Waxing Lyrical About County Cricket: Middlesex….

Oh I was walking round my local store
Searching for the ten pence off Lord’s
When suddenly I bumped into these guys
On seeing who it was I gave a cry
“Fuckin’ ‘Ell, It’s Middlesex!”

Oh Jane was pushing baby round the park
When all at once she saw her husband Mark
Well he was with a team down by the stream
So Jane and baby both began to scream
“Fuckin’ ‘Ell, It’s Middlesex!”

Oh as the train pulled into platform three
I looked around for my best girl to see
As she disembarked but I didn’t seem to care
‘Cos someone passed that made me stop and stare
Oh Dracula comes from Transylvania
Stevie nicks books about kleptomania
Johnny looked out of his NW9 bedroom window
And shouted to his mum “It’s Middlesex!”

With apologies to ‘Half Man, Half Biscuit’ and Fred Titmus

Waxing Lyrical about County Cricket: Surrey

Surrey, get away
Get a good club with more pay
And you’re O.K.

Surrey, it’s a gas(ometer)
Players grab that cash with both hands
And make a stash

New captain, new direction, four star dream team
Think they’ve bought a cricket team

Surrey get back
They’re all right Jack
Keep your hands off their stash (of players)

Surrey, they’re a hit
Don’t give me that
Do goody good bullshit

They’re in the hi-fidelity
First class-travelling cricketing set
And people think they think they need a Lear jet

Surrey, it’s not a club to hate*
Square that fairly
And don’t take a slice of schadenfreude pie

Surrey, so they say
Are the root of all evil
Today

But if you ask for an appraisal
It’s no surprise that they’re
Well positioned to go all the way
All the way
All the way
All the way
All the way…

*mock when they lose to Cambridge UCCE, yes, but not hate.

Hallelujah (the season is here)

“Hallelujah”

I’ve heard there was a secret shot
That Hildreth played, and it pleased the Lord (Selvey)
But you don’t really care for county cricket, do you?
It goes like this
The leave, the graft
The minor fall of a tailender, the major lift over cover
The baffled king-of-spain composing dossiers.

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

Your faith in Lyth was strong but you needed proof
You saw him batting on the roof
His beauty in the morning light overthrew you
He tied you to your plastic chair
He broke the opposition, and cut them behind square
And from your lips she drew the “Hallelujah!” (Scyld Berry’s got another player to champion every Sunday)

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

But I have been here before
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew it.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
The championship is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a brutal six month slog.

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

There was a time when Scyld Berry let me know
What’s really going on below
But now he never shows it to me, do you?
And remember when I sat next to you
The Graeme Swann was bowling too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

Maybe there’s a God above
But all I’ve ever learned from County cricket
Was how to drive at someone who bowled an outswinger at you.
It’s not a cry you can hear at night
It’s not those fans who haven’t seen the light
It’s a cold and it’s a brilliant county season

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

You say I took the name of this song in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every world
It doesn’t matter which you like
The IPL or the “Broken” County cricket

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel outside off, so I tried to touch to leg
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it will all go wrong for Essex
I’ll stand before the Lord Selvey of Uphill-into-the-Wind
With nothing on my tongue but county cricket

County cricket, County cricket
County cricket, County cricket

(Apologies to Leonard Cohen)

If…..

(With apologies to Rudyard Kipling)

If you can keep your wicket when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming their predicament on your slap to point;
If you can trust yourself to take on the short ball when all media doubt your ability to survive,
But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream of escaping with the draw—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think about the match situation—and not make thoughts about the match situation your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the partnership with an out-of-form Stuart Broad you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build up Monty with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings in the first innings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, just before the 2nd new ball is due.
And lose, and start again at your 2nd innings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To take ball after ball down the legside from Steven Finn.
And so hold on to them when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on! Even if he doesn’t deserve a wicket with such dross”

If you can talk with commentators and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Giles Clarke—nor lose the common touch,
If neither @Bailsthebadger nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of encouragement behind the stumps to a flagging team in the field,
Yours is the England vice-captaincy and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Matt Prior, my son!

If was all England fans had at the start of yesterday’s play.

Operation Christmas Child

Do you take part in Operation Christmas Child?

If so why do you make a shoebox?

We are looking ahead to the 2013 shoebox campaign and my colleagues would really love to know what motivates you to do a shoebox (don’t be frightened by their appearance, they wouldn’t hurt a fly).

Further background about who I work for: http://bit.ly/VYGdg0

If you could tell them in 20 words or less and email your answers to socialmedia@samaritans-purse.org.uk  by Monday 18th March. They would appreaciate it very much indeed!

 

What a difference a decade and a half makes.

In the mid-1960s the UK government decided to change who had de-jure sovereignty of an overseas dependency in an isolated part of the ocean far, thousands of miles from the British Isles.

Without recourse to the inhabitants of the island it evicted them and forbade them ever to return to the island, even to visit the graves of their relatives whom they had buried there. It was a callous, imperialistic and cowardly hand over of the islands to the demands of a foreign power. It doesn’t really matter that the government was a Labour one at the time of the signing of the agreement, because previous and subsequent Conservative & Labour governments all had a part to play in the shameful history of what has happened to the former inhabitants of Diego Garcia.

In 1982, another country took control of another bunch of islands thousands of miles away from the UK without the express consent of the inhabitants. This time, however, they did so by force and they did so by almost complete surprise. This time the UK government didn’t acquiesce and help deport the islanders to somewhere thousands of miles from their homes (as they could have done), this time the UK government used its full force and powers to defend the right of self-determination and self-defence that is a core part of the UN charter.

I find it odd that the rights of the Falkland islanders are often dismissed as being uneconomical by people such as Simon Jenkins, yet the self same publication he writes for rails against the injustices suffered by the people of Diego Garcia. I’ll say it now that I’m a left-wing hawk. Were I alive at the time of the Falklands conflict I would have been arguing for the rights of the islanders to be heard, and agreeing that the UK government should be using any and all legal means to restore the government that the Islanders wanted.

Certainly the jingoism in parts of the press could have been avoided. The use of help from Chile is morally dubious at best, given what Pinochet was doing in Chile at the time, but when all is said and done, the case for defending the islanders was pretty straight-forward.

The question of their “not being indigenous” arises often in discussions about the Falklands, well neither has Diego Garcia had any indigenous human population, it was first settled in the late 18th century. If the Falkland Islanders ever wish to become independent or join another country, this wish should be listened to by the UK government. The former inhabitants of Diego Garcia should have been given this choice. They had to fight for over 40 years just to get the right to visit the graves of their families.  Just before Christmas they received a horrific blow  when the court in Strasbourg told them that their right to live on Diego Garcia was revoked when they accepted compensation for their displacement.

The government is wholly wrong on this, they have fought to deny the Chagossians the right to live on Diego Garcia, just as much as they have (rightly) fought to defend the rights of the Falkland Islanders to live how they want to. This is the real imperialism, the utter disregard for the wishes of people it had a duty of care over. I hope that the UK government see sense soon and resettle those Chagossians that want to return to Diego Garcia. It’s what the Falkland Islanders would want.

Copyright Ben Tubby via Creative Commons. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Falkland_Islands_Penguins_91.jpg )

In praise of….. ‘The Fear’: a feeling known to many English cricket fans.

With apologies to St. Paul..

 

 

Though I speak with the tongues of cricket fans and citizens of the DPRY, but have not bumptiousness, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of reverse-jinxing, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all of Hope’s contact details, so that I could remove mountains (or at least Cosgrove), but have not confidence, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to take wickets via commenting on a cricinfo live scorecard, and though I give my body to be burned by many a captain who wants to bowl me into the ground, but I have not The Fear, and it profits me nothing.

The Fear suffers long and is kind; The Fear does not envy; The Fear does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil (except of the chances of my cricket teams that i support); The Fear does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth that the 1980s & 1990s brought; The Fear bears all things, believes all things (that could go wrong), hopes all things, endures all things as Hope leaves us dazed and confused once again.

The Fear never fails. But whether there are prophecies of an England win, they will fail; whether there are tongues preaching English supremacy, they will cease at least once in a given series; whether there is knowledge that informs Hope, it will vanish away in a spell of mesmeric bowling by Dale Steyn . For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face at 6am in the morning as England are 92-5. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide Faith, Hope, The Fear, these three; but the greatest of these is The Fear.