Addiction

Dear reader, this is right at the beginning of our relationship so I feel you deserve to know the truth about me. I have a problem and they say that acknowledging that you have one is going part of the way to solving it, so I'm going to give it to you, plain and unvarnished. So here goes nothing.

(Deep breath)

My name is Laura Daniels and I am a sportaholic.

There. I've said it. Do you think any the less of me?

In full truthfulness, the above statement is an exaggeration. But not by much. I love watching sport. Not playing it. I'm hopeless when it comes to participating in sport. I'm flat-footed, clumsy and severely lacking in hand-eye co-ordination. These attributes are not unnconected to my participation in daily life, but when it comes to taking part in sporting activites they become exaggerated to the point that a fairy elephant would make a better fist at most sports than me. I say most sports because, like every rule, there is an exception. Mine is swimming. Surrounded and supported by water, I possess a grace that is lacking in my body on land, a grace that is due in no small part to the ten years or so that I spent as a child and a young teenager at my local swimming club, where my swimming instructors managed to pummel into a brain that functions far better with theory than practice the fundamentals of four swimming strokes. But regardless of my inability to successfully play most sports even at their most basic level, I love watching professional sports.

Some of this love no doubt derives from the admiration of the non-participant for the participant's skill in performing tasks that are beyond their ken. But whilst I could not carry a tune to save my life, I am not a musicaholic. While I enjoy listening to music, it is distinctly a secondary aspect of my life. It is something to put on in the background whilst I accomplish other tasks, such as the washing up or reading of e-mails. Watching sport, however, is a primary task. If there is a sporting contest that I wish to watch I have to devote all my attention to watching it; otherwise what's the point? This need to concentrate completely upon the sporting contest at hand derives, I think, in part in homage to the dedication that the protagonists, be they individuals or collective members of a team, have put in in their training before their performance. But, for me at least, what most of all draws me to sport is the drama, or the potential for drama, of it all. Sport, especially when it is live and the result is unknown, is pure, unscripted human drama. There's nothing like watching a football or a tennis match unfold before your eyes, watching individuals try their very best and either fail or succeed, sometimes by the smallest of margins. It's possible to spot shifts in momentum in the tiniest of moments - in the forehand that goes long, in the spilled catch, in the missed tackle - and so, if you don't concentrate properly on the whole of the game, in missing five minutes here and there you might as well have not as bothered. Of course, watching sport live in the arena it's actually being performed in is best of all. For then you truly are part of the event, sublimating your self into a collective will, becoming part of something that is greater than the sum of its parts. This is never more true for me than when I watch football. As a mostly armchair fan I can get bored of a game for five minutes when it's on TV, even when watching my club, Liverpool FC. My mind can wander during a game, and my hand will reach for my phone and before I know it I'm on Facebook or Twitter looking to see what people have posted in the last 20 minutes or since I last checked. But when it comes to being actually in the ground, well, things change: I think that there's nothing like the sound of a football ground in full voice, 30-40,000 people united in a common cause, to get the adrenalin flowing, the heart pumping and the mind concentrated.

So if you ever want to know where I am, it's easy. I'm watching sport.