When I was younger, we'd go to the same hotel in Blackpool each year for our summer holidays. One of the corridor walls featured a framed copy of Rudyard Kipling's 'If', a poem bound to leave its mark on an impressionable youthful mind.
Saints RL have tasted both of these 'impostors' in recent weeks. At the start of the 2007 season, we were entered for four trophies. A few weeks ago, I went to Old Trafford hoping to see us complete a clean sweep. In the event, we were comprehensively outplayed by Leeds, not for the first time this season.
Funny thing was, I wasn't that fussed. When I was younger, I used to get awfully upset and nervous about sporting occasions, but I just don't any more. I suspect that there may be a flip-side to this: whether the two are linked or not, I certainly don't experience the highs of victory in the way I used to.
Maybe this is an act of growing-up on my part, a realisation that it truly is 'only a game'. Where I get worried is that I seem to have lost my capacity for justifiable outrage at things which once made me feel physically sick and, so far as I can make out, still should - things like hate crimes, war and social injustice. At the back of my mind is a nagging fear that I'm some sort of cold-hearted, indifferent, uncaring monster.
Perhaps this is another thing over which, by rights, I should be getting worked up. Except I'm not sure I can any more.
Currently listening to: 'Universal Evolution', from Miroslav Vitous's 'Universal Syncopations II' album.
