#oh and google says its a cantaloupe

[odyssey-of-a-human-being]

Konta vs Ostapenko - a Saga in Three Parts Lemonade, Two Parts Vodka, One Part Pimm’s

It’s June 29th at time of writing and I am sober. As an unemployed, unemployable man it always feels quite natural to watch the television. As circumstance would have it, I happened upon a tennis match on BBC2. “This will have to do,” I lamented to my warm can of comfort (beer). Fate had thrust me into a match between two female women’s-tennis players: the teenaged Latvian wunderkind Ostapenko, a spunky, highly aggressive player whose meteoric rise to tennis fame put me in mind of a meteor (ascending, rather than crumbling to nothing in the atmosphere), and whose endearing frustrations translate in sporting terms to not just personality, but a personality, the highest accolade any woman sportsman can hope to achieve. She was battling against her opponent, Konta, who was quite tall and wore pink.

It was obvious who the home favourite was, particularly after John Inverdale remarked that she was “the home favourite here at Eastbourne.” As it transpired, Konta – Jo Konta – was in fact the British number one women’s-tennis player and number five women’s-tennis female player worldwide. And then I pitied her – I could see the weight of expectation that had been imposed upon her. Every broken microwave, every smashed up toaster from every penalty shootout in the modern era dangled over her like the Sword of Damocles. Because it’s always been a source of deep shame and secret regret to the English that the greatest tennis player in the world - perhaps in the entire universe - our national hero, our homegrown British champion is not in fact English, and soon will cease even to be British. Moreover, Murray, busy with training, never developed his personality, let alone a personality.

Sponsors, event organisers, broadcasters, journalists, content distributors...they can make him juggle cantaloupes, trim his neckline, play instead with a squash racket for Sports Relief (for money); they can tee him up with softball questions desperate for some kind of humorous aside, but it’s symptomatic of our denial: not only is Andy Murray - our national Hero - a foreigner, he doesn’t even possess a personality. Off court, he may as well walk into his airing cupboard and power down until morning practice. Observe the relationship with his wife and you’ll see there’s about as much chemistry in it as a North Korean chemistry GCSE – which is to say there’s some but that it’s essentially false, with some rather telling errors and glaring omissions betraying a blatant misunderstanding of the basics of chemistry. Long have I wondered what she sees in Sir Andy Murray. I suppose I pity her, too. 

The days of Henmania – days of hope for our nation’s greatest semifinalist – are long over, and soon history shall forget him, as indeed it has forgotten multiple Doctor Who episodes, charity wristbands and custom ringtones. Or perhaps he shall instead be vilified? Which would he prefer? Shall we judge him for demoralising the British spirit, for that time he got disqualified in 1995 – thankfully in the doubles – for hitting a ballgirl in the face. Will we happily forget that it was with a tennis ball? Shall instead it be his racket, or his Scottish fists?

Jo Konta - the Heroine of the Hardcourt, The Queen of Clay, The Grass Goddess - is she doomed to a similar fate? Doomed to the mercy of our damaged hopes, a victim to our scorn, the goat to our damaged scapes, the nationally despised national hero, shall She die for our sins? We accept we cannot have an Englishman champion but we have a Scottish one, so who is to say we are not ready for a female woman one? Surely we’ve moved past all that. Can we not welcome her likewise into our needy arms, as we did indeed Mo Farah? Is this our new prime candidate…is this Henwomania?

And then, out of frenzied panic, I googled her: that was when my hope crumbled like so much vintage cheddar, for ‘Jo’ was a deception. Perhaps you thought it was short for Joanna? Nein. It’s Johanna. And Konta – Mr. Konta isn’t drinking Carling down at the Red Lion and moaning about the surnames of the senior England football squad. Mr. Konta isn’t tagging the Kontas of this world into anonymous hateposts. Yes, you’ve got it – her parents are South African and she played for Australia – quite naturally, having lived there until she was 14. I can understand a Scottish champion, but surely it is beyond our pale to root for a South African Austro-Anglian woman’s-tennis player. I pondered on all this, and having found it to be profoundly sobering I poured myself a Pimm’s (& vodka) and lemonade.

After the first set (Konta nudged out Ostapenko in a deciding game) I decided to invest fully and totally into the match - and it was only then that I noticed an ugly tension in the atmosphere. And I understood it immediately. The crowd…old, white, crusty Tories, they were not rooting for the South African Austro-Anglian, they were rather wishing failure upon the Latvian Latvian. And then it took on an altogether political tone. The Old Tory Brexiteers, upper middle class, upper middle-aged men, perving on women they despise – men mercifully unaware of private browsers, let alone Google Chrome. The top 2%, the only people worse than the 1%: in this sense, Eastbourne is considerably worse than Wimbledon – ask any self-respecting tennis-hating tennis fan. Look at them, in their brown brogues and authentic Ray Ban’s, enjoying a perv and a Pimm’s – “It’s Perv o’Clock!” I overhear one of them say, rubbing his hands together – wrinkled with time, not toil. Unwittingly rooting for their immigrant. An Australian, no less. But shall we forgive them for they know not what they do?

I poured myself another vodka (& Pimm’s) & lemonade, no ice or fruit or anything, and I knew then, for sure, what I thought I knew before. “This,” I said to myself, “is war. Plain and simple.” And it was that dreaded Brexit. Our minds have become enspoiled with its putrid filth, like a dangerous dangly dirty politoctopus, whose slimy tentacles invade the sanctity of our personal space, encroaching it, squirming through it, past through our eyes and our tears and our ears and into our tiny little brains, fidgeting down through to the small of our backs, its tendrils gathering like polyfiller through to our corpus callosa – the brain: an organ as predictable and as knowable as the spleen. Look at it: a great grey meaty bolus. And it was then that I vowed to be a soldier in this war: fighting the good fight. Henceforth, all my meals are to be made with non-locally sourced ingredients – my sausage shall be German, my mash shall be mashed up French fries (also German, Dr Oetker – oh yes, it will be complicated). I shall master every cuisine of the world, learn every other language, cram my brain full with enough knowledge of the vocabulary and grammatical nuance of every language, every dialect, every patois, in the hope that I will eventually expunge all existing knowledge of my mother tongue, expunge every pub-factoid, every pop-cultural frame of reference, all my slang, all my friends, my childhood memories, everything that ever happened to take place in this scuppered Isle, to get rid of all of it! Replace it with knowledge of Scandinavian politics, the etiquette of Japanese cuisine, re-learn how to cycle, but along the frigid canals of Amsterdam, spliff in hand - smoke and steam in the winter air - French cheese and Polish cold-cuts in my wicker basket, trring-trring!, with a great big massive baguette, and I’ll learn to love Finnish melodic death metal, appreciate German architecture, practice Persian poetry, study Chinese history, explore Norse Mythology and eat those little paprika crisps you sometimes find in Lidl. I consummated this noble decision - and to me it felt like a good start in the brain-damaging process – with yet another vodka & lemonade (and a dash of Pimm’s).

As I sobered up after a small nap and after a small period of time, my allegiance toward Europe and the promises I had splurted at a mirror I had mistaken for my own face, now moist with spittle, had somewhat waned. My unshakable hatred toward the wind-power couple – Murray and Murray wife – had now settled into amused bemusement. My anger towards the audience was now little more than a mild vexation – a mere frustration, a puzzling perturberance – nothing more, nothing less. And probably not even that. And the words ‘Ostapenko’ and ‘Konta’ suddenly evoked within me as much emotion as the words ‘limestone’ and ‘velcro’ do. The episode was finally over: I had drunk myself into contention and slept it off.  The match finished, Ostapenko having lost, and I was at peace. As an 18-24 year old educated to master’s degree level I am naturally quite accustomed to failure, and tennis. I lost in 2010. I lost in Brexit. I lost in 2015. I lost against Konta. As indeed we all did. But I did not lose Andy Murray. That’s right – I won the Independence referendum. Which is to say I didn’t lose it. Murray’s ours, for now at least. But we should be prepared. For we shall lose him. And that’s why we need, now, a man like Joe Konta, to step into his red, blue and white sneakers (except at Wimbledon where they’re not allowed) should he no longer need them. Because Murray won’t be here forever. Look at that stony-faced expression, gazing outward in press conferences waiting for his questions to be translated, desperate to think of nothing. Desperate not to be there. There is more in that glazed expression than Murray could express in a million words. Look at him. Dare to countenance him. 

Murray himself has begun to lose Murray. And losing is not an option.