What I've Been Watching and Reading

 

What I’ve been Watching: Ted Lasso. 

After hearing many good reviews, I’ve been watching this show and I am hooked. A goofy, oddball, always optimistic Ted Lasso from Kansas is hired to coach a struggling British soccer (football) team in England. He knows nothing about English football, nor does he know that the polished, upper-crust female owner of the team wants to grind it into the ground to spite her philandering ex-husband. There is so much that is charming and engaging about this show, from Ted’s goofiness on the surface (but we know there’s layers beneath hinting as to why he constantly deflects with cheeriness) to the aging, fading, soccer star, Roy Kent, who swears profusely, cares nothing about being popular or a people-pleaser, but is devoted to his little niece.

Roy Kent is one of my favourite characters, and what does that say about me, drawn to the surliest person on the show? He refuses to be anything other than who he is. And I won’t go on about how lovable Sam Obisanya is. You will have to watch the show to appreciate how he deals with confrontation and the allure of money and fame.

Coach Lasso is, of course, the star, and although he insists on always being rah-rah, it’s not in a too-Pollyanna-ish kind of way. His original quips and unique sayings (that one would only ever hear in Kansas) have an undercurrent of warmth, humility, and wisdom.

I happen to agree with his assessment of tea – vile-tasting, brown dishwater – and cannot understand the British obsession with it. If I’m going to drink tea it should be herbal (minty or gingery) without a hint of the taste of well…actual tea.

Watching the show reminds me of how much I loved British football way back in the days of my youth. While other girls drooled over David Cassidy, I pined over George Best (British football mega-star) and spent hours watching Manchester United on a small black-and-white TV. My love for British football morphed into a passion for hockey when I moved to Canada and then I discarded hockey for tennis. There’s always been one sport I’ve been devoted to (but only one at a time). Odd, since I didn’t grow up playing sports, and only took up tennis as an adult. Perhaps there was always this lurking yearning to be a sportswoman. Too late for that now.

What I’ve been Reading: Unlike sports, where I can only devote my attention to one at a time, I usually have two or more books on the go (but only one of them can be fiction).

Marrying The Ketchups: I’m partway through this, picking it up after reading many good reviews and, as with Ted Lasso, I am hooked. The family dynamics, the voice, the unique observations on small things, the subtle social commentary on how the Trump era caused rifts in families and friends - such as  two elderly couples who have dined together weekly for decades. “You must admit he has some good ideas,” the bigger guy says of Trump. The other couple looks down at their food, wanting to admit nothing of the sort. You just know that their weekly Friday dinners are over, and wasn’t some version of this scene being played out across the country? Witty, astute, insightful – everything that has been said about this book is true.

Dinner for One is a memoir that combines love, romance, a move to Paris in a heady rush of optimism and emotion, with a subsequent marriage breakdown, a struggle to find belonging, language, understanding and self alone in a foreign country, with…the ultimate comfort: food! There are even recipes at the back of the book.

Bookends, also a memoir, is sprinkled throughout, not with references to food, but to books that Owens read while going through various difficult periods in her life. The part that I found very interesting was the reference to 9/11, when Owens lost her closest friend in one of the towers that collapsed. I think it’s the first book I’ve read that talks, in an intimate way, about 9/11. For a long time, writing about 9/11 was taboo. Too fresh, too overwhelming, too traumatic.

It immediately took me back to where I was at the time: in an office boardroom, clustered around a TV, all of us silently watching, in shock. And then a quiet exodus from the boardroom, packing our things, leaving for home.

There are some defining moments in life when you can recall with absolute clarity exactly where you were and what you were doing when you heard the news. For me, the 9/11 realization was in that office boardroom. When the U.S. space shuttle Challenger exploded on take-off, I was in a hairdresser’s chair.

It is the emotion we feel in that instant, when we realize something momentous has shifted in our world, that etches the memory deep inside us.

Some books and shows do that too – make their mark on us, although the memories may not be as clear or long-lasting. But they create small moments of enjoyment and understanding, transporting us to a place where words or observations find a home within us. We shake our heads and say, “Yes, so true. Why didn’t I think of that?” We make note of it, and then we read on.