The Henry Winter of our discontent
Chekov advised writers that descriptions of landscape should be sparing, while Elmore Leonard begins his "Ten Rules of Writing" with "1. Never open a book with weather." Henry Winter, the football columnist of The Daily Telegraph, has read his Leonard and Chekov. His reportage on the Champions League Final last week confirmed that. Take this:
"So full of confidence as they arrived in Paris on Tuesday, Arsenal found only darkness on the edge of town last night." Nice tip o' the hat to Springsteen, that, eh? But we're only warming up.
"All Arsenal's pride at their run to the final, all that self-belief rooted in a defensive defiance that had brought 10 successive clean sheets was replaced by a searing pain chilling them to the core." Do "sear", which means to "to burn or scorch something with an application of intense heat" and "chill", which means "to make somebody or something become cold, usually unpleasantly cold" belong together? Yes, if you're good. And it gets better.
"After years of searching of struggling to meet Europe's refined demands, the Londoners thought they had discovered Shangri-La on the banks of the Seine, particularly when Campbell headed in magnificently after 37 minutes." Factoid: Shangri-la was the name given to an imaginary land in Lost Horizon (1933) by the English novelist James Hilton. And now, the cream de la cream, as they used to say on Fleet Street.
"But Barcelona had other ideas. Just when Arsenal were hoping to march from Highbury to their new Ashburton Grove home through the Arc de Triomphe, they were run off the road by a Spanish street-car named desire. Eto'o and Belletti forcing Wenger's men down a boulevard of broken dreams." Hollywood, here we come!
But enough. Well, OK, then, one more gem. Here's how Winter ended his epic, which appeared last Thursday in the Irish Independent: "Desolation engulfed Arsenal". Proving, as if proof were needed, that everyone turns to the Bard in the end.
