henry cooper is alive and well

Good to see our 'Enery in the papers. My foremost memory of Henry Cooper is watching him from the car while he served my Gran in his greengrocer's shop in Wembley. He was talking to her and she was laughing all the while. I don't know what he was telling her and neither did she, being profoundly deaf, but I've no doubt it was something charming. It's a better memory than him ''splashing it all over'' - I see he's going to be doing more of that hence the newspaper item - and probably slightly better than putting Cassius Clay (later to be Muhammad Ali) on his arse.

HC decries the demise of teaching the noble art of boxing in schools. I'm with him on that. I never had the opportunity; wish I had now. Instead I was offered Judo lessons, which I tried even winning a medal in an inter-school championship, but it's not the same I don't think. Anyway, the point to this post is Henry's pearl:

“Whenever something or someone upsets you, count to ten before responding. Losing your cool isn’t good for you.”

Sound advice, and I could have done with doing this the other day. Trouble is, it takes discipline and practice and, unless you deliberately go looking for altercations, you don't get the practice. I learned from training our pup that any such counter-measure has to be done at level 1 or 2, yet often you're at level 5 or 6 before you know what's going on and it's too late. Maybe we could try counting to ten during every meeting; that might work. Still, no one got harmed during the making of this episode.