bears and werewolves and shout-outs to Colin Firth

[bronze_ribbons]

Oh, tennis. The sheer amount of nonsense posted about both Andy Murray and Roger Federer over the past week has been through the roof, and the one that has made me laugh the hardest is Barney Ronay's essay in the Guardian, which begins, "Why are we tense about Andy Murray's grand slam? There is an accepted narrative to this: we start from an assumption of lurking emotional frigidity." The whole thing has to be read to be believed (although that's not the phrase juste, because I still can't quite believe what I was reading). It describes Murray

roaring and shrieking like a gangly, bouffant, white-shorted 1950s B-movie werewolf. Angular Scots reserve conquered, he can "come forward" as we keep urging him, and get on with winning the match.

Just thinking about it now, it all feels terribly unrelaxed and even quite intrusive. If this is, at times, an almost physical sensation, perhaps that's not surprising. Tennis is the only sport that is really all about sex. There is nothing new or controversial in this. As a popular sport tennis has its roots in hair-oiled country house flirtation, its rhythms perfectly suited to the honeyed repartee of romantic pursuit.

And then goes on to suggest:

It has become standard at this point to say that Robson is "good for" Murray, a scenario that paints Murray as a seductively stifled all-court Mr Darcy, raw with unrelieved tension. There is something vaguely Jane Austen-ish about the pair of them together, jousting their way through another press conference, the courtly Mr Murray suddenly boyish beside free-spirited Ms Robson. And let's just say it right now. If you don't, on some level, want to see Murray and Robson one day get married and live in a big house in the country where they keep horses, then you're barely human.

[As it happens, I personally don't, but as numerous fandom discussions have verified over the years, I have a gag reflex where my heart should be.]

And finally, that

right now Murray is in his smouldering stage: all set to dive into the duckpond and emerge steaming and alarmingly priapic.

Oh, my sides.