, but serendipitously was looking at the screen at the moment that the commentator was saying the name of one of the players: Juan Manuel Cerúndolo, the Argentine world #42, no less. Did the automated (they'd probably call it AI these days) subtitling bot correctly render his name? Of course not, otherwise this wouldn't be a very interesting post. It assigned him the conjure-worthy name of One Man Rail Cylinder. There's absolutely no way this will ever leave me. Why did I have to be looking at the screen during that tiny slice of time? I will now never not know this bloke as One Man Rail Cylinder. Similarly, I once heard Peter Alliss call the Belgian golfer Thomas Pieters 'old stoat face'. I can't imagine he did it more than once, because that would have gone beyond whimsy into borderline victimisation. Even the BBC wouldn't have allowed that. But now he'll always be Old Stoat Face to me. That sounds like a country and western song. Perhaps Taylor Swift walked up the aisle to it earlier... And an overheard phone conversation at work, years ago - one of the facilties guys, it was. He picked up the phone and said 'hello, who's that? Is that Ricky the Touch?' That day is at least as important to me as the days my children were born. I still want to meet Ricky the Touch more than, say, Neil Young or John Cleese or Garry Sobers. Makes for interesting reactions when I answer the 'dream dinner party' question. Well, don't ask such banal questions then. You think it's fun being you? Try being me for a while.