I had a discussion with the other threequarters about the players becoming millionaires almost overnight. She doesn't feel this is right. I feel it is totally appropriate for what they have achieved on behalf of our country. All power to their elbows is what I say. I would rather the money goes to them than to bankrupt politicians and I use the word here to mean morally bankrupt.
A few days ago there was an interview with England goalkeeper Mary Earps who was asked how she coped with pressure.
Her reply was that she retreats into Mary's World which she described as a rather "strange place."
I think we all have our own worlds where we retreat to when things become too much. Of course some of us retreat into our own worlds more often than others. This blog is a kind of retreat into a different world.
Who doesn't dream of a world where we have just won the lottery or where something wonderful has happened? We can also retreat into our own worlds for something that is really going to happen. In my case it might be one of my talks to a local group. I run through what I'm going to say and how I'm going to say it and how those present will react. Of course they always react in my fantasy world with a standing ovation whereas in reality I'm more likely to get a round of rather muted applause.
When I was growing up I very much inhabited a made up world where I was a famous cricketer or footballer but I never envisaged a made up world where I was simply me. What good is a made up world where you are simply you as that's known as reality?
Who remembers the zany film Wayne's World which was a firm favourite in our family? It espoused a made up world where you could be anything you wanted to be and behave in any way you wanted to behave.
The problem with fantasy worlds is they don't exist which is pretty much stating the obvious. It's ok to fantasise of course unless that fantasy overtakes reality and then it can be a problem.
How many of us are truly happy with our lives?
Of course this blog may be expounding a version of my own fantasy world. If you don't know me personally, you may well have built up a picture of what I am like. But how can you be sure that the person you have a mental picture of is what I'm really like. Those who read my blog and know me personally may be in a better place to say whether the image I project with my blogs is the real me. But then again do they know what the real me is like and what actually is the real me? Do I even know what the real me is? In the words of the Who's Pete Townshend.
The cracks between the paving stones, like rivers of flowing veins
Strange people who know me, peeping from behind every window pane.
Can you see the real me?
Our perceptions of ourselves may be very different from other people's perceptions. Sometimes somebody will say something about me that I really don't recognise. This of course can help us grow.
I think the biggest compliment that anyone could give me is that old cliche "what you see is what you get."
All the above came out of a footballer saying that she retreats into her own made up world. And while I was writing this another Harry Chapin lyric flew into my head as Harry Chapin lyrics are likely to do.
"I'm a tangled up puppet
All hangin in your strings
I'm a butterfly in a spider's web
Fluttering my wings.
And the more that I keep dancin
And spinnin round in knots
The more I see what used to be
And the less of you I've got.
This is a lovely song written by Harry and his wife Sandy about the feeling of losing a daughter as they grow into a woman. It's a similar theme in many ways to one of his best known songs Cats in the Cradle.
I hope you like my photos of Mayfield taken on Friday along with a few from Eastbourne on Saturday where there were thousands at the annual air show.