"When I heard the terrible news that George Best had passed away I cried and cried and cried. I cried and cried more than I have ever cried in my whole life.
I cried and cried and cried because more than anyone else I have never met George Best represented something important. Important to me.As a schoolboy huddled on the grainy, black and white football terraces of the past, his dazzling football skills opened my says to a Technicolor world that was limitless and free and beautiful. A world that was limitless. A world that was free. And, yes, a world that was beautiful.
George Best was all those things and more. He was limitless. He was free. And, yes, he was beautiful. Before George the Saturday afternoon football match was a dismal, grey experience. Drab grey men would pass a lumpy grey leather ball to each other on a cold, churned up, muddy, grey bomb site whilst the crowd of black and white, grey men in dull, flat, lumpy, grey caps smoked Woodbines, yawned and looked at their feet.
When George appeared on the scene it was like being struck by lightning, sticking your fingers in a socket and being struck by some more lightning all rolled into one. It felt like seeing Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Elvis Presley all rolled into one. Every time he touched the ball he literally defied the laws of gravity. I can still recall the trill of seeing him on the news yesterday doing things with a football that no-on else on earth would ever have attempted, let alone tried.
With every effortless kick, he taught us more about wisdom than ten Confuciusses. With every graceful swerve around a defender he taught us more about freedom than a hundred Mandellas. With every sublime header, he taught us more about artistry than a thousand Michelangelos. With every picturesque indirect free kick, he taught us more about beauty than a million Marilyn Monroes.
By any measure you care to choose George Best was the most perfect and flawless human being who ever lived.
And yet, he wasn't perfect. Far from it. Like all of us he had his flaws"
... and so it goes on. I found this in a comic book that I have. Viz, and it's written under a byline of Tony Parsehole.
I found it humorous and I wonder if it's a template for any near future obituaries that we're about too see, and if it had been used as and previous ones.
I'm not big on forced faux grief. On forced empathy and sympathy, of forced and faux mourning, If you're affected be affected, don't try to get me to join in with that, it's not going to happen.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/boxing/tony-parsons-on-muhammad-ali-the-greatest-1594714
ReplyDeleteYou need to read the above if you have never read any real life Tony Parsons drivel. He's only very slightly more literate than his ex-wife, Julie Burchill.
The Viz is more like Tony Parsons than Tony Parsons is. He really is a total Parsehole.
It a style of prose that's unique, and side by side you'd be pushed to spot the difference, short clippy sentances that need almost exclamation points.
ReplyDeleteA style of a man focussed.
Like no other, a man with a mission, a goal, achiveable only to a few.
I could go on, but there would be no point, a point that could not be made, for it can't be made.
A true gem, a living treasure.