{"id":2328,"date":"2010-06-05T15:00:36","date_gmt":"2010-06-05T14:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/?p=2328"},"modified":"2020-10-26T12:21:45","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T12:21:45","slug":"the-ball-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/blog\/2010\/06\/05\/the-ball-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ball is Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"

We arrive at the school with The Ball and a giant replica. Alarmingly for us, the teachers are nowhere to be seen. Andrew talks to the kids about The Ball, but struggles to make himself heard above the cacophony of chatter.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Mayhem<\/a><\/span>Mayhem and cacophony greets The Ball<\/small><\/div>\n

The children crowd around to sign both balls. And game on… The Ball is kicked around the school-yard in an unruly fashion harking back to the days of village football in England or even the Wall Game at Eton. A huge punt by one young lad and The Ball’s on a classroom roof.<\/p>\n

\"Where's<\/a><\/span>Where’s The Ball? Mob football in Windhoek<\/small><\/div>\n

But what’s that? Oh no. The Ball meets a spike on the roof head-on and flops back to earth limp, lifeless and deflated. It needs urgent repairing. We’re a long way from an Alive & Kicking stitching centre and even further from The Ball doctor in Douala. What to do?<\/p>\n

We’re recommended a cobbler and that seems like the sensible solution until we hear about a technique for fixing bike punctures. The answer is simple — pump a white sticky substance into The Ball with a syringe.<\/p>\n

\"Injecting<\/a><\/span>Injecting the white sticky stuff<\/small><\/div>\n

Shake The Ball about, pump it up, bounce it around. And hey, presto, it rolls again…<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/span>The sticky stuff finds the hole and seals it<\/small><\/div>\n

The Ball was dead. Long live The Ball.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We arrive at the school with The Ball and a giant replica. Alarmingly for us, the teachers are nowhere to be seen. Andrew talks to the kids about The Ball, but struggles to make himself heard above the cacophony of chatter. The children crowd around to sign both balls. And game on… The Ball is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[224,18,232],"tags":[33,182,48,49,226,183],"class_list":["post-2328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-namibia-countries","category-the-ball","category-the-journey","tag-alive-kicking","tag-namibia","tag-peril","tag-rescue","tag-school-visit","tag-windhoek"],"geo":{"latitude":-22.558904600000001750004230416379868984222412109375,"longitude":17.08248139999999892779669607989490032196044921875,"description":"Windhoek, Namibia"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2010\/06\/nam_DSC02869.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3271,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2328\/revisions\/3271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theball.tv\/2010\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}