Midgetgems Comedy

Forget square miles, metres, acres, hectares, furlongs, and even a cow’s moo, the delightfully poetic hearing distance used in parts of Africa, we Brits now use a more modern and sophisticated measure when it comes to land area. Granted, only we Brits claim to understand it but if you are planning to visit us ( and it is looking lovely here though hurry, before it all falls into the sea), you’d do well to familiarise yourself with the ‘rough football pitch’.

Now, a bit of cultural understanding may be necessary: Knowing how to lie through your teeth about the loveliness of someone’s cat here is certainly useful but more interestingly, knowing roughly how big a football pitch is will guarantee you a successful trip.

You see, our south coast has just lost an area ‘roughly the size of four football pitches’ to landslip but it should be explained that football pitches here are not of uniform size. Therefore, if you do get into conversation with one of us and feel the need to mention how big or small your country is, say either, “it’s bigger than a football pitch AND the practice pitch behind the stadium AND the car park Tesco wants to build on” or, “a bit bigger than the centre circle”.

Now, of course, you have gone and mentioned the F-word, rendering it utterly impossible for any of us to visualise the proportions of said football pitch because you have unwittingly conjured up replays of hitting the underside of the crossbar, dodgy refereeing decisions and what might have been.  Notice that we will simply nod with an air of vague interest, anticipating that glorious day when the sea reduces our island to a more recognisable, FIFA-friendly size so we can get a proper game on.

Remains of north v. Remains of south - that ought to be a cracking fixture.