'…Excising your letter of offending sports references (which mean absolutely nada to me..' Nor to me Camille. But we must be indulgent. Although you & I both know without a scintilla of anxiety or doubt that there's absolutely nothing, nothing at all, to be ashamed about - or requiring explanation - in those tiny residual traces of isosexual tenderness that persist in all our hearts, there remain, sadly - in the secret places of many male minds - certain qualms about gender identity. Naively, these chaps feel that a boisterous display of sporting enthusiasm will allay whatever doubts might linger in the minds of the rest of us. Hence all this joshing & expertise about bouncing balls. It may take a while to die down (the anxiety is rather greater than one might think) but a week or two should see the end of it. It has just occurred to me that you may not be familiar with the phenomenon since poofters cannot, of course, survive in the dry climate of Australia. Scottie B.