Gone Rambling

Those who have accompanied me to cricket matches at Lords know that I invariably purchase a scorecard and diligently start the day recording every wicket taken, the score at the end of each over, etc, etc. This usually lasts for the first half hour of play after which I have either simply lost interest, dozed off, or (normally) fallen victim to an alcohol-fuelled stupor.

So it has been with 'The Ranting Nappa' blog - left unattended (like my golf clubs) for the best part of a year.

It could be said that time changes everything. I don't seem to feel like ranting like a Victor Meldrew any more. I've mellowed and, with old age, I've started to ramble.

So I've decided to buy a new scorecard and to try again! Thus, starting with a bookselling adventure at a party political conference, I've reinvented myself as:

http://www.ramblingnappa.blogspot.com

Driving Me Bonkers

Motoring through suburban Surrey a few days ago there was a resounding crash as something solid bounced off the roof of the car. “Quickly” I said to the wifely passenger, “have a look at the map. Is there a golf course around here? I’m sure that was a golf ball. Maybe we can sue?”

In the event a later inspection of the car revealed no visible damage and I let the matter pass. But yesterday the same thing happened again – twice. In the morning as I was driving to work my attention to Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 (Quentin Blake and, yes, I was running late) was interrupted by a similar, explosive “Bang” on the roof of the car. Later in the day, on the way back home, “Thud” again. To my surprise there were no golfers around on either of these occasions, and, again no visible damage.

The explanation is, of course that it is autumn and conkers are coming off the trees like large hailstones. As I take my morning stroll to collect the newspaper I trip and slide on the things. The wife, for reasons unknown, is collecting them in a bowl in the kitchen. Maybe Pheasant Braised in Conkers is a projected supper dish, or she is going to souse them to make Conker Gin?”

On the subject of conkers Breakfast TV yesterday also featured England’s rather eccentric and ancient conker-fighting champion. The secret of a championship-winning conker, he said, is to ensure that your conker has “passed whole through a pig”.

Graveyards Again – and Feng Shui

I was startled to read about the rumpus over a new graveyard in the East Midlands. The authorities are insisting that all graves point towards Mecca – to satisfy the projected 15% Muslim occupancy. There’s nothing wrong with that I reckoned, until the article informed me that this would offend Christians who like to be buried with their feet pointing East (in anticipation of the second coming of Christ). Now this came as a surprise to me as I didn’t think it mattered in which direction a grave pointed. I grabbed the compass from the wife’s car (yes, she does need directional assistance from time to time) and hurried to the village churchyard. Lo and behold, all the occupants had their feet pointing due East. I learn something new every day.

Talking about directional assistance, business was slow at the end of last week, so much so in fact that I started to think about moving the office furniture around. The Chinese directional system of Feng Shui came to mind and a little quiet research showed me that my humble workplace fails on several counts:

I currently sit with my back to a window. Feng Shui stipulates that you should always sit with your back to a solid wall - to ensure that you have support in your life.

The office photocopier is situated at the office entrance. Feng Shui rules say that this is wrong – the heat generated causes bad vibes (chi) to people entering and leaving.

My desk has papers on it. Ouch! Feng Shui expects pristine, clean work areas.

I need a proper “wealth area” where I keep my paying-in book and PDQ machine. It would probably be a good idea to stick some coins on the PDQ machine to attract more custom.

I also need a water fountain, a fishtank, a Dragon and a three-legged Toad God. Oh heck - one thing at a time, please. I’ll move my desk first. With any luck I won’t need the three-legged Toad God until after Christmas.

The Ryder Cup - Postscript

The hex of the Ranting Nappa virtually did for Tiger Woods (see previous post 22 September)in the Ryder Cup, but what a contest, what an epic of sporting theatre!

Having spent most of the weekend "glued" to the TV I reckoned that I watched some of the best golf shots and sequences of televised play that I have ever seen (and I've seen a lot). Hearty congratulations to the European team, and to the Irish hosts.

There was several defining moments (mostly featuring Darren Clarke) but for me it was on Saturday afternoon when Paul McGinley missed a putt on the fifteenth green to keep his (and Padraig Harrington's) match against Woods and Furyk alive. The TV cameras briefly caught look of utter despair on the spectators faces, some holding their heads in anguish. That instant showed just how expressive the Irish can be, and I'm sure that two pints of Guinness later their woes were all forgotten.

Apologies to Lucy Legg, the Rev. Morris et al.

In this day and age it seems that every corner of England suffers from vandalism of one kind or another. The causes are diverse and range from youthful exuberance to drink and drugs, from sheer wickedness to totally benevolent and well-intentioned malfeasance.

The local churchyard has examples a-plenty. There are the children who realise that the grassy hillocks and graves offer ideal stunt-biking opportunities. The kids mean no real harm and do little or no damage. There are hikers who leave their picnic lunch litter, but there are plenty of do-gooders to clean that up. There are the drunks and idlers.

The older parishioners however are rather more dangerous. Mindful of government edicts and with the full support of the church authorities, they are currently enjoying the redevelopment opportunities offered by the legislation that stipulates that every public place must offer proper facilities for the disabled.

A church is a public place and car parking facilities in the village are limited, so the worthy parishioners are loathe to have the parking area outside the church reduced by the designation of a disabled parking bay. Much better they reason to provide proper parking facilities within the church grounds. All you have to do is remove a few gravestones, enlarge a gateway and then tarmac over the interred remains of (to name a few) … Lucy Legg (1872), Sally Legg (1865), Charles Hipkin (1871), another Charles Hipkin (1867), Isabella Bennett (1871), James Wiggins (1879), M.A.W. (1879), Harriet Greatree (1881), Christianson (1937), John Brightwell (1887), Arthur Pink (1949), Harry Pink (1940).

And there you have it - utter desecration of a section of a churchyard to provide disabled parking for three cars, and while we are about it a new unloading bay for hearses (which require a decent turning circle after all), and surely this space will come in useful for church festivities (car boot sales?), maybe some executive parking bays for church wardens, room for a barbecue pit, and maybe we can put in parking ticket machines for non-disabled users of this new facility. Pshaw! My sincere apologies to Lucy and her neighbours for not putting up more of a fight on their behalves.

Ryder Cup – Another Blog

Here we go again. As I write the contest is just starting out and I have a sneaky feeling that Tiger Woods is going to win everything. Over the past few days I have particularly enjoyed the BBC blog at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rydercup/. It’s a great way to fully utilise the journalistic power that the BBC fields at events like this – even if they do go on a bit about the parking arrangements.

Pelf, Dzo, Chemineas and Brethren Germane

Well I’ve lived all these years and still find words and objects to completely baffle me. The Telegraph’s “Codewords” feature irritated me last week by introducing me to the word PELF which the more educated of my readers will recognise as being a word used to describe ill-gotten wealth. The same newspaper angered me further with a Scrabble competition in which the word DZO was used (yes, it’s a cross between a cow and a yak).

A visit to the sister’s fine new house in East Sussex yesterday was notable not only for a very pleasant family lunch, but also for the handsome pair of pewter candlesticks on the table each inscribed “SS COSMA ET DAMIANUS 1687”. I struggled with thoughts of ships (the candlesticks were broad-of-base so the SS Cosma might have ploughed the oceans but unlikely as “SS” as in steamships were not around in the late seventeenth century). It was only when I got home that I learned of the Brother Saints Cosma and Damianus, both physicians of Arab origin who were martyred towards the end of the third century. A church was built in their honour in Rome by Pope Felix and a rather odd miracle took place on the premises when a nightwatchmen with a cancerous leg woke up to find that the poisoned limb had been replaced overnight with that of a recently demised Ethiopian. Cosma and Damianus were brethren germane, meaning brothers by the same mother and father, which differentiates them from other “brother saints” who were brothers in monkhood rather than by parentage. As well as being physicians they healed and cured beasts and practiced leechcraft. Anyway I woffle too much.

The sister and the new brother-in-law boast a fine collection of barbecue equipment on their patio. Amongst the gleaming equipment stood one of those terracotta stove things that hitherto I had only spotted in garden centres. They are called chemineas and might derive from North Africa or Spain. I always thought that they were an alternative form of barbecue – perfect for roasted monkfish or boney bits of chicken. Wrong again! Chemineas (as everyone apart from me knows) are wood-burning patio heaters - a good alternative to the gas-fired contraptions which radiate heat from above.

Kopparberg and Glogg (and Michael Ballack)

To Lords again on Saturday. The wife takes weather forecasts very seriously and assured me that there was no chance of any cricket being played. The older brother and I however braved the elements and actually got to see over seventy overs bowled and a convincing victory for Pakistan, albeit one that ended in near darkness.

Accompanying us was our friend the Loughton lawyer and after the match we set off to try and lift our spirits on licenced premises. After an airshot at the handsome Landmark Hotel on the Marylebone Road (no draught beer - even for ready money) we struck gold at The Harcourt Arms - London's Swedish pub. Obviously the Vikings invaded Southwold years ago and came away with happy memories. The main beer served at the Harcourt Arms is Adnams, and, fittingly for a Swedish pub, the barmaid who served us was wonderfully pleasing-on-the-eye. Here we were able to watch the closing moments of the England-Andorra European Cup qualifier on a plasma screen more usually used to show Scandinavian ice hockey matches (as well as keeping an eye on the barmaid). In addition to Adnams they serve Kopparberg here which is a mixed fruit cider guaranteed to anaesthetise you against all life's ills, and in winter you can get a Swedish mulled wine called glogg. It's a great pub.

Stupidly, as I supped my beer, I mentioned that my next blog might praise the Bavarian legal system. I had been impressed to read that Michael Ballack (of Chelsea and Germany) had been fined by a Munich court for failing to declare at customs the Fendi handbag which he had purchased as a gift for his footballer's wife/girl friend in Dubai. He had paid about £1,200 for the bag, and the fine levied by the German court ended up in the region of £65,000 - a high price, but one that might serve to remind Herr Ballack to declare his foreign purchases in future.

Abruptly the Loughton lawyer stopped ogling the barmaid and sprang to life, a glint in his eye as he saw an opportunity to defend the English legal system against a Ranting Nappa attack. "Let the punishment fit the crime!" I pleaded. "Why should Alan Sugar's Rolls Royce be charged the same £40 parking fine as the wife's small hatchback?". I even tried bringing Papua New Guinea law into the fray, but all to no avail. The Loughton lawyer had the bit between his teeth and, Rumpole-like, he wasn't going to let me off the hook. Remorselessly he chewed into every plea I could come up with. I think I'll keep off legal argument for a while.

Sporting Melodies

To Lords on Saturday, complete with the wife and her bad foot. A very happy day’s cricket, although the new brother-in-law needed educating about the traditional Lancashire anthem which rang around the ground as Dominic Cork swept a Robin Martin-Jenkins delivery to the mid-wicket boundary. “What are they singing?” he asked, with the bemusement that comes only from someone who knows all the words to Sussex by the Sea. Well the correct answer is of course that they are not singing, they are chanting the refrain – Ow, Lanky, Lanky, Lanky; Lanky Lanky Lanky Lancashire.

For my readers who do not know the words, Sussex by the Sea goes something like this:

Now is the time for marching,
Now let your hearts be gay,
Hark to the merry bugles
Sounding along our way.
So let your voices ring my boys,
And take the time from me,
And I'll sing you a song as we march along,
Of Sussex by the Sea! For...

(chorus)
We're the men from Sussex, Sussex by the Sea.
We plough and sow and reap and mow,
And useful men are we;
And when you go to Sussex,
Whoever you may be,
You may tell them all that we stand or fall
For Sussex by the Sea !
Oh Sussex, Sussex by the Sea !
Good old Sussex by the Sea !
You may tell them all that we stand or fall,
For Sussex by the Sea

Up in the morning early,
Start at the break of day;
March till the evening shadows
Tell us it's time to stay.
We're always moving on my boys,
So take the time from me,
And sing this song as we march along,
Of Sussex by theSea. For ...

(chorus)

Sometimes your feet are weary,
Sometimes the way is long,
Sometimes the day is dreary,
Sometimes the world goes wrong;
But if you let your voices ring,
Your care will fly away,
So we'll sing a song as we march along,
Of Sussex by the Sea. For . . .

(chorus)

Light is the love of a soldier,
That's what the ladies say,
Lightly he goes a wooing,
Lightly he rides away.
In love and war we always are
As fair as fair can be,
And a soldier boy is a lady's joy
In Sussex by the Sea. For ...

(chorus)

Far o'er the seas we wander,
Wide thro' the world we roam;
Far from the kind hearts yonder,
Far from our dear old home;
But ne'er shall we forget my boys,
And true we'll ever be
To the girls so kind that we left behind
In Sussex by the Sea

Despite all this Sussex managed to win the match due, in no small measure, to the superb bowling of James Kirtley. I must remember to ask the older brother for a rendition of Ipswich football anthems (of which there is a CD available from the supporters club). The daughter won’t be particularly informative about Portsmouth FC chants. If Pompey songs exist at all they are probably foul-mouthed and unprintable.

Centrefolds and Fuming in the Forum

One of the good things about the Daily Telegraph (apart from its format) is the strange mixture of serendipitous trivia and rather more straightforward information that you find on the Social News – Obituaries double page spread.

Yesterday’s paper was a case in point. Obituaries led with the untimely departure of Wasim Raja (there’s a great all-rounder for you – no protective headgear when batting against Messrs Roberts, Garner and Croft in the West Indies) who apparently suffered a heart attack while playing for Surrey Over-50s at High Wycombe. Others on the obituaries page were Bruce Gary – drummer with The Knack whose infectious hit (My Sharona) never infected the Ranting Nappa, but features on President Bush’s iPod; and the late Lord Deramore whose writing efforts culminated in the publication of an erotic novel when he was 85.

Moving to the section on Bridge News I enjoyed learning about the Annual Bridge Awards in Warsaw. Bridge Personalities of the Year were (jointly) Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who are reported to “know and trust each other through bridge”. Happily the award for enterprising reporting was given to someone who had written up a game of bridge played during the year at the South Pole. Correctly instead of calling the players North, South, East and West he described all four players as being North.

Birthdays and Anniversaries for 24th August unite Sam Torrance (53), Stephen Fry (49), Antinia Byatt (70) with Cardnal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor (74) with the Massacre of St Bartholomew in 1572 and the destruction of Pompeii in AD79.

Racing over the Births, Anniversaries and Deaths classified column I found a little General section which promoted a website called www.fumingintheforum.org. Here every Victor Meldrew and Ranting Nappa that was ever born gather to expostulate about Ruth Kelly, Immigration, and every other issue of concern to the stalwarts of Middle England.

I could drone on about the chess section and the quote from the Bible that heralds the Personal advertisements (“Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof …” 1 Chronicles 16-32-33), but the reason I visited the Social News – Obituaries double page spread in the first place was to find the backup Sudoku puzzle. It was “Tough” but I solved it (just).

Bad Hair Day (Or How a Series of Bad Decisions Can Ruin a Sporting Sunday)

Well, I can’t let yesterday’s cricket fiasco pass by without a few words, can I? The blood has boiled after all at the ineptitude of everyone involved in the England – Pakistan ball-tampering incident.

Before the crisis erupted there had been a series of bad decisions from three umpires (amazingly the man who sits and watches replays on TV even managed a howler) and both teams had cause to feel let down by the officials. Certainly the Pakistan team were at fault for staging their protest after tea, but they had cause to be aggrieved: the umpires had failed to explain properly an accusation of cheating.

The events that followed were simply a nonsense (“farcical” would be the wrong word because it implies an element of humour). “Jobsworths” were everywhere and the man who should have stepped forward – England’s captain – missed the opportunity to a) approach Inzamam directly to see if there was anything he could do to defuse the situation, and b) refuse to accept victory in the match by default

Cricket, as everyone knows, is a game which is proud of the term “spirit of cricket”. It is a wonderful builder of bridges and repairer of broken roads. Where the hell was the “spirit” of cricket yesterday? Messrs Hair, Speed and Proctor should be removed from public sight immediately, and Mr Strauss taught that captaining England is a bigger job than organising field placements.

Grand Central Terminal

125th Street Harlem, Mount Vernon East, Pelham, New Rochelle, Larchmont - the names of stations on Metro-North’s New Haven line are a happy memory of the trip I made in June to the US Open at Winged Foot. Each morning of the tournament the older brother, the used guitar salesman and I would extricate ourselves from the breakfast table and scramble the couple of hundred yards or so from our lodgings to find our train at Grand Central Station - a train that would take us and our fellow golf fans through the Park Avenue tunnel on our 20-mile commute to our destination station – Mamaroneck. Sometimes the trains would be “specials”, but more often they would be regular service to the consternation and bewilderment of the normal users unused to the appearance of crowds of golf fans en route to the course.

But the purpose of this particular blog is neither the journey nor the tournament itself (which will always be remembered more as the Open that Phil Mickelson and Colin Montgomerie lost, rather than the first that Australian Geoff Ogilvie won). This is about Grand Central Station (or “Terminal” as it is more correctly named).

Grand Central is a film star (North by North West, Superman, Men in Black, etc., etc.), it crops up regularly in fiction, and is used as the backdrop for several TV shows. The station has an extraordinary, cathedral-like Beaux-Arts interior with the famous Information Point and clock at the centre of the main concourse as well as its celebrated “sky” ceiling. The exterior was once prominent but is now pretty much dwarfed by surrounding office blocks. It handles around 700,000 people per day which is about double the number at London’s Waterloo. It covers a much larger acreage and the tracks, assorted waiting rooms and apparatus sink about 10 storeys below ground level. In the 1970s it was very nearly pulled down as part of a major development plan but was thankfully saved following huge public pressure backed by the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In 1998 a complete restoration project was completed and it is now one of the most impressive railway stations in the world.

What is particularly good about the station is the complete absence of clutter. At Waterloo the concourse is crowded with kiosks, temporary information desks and stalls selling the Evening Standard. It is difficult to move through the crowds of people trying to figure out train movements on the poor TV monitors and there is a total lack of style. Grand Central on the other hand is marvellously open, free of clutter and, as for style, New York’s finest just oozes the stuff. Instead of the ubiquitous Burger King that dominates Waterloo you are offered an Oyster Bar and Restaurant (which has traded continuously on the site since 1913). More trendy and modern eateries include an outpost of the Cipriani (Harry’s Bar) empire on a balcony overlooking the main hall. Here it was that the used guitar salesman, the older brother and I frittered away a fistful or two of dollars on pasta, bellinis and carafes of wine while watching the comings and goings.

There are no commercial advertising hoardings on the concourse at Grand Central. A huge American flag was installed after the World Trade Centre attacks, but that rather adds to the feel of the place. It makes you wonder if London can ever do the same. I quite like Marylebone Station and the Liverpool Street Station redevelopment was good until the clutter crept back in. I’ll reserve judgment on the new-look Kings Cross and St Pancras and only hope that they will be as easy-to-use and pleasing-on-the-eye as New York’s finest. Meanwhile I feel like checking out Milan, St Petersburg and a few other great stations, but they are for another year.

Knocked Out

The NHS are building a vast new mortuary at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Cosham (just outside Portsmouth) and it was the building footprint that I could see from my Day Patients Clinic ward as I waited for my hernia operation on Wednesday. They’ll have it ready for me by 2009 together with the rest of the hospital’s £200 million redevelopment. Quite a change from the small military hospital which first appeared on the site around 1904 – linked to Portsmouth centre by a tram service.

The surgeon reckoned that I might become argumentative so changed the plan to do me under a local anaesthetic and ordered the full knock-out general anaesthetic instead. He was probably right, but it does leave me rather ignorant about what went on. I just woke up an hour after going into the theatre with a large plaster on my tummy and (to my relief) my pubic hairs still intact. A cup of Nescafe and a slice of marmite toast later I was whisked away by my two responsible adults (the wife and sister-in-law) and driven straight to my place of work to process the day’s orders. Not much of a story in that!

The considered opinion is that I shouldn’t operate heavy machinery for a while, or make any major decisions. So the lawnmower remains unused and I’ll hang on to the wife and cat for the time being. There is also the thing about lifting things. It was very sensible to have the hernia done in August when things are quiet at work and typical of my customers that two “eighty-plus” book orders have rolled in immediately after the operation. The poor wife (with her injured foot) is acting as my “porter” for the time being and trundles after me down the corridors at work laden with parcels, briefcases, packing materials, etc., etc. I feel quite Victorian about it all, although I do get some strange looks from other workers on the premises.

Anyway, the forty-eight hours are virtually up so I’m off to have my first permitted (but shallow) bath – to the huge relief of the wife and the cat

Neglect and Sour Grapes

It has been an odd year. I started out in January with the intention of blogging regularly but then, around mid- March, I started suffering from bloggers’ cramp, or blogger’s block or whatever. There has been no lack of material. If anything I have had too much to blog about – Irish car rental costs, Grand Central Station in New York, Colin Montgomerie, Monty Panesar, the cursed hot weather, the older brother’s disguise (short trousers, dark glasses and a baseball cap), staff reductions (I’m on my own now), the World Cup, and the wife’s poor foot (still encased in an inflatable boot while recovering from an operation).

My sincere apologies are due to the two or three poor souls who try to read the “ranting nappa” on a regular basis. I hereby resolve to try and blog better and to blog more often. I might even try and backtrack on matters such as Grand Central Station.

But for the moment my theme is “neglect”. While the blog hasn’t suffered unduly in my absence (it is much as I left it), other things do get altered by neglect. My hair, for instance, became like thick thatch this summer and needed emergency treatment as I was wilting in the hot sunshine.

The house in France got neglected as well. For about eight weeks we left the ancient edifice untended and unvisited until last weekend, when we finally managed to cross the channel again. The “blue paint” operation (see passim) is half complete (how did blue paint get onto a lavatory seat?), but masking tape had become embedded on the window panes. The handsome vine which grows along the front of the house was another matter altogether. Like some sort of Triffid the hot weather had caused the vine to try and engulf the building altogether (see photo above). Certainly there were many grapes, but none were of the eating or drinking variety.

Rather than relaxing, the weekend was spent pruning vegetation, collecting up more than one hundred arachnids of one sort or another from inside the house and creating a rather impressive bonfire. By the time we left on Monday morning the house looked a little bit more respectable.

Fortunately blogs don't require this degree of maintenance, but I'll try and improve on the regularity my postings in future.

Blue Willy

Sorry if I’ve been suffering from blogger’s block (or whatever) these past few weeks, but I’ve had other things on my mind. Like paint!

The house in France has not wintered particularly well. The once-smart wooden shutters look rather shabby, and the “Breton Blue” which had been applied to windows and woodwork by the house’s previous owner is looking drab and flaking away. So it’s been a time for action, for a visit to Homebase to buy paint and brushes, and for a few days in France to smarten the place up a bit.

Now the wife comes from the school of D-I-Y that insists on thoroughness in everything. The old paint has to be stripped off, surfaces rubbed down, primers applied, and surrounding surfaces covered or taped lest a single drip of gloss paint runs astray.

Surprisingly she has always harboured dark thoughts about my D-I-Y skills because, quite frankly, I do tend to get a little over-excited when it comes to wielding a paintbrush. A. A. Milne’s Tigger comes to mind and for the best part of forty years I have been more-or-less banned from interior decorating following a run of disasters when trying to smarten up the small flat in Kensington which was our first home together.

Not to bore you too much with things that happened before most of my readers were born, I came home from work one day to find painting going on and so I immediately rushed to help. Maybe it would have been more sensible if I had changed out of my smart city suit and clean black shoes before I lifted the paintbrush. Maybe it would have been more sensible to stir the paint with something more appropriate than my hand. Maybe it would have helped if I had not been a heavy smoker at the time and not felt the urge to light up after ten minutes of industrious painting. The paint stains on my suit trousers (where my paint-stirring hand had delved into a pocket in search of a packet of Rothmans) rather stretched our young relationship.

Anyway, back to France. The Dulux Atlantic Surf gloss paint is a bit darker than the Breton Blue and goes on to the old shutters like a treat. Some of the shutters have been given the proper treatment - dipped in an acid bath to remove the old paint, sanded and given a coat or two of good primer before the paint is applied. Other shutters have been painted by me.

But this is the new me – dressed in old clothes, and using dustsheets and generally clearing up afterwards so the result is not too bad. The problem arises in that the gloss paint tends to creep off the brush and onto my hand. From there the paint mysteriously transfers to objects and utensils. It transfers onto kitchen cutlery and beer bottles; my hair turns blue when I scratch it, somehow the paint gets onto a pair of my best trousers (which I wasn’t even wearing at the time). Alarmingly the lawn-mower develops a blue streak, as well as some of the grass. We don’t talk about the steering wheel of the wife’s car, or the keyboard of her computer. And then the beer started to take effect and I paid a quick visit to the loo …

Spring and the Trouble it Brings

We were tipped off by a local Irish couple late on the Saturday night of our weekend break.

We (the wife and I) were in a Dingle pub enjoying a fairly lusty sing-along of Irish ballads, most of which seemed to be anti-English to some degree or other, when the information came through, “You know that the clocks go forward tonight”.

Phew! The following morning (or should I say a few hours later) we were just in time for our traditional breakfast unlike the other guests in our boarding house. But since then our sense of timing has not been exactly perfect.

Normally I prowl around the house on the morning after the clocks change. Methodically I seek out every timepiece and make the necessary changes. Videos, oven-timers, computers, watches, clocks in the house, clocks in the car, all get the treatment. But being away from home this year I never got around to doing this in any sort of organised manner.

The effect of this omission took a while to manifest itself. While daffodils and tulips appeared on schedule, the cat came out of winter hibernation and ventured into the garden, the paths got swept and the grass got mown, something still was awry. It wasn’t just the volatility of the weather – raining one minute, sunshine the next – or the quick succession of seasonal events (Grand National, Boat Race, start of flat-racing and cricket, etc.), things kept going wrong - appointments were missed, TV programmes kept changing schedule, mealtimes were sometimes off track.

Matters came to a head when we set out for an Easter weekend in France, or should I say we failed to set out for an Easter weekend in France. We knew that we had to leave in good time because of holiday traffic and the unreliability of Eurotunnel at busy times. We arranged that the wife would meet me at my office no later than midday, but the appointed time came and there was no sign. I phoned at twenty past and discovered that she was still at home “about to leave”. Oddly she sounded calm and relaxed which was a little strange as the cat had to be delivered to her b&b before one o’clock and that was a full 35 minutes drive from the office.

When she finally arrived (at about ten minutes to one) looking calm and unruffled, we were eventually able to piece together the misunderstanding. I had been unaware that the wife relies wholly on our kitchen clock for time-keeping and that this particular timepiece had not been changed during the weeks since the clocks had moved forward. In a moment all sorts of oddities became clear to her – why she had been so late meeting the daughter a few days earlier, why horse races had a nasty habit of being over before a bet was placed, why TV schedules kept changing, why the sister-in-law had been kept waiting, etc., etc.

Come the autumn I’ll try to make sure that I’m home when the clocks go back again.

Ring of Kerry

We may sometimes think that the Irish are a bit bonkers, but they in turn must surely wonder at the eccentric behaviour of English tourists.

There we were last weekend, the wife and I and our little hire car, driving for miles and miles around the famous Ring of Kerry in the rain, the mist and the gloom. The weather was just awful, but we persisted - trying to see if we could spot the MacGillicuddy Reeks - Ireland's largest mountain range, and other landmarks for which this circular drive is so famous.

During a short break in the weather we did manage to spot the Ladies View (named apparently after Queen Victoria’s Ladies in Waiting) outside Killarney. Typically when I took the photo above I managed to miss the fine rainbow which had been there a moment beforehand.

At the westernmost point on the drive we diverted briefly and crossed the causeway to Valentia Island where we stopped at a tourist attraction called the "Skellig Experience". This exhibition (plus short film) celebrates the two small rocky islets, lashed by the Atlantic, about 10 kilometres from Valentia - although quite invisible in the ghastly weather. The larger of the two - Skellig Michael - is home to some 27,000 pairs of gannets and a lighthouse. It is also a UNESCO world heritage site, but not because of the gannets or the lighthouse. From 588 to 1222AD the place was inhabited by Irish monks. They created a stairway from the landing point up 200 metres to their stone “beehive” shelters which still survive today. For sheer, bloody-minded remoteness this is an extraordinary place to build a monastery, but as Lord Clark said "It was in places like Skellig Michael that Western Civilization was preserved." George Bernard Shaw described Skellig Michael as "an incredible, impossible, mad place. I tell you the thing does not belong to any world that you and I have lived and worked in; it is part of our dream world." It was sad that we came all this way and failed to see it for ourselves.

For the rest of the "Ring", there was little to be said. I had wanted to take the wife for a jaunting car ride through the Lakes of Killarney, but the weather said no. Muckross House seemed to be closed, and for long periods we followed tourist coaches through interminable, narrow roads. I even failed to appreciate the golf course at Waterville where the older brother distinguished himself on the celebrated 18th hole.

Alternative Employment

With mail order bookselling deep in the doldrums it is time to consider other ways of earning a living.

Becoming a politician would be nice - £56,000 for six months ranting and politicizing, and massive expense allowances. But I’m really the wrong gender. The big jobs in politics tend to go to the girls. Tessa Jowell was given a throne to sit on at the Test Match in Mumbai this morning – and I bet she didn’t fly out economy class. Ruth Kelly has claimed so much in expenses this year that she has virtually covered the cost of her constituency home purchased in 2001 (on top of her £134,000 salary). I’d love the money, but would feel that I was being less than honest with the taxpayer.

Not being strong in anything that demands sporting prowess I don’t feel that I’d get very far as a professional footballer. My rugby playing days are also long passed. But what about becoming a referee? Now I have the judgmental integrity to do the job but the eyesight isn’t what it used to be. This impediment never seems to stop partially-sighted people getting jobs as line judges at Wimbledon, and certainly the efforts of referee Mike Dean at yesterday evening’s Fulham-Chelsea match indicate that it doesn’t matter if you (and the linesman) completely fail to see a Chelsea player’s misdemeanour prior to scoring a goal. Eleven angry Fulham players quickly jostled round Mr Dean to complain and stayed there until he reversed his decision to award a goal (no wonder there was a pitch invasion afterwards).

While watching the Six Nations rugby it was also interesting to note that a decision is never final. Repeated delays while TV replays are studied make one wonder if a referee can ever be qualified to award a try. The linesmen also behave strangely. In the old days when a linesman raised his flag to say the ball is out of play, then play stops and a lineout is awarded. On Saturday a linesman raised his flag, ran a few paces and, seeing that the errant player was running on to score a try, he then lowered it again – as if to say “maybe it was, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt”. I could do that.

Chef? Hairdresser? Car Wash Attendant? Traffic Warden? All too confusing. Maybe I’d better stick with books.

Square-Eyed and Crestfallen

The Rugby Six Nations “Super Saturday” was a bit much for me. Three consecutive, televised matches (all fairly closely fought and all ending with the wrong result) were too much of an emotional drain. Unlike the England vs. France match the previous weekend I had not taken the precaution of dosing myself with large quantities of Dorset bitter and Australian red before the first kick-off. Accordingly I lasted the full eighty-minutes-times-three without even the shortest nap and ended up tired, head-achey, depressed and fed up with TV.

Anyway, well done France and Ireland, but what do we do about England? Oddly today's Sunday Times (Jeremy Guscott) and the Sunday Telegraph (Paul Ackford) agree that Andy Robinson must stay on for next year’s World Cup, but that he must change his coaching staff - particularly for the backs. Guscott named eight or nine uncapped players with great potential who might be considered, although Robinson is not known as a risk-taker. Ackford picked his dream team from all the Six Nations teams and there wasn’t an Englishman in sight. The New Zealander Sean Fitzpatrick (in the Sunday Times) described England as “one of the dullest teams on the planet, not just in its style of play but when it comes to applying a bit of grey matter when it counts”. Stern stuff, but on reflection is it not so far from the truth? Let’s hope for better stuff next year.

Next weekend we’re off to Ireland to see if the Emerald Isle is still celebrating threefold – the Triple Crown, St Patrick’s Day and a hugely successful Cheltenham. I’ve no doubt that there will be plenty of smiling faces over there and maybe, just maybe the weather will warm up a bit.

Scientific Evidence

I don’t intend to cause my readers distresss when posting these blogs but just occasionally I cross someone’s nerve. An example was the day I mentioned a book called Red Herrings and White Elephants. I had been entertained by the author’s explanation of “freeze the balls off a brass monkey” (having to do apparently with brass trays to hold cannon balls on ships in the Napoleonic Wars). Now I didn’t mean to upset the metallurgists amongst my few readers (I didn’t realise that such people read blogs) but there ensued a chorus of “Balderdash” and “Piffle” and “How could you have be so stupid as to actually believe such patent nonsense!”. The metallurgists in refuting the explanation still couldn’t explain the derivation of “freeze the balls off a brass monkey” and nor, it seems, can anyone else.

Not to make the same mistake twice I have now acquired a new trivia book with undoubted pedigree for scientific accuracy – Does Anything Eat Wasps?* – a collection of questions and answers from the “Last Word” column in the New Scientist. Now I’m the last person to understand the physics of it all but I did enjoy the answers to the question whether or not you can safely drop a cat from any height and it will survive (because its terminal velocity is lower than the speed, etc., etc.). A survey has been carried out on injuries to cats who have fallen from varying heights and the conclusion is that if the cat falls from a building less than seven storeys high it should live; if the cat falls from a height in excess of seven storeys it should live; but if the cat falls from the seventh storey (no higher, no lower) it is statistically likely to perish. Falling onto concrete is not to be particularly recommended, and cats can survive falling from the 32nd floor of a building. (Sources: Papers published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medicine Association and Nature).

Since reading this piece (and laughing out loud at it) I have been getting some very strange looks from our ancient cat.

* Bears, frogs and fish (to name a few) eat wasps.