FIFA bribery - where's mine? (June 10)

DIARY

Hookers can fish, play rugby, or otherwise

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            There are those who think wild animals are stupid. Them as does that, they can’t be too bright theirselves.

            A case in point, as the saying goes: This morning about 5:00 I was awakened by the clattering of a woodpecker’s beak against the tin roof of the outhouse across the road. (Did I get enough prepositions in that sentence?) After a few curses, I turned over and tried to go back to sleep and then I realized something.

            That woodpecker, who was letting all the girls know he was available, was signalling in Morse Code!

            It had been many a year since I used Morse Code. I learned it in 1973 and 1974, first in a government classroom in Ottawa, and then working in the radio room at Alert, NWT (now Nunavut) where we weather guys and radio operators had to communicate with jet overflights going to Europe on the Polar Route and with our own Air Force pilots.

            Back to 2015, I knew it was Morse Code and my ancient mind took me back to the days when I was tapping keys at Alert. “H-e-l-l-o,” the woodpecker tapped. “Do you come here often? What’s your sign? Want to come over and see my etchings?”

            From farther down in the woods came tapping from what was clearly a female woodpecker: “Hi there, sailor. Wanna buy a girl a drink?”

            It got a little more personal after that, but let’s suffice to say that they went away somewhere for a while after he tapped: “Your place or mine?” and she said: “Surprise me, big guy. Got any chilled white wine?”

            I know a lot of people are not going to believe that actually happened, but you can trust me. You know you can. I wouldn’t lie to you.

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            Speaking of honesty, the organization called FIFA, which is in charge of professional soccer around the world – including Canada – is under attack because its officials are thought to have taken bribes.

            First of all, I disagree with the word ‘bribes’. I prefer ‘remuneration enhancement’. Second, why would anyone think these people are taking bribes or RE?

Some would call it a ‘no-brainer’. The country of Qatar, whose average temperature in June is about 45ºC – the melting point of cellphones – won the bid for the 2022 World Cup. Does anybody in his right mind really believe this could have happened without a vast amount of ‘baksheesh’ (as they say over there) changing hands?

            We’ll say that a soccer team from Iceland gets off the plane in late May 2022 and the players all take a deep breath. Then they would climb (crawl) back up the steps and head back to Reykjavik. Better to fall into a volcano; it would be cooler.

            There is no possible way that bribeless FIFA officials would have voted to have the World Cup in Qatar where they use microwaves to cool down food.

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            One of the many hundreds, probably thousands, of books I have lying all over the house is published by the Rodale Company. It’s called ‘Hints and tips for making things work better’. It’s one of those self-help books that we all read and then discard.

            When I picked up that book that was lying on the floor under my easy chair, I didn’t look at the title. Scanning to see what sort of thing I could find, I opened it up to page 130.

            The title of the first article I looked at was “Making a stripper work harder”. That caught my eye for some reason. I read on, past the title. For crying out loud, they were talking about removing old paint from a chair! I had thought…well, you don’t need to know what I thought.

            A similar thing happened only a few days earlier and, indeed, from the same spot. I was sitting in that favourite chair and dozing while a rugby game was on one of the Sportsnet channels. I perked up when I heard the announcer say: “J. B. McClennan is going to be the hooker today.” I woke up, as much as I ever do, and wondered how such a person as I was thinking of had managed to get onto a rugby field during a game. Then I remembered the old saying: “Boys will be boys”.

            It turned out that a hooker, in rugby, is a forward, and usually wears number 9. It reminded me of that time in Campbell River, BC, when a group of young ladies with numbered jerseys came into a party I was attending on behalf of my church group.

            But…we’ll save that story for another day. Hint: It didn’t end well.

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