No two ways about, if you’re an Australian Fanatic, Lord’s was a dreadful result, nearly as bad, perhaps worse than drawing at Cardiff. Never mind the seventy-four year old Lord’s voodoo going down the clacker – historical records for Australian test teams are only there to be beaten. What’ll hurt is the failure to nail a dead-cert win at [...]
From capital to capital, Cardiff to London. The difference could hardly be greater. It was the first test ever in Wales as well as the series, whereas although any test at Lord’s is significant, especially against Australia, it was when all is said and done, just another test. There were no signs directing people to [...]
till the game’s bones break. All brave teams eat
at the same table. Their contest sated,
there will be more, if not more to meet
before time’s great door bequeaths the departed.
Tough luck, Tom Watson, at the Turnberry Open, but if you wanted real-deal sporting thrills and spills this weekend you should have been at Congham, Norfolk for the World Snail Racing Championships (The French are also-rans: they eat their competitors.) It’s bright and breezy July morning, and instead of taking the 13 or 82 bus I’m going to walk to Lord’s; a final pilgrimage of a five day test.
Albion Underground regrets to announce significant delays to the arrival of the next wicket on the Victory Line.
This is due to engineering works not following on and proceeding as expected, although we are doing as much as we can to rectify the situation by deployment of a new ball.
However Albion Underground would like to make [...]
I tell a lie. Yesterday there were kids at the ground. About a dozen seats down from me in the upper tier of the Edrich stand after lunch a young boy gripped and polished his brand new MCC ball as though he was opening the England attack from the Nursery End. Never mind the ball was doubtless made on the Indian sub-continent, probably by a boy or girl about as young and quite possibly for the sweatiest of sweat shop wages.
ethereal, a slight aromatic
adrift in time, fainter than dew
left after blades flens sward
before its possibility
earlier days’ traces linger;
stale ales, linament,
sweat and certified under-arm deodorant
fails to mask an exotic musk,
rare even to memories, dreams
beyond experience
sniffed with leather
when it edges their bats
or pummelled by ours;
with luck to taste on lips
as they lick fingers
before each dries with anxiety
you’ll [...]
At ten-thirty today I’m to be interviewed by Ronnie Barber of BBC Radio about what words poets don’t like. Any that end in -ly except sly, since they’re adverbs which means the verb isn’t doing its job well enough, and generally used by politicians and the like to evade rather than seek truth and meaning [...]
It is one of those days: from the top of a 13 bus observe the increasing pavement rain dapples down the Finchley Road. Nearly didn’t get this far as a silver Honda Jazz driven by a bitch of a silver-haired hag tried to total me crossing the road just because she wanted to turn right [...]
Brother Ben,
Life brings its own frustrations.
Eyes beseech the heavens
Leaves all in place as before.
Thy task is to dismiss by thine own labours
Without pleas to those with especial powers
To do thy humble work towards dismissal.
Here endeth the elders’ epistle:
Success shall come,
You leave no margin for error,
They shall succumb,
Thy will be done. ‘Tis enough,
Virtue is its own reward [...]
