Footballers, spitting and machismo
This morning on the [BBC London morning talk show](http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/tv_and_radio/radio/index.shtml), the main topic of conversation is a report that the habit of professional footballers to spit on the pitch is being copied by young people who think it “macho” (see [BBC report](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/4594052.stm)), according to the anti-litter campaign group Keep Britain Tidy. I tried emailing the presenter, Geoff Schumann, but the last time I did this, I got an email reply from him later but got the impression that he did not receive it while presenting the show. The [BBC London website](http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/) is very badly laid out and, in particular, does not tell you accurately who is on line at the moment. (Click on the “On Air Now” link at this moment and you’ll get Danny Baker, who does the late afternoon show!)
Anyway, spitting in public is ugly, anti-social and unhygienic. About ten years ago, when I was travelling to college in Coulsdon, I used to see an old sign from the bus window at the Stoats Nest Road railway bridge which was issued, if I remember rightly, by either a railway company or a local authority which has since been abolished, which told the public to refrain from the habit in the interests of the “prevention of consumption”. And today, TB is resurgent in this country, to say nothing of the threat of bird flu. Much has been said of the reaction of Asian countries to the SARS outbreak a few years ago: they clamped down on spitting.
Far worse than this, however, is urinating in public places! Of course, it’s not done in front of other people, but in places other people will come later, like lifts (elevators) and car and truck parks. Truck parks are particularly bad. There’s one particular truck park, at the Clacket Lane service station on the M25 (ring road around London) which, whenever I stop there, always smells of stale pee. Male truck drivers, who apparently don’t think there is such a thing as a female truck driver, although there is, pee against their vehicles. How they stop the inside of the service station smelling of the same stuff I don’t know. I once stopped at the Oxford service station on the M40 to Birmingham and wondered why the truck park was such a long walk from the service building, and perhaps that’s why! (Or perhaps they could only get a tract of land which was long and narrow, and they had to put it somewhere.)
And it’s not just truck drivers – I have on at least one occasion seen some of Our Brave Boys(tm) peeing against their military vehicles at Fleet service station on the M3. Now, the Army protects its reputation by such means as banning the Boys from socialising in towns near the bases, like Aldershot and Farnborough, which is why they had to go to Guildford to do this (although Guildford is a bigger town and no doubt has more nightlife). This is why Guildford got bombed by the IRA in the 1970s, leading to innocent people getting locked up for it, rather than any of the base towns. Anyway, you would think they would tell their men to pee like everyone else, in the loo which is in the service building, so that the public don’t get the impression that soldiers are indeed dirty animals.
The report’s reference to the incident involving El Hadji Diouf, a Senegalese professional footballer, leaves out an important fact in that incident: the person he spat at had patted Diouf’s head, a gesture slave owners used to use on their slaves. No doubt a white man doing this to an African caused enormous offence that he would not have realised. It certainly wasn’t a response to a common footballing “foul”.
