Turf zone – RoslinBattle
Birds can sometimes display amazing feats of brain power. Take for instance the carrion crows that visit our back garden. I’ve watched them on numerous occasions swoop in with a piece of Hovis Granary toast or even an entire dried out crusty roll. They drop their prize into the bird bath then fly away, returning a short while later with another piece of bread or roll. They then eat the now softened bread or roll, then drunk the second piece. Is that not remarkable? Pigeons are not, however, very intelligent. When visiting our bird bath, they first have a bath, then they drink the bath water, after that they crap in the bird bath. And not always in that order.
People, on the other hand, you might expect to be more intelligent. Perhaps they are but not while I’m out turfing, it would seem. This morning, for example, at zone Bonnyrigg in the High Street, I watched an exceedingly large woman, with enough mass to create her own gravity, scoffing down an entire packet of Jaffa Cakes. She had a second packet under her arm. At zone Slytherin, at Bonnyrigg Community Hospital, I watched a gaggle of health care staff lurking on the railway path puffing away at high speed on cigarettes. The key word here is health. Then, at zone WitchTakeoff, I watched with amazement a youth coughing and racking his lungs to death then immediately light up a roll up. From the smell I’m guessing not containing your usual run-of-the-mill tobacco. People are sometimes weird.
So, what has this to do with turfing. Well, I had a thought while out turfing around Bonnyrigg and Eskbank, would intelligent beings from another planet take up turfing? We travel about town and country in search of invisible areas called zones, we do this on foot, by bicycle, running or even kick scooting. In addition, we do this at all hours of the day and night, in all weathers come torrential rain, blistering sun, raging tempest or white-out blizzard. We spend many hours, countless days, umpteen weeks, even an entire year chasing virtual medals.
We chase the clock to add a tail to our turfman icon. We go by all manner of weird and wonderful turf names, from DoodleDad to GreasedWeasel, from Fearglas to Furryback. Not to mention some crazy chap called PlanetGary. You name it and it’s out there. We also chase medals in the wee small hours, questing for the elusive ninja medal and a sword on our back. We scare ourselves silly for the ghost minute. We cross bridges three at a time and visit train stations every day for 30 days from another medal. We even swim in freezing cold waters and call ourselves Aqua man, or Aqua women, or is it Aqua person, these days?
Yes, what would visiting aliens think about turf? I suspect they would scrap any invasion plans for Earth domination and hyper-warp back to wherever planet they came from. Which makes me wonder what type of strange earthling actually play the game of turf?
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