Sport as politics

I'm working from home today, in my Noel Coward dressing gown. When I woke up, I couldn't quite remember why on earth I'd promised to work for a few hours on my day off. But then the logic came back to me - had I not had something to get up for, I'd have slept until, oooh, half past three in the afternoon. Monday is the day my body regenerates from the sleep deprivation of the previous week - today, I had a reason to stop that from happening. So if my arm falls off, you'll know why.

As an added bonus, I'm getting to watch Andy Murray play Nadal in the Australian open. Murray is basically a hyper-confident wind up merchant - a growling, disgustingly ugly velociraptor of a tennis player. He is the antithesis of Tim 'flid' Henman - one of the most ridiculously talentled players I've ever seen, but with the unfortunate mental capacity to convince himself that he doesn't have any arms and legs at crucial moments of career-defining matches. I loved Henman, and thought the negative press he received was ridiculously harsh for the best British player in twenty years or so, but one can understand why the papers couldn't help but paint him as a one-man embodiment of the desperate self-loathing hopes and fears of middle England. The military father, the posh wife - he was just too, too perfect. And so maybe it's good he failed, from a symbolic point of view at any rate.

I've no idea whether Murray will win this one or not (he's a set up and his opponent, the drugged-up Spaniard wonderkid, is looking a bit rattled) - but now we have a tennis-playing equivalent of the West Lothian question instead.

Isn't sport great?