21st October, 2009 - Disappointments 2

The second of my disappointments goes right back to school. Our team lost in the final of the Scottish Schools’ Volleyball tournament. It is my only really significant sporting achievement to reach that final. In all honesty, I was kind of lucky to make it into that team at all. We had a number of guys who were playing at county level and I think even in the Scotland squad. I was strictly school team material – easily the worst regular in the team; easily the least gifted athletically.

But I loved volleyball. For maybe 5 years of my life it was a ritual. Training two or three times a week. A game or a tournament every week. Trips in the school minibus to other schools. Me, seriously uncool, amongst the cool boys, the athletes. That is how I secretly felt. It was my foot in the other camp – my own camp being the world of wargames and the debating club and the school magazine committee.

I remember the feeling of defeat as I type this. Those of you who know me, know that I have a disastrously competitive streak. I detest losing. Not in the way that I think most people do. It feels like personal failure to me. Defeat feels like a failure to be able to bend the world to my will. I see that this is not a logical feeling, of course. I see that it is futile to expect light to bend around you, and to feel the forces of the universe flowing through your fingers. But it still makes me mad that I can’t.

As I get older, I think I am a bit better at hiding these feelings. But any time I lose, it still feels like the dressing room after that game in 1984.