I’ve found lockdown love with the Bulls
What pastime have you found yourself doing that you would never, ever have indulged in, were it not for lockdown?
Some people have taken up jogging, others stitching PPE for hard-working members of the local community. I wish mine was as useful, but unfortunately it is not. Nope, my unexpected lockdown pastime is that I have become completely addicted to a documentary about the basketball team, the Chicago Bulls.
The Last Dance is a 10-part series on Netflix that charts the team’s journey from minnows in the Eighties to world-beaters in the Nineties, in no small part because of one Michael Jordan.
Obviously, I’d heard of him before my husband forced me to sit down and watch the show – but otherwise my knowledge and interest in basketball was minimal, to say the least.
But within one episode I was hooked, and shushing anyone who dared interrupt my watching of a 1984 game between the Bulls and the Detroit Pistons…
I knew I had reached peak-lockdown weirdness when I realised I had spent a not insignificant amount of money on a vintage Chicago Bulls jersey, that had to be shipped all the way from… well, Chicago.
Is this a good use of my time and money? No. Do I, at this stage of proceedings, care? Absolutely not. I know that I would never have watched this programme and discovered the powerfully democratic nature of basketball, had it not been for lockdown.
This really is a sport for absolutely everyone (as long as you are over 6ft 5in and able to leap five feet into the air). I urge you to watch it and see for yourselves – and if you don’t want to watch it, please let me know of any of your own strange lockdown habits that you have formed, via the email address above.