Blake Aldridge and the Terror of the Mods

I can't help but feel a certain sympathy for British diver Blake Aldridge. Having seen his Olympic dream evaporate, he injudiciously inferred that responsibility could be attributed to his diving partner, fourteen year old Tom Daley. Daley, for his part, was publicly magnanimous, refusing to be drawn on the contentious point as to whether or not Aldridge should have taken a phone call from his mother immediately before their third and crucial dive. Aldridge himself, it should be remembered, is still a young man. He undoubtably expected the Olympics to present him with his moment of glory. Instead, he's been reduced to the role of bit player from the outset. Daley has been feted for months in advance of the tournament: how many people, I wonder, realised he even had a partner. I certainly didn't! How galling, then, it must have been for Aldridge when the prodigy subsequently failed to perform. He'd have been well advised, of course, to bite his tongue but is it entirely reasonable to ask a young man to articulate his thoughts in the immediate aftermath of such a crushing disappointment?

My own experience of diving is limited to being thrown into the outdoor pool in North Berwick when I was fourteen, the culmination of a miserable October holiday. Within hours of arriving in the town, Spencer, who was going through one of his phases, fell in with a group of Moddie Boys who frequented one of the town's amusement arcades. As his older brother, it was obviously incumbent on me to keep him out of mischief. My attempts to engage with the group, however, met with bewilderment and then antipathy: "Get tae f___ ya speccy wee grass," snarled the group's leader, a scrofulous Glaswegian called Neilly after I cautioned Spencer against participating in a proposed shoplifting expedition. Naturally, I refused to simply abandon my brother. My appeals to his better nature, though, prompted a further barrage of profanity. As a last resort, I threatened to take the entire group into my own personal custody. At this, all (including Spencer), responding to a signal from Neilly, turned and ran. For the rest of the week, I was forced to follow at a distance as they strutted around town in their ridiculous striped blazers and black and white shoes. "What are you lookin' at, ya dobber?" Neilly would demand of any normally attired adolescent they encountered. The entire group would then circle their victim menacingly, delivering jibes about flared trousers or Beetle Crushers.

The day before our scheduled departure, Spencer approached me after lunch. "Neilly wants to know about being psychic," he said. "He's really interested." This seemed manifestly improbable. Even while Neilly had tolerated my company, he'd persisted in referring to me as a 'spastic'. Only after several corrections had I realised that he was being deliberately offensive. Having been shunned for a week, though, the prospect of belated acceptance was sufficient incentive for me to follow Spencer into an ambush. Naturally, I put up a stout resistance, but not even the founder of Cung-Coe can contend with an entire gang. "Enough, Spencer!" I cried as they swarmed around me, "I'm defeated!" No mercy, however, was forthcoming. I was lifted bodily and marched through town attracting the sort of gawkers who always attach themselves to a mob, but refuse to accept responsibility in its aftermath. " We are the Mods!" they chanted, drowning out my pleas for assistance as the procession made its inexorable progress toward the pool into which I was unceremoniously ducked.

 

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