Here’s a little ice-breaker. Curling is Cool. Not the hair or eyelash kind (though, yes, it makes you look prettier sometimes)… I mean the large rock sliding and ice-sweeping kind.
At least, that’s what Curling is Cool Day is about, an old Scottish game that’s a Canadian favourite at the Winter Olympics, and also right up there amongst Bruce Springsteen and George Clooney’s top-watched sports. Tentatively linked by closeness of spelling and Gaelic beginnings, any time I mention one of Ireland’s national sports, Hurling, I often get questioned as to whether it’s the weird Scottish ice shuffleboard and broomstick one… but it couldn’t be more different. As Jason Statham says in Blitz: "This, lads, is a hurley, used in the Irish game of hurling; a cross between hockey and murder". And seeing as I’m from Limerick, having suffered decades of torment in mediocrity, I currently revel in my hometown’s Man City-esque rise to the top of the pile, chasing an unprecedented five-in-a-row world championship rings. As good an advert for Irish manly excellence as any.
Today in 1886, the first-ever classified advert was published in The Times in London. I mean, they call it the first-ever, but the Ancient Egyptians pipped the Brits to the post by about four millennia, creating public notice carvings as far back as 2000 BC. When I was growing up, classifieds were all about Desperately Seeking Susan (a Madonna film – not a cry for female attention), though if you look a little further back in the States, they were a great way of tracking down runaway slaves or far-reaching ransom notes.
Both runaways and ransom-seekers could’ve benefited from playing Unesco-noted oldest and fastest field sport in the world (hurling), having begun as a Cú Chulainn hunting weapon as he slayed wild Irish wolves of mythology. I understand that you may be disappointed in curling not featuring more prominently in a Curling is Cool Day post… but, to be fair, it’s only cool in temperature, and hurling is much greater.
#Curling #Hurling #Classifieds
