How to learn whilst enjoying myself

There are many ways to learn, but for me none nicer than to put my feet up in front of the TV and watch sport.  I have a particular affinity for cricket because of what happened in my childhood.  In those days there was no TV, of course, but sport was brought to us through the radio.  I succumbed to scarlet fever and had to be put in quarantine for six weeks to protect my younger brothers, because in the days before antibiotics scarlet fever was considered to be a dangerous illness.  So there I was stuck in a bedroom on my own upstairs away from all the family, and with only the radio to keep me company.  As luck would have it, a famous cricket series between England and Australia was being played, and there were a lot of exciting matches to listen to.  I had no idea about the subtleties of cricket which I was listening to (what was a “silly mid-off”, for example?), but I got hooked, and once hooked this interest in cricket has stayed with me all my life, to the extent that not long ago I went to my first cricket match to experience it at first-hand.  It was only then that I realised just how fast people bowled, and how dangerous a cricket ball could be.

For anybody reading this who may be interested in cricket, and particularly those in Australia who will be aware that we are in the midst of an Ashes series, there is a further lesson about the Fire element which my TV watching is teaching me at the moment.  There has been a surprising turn-around in the fortunes of the two teams, with the English team suddenly transformed from a rather dour, inhibited group of players into a cheerful, expansive (and successful) team.  And what do TV commentators, and I, too, attribute this success to?  To the injection into the team of some new Fire people.  As one commentator said about one of them, “It’s good to see a smile on his face.”  Looking carefully at the whole team, I realised that three of its new members appear not only to be Fire, but a very outgoing kind of Fire, probably with the Three Heater as their dominant official, for they all seem to be what we could call “the life and soul of the party”, a Three Heater characteristic.

So if you can catch a few moments watching cricket on TV over the next couple of months, look out for the following cricketers for clear evidence of the exuberance of Fire:  Joe Root (in particular), Mark Ward and Jos Buttler.  And for Australians reading this, it is worth looking at  their captain, Michael Clarke, who I think is also Fire, but a much quieter Fire, probably with its official the Heart Protector rather than the Three Heater.

Thus do I continue to learn whilst enjoying myself!