Ever since, as a young child, I saw a Scottish Curling game on TV (something like this), I have strongly disliked it - for one simple reason.
Because of the characters running along with brooms, sweeping with brushes in front of the stone.
If it was not for these sweeping guys, I would feel as cheerfully benign towards curling as I do towards lawn bowling. If the chaps that slid the stone across the ice did just that, and that was the game; if the stone was left to its own devices like in any other accuracy game - like a ball in bowls, the arrow in archery, or the dart in darts...
That might be an elegant, aesthetically-pleasing thing to watch.
But no.
Those sweepers are fussing, pestering, and interfering-with the distance and the direction of the rock, creating a stupidly-frantic atmosphere.
Worse; the very existence of sweepers creates create in my imagination a depressing picture of aristocratic oppression; much like the blokes who "beat" game birds directly into the shooting arc of a line of toffs with guns - who just stand there blasting-away at the pheasant or grouse - or the beaters... or whatever.
Sport?
I don't blame the sweepers... they are just servile lackeys, out for an extra shilling.
After all; the Laird and his mates gets the fun of chucking the rock; then (I guess, at some point in the history of the pastime) some idle, devious gent got the idea of paying a couple of downtrodden crofters to make a pittance running around harassing his stone en route; making sure it went where he wasn't skilled enough to bung it - and then Sir Smug Git takes the credit for whatever happens at the target...
Curling? Bah, Humbug.
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