Last week rain, this week snow. There is nothing happening with the veggie beds, and on the livestock front it’ll be chooks, chooks, chooks shortly, with the Peebles Poultry Show coming up.
We’ll be selecting, carefully washing and grading our entries for the eggs classes.
And you’ll hear about it. Oh, yes sir-ee.
Until then, I’m afraid it’s another random subject. Snow. Very timely, as the Sochi Winter Olympics have just started. I will refrain from any political or moral comments about what have become tagged in the media ‘the controversial Sochi games’, and instead make just one light-hearted comment about snowboarding.
As those of my few readers who are not middle-aged (and as I have so few readers, that really cuts the numbers right down) will know, snowboarding has its own language which only people under 25 – or those older but tragically still trying to be hip (like me) – understand.
Not only do they have their own language, but they have their own young-person way of doing things. Now I know that snowboarding is very tiring, as is skiing, but you don’t see skiiers sitting down for a breather half-way down this hill. This may be due to the fact that for most mortals, it is darn-near impossible to get up back on to your skiis once you are on the ground. Or it may be that (devil’s advocate, me) skiing demands real skill, fitness and stamina and, as I say, snowboading is mainly practised by yoofs. And, as many of us oldies will have observed, yoofs have no stamina or staying power, so they have to keep sitting down and taking it easy.
I also have no fear of being Twitted or Tweeted (or whatever) about by snowboarding yoofs, as I am pretty certain none of them will be reading this, as they don’t actually read stuff (printed or online). They just Twit and Faceache other yoofs about yoof stuff like spots.
Anyhoo, I took the Young Master and Young Mistress up to Hillend in Embra last Saturday for a blow on the hill and their first skiing lesson. It turned out to be the same day Billy Morgan and another young chappie who was about 12 were bidding for gongs in the first-ever Olympic snowboarding slopestyle competition. Great excitement.
We even tuned in to crackly, old-fashioned AM radio (what dinosaurs we are) to try and find out what was happening to them in Homophobia. Erm, I mean Russia.
I didn’t have to be a yoof to appreciate the blunder the BBC made whilst interviewing young Mr Morgan. I may be an oldie, but even I know what snowboard slang like ‘stoked’ and ‘rad’ and ‘gnarly’ mean.
Apparently, the BBC hastily cut away from the interview with Billy as, when asked about his approach to a run, he said: “I just thought, huck it!” It even issued an apology.
To ‘huck’ is to go all out, with little regard to personal safety.
Embarrassing, BBC dudes.