Melancholy and hockey

I woke up this morning to the news on 702, which - amongst other things - included a brief comment about people picketing against crime on Corlett Drive. I think it's the third day running that they're doing this.

Following the news, there was a phone call from someone mentioning that there is an sms circulating - "Unite against crime... Show your support by driving with your headlights on today." He also mentioned how many headlights he saw on this morning.

Next phonecall: Smash and grab at the intersection of Witkoppen and Main in Fourways... and the perps haven't even run away. They're still in the area, looking for more things to grab. Talk about brazen. The guy tried to call 10111, but got a voice message.

Third phonecall: They've just driven past New Rd in town, where people are also picketing, "all races, all colours, all ages" against crime.

It all just makes me so sad. This was all in the space of 15 minutes. Crime. Crime. Unite against crime. Crime. Can you imagine (as a female) calling 10111 because you think you are about to be raped... and getting through to a voice message. It leaves me speechless.

BUT I am not going to end on such a despondent note. Brushing all perturbing thoughts of crime under the carpet... The Ballerina-hockey girls played my old high school last night.

I hate playing schoolgirls - mostly because it reminds me how I am definitely no schoolgirl, no more. The truth is, I've been driving for as long as some of these girls have been at school. Crikey.

On the upside, schoolgirls are really easy to over balance. It's like cow-tipping, but with smaller thuds. At one stage (and I'm really not sure what happened), a girl ran into me, bounced off and did an impressive tumbling routine at my feet. I just stood there. I didn't even make a tackle, didn't so much as growl at her. She literally ran at me and fell over. Consider me the solid, scary sweeper at the back.

Then a cocky upstart got behind me in the defence... she picked up the ball and ran. I caught up with her (although I thought I was going to pull a bum-fat in my efforts) and I did seriously consider going in for the slide tackle. My first thought was - will I get hurt? Probably not, chances were high that I would've landed on the 16-year-old twig I was bearing down on. My second thought was - can I afford the bad karma? With me heading to slushy Holland, I can see myself coming very pear off a wobbly bike in the middle of a busy intersection... So I aborted my mission and twig-legs scored a goal.

To quote Earl Hickey..."Screw you, Carson Daly!"