We have been hiding from the rain by staying indoors watching the snow. Rain hats and wet wellies are stacked up by the radiators. The puffer coat now lives in the tumble dryer and has puffed up to twice its size.
We sit by the electric fire eating 80 per cent chocolate and, though fascinated by the snowboarders and rifle-firing cross-country skiers, we wonder out loud who these people ARE and what makes them risk life and limb to fly on fibreglass foot extensions over a curved crest into a void higher than two London buses, then turn eight varied kinds of somersaults before landing with their knees bent in a way that, mysteriously to us mere mortals, loses them points.
In my 79 and three-quarter years I have never met such a person. I think my genes contain not one iota of athleticism. It is not because my DNA is 80 per cent Ashkenazi Jew, because so is my brother’s and he played rugby until he was 45 and his nose had no other places worth breaking. My son, similarly, had a ball attached by friction to his foot and his son, my grandson, captains both the rugby and football at his primary school and is rarely seen without a number on his back.
There have been Jewish boxers, Daniel Mendoza, ‘’The Star of Israel”, being the most famous – it was a fast way out of the sweatshop, like showbusiness, and naturally, being a creative as well as an athlete, he went on to write two definitive books on the subject. There has been the odd footballer, but where are the polo players, and darts players, the figure- skating champions and people whose idea of a good day out is lying face down on a tea tray, going 80 miles an hour down a perpendicular sheet of ice?
One would expect snooker champions by the score, certainly from my neck of the woods. My father played at his club in Hull at every possible opportunity. In fact, one famous family story relates how, in the early days of their marriage, he left my mother sitting in the cinema because he was bored by what he called “a woman’s film” (ie no stage coaches, Stetsons or whinnying).
After the film she waited for him to pick her up but he never showed up. She went to one of Hull’s iconic cream and green telephone boxes and rang their home. No reply. Finally, she got through to his mother’s house and found him surprised to hear from her. He had won a few games, completely forgotten he was married, and gone home to his mother.
Of course, football management is very much part of the Jewish genre and let us never forget Holocaust survivor Béla Guttman, who dodged death by hiding for months in an attic near Budapest, and escaped from a slave labour camp having lost his sister and parents to the slaughter; then as he lifted the European Cup as coach of Benfica for two successive years became the most decorated football coach of his era.
It was the single greatest comeback in football history. His amazing journey is told in the book The Greatest Comeback by David Bolchover (shortlisted for 2017’s William Hill Sports Book of the Year) and I can only quote my husband as saying it is a truly unforgettable read.
I think my own failure to compete was because my brother was so much better than me at everything, arguably, with the exception of my Eartha Kitt impersonation – or as he called it, my showing off – so I opted out. Also, my parents were very timid about anything involving risk. So if I bounded up the stairs, my father shouted;
‘’Mammele – go pamelech!’’
I guess it meant slowly. Because, in his mind, if I bounded up the stairs I would surely trip over, take out my two front teeth and punct – no one would marry me. The same applied to rollerskates or, G-D forbid, ice skates. It is hard to believe that they let me cycle six miles to my secondary school without hiring someone to drive alongside me at six miles an hour with a megaphone. Only swimming and table tennis passed muster as sports for girls in our neck of the woods, but one made your perm stink and the other ensured certain defeat by your pesky brother with his fat new Japanese sponge bat.
Back to the drawing board… and ha ha, big brother, at least drawing was something I could do with ease…easel even.
So, through the female line my daughter, granddaughter and I are just astonished when we can walk to a pastry shop without falling over. We can’t really run at all – no, seriously I can run about four metres before I’m panting and bent over sideways, clutching at things.
Amy, my daughter, tries but, honestly, when she runs for a bus – and I would say it to her back –- she resembles an Egyptian duck. My granddaughter cites cross-country runs as her bête-noir but that is because it stops her from sprouting her favourite subject, philosophy, ten to the dozen when her friends want to talk about Harry Styles.
Things are different today when women of all ages are hurtling to the gym or Reformer Pilates every other day. This is a wellness issue and indicates that they fear putting on a spare kilo. Our mothers never stooped so low as to waste precious time on themselves. The idea of my mother wearing Lycra and getting into a downwards-facing dog is risible. And yet she and her friends were not overweight or obsessed by slimming. Indeed, they didn’t have to diet because they did housework for a couple of hours a day and went dancing. Housework takes stones off you. Or so I’ve heard. …
Hoovering a staircase, climbing up to put towels away in a cupboard, polishing mahogany tallboys, rubbing silverware till it shines, hanging up sheets and eiderdowns on a line with a “prop” to lug in and out. Then off to the shops for the fish and lugging the potatoes and sprouts home and then pounding the pie dough and standing sweating over the ironing for hours. There was no time to put on weight.
Of course, the underpinning our mothers wore was a great concealer. There was a deep-line bra and a high-line “Roll-on”, or corset, often boned and a long line vest and suspenders and stockings and big pants in Directoire pink – I mean, who could see if they were chunky, plump or just shrink-wrapped like a roll of worscht.
Well, it’s all over now bar the shouting and dear old Clare Balding can push back her fringe and start boning up on the Fifa Club World Cup, World Aquatics and the Best of 200 Breeds at Crufts. Meanwhile, David and I will take a stately car drive next week to Kings Place for Jewish Book Week where, along with Rob Rinder, Allan Corduner and Toni Kanal, we shall be sitting comfortably to bring you the far-from-sedentary life of the great Mel Brooks. See you there, sport.
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