Test Match Special

Given my complete lack of sporting ability and my pretty much minimal interest in spectating, which in any case is more in the way of just looking at the results in the paper, it might seem passing strange that I'm posting about sport for the second consecutive day.

It must have been back three weeks or more that I mentioned the Ashes, the name given to international cricket matches (test matches) between England and Australia.  I suppose to be completely accurate, the Ashes is not the name given to the matches but is the name of the trophy.

(It wasn't three weeks, it was a month ago that I posted about the Ashes.)

OK, if you followed the link you now know all about it.  If you didn't, you might not.

England won the first two matches in the five-game series very convincingly and seemed well on course for a series win and the retention of the Ashes.  Then came the third test, the weekend before last.  This game looked to be going Australia's way with them staying on top for the first four days.  On the fifth day it rained and the match was declared a draw.  As Australia could no longer win the series, England got to retain the Ashes anhd great was the jubilation across the world.  Well, across the world of English cricket anyway.

There was no disputing the fact that the best Australia could hope for was to draw the series 2-2, an overall result that would satisfy England.  All the same, if Australia did win the 4th and 5th tests to claim a series draw, the fact that they had been on course to win the 3rd test would have left a slightly sour taste in the mouth; two matches won by each side with Australia the better team in the drawn match.  They could, I would suggest, claim quite justifiably that they had been robbed by rain.

The 4th test was played over the last weekend.  On Friday (day one), Australia seemed to be in the ascendancy.  Saturday was the same, but by close of play on Sunday things looked pretty even.  Monday saw Australia chasing a total of 299 in their second innings and looking likely to get there.  Then England achieved a break through and skittled the Aussies out to win the match with a day to spare.

That bad taste has gone from the mouth now and England can truly claim to have won the series.

~~~~~

Frustration can set in during a cricket match, especially one of the 5-day internationals.  It can also - and more frequently - arise as a result of computer malfunction.  For some reason my standard PC keeps crashing on Firefox and refuses to load Explorer.  I just hope that service pack 2, which I am in the throes of installing, solves the problem.

~~~~~

When I was but a whippersnapper, one of my pastimes was completing the "I Spy" books.  (Read about them here.) I don't recall if "I Spy in the Street" included this, but it would have been worth a lot of points as an Edward VIII post box is something of a rarity.

To explain.  Post boxes bear the royal cypher, such as the EIIR for Queen Elizabeth 2nd.  Edward VIII was King for only a few months in 1936 so there was little chance that post boxes would be sited during his reign.

I have to wonder how many were manufactured and not installed.

We was robbed!

So here we are, not yet in the middle of August, and yet this past weekend was the second in the latest football season.  My memory must be playing tricks because it seems to me that the gap between one season ending and the next beginning is getting shorter and shorter with each succeeding year.  I'm not entirely sue that my recollection is accurate as I have hazy memories of football spectators in summer clothes, which would seem to indicate that August has been the traditional month for the start of the new season.  On the other hand, the cup final was always the last game of the season (or so I thought) and was played on the second Saturday in May.  I think.  Nowadays the cup final is not the last match of the season, which extends further into May.

You might gather from the previous paragraph that my knowledge of professional football (and I'm talking about proper football, not the version of rugby that is called football in America, nor the strange game played under Australian rules) is not top of the form standard.  You would be quite right.  There have been occasions in the past when I have been to professional football matches, mainly in the far-off days when spectators stood on the terraces, shouted obscene remarks at the referee and rushed for a pie and a pint at half time.  I have also been to a couple of matches since stadia became all-seating with no spectator allowed to even stand up to stretch his legs while play is in progress.  How anyone can afford to watch professional football on a regular basis is quite beyond me.  I have just checked and find that tickets for Manchester United cost from £31 to £53 for one game.  Even our local club, which is hardly in the top flight, has ticket prices starting at £25 and rising to £42.

What has puzzled me for many years is the way people say things like, "We won" or "We were robbed".  Why do they refer to "we"?  It's not as if they had anything to do with the game - other than watching it or sometimes just seeing the result.  They were not playing and were not involved in any way with the team.  In fact, they are not even members of a club; they are simply paying customers.

I say that spectators are not members of clubs.  That is, perhaps, not how supporters see things.  All football teams are "clubs" - even though they are, in truth, limited companies often owned by a single person.  It's not as though the teams are selected from a closely-knit group, say the workers at a certain factory or the members of a social club.  The players don't even need come from the country where the club is based let alone the town.  They are simply men (usually) who have been employed to undertake work.

It's the same with any professional team sport - football, cricket, rugby, ice hockey - but quite different in individual sports such as golf, tennis or athletics and, on the whole, in amateur sports

I find it all just a little puzzling.  But maybe it's me who is the odd one out and everyone else who is marching in step.

~~~~~

Today, another picture taken from the end of the Upper Lodge Wood.  This time, looking west, almost exactly the opposite direction from yesterday's picture.

Pricey

I set a new record yesterday.  It cost me just a few coppers over £90 to fill the car, the most I have ever spent at one time on fuel.  Mind you, the on-board computer was telling me there was just enough fuel left for 20 miles so I did put in more than 60 litres (that's 14.18 gallons).  To think I can remember the time when I would pull up at the pump, ask for four gallons (it wasn't self-service) and still get change from a ten shilling note.

However, I do have to confess to being a trifle worried.  I can remember what I had for breakfast - not hard, as it's always a bowl of cereal - and can even remember last night's dinner (roast pork) and dinner the night before (confit de canard - duck's leg preserved in its own fat) but I have just noticed that I posted a picture on Saturday that I had posted only a couple of weeks earlier.  Does that mean I'm losing my marbles?  Possibly, or there again, possibly not.

So, today's picture.  Basically, this is another view I have shown before, from near the Upper Lodge Wood looking along the Stanmer valley to Castle Hill (on the right above the trees) with a distant view of Firle Beacon (the pointed hill in the centre of the horizon).  One of my all-time favourite views.

On the map below, "A" marks the spot where I was when I took the picture, the pink marker is Firle Beacon.

The summer plague

It happens every summer - and seems to have become worse since we had an elected council with the Green Party in the majority.  I try to keep politics out of this blog on the grounds that (a) my political views are my own affair and I'm not obliged to broadcast them to the world, and (b) politics is one of the three subjects that should not be mentioned around the dinner tables of society, the other two being religion and money.  But I'll make an exception in this case.  Having said that, I will freely - indeed, even happily - admit that the Greens are not entirely to blame.  I expect that some of the blame must rest with some commissar or other in Brussels.  Whoops, here go with politics again!

Every year Brighton is invaded.  During the early autumn there is often a party conference, and if the political parties give the city the cold shoulder there are almost certainly other groups who will be happy to spend a few days by the sea.  The high summer sees an influx of foreign students spending a few weeks here, ostensibly to improve their English but they seem more intent on partying and generally have a good time.  OK, so both political party conferences and large numbers of foreign students can have a disruptive effect on life in the city but, quite frankly, neither impact much on me and both conferences and students contribute to the local economy.  What does cause me disruption and makes me hot under the collar is the swarm of travellers who set up illegal encampments in our parks and other open spaces around the city.

Let's be perfectly reasonable about this.  Well, I think I am, anyway.  I have no problem with people living a nomadic lifestyle per se if that is their choice.  I don't understand quite how they expect to live a modern life-style in a developed country, with satellite television and mobile phones, but that is not my problem.  If they spent a night or two at the side of the road - in small groups - and moved on leaving nothing but their thanks, I'm sure I would have no cause to be upset.

What does annoy me is that they park up on a public park in groups of 20 or 30 caravans, stay for anything up to six weeks before they can be ejected legally, and leave mountains of rubbish when they do go.  Or the council will provide large wheelie bins for their rubbish, which is probably cheaper than employing contractors to clean up the site later.  And all this is, of course, at the expense of the local council tax payer.

I did read something put out by our local council (the Green Party) telling us that travellers deserve our care and compassion because they have shorter life expectancy and poor education.  I really blew my top when I read that; after all, it's not exactly my fault that they choose a life-style that causes those problems.   And why should travellers expect to benefit from free health care, education and rubbish removal when they make no contribution towards the cost?

At some point every summer, and quite often in the winter too, but the summer is particularly prone to the problem, one or more of my usual routes for walking the dog becomes unavailable to me as the travellers have descended with their aggressive dogs and their mess.

But enough already.  Except for a picture I took yesterday showing the illegal encampment on the Waterhall valley playing fields.  This was taken from about a mile away so I don't claim it is a brilliant picture but it does illustrate the problem.

In a quandary

Yep, that's me.  I'm in something of a quandary.  It's not anything major, it's like making a decision on whether to have cereal or toast and marmalade for breakfast.  Pretty earth-shattering stuff.  No, my quandary is deciding what I should write about today.

There are a number of possible themes running around in my head.  There is the report in this morning's newspaper of a man who has written a daily diary for the past 38 years.  It seems his output now exceeds that of William Shakespeare and is approaching that of Charles Dickens.  Or maybe I misread that bit as the kettle came to boil at that point.  But it gave me pause for thought (as I filled the teapot); some of those diary entries would be quite interesting.

A few years ago the Old Bat and I were in the Lake District with my brother and sister-in-law, staying not far from Grasmere and Wordsworth's Dove Cottage, which we visited.  Until then, I had never appreciated that his sister, Dorothy, wrote a journal which has been published.  Following the example of my s-in-l, I bought a copy, thinking it might prove enlightening.  It didn't.  She kept repeating short sentences like, "Walked round the lake in the late afternoon" but gave (to my mind) very little impression of what life was really like for her or her opinions on things that happened.  I suppose 200 years ago life was very much more parochial, with news taking forever to travel from one end of the country to the other.  But what I wanted was rather more of the intimate details of their lives; what they ate, the cost of things and so on.

That was part of the reason behind my starting this blog - an attempt to put down something of my thoughts and to give generations to come some idea of what it is (or was, as it will be to them) like to live in these early years of the 21st century.  But perhaps I am being over-ambitious and too full of hubris.

That was one thing I thought I might write about.  Another was the dreadful sense of ennui that seems to have overtaken me these last two or three days.  There are so many things I ought to be doing but that I just can't be bothered with, so many things I usually like doing but seem to be just too much bother.  On the other hand, I was contacted during the week by a distant cousin - my 7 x great grandfather is his 8 x ggf which makes him, oh, something like a 7th cousin once removed.  Anyway, that prodded me to follow another branch of the family tree that I hadn't even know existed.  Not exactly fascinating, but something I find almost irresistible once I get started. Only those who have a similar interest will come anywhere close to understanding that urge!

I also thought I might jot down a few thought on why I like living in this "sceptered isle set in a silver sea".  Those of my readers who know their Shakespeare will know that that is a mangled quotation - and perhaps I will leave the subject right now.  We can always come back to it later.  Meanwhile, I mentioned that I rarely glance at the Royal Pavilion when I pass it on the bus.  Here is a picture I did take - when the sky was almost impossibly blue for England - and which I have recently used as a kind of brand image for Brighton Lions Club.  You will find it on our web site, our Facebook page and our blog.

Deeply philosophical

I went to the tip yesterday morning with a load of garden rubbish.  The road I take crosses the race course - or maybe the race course crosses the road.  Either way, on race days thick mats are laid over the road and straw or grass cuttings are spread over them, which actually makes for an extremely slippery surface.

Parenthetical point: Brighton race course is unusual in thatit is horseshoe (or U) shaped, one of only three in England that do not prescribe a complete loop.

As I was saying, I had to drive across the race course.  Luckily, I went in the morning.  I had not been aware that yesterday was a race day.  Had I tried to go to the tip in the afternoon, I would likely have been held up, possibly for as long as 20 minutes.

There always used to be a sign on the approach to the race course warning drivers of a temporary road surface, this sign being uncovered on race days.  That sign seems to have disappeared, to be replaced by this deeply philosophical thought:

Seems to me to be a thought worthy of Uncle Skip.

Blasé?

Well, I hope the day never comes when I become so blasé that I don't notice the beauty of the view when I open the bedroom curtains or walk the dog across the fields from the Upper Lodges of Stanmer Park.

There was a time when I commuted daily to an office in London.  My journey on the train took me past London Bridge and along the south bank of the Thames almost through the churchyard of Southwark Cathedral before turning over Blackfriars Bridge - with the reconstructed Globe Theatre just a bit further along and visible from the train.  Crossing the Thames, one could see Tower Bridge, the Tower of London, the Monument [to the Great Fire of London in 1666] and the dome of St Paul's Cathedral as well as the river traffic.  Sadly, I saw this sight so often that I became immune to the beauty of it and kept my head buried in my newspaper.

That happens even now on the fairly rare occasions that I journey into town.  My route on the bus, both into town and back home again, takes me past the Royal Pavilion - and I seldom give it so much as a glance.

However, I am determined that my eyes will not become blind to the beauty of the views over the Downs, whether they be from my bedroom window or the fields along from the Upper Lodges.  Like this one:

By the way, we haven't seen our robins around for the last two or three days.  Presumably the young have left the nest, but whether it was under their own steam or courtesy of one of the local cats . . .