First of all, huge congratulations to Eve Muirhead and her team for securing what will undoubtedly be regarded as one of the all-time great Scottish sporting achievements. I’m sure I was one of many tens of thousands who stayed up to watch the whole game against Japan in the wee small hours. However, if you’ll forgive the shameless self-indulgence, I really must take a moment to mark the fact that the Olympic curling over the last couple of weeks has also unexpectedly provided me with a little highlight of my own blogging career.
As long-term readers will know, I genuinely am a big curling fan. I think it probably goes back to the fact that there seemed to be someone in the BBC Scotland hierarchy when I was growing up in the early 90s who was sympathetic towards curling and used to make generous space in the schedules for highlights packages from events like the Scottish Junior Championships. (Those days are long gone, sadly.) So I was exposed to the sport back then, and since around 1999 I’ve been religiously glued to either Eurosport or the World Curling channel on YouTube every November, March and April, when 99% of people probably don’t have a clue anything is even happening. I’ve been to the Scottish finals day in Perth a few times, and I remember in 2016 a very nice chap from UK Sport approached me in Braehead when I was practically the only spectator (an exaggeration, but only a slight one) for the Norway v Sweden men’s semi-final in the European Championships, and said “bit of a disappointing turnout, isn’t it?” So I think it’s reasonable to say I’m not exactly a fair-weather fan, unlike the jingoistic Brit journalists who jump on the curling bandwagon for a couple of days every four years and then immediately forget the sport even exists.
Yes, Douglas Dickie of the Mirror, and yes, David Walker of the Daily Express, I’m looking at you. Thanks to James Sellars on Twitter, I’ve only just found out that my occasional wind-up tweets about “Scottish and European curling” and “Scolympic silver medals” have triggered no fewer than two barking mad articles in national newspaper websites – one in the Mirror yesterday entitled ‘Scottish nationalists hijack Team GB curling silver medal for divisive agenda’, (which cluelessly uses a photo of David Murdoch’s silver medal-winning team from eight years ago!) and one in the Express way back on 8th February entitled ‘Nationalist blogger slammed for ‘hate-filled’ anti-British comment on the Winter Olympics’, with the sub-heading ‘James Kelly, who is a pro-independence blogger and says he is an elected member of Alba’s National Executive Committee, was criticised for his tweet about curling‘. Even better, the Express went to all the trouble of getting a Scottish Conservative spokesperson to make an official comment about my tweet.
Words fail me. I’ve finally made the big time now, and it’s all thanks to the Roarin’ Game. It’s amazing, isn’t it? Think of all the deadly serious topics I’ve covered at length on this blog over the years, from gun control to the death penalty, from Covid to the destruction of devolution. Not even the remotest flicker of interest from the mainstream media. But a bit of throwaway banter on Twitter about the indisputable fact that the “British curling team” are all Scottish, and it’s like the end of civilisation as we know it.
One day, someone will write a book about the fascinating psychological phenomenon of a minority winter sport proving to be more “triggering” for the Brit Nat hordes than practically any other subject I can think of. The Express noted that I was heavily criticised for my tweet, which is perfectly true, but what they didn’t bother mentioning is that almost all of the criticisms came from borderline-fascists, many of whom seemed to think I couldn’t be Scottish because I have an Irish surname. “Is dat royt, James?” was a particular highlight. Blair McDougall must be so proud.
I’ve learned something valuable over the last couple of weeks. If you want to *really trigger* the Brit Nats, you don’t have to say ‘It’s Scotland’s Oil’ or even ‘the Pentland Firth is the Saudi Arabia of tidal power’.
You just have to point out the curlers are Scottish.
— James Kelly (@JamesKelly) February 19, 2022
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