Horses Playing Football

If I was to place a map of the world in front of you and asked you to point to England you could do it, if I did the same with Spain, Germany and even Portugal you could do it. You could even tell me what language they spoke in these countries and may even be able to throw out a few words or a well known phrase. If I did the same with Colombia it would no doubt get a bit more difficult to point straight at it on the map and we would have to think about what language they spoke. So how about Croatia, or Boznia-Herzegovina, you may have a rough idea about were these countries are, but actually pointing them out may take some doing and as for the language they speak, forget it. What about Cote d'ivoire then where the hell is that and what language do they speak,

You see where you come from dictates what language you speak and your language defines you as a person of that country. Language is extremely important to us all, some of us can even speak more than our own language although that can present its own problems. For example I was talking to my Malawian friend the other day, which incidently is a country in Southern Africa, where they speak Malawian. But my friend also speaks pretty good Xhosa, one of the South African tribal languages and pretty good English. It was whilst chatting to him that I discovered that he once saw horses playing football. The next few minutes were most entertaining as I was amazed that horses could play football and guessed it must be peculiar to some of the many herds of wild horses found scattered across the southern parts of Africa. It was only after this blissful few minutes of misunderstanding that I found out what he was actually talking about was the game of polo.

I am not sure if its something particular to Malawians, but I had another one in my truck the other day and we were listening to some music on the stereo. He started to tell me about how when he was courting his wife they would sit sharing one set of headphones listening to Ditty Patton on a walkman. I again assumed Ditty Patton was a popular singer in Malawi, but once again I was wrong, as I discovered that Ditty had a big hit with "Islands In The Stream", he was of course talking about Dolly Pardon.

There you have it language defines us and can confuse us, often at the same time.

Just coming back to soccer playing horses, one thing is for sure if they ever did take up playing football the chances are that they, like Spain, Germany, Croatia, Boznia-Herzegovina, Coted'ivoire and even Portugal and eight other countries according to the current FIFA world rankings, would be better at it than the English football team. Sadly to use a well know phrase when it comes to this group of players you can honestly say, "never has so little been achieved by so many", but what do you expect from show ponies.