99 YEARS OLD AND STILL PLAYING SILLY GAMES…

AMBLING through Beachcomber Towers to see what the cleaners had been up to, I stuck my head around the door of the television room and was astonished to see that the floor was strewn with newspapers. “I must have a word with Ebola about this,” I mumbled. “Her team should clear such things up.”

Just at that moment, however, the house polar bear wandered into the room sucking a glacier mint. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “My fault. I’m planning a mid- life career change. I thought I should become a football pundit and I wanted to see what the others were doing.”

“What?” I said with surprise, only now noticing that all the papers were open at the sports pages. “But you hardly know anything about football.”

“What is there to know?” the bear responded. “Other than the fact that two groups of men are trying to kick the ball into each other’s nets?”

“Not much,” I agreed, “but to be a pundit, one is expected to delve deeper into the game.”

“Exactly,” he said, “and according to my research, they don’t seem to know any of the interesting things.” “Such as?” I asked. “Well, take this recent game between a group calling themselves Chelsea and another called PSG. Some of the pundits don’t even mention that it stands for Paris St Germain. I thought it was Project Steering Group, or Personnel Support Group, or Pagan Spirit Gathering or Polysomnograph, the last of which could be very useful when I doze off while watching a football match. It measures all sorts of brain and bodily functions while you’re asleep, you know.”

“I doubt that the Chelsea fans would be very interested in…” I began, but the bear interrupted.

“And even those that do tell us it’s Paris St Germain do not go on to tell us which of the French St Germains they’re referring to. I imagine it’s probably the St Germain who was bishop of Paris in the sixth century, though St Germain of Auxerre seems a much more interesting fellow.” “Tell me more, oh pundit,” I begged. “He was born to a noble family about 378 and died around 450,” the bear said. “In 429, he visited Britain and led the Britons to a victory over Pictish and Saxon raiders in Wales. Though heavily outnumbered, he terrified the opposition by getting his men to shout out ‘ Alleluia’, which echoed around the hills so well that the Picts and Saxons thought there were far more of them and ran away.”

“Fascinating,” I said. “Do you think such tactics might have helped Chelsea defeat the French?”

“When Charles the Bald opened the grave of St Germain of Auxerre some 400 years after his death,” the bear went on, “the body is said to have been intact so it was embalmed and moved to a more prominent position.” “That’s real punditry,” I said. “Charles the Bald probably wasn’t bald, you know,” the bear went on. “It may even have been a name given to him jokingly because he was so hairy.”

“Fascinating,” I said in admiration, and I left the bear to it.