Ashes Poetry

This is my father’s day pressie from Kay and Laurel on the recently revarnished kitchen table of a wicket which I used to hide under as a lad since the days when born in Coventry. This is why I’m a Bear – Warwickshire through and through, even though not a drop of English blood courses through my veins (1/4 German, 1/4 Austrian, 1/2 Russian and 100% Jewish to be precise.)

Sometimes I’ve almost thought about supporting Russia at cricket England have played so badly, (and yes, I know true supporters support their teams through thick and thin, but there is only so much you can take, you know.) But I’d always support Warwickshire, and Coventry City, the greatest soccer team ever, for as my eldest brother said after we won the FA Cup in 1987 ‘There is nothing else to live for.’

England vs Warwickshire. Who do I support? Does it matter so long as we thrash the Aussies, who’ll be just down the Pershore Road warming up against the Young Lions at Worcester. Objectively speaking there’s something of a phoney war feel about affairs, the sharpening of swords, pencils, rss feeds and bon-mots for next Wednesday at Cardiff: the two games judged as a whole by England selectors, the Aussies keeping a weather eye on the form of likely opponents over the summer.

But as a Bear I want Warwickshire to win. Let’s face it not so long ago, Warwickshire was England. During the War of the Roses, Warwick was king-maker, the most powerful man in the country, a Bernie Ecclestone of Tudor politics.

Then Edgbaston was one of many such settlements in the county, probably larger than another called Birmingham. The River Rae ran through it, giving the name to the old Rae Bank stand, which became the Eric Hollies stand a few years back – the hoardings behind follow the Rae into the city. Edgbaston may well be one of the few test match grounds which could trace its origins back to medieval times….

…. in those days where could you play cricket?  You’d need somewhere flat; you’d need somewhere which wasn’t being used for anything else. A meadow would be ideal. Unlike humpy-bumpy ridge and furrow, meadows classically run besides rivers and streams: from Saxon times onwards they were developed for hay to over-winter livestock. Once the hay is cut, around June, July, for sheep and goats to give the final nibble, you have a flat open area free for cricket…

Just upstream and across the road from the ground was a mill. I saw it being excavated ahead of development just after the old Rae Bank stands went. Perhaps you can imagine the miller and the farmers playing the summer game just across the way as the water wheel clacked round and round:-

Chaff

Here on the Rae bank
stands a mill,
and beneath it, another
and perhaps another, still.

Their wheels still turn after harvesting
paled wheat once these fields were left
to seed, grain, then flour
to sell or take
for tithe, ex ultima
our daily bread to bake.

A trickle of water annoints their past,
the click of bearings ghosts their last.
Let the seasons turn like tables
from one year to the next
till time itself is winnowed from us all.
Forgive us our trespass,
it is enough to do no more.