It's all about soul
I’m writing this in the bowels of Oxford’s New Theatre. It must have been a ‘new’ theatre once (the 20s, I reckon) but it’s now old and distinguished. These golden-age theatres are always the prettiest venues, but their wi-fi isn’t so good; I don’t know how people in the twenties managed with their daily blogs. The internet signal on my laptop is as weak as my pulse was this morning, after standing outside filming for two hours, in some of the coldest conditions I can remember since school rugby matches. The filming was one of the wacky ‘challenges’ for MW Kicks Off and it should have been fun, but by Ringo Starr, was it cold. I hope the 45 viewers appreciate it.
What with this and various professional disappointments which greeted me when I opened my inbox this morning, today has not been a day I will look back on with great fondness. But it’s often on such days that you have the best shows (release of pent-up energy, etc) and I am hopeful of such an outcome tonight.
Here’s a half-interesting question you might want to chew over:
As I mentioned, every time (like today) I find myself in particularly numbing, can’t-feel-fingers cold, I look back to being forced to play rugby or hockey at school. Despite being a lifelong lover of sport I’ve always, rather unfairly, been shit at playing it (apart from table football, where I’m a demon) and like other weedy kids, I used to resent being made to stand and shiver on these freezing muddy fields every Tuesday afternoon, in the hope of occasionally getting the ball so that some enormous boy who already shaved could steamroller me into the dirt.
What I disliked even more than the games themselves was everyone’s insistence that it would ‘do us good’ and ‘toughen us up’ and so on to trot around with a hockey stick till our hands were purple and too inert to put our shirts back on afterwards. Alongside the virtues of sport itself (which, needless to say, I do agree with in theory), one of the biggest arguments over the centuries for making kids play games on fucking-freezing-beyond-belief days is this ancient British idea of unpleasant experiences being ‘good for the soul’. Like a lot of quasi-religious ideas, this idea has lived on no matter what has happened to religion itself.
But the thing is, these days when I’m miserable and cold and wet, I automatically think back to those Tuesdays when I was twelve and weighed about two stone and was blown about like a leaf in a gale, and had to get my mate Tom to pull off one of my rugby boots because I couldn’t hold onto it properly because my fingers work, and think ‘well, things aren’t as bad as THAT’. And in general it’s true that I get through most of life’s trials by thinking of a worse trial in the past (worried about missing train? Remember when Emily fell off that quad bike and you thought she might be dead for a few moments? Bristol City in poor form? Remember when they were SO poor you feared they might go out of business? Etc).
So… in a weird way it’s true that the dismal experiences of my school sports years have toughened me up and made me more resilient, or at least, more optimistic in the face of cold. So, er, does that mean it was true after all and everyone SHOULD be forced to play games they’re ill-suited to at school, and get as cold as necessary, because they’ll be better-rounded adults with a healthy sense of perspective? Or is that all bollocks and we should be finding ways to produce strong adults that don’t involve freezing the knackers/tits off them once a week for five years?
What do you think? You may address the question specifically (school sports) or more generally (is suffering good for the ‘soul’) or you may now go to a different website.
Posted by Meg on November 24, 2010
Just found this BBC article about PE in schools: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11814633
Posted by Rachel Winter on November 19, 2010
Sorry to hear you had disappointments this morning.
Hmm I’m torn on this ‘what doesn’t kill us’ etc.
I’m not sure being made to do cross country running despite having asthma has made be a better or more resilient person in later life.
But then I have never been very good at the ‘it’s not so bad’ mentality that you sound really good at. Afraid if I’m fed up, I’m fed up! (You would know this if you’d seen my face during my energy slump at your last 24 hour show. I mean – no coffee in the venue!).
But specifically to the cross country running, an hour in the library would have been a much better way for me to spend the time.
Posted by Meg on November 18, 2010
My school specialises in sport which basically means the school gets to show off about being a ‘sports college’ and we get a few more pieces of equipment. I’ve always hated PE and my parents have never really minded because they hate sports in general. I like playing things like football, rugby, badminton and tennis but I do not like being forced to play with people who sneer at my lack of sporting ability and make comments about my weight (I’m not fat but I’m not as thin as most of the girls in my year…. which is extremely thin). I want to be able to enjoy sport and I reckon I would do a lot more exercise if someone would play with me.
Sadly girls at my school don’t do proper sports anymore. We do stupid things like aerobics, cheerleading and street dance because my school thinks girls don’t want to get muddy. To be honest, I’d rather get muddy and have fun than spend an hour being taught an obscenely tedious cheerleading routine. But at least it means we don’t have to stand around in the cold.
I had a terrific time seeing you in Oxford last night, Mark. Thank you so much for signing my book and the photo and everything. Kate from Blackpool (was she really from Blackpool??) made things slightly awkward for a few minutes but it was so funny! I hope you enjoyed it. My plans to get to Warwick tomorrow have been thwarted so now trying to come to one of your shows in February
x
Posted by Anji on November 18, 2010
Done. :0
Posted by Clembear on November 18, 2010
In the UK, many of my teachers didn’t actually teach sports or how to improve, they just worked with the already skilled. Some other teachers were quite good though. This is in total contrast to sport in the US, where I was actually taught, not just the rules but lots and lots of practice. I was also graded on both how hard I tried and how good I was. Y’know – actual teaching. That would help.
Its a real shame – girls in particular often stop playing any sort of sport around 12 and then only view exercise in terms of going to the gym or through the frame of weight loss. Its really sad. Sport’s great, but like any other skill, you need to practice and learn. Imagine if we only encouraged reading in those who grasped it quickly.
I’m unconvinced that suffering is good for people – generally avoiding suffering feels like a good plan. Pain isn’t good, its a signal to tell you to change. Sometimes you have to bear it, and push on but in general pain is a sign that something is wrong and needs attention. I think “putting up with it” can go a bit odd, like the stylites and Calvinism. Coping is a good skill to learn but should only be deployed short term.
Posted by DiB (Sue) on November 18, 2010
Life can throw you enough curve balls without involving literal ones. Not a sports fan. At all.
Posted by Jon on November 18, 2010
So who is bidding for Mark’s signed Pudsey Bear on eBay!?
Posted by Tom Beasley on November 18, 2010
I was at the New Theatre in Oxford recently on the opening night of John Barrowman’s tour. It is a really lovely venue.
I’m not sure about school sports. I always broadly disliked PE, although I was well up for anything indoors, which probably explains why table tennis is the one sport I’ve ever really taken to. I mean, football is good fun, but I was never good enough at it to enjoy being out in the bitter cold playing it.
Most outdoor sports, particularly those involving mud, I despise totally. Rugby was a horrific experience.
Posted by Glamlovinkitty on November 18, 2010
I would try every excuse known to man/woman to get out of PE. I didn’t mind it at primary school as it was generally just fannying about. But in secondary school I became self-conscious and was utterly shit at sports. I loathed it, and don’t feel it’s done me any good – I’m still self-conscious now, more than 25 years later…and I still detest all sport.
When I’m going through something tiresome, I think of something I heard Nikki Sixx (the hot one out of Motley Crue even though he’s about 50 now) say – he said (I’m paraphrasing) that however shit a time you’re having, there’s someone lying in a hospital somewhere wishing they could be in your shoes.
Wise words from a dude who’s died at least twice.
Posted by Tracey on November 18, 2010
Hi Mark. School sports can be summed up in one word as far as I’m concerned – yuk. That said, I was in the school netball team – mainly because I was tall and could be useful either scoring or preventing others from scoring goals. I also did the high jump on school sports day but they were the only two things I was any good at. I remember the sea of mud that was the hockey pitch with something approaching horror but gym was worse. God knows what they thought virtually hanging yourself at the top of a rope or climbing up very high wall bars would prepare you for!My daughter felt exactly the same when she was at school, although they could give up sports in fourth year if they wished so she wasted no time in doing so. Personally, I don’t find it at all character building unless you’re extrememly good at it, which is true of any situation I suppose. Have a great day, Tracey x
Posted by Irwin on November 18, 2010
Weird. I’ve just been thinking about this sort of thing.
Also the fact that, like you, I love pretty much all sport and yet have the misfortune to be terrible at all of them.
I don’t think it can be healthy standing in the freezing cold. It was alright when we played football because I had a small amount of talent I could bring to the table there. I played like a faded pro in a charity match, lazily sauntering around the pitch and then occasionally producing a quick flash of skill that impressed everyone slightly…
I’m kind of glad we have to experience such terrible freezing conditions at school. I think it’s good for the soul in the sense that it gives us all a shared collective experience. Apart from the strong good looking kids who were too busy being awesome to acknowledge the cold weather.
Posted by Rachael on November 18, 2010
I think it quite easy to say, years later, that these awful experiences did you good in the end but given the choice to go back, knowing that it might do us some good eventually, would we go through it all again? I certainly wouldn’t!
I think a part of me always thinks that when I have a bad day it is going to make me better in the end, but maybe thats just the relief that its over and I can forget about it now.
Posted by Tibbs on November 18, 2010
They never made us play spots in the cold; we were only outside in the summer. I do not feel that my soul has suffered as a consequence.
Posted by Matthew on November 18, 2010
I think mild trials are good, life isn’t straightforward and realising sometimes you need to stand outside in the rain isn’t harmful.
Generally however, school sports is very competitive and puts lots of people off exercise for life. I am not arguing we should have a non-competitive ethos to sport in school, life is often a competition and to teach children any different is to mislead them but in school this is amplified a hundred times and puts many people off exercise or the idea of doing sport for fun for life, just because they are not good at it. The most fun I ever had in sport was in a hockey team at uni that never won a match, and I have really good memories of that, unlike being in sports in school. I think there are too many adults out there not doing sport/exercise now, because of their bad experiences as a child – and that is bad for them as individuals and us as a society.
On the more general idea of “bad breeding good” I think we have to be careful. It’s well known that psychological trauma causes serious long term repercussions – also what is psychological trauma varies massively from person to person. Some people cope with incredibly negative experiences very well, others cope poorly with less objectively serious experiences.
I think in general the idea of using unpleasant experiences as character building artificially is dangerous, and risks causing problems especially for the more fragile. And generally, I think teenagers are more emotionally fragile than we perhaps give them credit for. This is a personal opinion, and I am sure there are many people who would disagree with me. Some of them are probably PE teachers.
Posted by Rachel/Pandora on November 17, 2010
I always liked school sports. My main memories from it is having a laugh and playing matches against other local schools, rather than being really cold. I spose it helped that my Dad was a PE teacher at my school, so I got on well with all the staff.
I think occasional suffering may end up to be a positive thing. Getting knocked back every now and then might help increase your determination to continue.I think there’s probably a better way to help people gain perspective or develop character than PE though, because it seems a shame to put a lot of people off sport or exercise when they’re a bit older.
Posted by A lot of Rach[a]els on November 17, 2010
My school were weak with PE. I don’t remember doing it outside all too often in the winter except for cross-country, which I only remember doing twice (I won it the 2nd time because a dog started to smell me).
And towards the end of secondary school we weren’t made to do PE at all, we’d get changed and sit and chat for the hour.
Posted by Anji on November 17, 2010
Hmmm, looking back school sports usually ended up with me being injured. A story for life? Seemingly so. If only I’d known that!
On the upside, always having an injury, having to recover, and get back in the game ( so to speak) has taught me that it’s possible to still
achieve even if it does take you longer and you go slightly off course to get there.
Life is about learning right? I don’t regret anything I’ve been through, however rough it’s been, it’s taught me something, about myself, others, whatever.
So yeah, past experiences, suffering, joyus moments, they’re all learning curves.
Posted by Kathryn on November 17, 2010
PE in the cold simply revealed my inner masochism. I deliberately chose not to wear a jumper when it snowed. It was also frustrating because I was incredibly competitive but generally rubbish at everything. Thankfully after a while the PE department responded to our apathy with their own and just told us to play rounders every week for about 3 years.
I do agree that this form of suffering makes you stronger. I did a Duke of Ed expedition a few years ago- three days of walking through horrible mud and rain and wind over 30 miles of mountains with a massive rucksack. I didn’t do any training for it, or any sort of physical activity at all beforehand, and it was horrid. But I got through it. And I’m never doing anything like it again.
Posted by Misha on November 17, 2010
Oh P.E. My presiding memories of it were being (as you have mentioned) too cold to dress myself again afterwards. It’s no mean feat trying to do up a shirt and tie when you can’t feel anything below the elbows. Usually the two girls who’d remembered gloves were called on to help the rest of us redress ourselves. (Down boys!) Worst of all was being forced into the shower, we girls got lucky and had cubicles with curtains, which meant you could avoid showing anything with a bit of creative towel holding. The poor boys didn’t.
I think P.E. in the cold is, if nothing else, a formative experience. Standing out on the netball courts in a skirt and a polo shirt in october (because we weren’t allowed to put joggers on under the skirts til november) and praying to high hell that no-one passed the ball to you because your hands were so numb it hurt. I can only be thankful that we, as females at an old fashioned school, were spared rugby. Conversely I think i’d have been quite good at it though, being bigger and heavier than almost all the girls pretty much for the entirety of my P.E. days.
It’s one of those things that makes sense, you get a certain sense of perspective, but you could also spend those 2 hours watching harrowing charity videos I think. I’m just not a sporting person.
Posted by Someone on November 17, 2010
I think everyone needs a happy thought, to make you remember and smile at, and an unhappy though, of which to compare life to, and again smile. I used to call upon my happy thought years ago working at somerfield – which I hated with a passion. I used to walk down the corridor on my way to the shop floor with my hands in my pockets thinking “I’m Vince Noir, rock and roll star!”(leaving aside the gender difference. I mean, he us practically a girl.) anyway, point is, my unhappy thought is school. Most parts of school, but p.e was particularly traumatic I suppose. But I think it is, in hindsight, useful, because life very often is not as bad as back in them days. At least for some of us. It made me stronger, I have to admit. Though if you sent me back there to do it all again I’m afraid I would skip school like my life depended on it. But that’s what we learn! We grow in our strength of mind. Use the bad to nurture good.
I liked this post a lot. You’re right: your pent-up energy has produced funny insight. Which is what you’re for!
Posted by Mariam on November 17, 2010
P.E. at my school meant the girls split up into different groups. You had the willing sporty girls, the non-willing sporty girls, and the non-willing, non-sporty girls, like me. And then for two hours a week I would be repeatedly kicked, elbowed, and pushed over– all in the name of non-contact sport. Yes, you read that correctly. Non-contact sport. I grew up in North East London and it was rough as shit. There’s a reason they never taught us rugby.
I have a distinct memory of being put on the opposite team to my best friends during a game of dodgeball, and discussing in what order we were each going to try and put the other out of our collective misery.
Do I feel like I’m a better person because of those times? No. But I do know how it feels to be hit square in the face with a tennis ball from three feet away.
Posted by Phill on November 17, 2010
Heh… interesting. I played rugby at school because I was forced to. I was one of the weediest kids in my class (sounds like we were quite similar in that respect) and hated every minute of it. But in retrospect perhaps it wasn’t a bad thing because it taught me that in life, to quote the Stones, you can’t always get what you want. (Or, to put it more accurately, get out of what you don’t want).
That said, schools are pretty unforgiving places and I think I probably would have learned that anyway even if I didn’t have to play rugby.
I do think that suffering produces character, but that said I don’t think we should intentionally put ourselves through suffering in order to produce those good effects. There’s a balance to be had: unavoidable suffering you have to take with the right attitude, whereas stuff which is probably unnecessary (such as the rugby)… can be left out.
Just my two pence anyway!
Posted by Iona on November 17, 2010
I hated sport. We had to do a 5 minute run in the freezing cold before every PE lesson. I felt like my lungs were about to explode. I don’t think that improved me as a human being.
But at least I’m not throwing up like I was last night 
so some suffering makes me feel better now.
Although some suffering can be good. For example today I am ill so missed school (fine) and a gig in London, tickets to which my friend bought me for my birthday (to see stornoway, a really good band).
Posted by isabelle on November 17, 2010
School sports were good for me, the problem wasn’t the weather, it was not being a guy. The best years were when there were only 3 guys in my gym class so I was now allowed to touch the ball for more than two seconds every class.
I live in Canada, I remember once playing football while it was snowing. That was a wonderful day. I’m one of those freaks who really enjoys the cold.
Posted by Alex on November 17, 2010
School sports made me self-conscious, not resilient. Being an ‘early-developer’ didn’t help, as it meant I was about 3 times fatter than everyone else (although, looking back, not actually fat), which was only exaggerated by wearing a polo shirt and PE shorts. The competitiveness stopped it being fun, because I was clearly never going to win. And now I hate exercising.
I appreciate that I may have ended up hating exercising anyway, but I don’t really think PE lessons helped. Personally, hockey was always the most horrendous. I didn’t even know it was possible to be that shit at something.
Posted by Natalie-Helen on November 17, 2010
At the end of the day I always find no matter how bad it has been at least I’m not dead.
Slightly morbid and pessimistic version of what I think you’re describing.
I hated games too, alot to do with the people we were forced to play it with. People don’t believe me when I describ how horrible my PE lessons were (think broken fingers on a regular basis, inflicted by supposed team members). Came away after one hockey game with purple bruises all up my legs because some people thought hockey meant hitting other people with sticks.
Now when I go swimming I’m just grateful there is no one else there. Not sure thats quite what they were trying to instill.
I do think a little bit of suffereing is good because it sort of toughens you up and rubs your corners off. Makes you a little more well rounder and able to empathise with others. Plus th outside world is not that nice so it helps to know that asap.
^_^
Posted by h2osarah on November 17, 2010
I don’t think I am qualified to comment cos I always enjoyed school sports. The only time I hated gym class was when we were forced to run. And I don’t think it made me stronger. I had shin splints, and to this day, running is my least favourite form of exercise. But the other sports were great fun, even if it was cold.
Posted by lisan66 on November 17, 2010
I think that the school sports thing in general is kind of not good for you in the long run. I agree that exercise is healthy and all, but if you’re a person who feels humiliated etc when playing sport, I don’t think it’s right to be made play with people who play on football/rugby/etc teams. I went to an all girls school, so a lot of the time, PE for us was a game of dodgeball which wasn’t actually that bad, but when we’d have to play soccer or hockey it generally resulted in all the sporty girls forming one team, and then the other team inevitably faked period pain so that they wouldn’t have to play against the athletic people.