I confess I have had an itty bitty morning of indecision, torn between cricket, writing and sorting out the in tray, tending to flit around things. Kent are losing wickets again so I decided on an early lunch here at home, the remaining snack meal of bacon beans potatoes and a banana, but I also make an unhealthy cheese and salami sandwich, before going out for quick visit to Aldi and the Fredericke Street Greengocers. I buy tins of the salmon ready prepared in sauces of various kinds for salad lunches. Breadm their last couple of pints of skimmed milk, lettuce cumcumber and some fresh peaches. The xcheries at the greengrocers look delicious large and juicey but I bulk at £3 around as those in Shields centre cost less. I buy two pounds of grapes for £1.
When I arrive at the Riverside ground a great black cloud covers the ground and I observed that having hesitated about making the trip I had chosed badly. There are a few droplets as I decided on location, staning near the Members Lounge but the rain does not come although the cloud lingers. Kent were all out for 78 some 68 runs behind Durham and their last wicket pair added 20. Durham are also struggling again and no one makes over 30 and they are all our around tea time for 108 leaving Kent 176 to win. This looks impossible as they losing two wickets in first over but then there is a stand of some sixty runs for the fourth wicket and scoring begins to look easy and none of the bowlers appear threatening. It is got very cold as well as fully overcast so perhaps atmospheric conditions is the factor. Then there is a sudden collapse just when Durham is in sight of victory play is stopped for bad light conditions. Ominously one of the batsman is approaching 50 runs and the other participated in the previous last wicket rally, although they have to score sixty runs to win in the morning, the game is far from over.
Althoyugh I had taken a sandwich and coffee to the game I was still peckish around tea time and treated myself to a scone and to a slice of cake for £3. I should have bought a pound of cherries . I raised the issue of the condition of the wicket with 15 players out on the first day and as it transpired 23 on the second day. I learnt that the umpires had called in the pitch inspectors the previous evening and three had looked at the pitch before the start of play. Durham could be fined championship points for using a below standard pitch although one member was confident this would not happen because similar visits had been made to two other grounds in the season and the problem was put down to excissive rain before the pitch is covered as usually after its initial preparation but there had not been sufficient warm sub to dry it out and together with atmospheric conditionas the ball was swinging around. Durham's chance of the championship could disappear if Kent get the run or points are deducted the equivalent of the winning points or both.
I do not do much over the rest of the evening other than watch TV. For the evening meal there are chicken pieces with baked beans and a loose ice cream cone which had slipped down into another basked. A glass of wine and peanuts beforehand. I work out the information required for registering the desk top so I can ask about the memory stick reader. I hope this is a drive problem as the light comes on but I leave sorting out until tomorrow having deciding not to go the match.
I watched a film called Catholics Boys better known as Heaven Help Us when first released outside the USA in 1985 about a young man brought with his sister by grandparents following the death of both parents and where is grandmother wants him to be a priest coinciding with the visit of Pope to the USA in the 1960's. The story hinges on the young man joining the school mid way during the term and this is not clear except possibly because the parental deaths was recent. Being a mid term arrival he becomes the centre of attention by the class gang leader and bully and who has a hold on one boy who is the brains of the class. The new boy and brains become friends and both are drawn into the life style of the gang leader and their ongoing problems in the school and outside.
The film concentrates on the arrival of a new young Brother who reports the behaviour of another brother who uses the strap and also physical force against boys indiscriminately. There are a series of climaxes after the gang leader takes his father's car while he is away, the brains and two girls for a ride after the school dance, wreck the car and nearly lose their lives on a swing type bridge over the river as a boat requests passage. During this sequence the bully does not he girl the objective of the outing as she throws up all over him having being given excessive alcohol whereas brains gets the other girl. The boys frequent a local ice cream parlour with girls from the separate Catholic school, run by a school age daughter where the mother has left and the father is in a state of clinical melancholia. It is the boy's school that is sufficiently concerned at the situation which alls in the authorities who removed the father and daughter to respective care situations thus breaking up the relationship which developed between thee new boys and the girl. The final sequence involves thee cutting off of the head of a statue in the yard of school which the boys have been made to clean with tooth brushes the bird excrement. The sadistic brother start to beat the boys including the terrified brains and at this point the new intervenes and there is a punch up in front of the school and school board before the end of the term. This leads to the headmaster sacking the sadistic Brother and appointing the new young Brother in his place with the boys involved being suspended from school for the rest of the term, some two weeks. The headmaster is played by Donald Sutherland
Understandably I compared the film to my own experience at such a school about ten tears earlier than in the film when the Mass and prayers were said in Latin. Theer were some similarities in that we also had a sadistic master who gave the strap indiscriminately and for trivial reasons. He was not a Priest or Brother and disappeared immediately after the incident when several boys in the class, including myself was given the strap, because we did not pronounce it is in French to his satisfaction. There was also the group of worldly always getting into trouble picking on other boys. However I escaped from the group by being moved from the third to the second stream during the first term. However this group of boys formed about a tenth of the grade year of some sixty seventy divided into three forms and then two as the grade year progressed. The important difference is that the majority were serious students and the number of of student aiming and getting to the sixth form and into university/teacher training college and professions was about a third of the grade year. The other difference was the full range of teachers in terms of quality and effect on our lives. In my instance there was the Rome educated and trained Jesuit whose approach to modern history led me to read reports of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. There was also the Maths Master who gave me considerable encouragement, even those I did not deliver the potential I promised at first. The film was worth watching but added nothing to my knowledge and provides an unbalanced view of Catholic education in general but it is a better film than the Secret Life of Altar Boys.
The most enjoyable experience of the day was an episode of The Unit a covert operation USA special task force, which in addition to including an current operation also features the lives of the unit and their families at home. This time it featured a group raising funds to provide free communications home for those swerving overseas. The group decide to run lottery for a modernised World War 2 Jeep where a letter to a loved one is discovered and the group then trace a fellow soldier who is alive and also his widow and invite them to the celebration fund raiser. The wife says she never received the letter and decline the offer to read it so this is undertaken by the lead organiser of the group only to discover that the affection name contained in the letter is not to the wife but the comrade in arms. Whoops.
When I arrive at the Riverside ground a great black cloud covers the ground and I observed that having hesitated about making the trip I had chosed badly. There are a few droplets as I decided on location, staning near the Members Lounge but the rain does not come although the cloud lingers. Kent were all out for 78 some 68 runs behind Durham and their last wicket pair added 20. Durham are also struggling again and no one makes over 30 and they are all our around tea time for 108 leaving Kent 176 to win. This looks impossible as they losing two wickets in first over but then there is a stand of some sixty runs for the fourth wicket and scoring begins to look easy and none of the bowlers appear threatening. It is got very cold as well as fully overcast so perhaps atmospheric conditions is the factor. Then there is a sudden collapse just when Durham is in sight of victory play is stopped for bad light conditions. Ominously one of the batsman is approaching 50 runs and the other participated in the previous last wicket rally, although they have to score sixty runs to win in the morning, the game is far from over.
Althoyugh I had taken a sandwich and coffee to the game I was still peckish around tea time and treated myself to a scone and to a slice of cake for £3. I should have bought a pound of cherries . I raised the issue of the condition of the wicket with 15 players out on the first day and as it transpired 23 on the second day. I learnt that the umpires had called in the pitch inspectors the previous evening and three had looked at the pitch before the start of play. Durham could be fined championship points for using a below standard pitch although one member was confident this would not happen because similar visits had been made to two other grounds in the season and the problem was put down to excissive rain before the pitch is covered as usually after its initial preparation but there had not been sufficient warm sub to dry it out and together with atmospheric conditionas the ball was swinging around. Durham's chance of the championship could disappear if Kent get the run or points are deducted the equivalent of the winning points or both.
I do not do much over the rest of the evening other than watch TV. For the evening meal there are chicken pieces with baked beans and a loose ice cream cone which had slipped down into another basked. A glass of wine and peanuts beforehand. I work out the information required for registering the desk top so I can ask about the memory stick reader. I hope this is a drive problem as the light comes on but I leave sorting out until tomorrow having deciding not to go the match.
I watched a film called Catholics Boys better known as Heaven Help Us when first released outside the USA in 1985 about a young man brought with his sister by grandparents following the death of both parents and where is grandmother wants him to be a priest coinciding with the visit of Pope to the USA in the 1960's. The story hinges on the young man joining the school mid way during the term and this is not clear except possibly because the parental deaths was recent. Being a mid term arrival he becomes the centre of attention by the class gang leader and bully and who has a hold on one boy who is the brains of the class. The new boy and brains become friends and both are drawn into the life style of the gang leader and their ongoing problems in the school and outside.
The film concentrates on the arrival of a new young Brother who reports the behaviour of another brother who uses the strap and also physical force against boys indiscriminately. There are a series of climaxes after the gang leader takes his father's car while he is away, the brains and two girls for a ride after the school dance, wreck the car and nearly lose their lives on a swing type bridge over the river as a boat requests passage. During this sequence the bully does not he girl the objective of the outing as she throws up all over him having being given excessive alcohol whereas brains gets the other girl. The boys frequent a local ice cream parlour with girls from the separate Catholic school, run by a school age daughter where the mother has left and the father is in a state of clinical melancholia. It is the boy's school that is sufficiently concerned at the situation which alls in the authorities who removed the father and daughter to respective care situations thus breaking up the relationship which developed between thee new boys and the girl. The final sequence involves thee cutting off of the head of a statue in the yard of school which the boys have been made to clean with tooth brushes the bird excrement. The sadistic brother start to beat the boys including the terrified brains and at this point the new intervenes and there is a punch up in front of the school and school board before the end of the term. This leads to the headmaster sacking the sadistic Brother and appointing the new young Brother in his place with the boys involved being suspended from school for the rest of the term, some two weeks. The headmaster is played by Donald Sutherland
Understandably I compared the film to my own experience at such a school about ten tears earlier than in the film when the Mass and prayers were said in Latin. Theer were some similarities in that we also had a sadistic master who gave the strap indiscriminately and for trivial reasons. He was not a Priest or Brother and disappeared immediately after the incident when several boys in the class, including myself was given the strap, because we did not pronounce it is in French to his satisfaction. There was also the group of worldly always getting into trouble picking on other boys. However I escaped from the group by being moved from the third to the second stream during the first term. However this group of boys formed about a tenth of the grade year of some sixty seventy divided into three forms and then two as the grade year progressed. The important difference is that the majority were serious students and the number of of student aiming and getting to the sixth form and into university/teacher training college and professions was about a third of the grade year. The other difference was the full range of teachers in terms of quality and effect on our lives. In my instance there was the Rome educated and trained Jesuit whose approach to modern history led me to read reports of the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. There was also the Maths Master who gave me considerable encouragement, even those I did not deliver the potential I promised at first. The film was worth watching but added nothing to my knowledge and provides an unbalanced view of Catholic education in general but it is a better film than the Secret Life of Altar Boys.
The most enjoyable experience of the day was an episode of The Unit a covert operation USA special task force, which in addition to including an current operation also features the lives of the unit and their families at home. This time it featured a group raising funds to provide free communications home for those swerving overseas. The group decide to run lottery for a modernised World War 2 Jeep where a letter to a loved one is discovered and the group then trace a fellow soldier who is alive and also his widow and invite them to the celebration fund raiser. The wife says she never received the letter and decline the offer to read it so this is undertaken by the lead organiser of the group only to discover that the affection name contained in the letter is not to the wife but the comrade in arms. Whoops.
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