1704 A sporting weekend and Ruby James

After four days of lazily watching cricket I need to work but am torn between sport, sport and more sport on the TV, football, cricket, motor racing, running and more football and other TV both live and catch up, a walk in the sun, wanting to read, to plan the week ahead, and more.

The first distraction came from Ruby James asking to be added to my friends and taking the trouble to pen a note on how the request was made. I could listen her all day and she interests because the combination of the sound, and what she reveals about herself, whether intended or not. Hopefully she will find someone who will not attempt to contain or change her. She admits she only comes alive when involved in song creating and performing and while that is the most satisfying of experience any human can have it is also a cross when it comes to undertaking the normal things such as a loving relationship, children, ongoing family relationships and on going friends. The path involves constant travelling, self observed experiencing and periods of reflection, alone. Although young, you know she understands this and is prepared to pay the price, for now. For every Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin who find fame a two edged sword, there are hundred of singers and musicians who seem able to combine making music with a satisfying life even though they are more part time than full time. MySpace provides a wonderful window into their world and at the moment I am exploring Spanish guitarists and flamenco players.

Shame on Yorkshire Cricket Club for lacking the self belief to meet the challenge set by Durham last week. Until late on Thursday the evidence was the two teams were well matched and then Yorkshire folded from 246 for five wickets to all out for 272, mainly because of a blistering attack from Steve Harmison and an accurate performance from Graham Onions with 3 for 49.

When local player Mark Stoneman was out in the first over for 0 the Leeds radio commentator got excited as he hoped this would herald a Durham collapse and nullify the 90 run first innings lead. However he had not allowed for Michael Di Venuto who last year scored 184 and then 45 not out in the same fixture, a total of 229 runs. This year he and only scored 26 runs in his first innings although had looked in command. On Friday he made 146 and until his dismissal looked as if nothing what going to stop him, making a total of 250 runs for the season so far.

Durham knew that that they needed to score quickly if on this wicket they were going to bowl out Yorkshire on the fourth day. Captain Smith 67 making 88 for the match and total of 288 runs for the season so far. With Blackwell also scoring over 250, former captain Blenkenstein contributing 100 and Mustard 135, The batting has got off to a great start.

It was the bowling where there was a question mark until Steve Harmison who had commenced to find pace and some accuracy on the Friday morning was supported by Graham Onion to wrap up the Yorkshire innings that hope emerged both for the match and the season as it is evident they are getting better with each innings performance. Durham have been noted for their poor starts to the season but the evidence, despite the one day loss and now the draw omens well.

The approach of Yorkshire was evident from the start on Saturday morning having survived four overs the night before. They offered no scoring strokes unless the bowlers were inaccurate. Everything else was defended and the bowlers had rely on getting edges which flew to where a fielder had been placed. Whereas on the Sunday and in the early pat of their first innings Yorks scored an average of five runs an over, on Saturday the rate was only two. Yet the game was of interest as the Durham bowlers attempted to force the batsman into making errors.

On Saturday I had risen early and having prepared the night before I was ready to leave so as to arrive well before the start of play. From the experience of previous years I expected the crowd to be less at weekend as Members had family commitments and would wait to see how the game progressed before committing themselves to attending. However I was unable to park in my favoured position because of the local rowing regatta. A full day of events loudly cheered by competitors and their families and friends who occupied the usual deserted river banks.

It was also warm, almost hot as the wind had dropped as I may have appeared overdressed with a coat, soft inner jacket and shirt but as the day progressed I was the one warm as the wind recommenced and the clouds rolled in and we were all reminded that this was spring and frosts were still possible at night.

On arrival I enjoyed a pan au chocolate with a cup of coffee either side, and then had two salami filled rolls with mustard for lunch followed by a fruit salad and the rest of the coffee. I had been for a cup of tea on previous afternoons but as a draw appeared inevitable and Sunderland were losing at West Brom, I indulged with a fat scone spread with raspberry jam and a thick layer of cream on each slice. It was delicious. I went outside to take a seat in the stand overlooking the wicket only to see rain bearing clouds roll over so stayed overlooking the restart from the shelter provided by the health club balcony. I waited until the rain stopped and as the shower was short there was the possibility of further play, but the inclination was to return home, which I did. and then listened to radio Leeds who were content with the draw.

The bowling deserved a better outcome. Onions was at least rewarded with 5 for 56 and a match total of 8 for 105. The most impressive performance was that of Steve Harmison whose 1 for 32 came from 28 overs which I would be surprised if was not his most economical and controlled spell for sometime. Blackwell with 21 runs from 11 overs and Thorp 18 from 11.4 all deserved wickets and the joy of winning the game. Credit to Yorkshire for their defence which I suspect would not have been the situation had Gough still been captain and he would have been unable to resist the challenge.

On Sunday morning I decided I could not bear to watch the humiliation of Sunderland losing 3.0 to West Brom after dominating most of the first half. Once West Brom scored their heads went down and there was no fight back, which was the mark of the team when Roy Keane was the manager. His appointment at the East Anglican club of Ipswich has just been announced. The present Manager Ricky Sprager seems a nice man with a footballing brain but I wonder if he will be the right man to get the team back into the Premiership if they are relegated and where some of the core players will want to move. Because of the dames which Boro have to play, the gap between the rest and West Brom and that Hull continues to lose despite their fighting endeavours I still think Newcastle and Sunderland will survive, but only just.

The sporting highlight on Sunday was the third Grand Prix win for Jenson Button in the cloudless heat of the desert track in Bahrain. Because the first two wins were in rain affected races where the steward’s safety vehicle was much in evidence and success was dependent on choosing the right tyres at the right time, this win was the more satisfying for him although as a spectacle it lacked the shunts and spills of all three previous races.

I did watch Match of the Day to confirm that the Boro had lost at Arsenal and where getting another point from their remaining games appears unlikely.

Food was disjointed on Sunday, ha ha... with the roast potatoes ready before everything else, then the portion of chicken and then some mixed beans, broad and red although I only consumed about a third of the remaining portion. Later I had the ham salad prepared for Saturday, enjoying a small piece of steak with mixed beans as an evening meal. There have been anchovies on thin crackers as a meal starter, and on Sunday there was smoked salmon with lemon droplets on thin crackers for tea. On both days of the weekend there was porridge for breakfast.

1704 Strachey and Carrington

I was surprised when the DVD of Carrington arrived on Friday as I had just added to my list of some fifty films I wanted to see over the next year, if I decide to continue with my subscription. I may take a break as I have the 4400 series to view as well as The West Wing and the Jazz history and I have added further trips away arising for an autumn sale of Travel Lodge rooms for £9.

Critics are divided about the merits of the film and after experiencing I reached the conclusion that I agreed with both wings of the debate. I usually agree with what James Berardinelli has to say and I concur when he describes the film about the seventeen year relationship between Lytton Strachey played by Jonathan Pryce and Carrington (Dora) played by Emma Thomson as “a special love story that challenges the intellect with as much vigour as it touches the heart.”

I cannot remember if I acquired my copy of Lytton’s great work Eminent Victorians, the brief biographies of Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold and General Gordon before or after Michael Holroyd’s Lytton Strachey, but it is a decade or two since I read either. Once I reopened the Holroyd and read his account of what happened when he first visited the psychoanalyst younger brother who translated the complete works of Freud into English and whose wife was also a psychoanalyst. I wanted to read his book again.

Lytton Strachey remains known for having created a new approach to the writing of biography which was honest, contained the latest psychological insights and which combined irreverence and wit with a sympathetic understanding (Wikipedia). Born in 1880 to Lieutenant General Sir Richard Strachey, he grew up as part of a large upper class Victorian family. Lady Strachey had a total of thirteen children of which Lytton was the fifth son and eleventh child, ten of whom survived into adulthood. His mother is described as a enthusiast for languages and literature and a leading supporter of the women’s suffrage.

Lytton was a child prone to ill health and his frail, nervous and quiet personality which led to a number of schools before spending six years at Cambridge where he wrote verse and was a member of the Cambridge Apostles who included, Bertrand Lord Russell, the philosopher educationalist, writer and activist, the economist James Maynard Keynes, the writer E M Foster, Leonard Woolf, the political theorist, write and publisher, civil servant and husband of Virginia Woolf and Clive Bell, the Art Critic. Together with Virginia , Bell, artists such as Roger Fry and Duncan Grant they formed what has become known as the Bloomsbury Group which in a addition to representing an important aspect of art and literature between the two World Wars, was also known for their complex bohemian behaviour which at one level was frequent bed hopping crossing sexual boundaries.

Lytton was not typical of the upper classes at this time, because although hopeless at the practicalities of life. used to servants and what to day we describe as “carers” he possessed a genuine concern for the plight of others and maintained a wish to express the realities of life and relationships. He was an open homosexual with a love of young men and a succession of relationships of varying length and quality.

Dora Carrington was an artist who painted for the enjoyment of working and what she achieved and did not wish to exhibit or sell. I know that feeling well. It is my work, it is me, it part of me. She attended, through scholarship, the Slade School of Art in London where she became part of a set who decided to abandon the concept of Christian and Surname and be known by a single name, in her instance Carrington. Boyish in appearance she was sexually chased by male artists from the Slade former students Paul and John Nash, Christopher R W Nevinson and the most passionate suitor of all Mark Gertler with whom she became “engaged.”

In the film she encounters Strachey, thirteen years her senior, at the home of a mutual friend. He was attracted to her seeing her as boy until realising she was female but this led to him testing his sexuality with her. A virgin until her twenties, unique for an art student in that era. Gertler turned to Strachey for advice and help in his seduction of Carrington but this led Strachey and Carrington to set up home and share a bed together straddling the period when Strachey moved from poverty and dependence on family support and his self described dark period to comparative prosperity after the Eminent Victorian and to full independence with his subsequent work on the life of Queen Victoria.

While the film depicts some of her work and approach to art and makes reference to Lytton writings, the film concentrates too much on attempting to portray the sexual life of the duo and complex entanglements which followed. Dora married an army man who is depicted as a fascist who wanted all pacifists shot, yet had a relationship with Lytton despite knowing he had refused the army call up and was saved from imprisonment, unlike Bertrand Russell, whose trial he attended, because of medical unfitness. Later after divorce the husband married Francis who became a fully fledged member of the Bloomsbury set and contributed to the biography once the younger brother and literary executor agreed to the venture. Although he film makes no direct reference, Dora is known to have been a lesbian as well as enjoying heterosexual relationships.

This bring me to the review of Christopher Null who asks who was this Carrington and why make a film about her, and more fundamental, what was the point being made in the film? Why make a film about her and not Lytton Strachey? I asked the same question but agree with Barardenelli that the sex scenes are more artistic tableaux than erotica and to which I add that for me the point of the film is two fold. First that it is possible to love and live with someone without owning them or exploiting them sexually and psychologically and secondly that it is possible to have a rich loving life with someone without having what is regarded as normal sexual relations. The problem with this outlook and behaviour is not religious or moral as such but the impact of such a lifestyle on children if there are children and on others if the individual is a role model of some kind. One can imagine how the international media today would have treated the lives of those in the film and all those part of the Bloomsbury set, however loosely an involvement an individual had.

I wrote this before reading Holroyd’s introduction to his revised work which separates the biography from the Literary Criticism and had to force myself from abandoning the rest of my day and week and reading the work in order to complete my intentions for the day and week. Although I have now a growing pile of books to read or reread before I die in one corner of this room and which I suspect will continue to lat there unless I am able to complete my main work and live on, this one I need to tackle after finishing the book about Durham cricket Club as I am to spend so much time watching matches this season unless the team falls apart and reverts to providing other teams with points and cup final places as of old. I can barely find a passage way across the room to the door or reach some bookshelves because of the quality of stuff on the floor. I need to ration the time between activities as I do not have the inclination or energy to devote myself to just photographing work or attending to half completed work sets and will take off into a flight of fancy. The hardest thing is to ignore something appealing which will stimulate and distract me further away from what I need to do. I need to finish this, wash and get myself out into the sunshine as there is roast chicken for lunch with the Boro at Arsenal on TV the Bahrain Grand Prix, Blackburn and Wigan, The London Marathon highlights, the TV Bafta and a Lost Special, There is also a Friend’s Provident cricket match. Durham have a day off before their trip to Somerset.

1703 Political truths

Wednesday was Budget day about which there has been almost universal disbelief at what the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to say with his forecasts for upturn, growth and national debt reduction. I suspect that the Chancellor does not believe what he said either. Far from convincing the electorate to vote for the government party at the European Elections in May, it is yet another nail in the making of the next General Election coffin.

The government argument for their deliberate distortion of the truth is that their first duty is to re-establish international and then national confidence in the British Financial system and therefore glossing over the more likely reality of the need for severe restrictions on public expenditure and increases in taxation is essential to restore the confidence of the financial markets and consumer spending both at home and abroad. To have done otherwise would be to make the present recession more painful for many more and to delay the process of recovery.

This approach also is politically helpful in that it enables the government to undertake measures to soften the pain for the majority of the electorate especially its traditional vote, and to respond to public anger about those who caused the present situation to occur. This aspect was covered by two measures. The first to remove the significant taxation advantage for those able to invest heavily in private pension arrangements, with the second, increasing income taxation to 50% for those earning over £150000 a year. There is concern that this will be avoided by those able to restrict their income to below £150K and take the otherwise additional income in the form of capital -dividends, shares and such like.

There was also a raft of measure designed to help the economy move forward, stimulate the housing market with a continuing reduction in stamp duty, limiting the period when people will be out of work by improvements in training and further education opportunities, the appointment of individual counsellors and such like, plus the protection of those children with increases in child benefits, and the elderly with the ability to hold more savings before benefits are reduced and improvement to the total funds investable in ISSA’s each year. For me there is a £2000 incentive if one buys a new car and scrap older one and which in turn should reduce the price of second hand vehicles.

The outcome of the budget policy, if it works, is that there will be indications of checks in the downward spiral of trade loss and job loss, and in people losing their ability to pay for their homes and confidence will return. However, this is unlikely to restore political confidence in the government unless there are major mistakes by the main opposition party, hence the political decision to try and create a loss of confidence in the opposition through false accusation and smear. The idea that one individual could generate such a campaign within a political party is absurd, although it is important not to underestimate the power which determined and creative individuals can wield and how quickly false accusation can become popular fact. The intention of the campaign was to damage the Opposition sufficiently to prevent losing power or to damage to such extent that the Opposition would not last in control for more than the next Parliament. The outcome is that it will make it doubly difficult to attack the Conservative opposition except on issues of policy

By equal token it is the responsibility of an Opposition to criticise everything the government does irrespective of whether if in power it would have done or will do differently, or argue that the government is only doing what it has been pressing for and that in general the government is protecting itself and trying to win the next election rather than face the political consequence of the international and national situation. The Opposition must try and ensure that if it is successful it is not handicapped by having to take twice as political damaging expenditure cuts because of government political based measures or is also forced to raise taxes in a situation where it has a tradition of reducing the tax burden and reducing the emphasis on state and local government expenditure, extending personal freedoms from state intervention and controls.

The main problem facing the electorate is that it has become just as cynical and suspicious of Conservative alternative what ever the present opinion polls might say. There are two problems. First, everyone other than first time voters remembers the approach of the Thatcher and subsequent governments. Secondly there are major doubts about the style and personality of Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne. The performance of Mr Cameron in response to the Budget speech by Alistair Darling was extraordinary. He had a great script which should have delivered devastating wounds upon the personal positions of the Prime Minister and his Chancellor, but instead of delivering it with gravitas he sounded like a first student trying to make a name for himself at the Oxford Union. Mr Osborn whose talents I have never understood, until now, delivered one of the most effective TV broadsides on the Chancellor’s statement that I can remember. It was not just the excellence of the script but his delivery was exceptionally convincing. I had to make a hasty reassessment of the man and his potential as a political leader. Like Peter, Lord Mandelson, he promises to become an important come back kid on the political stage.

However they are all being up staged by one individual who goes from strength to strength, that is the Liberal Democrat Vince Cable who would make the ideal Chancellor in a Labour or Conservative electoral pact or administration in a hung Parliament. However the problem is that he is not the Leader of his party and my solution is to make Nick Clegg Foreign Secretary, sorry David, unless he, Nick that is, is willing to accept a Peerage and become government Leader in the House of Lords. This could leave Gordon as Prime Minister, Nick controlling the Lords, until the second chamber is reformed as apart of a overall change in the constitution which would see the UK becoming a Republic after the death of the Queen and a political structure similar to the USA, although without the negative and criminal features of the system.

The idea that the constitution needs to be changed was raised during this week’s TV edition of Question Time in which the Historian and TV personality David Starkie let rip his contempt for politicians and the Labour Government in particular. This arose out of discussion of the Prime Minister’s proposal that Members of the House of Commons would not receive allowances for needing two homes but would be paid in effect an expenses attendance allowance, without having to submit receipts although I understand that for the E.E C the approach of some Members is to SISO... which stands for sign and then sod off, their words not mine).

The Opposition leader chose to use his six questions at Prime Ministers Questions on economic and financial matters, which appeared to be a surprise given that that he had opportunity to make the same points in his reply to the budget. The tactic was obviously to discredit the Prime Minister and the Chancellor before the details of the statements were known.

It is also suggested that he did not want to raise the issue of the smear campaign because this could put Conservative tactics under the spotlight. Similarly there were as many problems on his side the House as Labour on the issue of expenses and when in the future the publication of receipts for previous expenses would become available and more uncomfortable revelation are anticipated. The Conservative opposition with its tradition of supporting the military and the police regardless of what they do, also has difficulties in taking up the cause of the complainants at police tactics and individual police behaviour.

On the TV Any questions one visitor/refugee from Somalia made the valid point that whatever occurred in the UK it is harmless compared to what happens in countries as his own. Others made the point that in the USA armed State Troopers are deployed and in mainland Europe there is regular use of water cannon. Everywhere the police are now trained and deployed wearing protective gear to avoid personal injury and which is intended to be intimidating to demonstrators.

I was interested to read a view of the demonstration and police tactics by Laurens Otter, now well into his 70s and he and his wife, Celia are still campaigning for peace against wars. Together they hit their local headlines recently when they protested during a visit of the Prime Minister to their area. They were arrested, held for several hours and then released without charge according to the media report. Then Laurens published a piece about his experience at the G20. I first encountered Laurens, an Anglo catholic anarchist pacifist and vegan when I obtained a short term job at Houseman’s, the bookshop and he participated in the Wednesday evening posting out of the latest edition of Peace News. We journeyed subsequently together to two Liverpool to Hull Youth CND marches and he was also one of the six month Operation Foulness prisoners.

He, like me operated direct action according Gandhian principles of non violent action in which any action was part of a campaign of persuading people to change their actions and outlook and where any action which involve breaking the law or ignoring police requests to not to sit or to move away was detailed in advance to the authorities and the media. It was anticipated that the authorities would agree to protests, demonstrations and marches as long as they conformed to police and local authority requirements but in relation to anything outside the law or which refused to accept police directions then while the police welcome the information we provided they would never disclose their tactics and response in advance. As I have written before it was part and parcel of organisations which question or challenged the state whether of the left or right, religious or secular for the authorities within the UK, and from other nations to infiltrate for information and to disrupt and similarly the media would also be involved officially and unofficially. At times it was difficult to separate the plants from the genuine demonstrator. This all came back o the fore this morning when a young member of a climate change action organisation provided tape evidence of being offered financial incentives to provide information on the organisation which she supported to the authorities. No doubt she will become a Member of Parliament and eventually a right wing minister explaining why even more individual freedoms have to be compromised because the threats have become greater and more difficult to combat. Such is the circle of life as each new generation rediscovers what their grandparents learnt when they were of the same age.

1702 Durham County Championship versus Yorks

To anyone not interested in County cricket the importance of the clash match between Durham and Yorkshire will have seemed peculiarly English given that it was also the most important National Budget day since the ending of World War II.

For those like me who were present at the University Racecourse ground Durham City in April 1992 for the first game played of First class County Cricket. Wednesday 22nd April 2009 was an emotional occasion as for the first time in the history of the club Durham were to take the field or its opening batsmen go to the crease as reigning County Champions of cricket’s four day two innings contest. Originally three days the championship and international test cricket is the heart and soul of cricket, and the one day 60, 50, 40 and now 20 over single innings games are froth and money making.

The Yorkshire team are not just championship neighbours but the most successful club in British cricket history with 30 titles although for over thirty years between 1968 and 2001 its policy of insisting on recruiting and playing only those born in county had a major negative effect. The Yorkshire supporters also voted against moving from the present residential location to a new Green field site for a super stadium another indication of an unwillingness to adjust to the contemporary transformation of English cricket. This I suspect is more rural Yorkshire than Leeds City which is adjusting to the exporting of manufacturing production to new economies. Leeds United, the football club, who rejected Brian Clough after 63 days, as its manager, was to have had a new super stadium until financial mismanagement led to the near extinction of the club as all its better players were sold to meet debts. The return of Martyn Moxon from Durham to Yorkshire as their Cricket Director is likely to transform the club as he was able to do at Durham.

My boyhood supporting team, Surrey has only own the championship 18 times, with seven successive wins in the 1950’s as I was leaving school and went to work in central London, passing every day Balham station from where the underground train went to the Oval station, round the corner from Surrey Cricket Ground. Then Surrey had P B H May, the medium paced Bedser twins and Locke and Laker, not one but two international class spinners of the ball. Our rivals were Middlesex, the posh club whose home was Lords, the headquarters of the Marylebone Cricket Club, the MCC and where it was only after becoming a member of the Durham County Club that I had the privilege of visiting the Members stand and facilities, where only Gentleman are allowed and one is obliged to wear a tie even on he warmest of a summer’s day. Standing in the Long Room in which every players passes as a team or batsmen was one of the most exciting experiences of my life along with having watched Denis Compton and Bill Edrich of county and England, bat along with Yorkshire’s Freddie Truman Bowl and Sur Leonard Hutton bat and whose signed book Just My Story was the first book about cricket I bought,

For the record, Yorkshire’s traditional rival, Lancashire, the War of the Roses, has won the championship 7 times with Essex, Kent and Warwick 6, Notts and Worcestershire 5, and where Gloucestershire, Northants and Somerset have never won. Lancashire, Middlesex and Surrey have never finished bottom and Yorks only once. It is five years since one of the big four won the trophy and Sussex notably won for the first time in 2003 and then again in 2006 and 2007. Warwickshire 2004 and Nottinghamshire 2005 heralded a change which Durham’s victory has reinforced.

It will have been a bitter pill for many of the hard nosed conservative Yorkshire man to have greeted Durham’s championship win with enthusiasm especially as it was a proud Yorkshire man who was one of a handful of individuals who changed the fortunes of the team with the departure of Chairman Don Robson in 2004.

Don Robson was chairman of Durham County Council. I am yet to establish if he is was one of the seven sons of a seventh son, Robson family, one of whom served on South Tyneside Council during the period when I was employed there and where another brother became Vice Chairman of my committee and good friend. Both have since died. According to Tim Wellock, the author of the informative, entertaining and moving book about the development of Durham from a club which finished bottom of the championship for three years out of its first five and twice more subsequently, Don tended to run things and he ran the County Council and concentrated on the finding a site for the Club ground to be created and for its development into a venue to hold international cricket matches and which brings in major revenue, rather than put the emphasis on creating a winning team.

Of course this is an oversimplification. In the early days he and the Director’s of cricket brought a succession of international cricketers to play for the club, all of whom were past their prime. The most notable was Ian Botham who performances singled handed won the Ashes a few years earlier. While several gave 100% to club they no longer had the drive and ambition required to win a championship title and it is also fair to say that some, Johnny Morris in particular, were disasters. The comparatively small Durham hard core membership remains generous in giving praise for anyone, regardless of the team who plays cricket well and will loyally support home players who give their all and can take frank comments. However as with local football teams, because of years of performing badly in what are competitive and partisan games, supporters can quickly turn on someone who consistently fails to deliver or who tries to take on the crowd at their own game, instead of answering critics on the playing field. There is also a different approach towards anyone who is not regarded as a Durham man.

As mentioned, in 2004 Don Robson retired from the chairmanship and this coincided with a combination of new appointments and local men coming good. While players like Simon Brown and John Wood had reached the fringes of the senior international squad, it was the emergence of Durham born Stephen Harmison and Paul Collingwood as important members of the English team, and with Phil Mustard and Liam Plunket coming into consideration, bringing in Dale Beckenstein as a player and captain, under the direction of Yorkshire’s Martyn Moxon which turned the tide in an almost unbelievable way. It was the irony of ironies that when Yorkshire became desperate having barely survived in Division one of the Championship and successfully pleaded with Martyn to become their Director of Cricket Durham, were reaching their peak and had the excellent Geoff Cooke ready to take over. Geoff has been with Durham from the beginning and was able to continue the momentum created by Martyn with the additional advantage of understanding the nature of Durham Cricket Club and its supporters through and through.

Wednesday was therefore a very important day in the history of the club and in the development of a rivalry between Durham and Yorkshire. Until the last couple of years there was a comradeship from adversity between supporters of the two clubs with a number having dual membership, especially those living in South Durham and North Yorkshire and where with two motor routes it is easier for those in North Yorks to get quickly to the Durham ground than it is for them to get into Leeds.

As with the game on Sunday the wicket was set on the west side of square, restricting the behind the wicket west mini stand to about half the usual size and so with the influx of visitors from Yorkshire I was lucky to have free seats on either side. Given the win on Sunday the travelling Yorkshire fans were in good spirits and optimistic that their team would teach the new championships about rightful places. Although the wicket was good, Durham’s early batsmen had to work hard and four wickets fell before lunch Stoneman for 2 at 20, Du Venuto who had started positively at 41 for 36, Muchall at 69 for 13 and finally captain.

It was only in the afternoon that new signing Ian Blackwell came into his own and was out just five runs short on what would have been his second 100 for his new county. Later and yesterday Phil Mustard moved from playing a supporting to a commanding role but he ran out of team mates after reaching 94. Durham reached a creditable 364, and yesterday when Gale, Vaughan, Rudolph and McGrath were out at 142, it looked as Durham was about to achieve again the dominance of last year. In form Brophy 75 and Bresnan 40 added another 100 for the fifth wicket during which time I came home as the sun had gone in and I was tired having been up a five am with the latest Travel Lodge sale of rooms for £9. However having got both these batsman out Durham start today with the edge hoping to get the last four wickets quickly and take a good first innings lead. I suspect Yorkshire will eek out the runs and everything will depend on the second innings and how the wicket performs on the fourth day.

I used the intervals to take closer look at the new stand and sat in it for a time and it certainly gives a football view of proceedings. The seats are comfortable with good leg room. Yesterday I tool my own high backed folding chair and enjoyed a boundary view which bring an intimate involvement in the game although I was very tired for most of the time given the early rising.

I bought my copy of Tim Wellock’s book Summers with Durham during the luncheon interval on the first day and which he signed to Colin. He is a former player for Durham University and then in local leagues at Tynemouth, Darlington and Sedgefield and then for his true love of village cricket at Aldbrough St John near his home. He was a full time journalist and deputy editor for the Northern Echo before becoming a free lance sport’s writer in 1987 and followed Durham Home and Away since becoming a first class county in 1992 and is able to say he has seen more games than all but a handful of supporters, as well as writing for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph. He has also penned the article on Durham in this year edition of Wisden. I like his story about two supporters who travelled through the night by car to get to Kent for the winning morning last autumn. I had nearly done the same but counselled myself against doing in case it was the kiss of death for the prospects of success although it appeared that only the intervention of the devil would alter the outcome. God was on out side.

1701 Rufino Niccacci, Gino Bartali and the Assisi Undergorund

After a relaxed morning I thought disaster had struck. Since moving I have hot water and heating at the flick of a switch, although at a price, and then this morning I suspected the switch had fused or worse. I had to boil a kettle for the washing up. It took a few minutes to gather myself and determine the order of priorities for the rest of the day. There is another clear blue sky outside although the weather is changing on the west coastal and inland areas. We had the best of temperatures yesterday and the south east today. I will have to find out what the weather is going to be like for the cricket. I needed good soulful music.

Billie Holiday A to Z Volume 2
Don’t Explain
Easy Living
No Good Man
Porgy
The Blues are brewin
Big Stuff
Where is the sun
I must have that man
Sun Showers
He ain’t got rhythm
The last affair
Let’s call the whole thing of
I am painting the town red
I wished on the moon
If you were mine
Twenty four hours a day
Life begins when you are in love
Miss Brown to you
Mandy is two
Am I blue
Let’s do it
Jim

My tendency when faced with a plethora of things to do which I do not fancy is to leave them all rather than work out an order of priority and work through that. Yesterday I tried to do better

I vacuumed the downstairs and paid off the credit card. Then it was time for a very boring job, sorting out the passwords for this and that, deleting removing ones no longer used or replaced and getting then in some kind of list. Then I had great success with sorting out the telephone account finding that I was over £80 in credit and this be paid direct into my bank account, I also reduced the monthly direct debit. Next week I shall concentrate on the gas and electricity account although I am less optimistic about a similar outcome.

I then spent the rest of the morning sorting our financial records and enjoyed three lamb chops with vegetables for lunch before tackling the heating and hot water problem. I first tried the switch before making the telephone call and it was working again, and has since.

Later I tackled set finishing and made good progress, maintaining the target of three new sets a day. I need to undertake some more photographing of completed sets as there is now a substantial backlog. I also need more artman cards.

I went to Wilkinsons’ in the hope of finding a replacement coffee filter pot without success and on return found that I and some filter papers, over five years old, and the filter paper holder which could make more than the one cup should the need arise and meanwhile I will continue to use the single cup filter pot which uses less coffee. At Azda I bought a gammon joint which I decided would make a better filling for rolls and which I cooked in the evening in readiness for the morrow. I bought some grapes, lettuce, milk, stir fry prepared vegetables, stir fry sauce, olives, ginger spice, crackers although may have lost one box perhaps it is still in the car! It was.

I paid attention to the politics show where the build up is for a savage middle income hitting budget and reduction in public expenditure. My bet if for major hits on the very rich to assuage public anger. I shall take a radio with me to the cricket just in case it is not shown in the Members lounge.

There was a fuss about the Prime Minister making a film for You Tube about his idea to abolish the second home allowance but instead pay members from out of London constituencies an attendance allowance. He then asked to the see the other party leaders to discuss the idea and theirs No one was fooled by this last minute attempt to wrestle the initiative away from the opposition and attempt to placate the angry masses

It is rare for a cinematic film to be faithful to the true story being depicted. Father Rufino Niccacci 1911 1967 was a friar and priest who became the Father Guardian of the Franciscan Monastery of San Damiano in Assisi. In 1943 he was directed by his Bishop Placido Nicolini (James Mason) and the secretary of the Bishop, Aldo Brunacci, who was also chairman of the Committee to Aid Refuges to provide help to Jews fleeing from the Nazi extermination. In the film, the Assisi Underground, Rufino is played by Be Cross and communicates his understandable concern at the implications of such a mission, not for himself but for the clergy and parishioners who would do the looking after, provide the false documentation and try and help them reach the allied forces who were making their way through Italy from the south. When the Germans made leaving the town almost impossible a total of 300 Jews were hidden in local monasteries and convents and in the homes of individual Catholic Parishioners who all risked execution for what they were doing. As Ronald Regan former US President remarked at a gathering of Holocaust survivors in 1983, a slip of the tongue by anyone could have condemned the entire community to the camps, yet they did not yield.

Billie Holiday A to Z volume 3
My Man
Easy Living
Travelling Alone
I’ll get by
My First Impression

After the war he founded a small community of destitute Christians and Jews near to Assisi and later became the parish priest at his birthplace town of Deruta where after his death a street was named in his memory. A year after his death a book was published on his experiences written by Alexander Remati who went on to direct the film

When a woman loves a man
I’m gonna lock my heart
On the sentimental side
You can’t be mine
I can’t believe that your
If I were you

It is impossible know if the priest was satisfied with the portrayal of his role which goes a considerable way to reminding that there were many priests in Europe, including Germany who sacrificed their lives in the true practice of the Christian faith and the film states that some 30000 priests were executed by the Nazi regime. In the film the local commander is portrayed as a Catholic with an understanding of the importance of city and does what he can to protect the church and the priest, together with the city which the German High Command wanted devastated before their departure.

I’m pulling through
I’m all for you
Some other Spring
You are just a no account
You are so desirable
Say it with a kiss

There are two matters which are factual. One of the nuns at her convent is played by Alessandra Mussolini born 1962. The grand daughter of Mussolini became a controversial conservative politician and is at present a member of European Parliament. Sophia Loren is her aunt. She was educated at the American Overseas High school in Rome and is a graduate of Rimini. She has three daughters and a son Benito who has also taken her maiden name. She also won a Golden Globe for A special Day in 1977

Under a blue jungle moon
Hell my darling
More than you know

The second fact is that the portrayal of the Italian International cyclist during the war is accurate. Gino Bartelli 1914-2000 won the Tour de France 1938 and the Giro Italia in 1936 and 1937.

Georgio Nissim, a Jewish Italian, founded an organisation to help Jews escape the persecution, after meeting the Pope and with the help of the Archbishop of Genoa and the Franciscan friars. After his death his sons discovered from his diaries that Bartali had used his training runs to visit where the Jews were hiding, and collected the photographs needed for the forged identity papers and travel permits. He also used his position to learn when the Germans were raiding safe houses and warn those at risk. He also assisted Assisi underground and helped in the escape of Jews heading for the Swiss border. Regardless of the risks there are always human being prepared to risk and give their lives because of beliefs, for the welfare of others or as in the case of Rufino and Bartali, because it was the right thing to do at the time, and the situation in which they found themselves.

1700 Got Soul Man?

For the 700th edition of MySpace writing I ought to try and say something of substance although with a clear blue sky for the second day in succession I am in a holiday mood. For a little enthusiasm I listened to a previous edition of In our Time first broadcast on June 2nd 2002 in which Lord Bragg introduced the subject of the soul and the history of thinking about the concept with Richard Sorabji, Professor of Rhetoric at Gresham College, Ruth Padel, poet and author of In and Out of the Mind: Tragic Images of Self and Body and Martin Palmer, Theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture. My first thought is that the three programmes listened to all had two male speakers and one female which with a male chairman results in a three to one ratio. I shall have to investigate the sexual physiology of the programme production team if this is disclosed. The programme last week was the development of suffragism, a BBC word, where the three contributors were female this demonstrating that a sample of three programmes from three hundred is not a good one for making a generalization.

The programme about the soul showed something of the development of the concept from the fluid multi dimensional approach of the Chinese to Greek and Roman Thinkers, then the early Christian changes to the approach of Judaism, through to some more contemporary thinking.

It struck me that most of the historical thinkers were governed by their ignorance human physiology and biology. They wanted to describe the inner voice and imagery and wondered if it was particular to human beings, or if other creatures and growing things who had not developed the ability to communicate using human forms had similar experience. It was also natural to speculate what happened to the inner voice and vision with death, given what happens when we wake from sleep and to this process also has to be considered now in terms of the knowledge of nature, of space and time and timeless and endless universe.

The programme divided previous thinkers into those who view soul as a migrating experience separate from individual physical bodies and where it progresses, snakes and ladders, fashion between levels of human experience according to the quality of life and behaviour of the last being.

Then with Christianity as an inducement for believers to live good lives regardless of their social position, wealth, power, physical health and so on, the concept and what happens to the soul became fixed on how one’s lifetime body lived, so if the life was a good Christian one, the soul with its recognisable individuality, moved onto heaven or hell, or somewhere temporarily in between until the final judgement day. God, not ourselves, or our contemporaries was the judge of what happens to our soul but we could affect the outcome by being genuinely penitent about our sins and trying to lead better lives than before.

Along side these two comparatively simple concepts were the Chinese and others who combined and extended the two viewpoints into a multidimensional concept in full colour and high definition.

For me there are technical issues defining the moment when self conscious and unconscious imagery and thought end while aspects of the physical body continue and vice versa especially the point at which physical and mental pain ends. We know that we pass own our individual signatures through DNA and that this includes aspects of our physiological and psychological make up also including, in my view, memory.

My conclusion, to-date, is that we pass on more of ourselves and of our ancestors through the creation of new life, especially between mother and child, than we still understand or are willing to understand and that everything we do and say continues to exist within the totality that is the universe, and this is not just through the retained works of some individuals or relayed stories about them but the actual experiences as they occurred. This is also not just a processes of logic, of reasoning, that if the universe is endless and timeless then there will always be the capacity to watch or just listen to what has been as well to what is now, but that everything continues to be although everything is always in the process of change as well as our appreciation, our interpretation and understanding

I was up early this morning although went to bed and sleep in the early hours. The night was Ok but disjointed. I treated myself to a Bacon Roll at the Ship and Royal taking the long way round via the post box to renew my travel card for using the Metro train system, although I used it little last year. As I am at the cricket for a stretch of four days, weather permitting, and the match lasting and being of interest, I resisted the temptation to go out and enjoy the sun although I also knew that my work output was likely to be limited.

Billie Holiday A to Z Volume 1
Georgia on my mind
Solitude
Dreams of Life
Your are going to see a lot of me
Sugar
I cried for you

It is first day of political programmes after the Easter break and where the four main topics are continuing alongside speculation about the budget. G20 Policing, Political Dirty Tricks, Arrest of Conservative Shadow Minister and office raid and the expenses of Member’s of Parliament.

It is generally agreed that the discovered dirty tricks smear campaign was symptomatic of the Brown approach to politics and he is condemned accordingly. The damage limitation people, Neil Kinnock on Sunday, argue that the nature of what one is required to do and the nature of the political system is such that you cannot protect yourself from colleagues who are damaging to ones political future, to the country and to the Political party. This is unmitigated codswallop.

Andrew Neil or his advisers were caught suggesting that the public was prepared and would accept that getting out of the present mess created by bankers and governments involved cuts in public service expenditure, and higher taxes because everyone had been excessive in their borrowing and failure to save. This is even more codswallop, trying to blame what has happened elsewhere or skipping over the excessive differential changes of the past decade between the incomes of the rich and the poor. The Labour Party will be humiliated at the next election unless several real rabbits can be pulled out of the hat or rescued from the fire. Telling the truth as it is will help but deflecting attention to what happened at the FA Cup semi Final at Hillsborough twenty years ago or the actions of individual police during G20 will not work.

Lover Man
All of Me
Guilty
Born to Love
No more
I cover the waterfront

I need to check my electricity gas account and phone bills as part of the annual financial affairs sort out and arrange to have a water meter installed. Apparently 1 in 3 of bills/ assessments of electricity and gas are inaccurate. The Mail had an article giving he impression that the government was about to change the ability of Councils to spy on residents suspected of breaking local rules and minor social offending. Read the article and you find there is consultation about making changes to limit the powers. Such a process take months or years which means nothing will happen before the next General Election which means nothing will happen until sometime in the future something happens to remind everyone of the position and the public get behind a campaign.

There was an interesting example of how six families were able to beat NIBY over the holiday. They secretly bought a three acre field for £130000 and then moved in after laying 1000 tons of hard core to create hard standing for their caravan homes and motor vehicles. They had diggers ans 50 large lorries brought in the stuff. The whole thing was done in three days to the horror of local residents and planning officials.

As time goes by
How am I to know
That’s life I guess
Body and soul
Having myself a time
Weep no more

In today’s Indian Premier League match Kevin Petersen’s side faced Andrew Flintoff’s who were asked to bat first and scored 179 runs in a 20 over game is an extraordinary total. The game was won in the first overs with a masterful innings by former Australian batsman Mathew Hayden who was run out when 65 and looking as if he would score a hundred. The key to these matches is having top class spin bowlers and how the batsmen are able to play spin. This was Durham’s undoing last year in the semi final. Flintoff was not out for 22. Peterson bowled 3 overs for 14 runs and on wicket. His side then made a disastrous start losing the first wicket before any score was recorded and then the second at 40, third at 47 with Petersen out 2 balls later to Muralitheran in his first over and the gained a second wicket to make it 50 for 5, 66 for 6 and then 7, 74 for 8 79 for 9 and a humiliating 87 all out. Flintoff also had three over and took one wick for 11 runs so with Petersen out for 0 it must be said that Flintoff won this duel although the match was won and lost by others.

No regrets
Easy to Love
Billie’s Blues
Pennies from Heaven.

I thought the twelfth episode of the fifth season of Lost was excellent and reminded the limitations of the openings sequences to this series which is now drawing to its end. The battle of wills between Ben and Locke for supremacy on the Island continued. Locke appears to know who is the real boss despite being murdered by Ben and brought back in the plane in a casket. This resurrection has led to several witty lines.

Previously Ben had been knocked out by Sun before he could leave with her for the main Island having shown her the boats. On getting to the island she realises that the others on the plane have been put back in time to 1977 and that Locke is the key to be able to link with 1977 and her husband who she now knows is not dead. In this episode Ben recovers to be greeted by Locke which is an interesting experience. He admits that he is surprised that the Island was able to resurrect from the dead. Locke informs Ben that he must return to the main Island to be judged by its force, especially for turning his back on his “ daughter” who is killed. In flashbacks we learn that Charles Widmore, Penny’s father had warned Ben that the “ daughter” had to die for things to work out as they should.

On the main Island Sun joins forces with Locke who insists that Ben accompanies them to the Temple of “the others“, alternative inhabitant to the Dharma Initiative. Here in an underground area Ben encounters the presence of the Island which he has earlier unlocked or unleashed. He is confronted by an image of his daughter who warns him that his salvation depends on yielding to the authority of Locke. In the way the series likes to link past, present, future in unravelling the overall master plot we learn that back in the USA Ben had tried to kill Penny, the daughter of Charles Widmore in revenge for the death of his own but hesitates when seeing Penny’s son, and this gives Desmond the opportunity to recover from being shot by Ben and severely beat him up, thus explaining his battered appearance when he reappears on the outer island following the second plane crash. The episode had several unexpected twists which made it the most enjoyable of the season so far.

Last night I found the episode Some Like it Hoth of little interest although it revealed that both Hurley and Miles have the capacity to communicate with the physically dead, if their bodies are close by. A second theme is the relationship between son and their fathers and the need to forgive each other of sins committed between them whether real or perceived. There are three episode to this season left

Twenty fours continues to be awful as was my choice between the two subscription DVD‘s to hand. The Virgin Territory 2008 was however decidedly worse. This one story film from the Decameron’s one hundred bawdy tales of sex, deception and religious hypocrisy alongside the era of the Black death failed to be anything it set out to be. It sat on the production shelf for three years before being issued as a DVD in the USA and had a limited showing in Europe. A few teenagers might like it if nothing better to do on a Saturday night but there are no thrills, kicks and it is not funny. I had a good sleep through most of it, fortunately. I was tempted to watch Hell in the Pacific which starts as a silent movie and continues with two characters finding themselves alone on a Pacific island in war time. Lee Marvin is the USA Marine Pilot and Toshio Mifune as the Japanese naval officer who attempts to capture each other and then. I opted for bed and went to sleep quickly.

1245 Oliver Twist and the Human Factor

I awoke and could hear what I interpreted as a nearby house alarm but it seemed to continue on and on as I dozed and came too several times and there I wondered and then I realised what it was and that from 8.30 until 9.48 the buzzer had been my unpacked disconnected alarm clock, but with battery, in the one of the travel bags, somewhere in the house. Just as well the neighbours on the side of the house are away and there is the open patio space on the other.

It has been a leisurely day and commenced with opening and sending a Christmas card and the decision to write an overview of the year, something I used to do, but stopped two years ago. There was no attempt to be comprehensive, and it proved a longer than had time for experience, as I attempted to distil priorities and summarise.

I made do with soup and then there was another letter and card and decisions to sort out this and that, a visit to the Council's environmental centre to dispose of accumulated rubbish, but the pong from the decaying prawn heads and shells was such that I decided to do the supermarket first and acquire some air freshener, but before that I took my suit to the dry cleaners, also my main car wearing coat, but the label was machine washable so it came back via the post office and supermarket where a lot of time was used finding the air freshener, which proved essential once the rubbish was in the vehicle.

It was not until just before the new five day production of Oliver Twist that I felt the need for food, Chinese style chicken wings, a generous carton followed by a puff pastry mince pie. The Oliver Twist is yet to compete with the most recent film production strangely omitted from the Daily Mail Role Replay information which mentions the original 1948 film and the 1968 musical. Oliver Twist is the story of the Male Supremacist nature of early Victorian society ranging from the attitude of the mother of Oliver Twist and the abuse and exploitation of Nancy and the way the ready way in which the upper and middle classes relished sending street children who committed offences to the gallows, on prison ships to the colonies or to hard labour in prisons, or the workhouse. The pervading attitudes of those are still heard on daily chat shows such as five live.

I was then looking forward the last Spooks as there was no advance showing last week but fell soundly asleep. I woke again in time of a gem of a programme about three women who went in search of their parents, two fathers and one mother. The two fathers were found through the Salvation Army service both with positive outcomes but sadly the woman who has spent nearly two decades trying to find if her mother is alive and two years actively enquiring since the death of her father had by the end of the programme failed to make any progress. The national release of a photograph tonight will hopefully produce the breakthrough for her.

I have written before about the power of this drive to know and how society makes this difficult by allowing mother to register births without information about the name and known circumstances of the biological father

Of course there will continue to be deceptions with false information provided and circumstances where the information is not known or where the circumstances are tricky, but as with adoption there should be opportunity when a young person reaches adulthood to be given the option to obtain the available information, with advance counselling provision if requested. The secrecy is often from the best of intentions and there are sometimes other children or family members whose protection is just as significant at the time, but the power to know should carry a right. The kind of crude bestial justice which is part of the Muslim faith in many countries and supported by national laws in relation to the behaviour and position of women, and as used to be and still is the attitude towards the female in predominantly Catholic nations and which underlines the hypocrisy of the male attitude to the Mary's in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, is symptomatic of male supremacist societies. The way the House of Commons is organised with the gladiatorial combat of Prime Minister's Question Times is another and oh for a Prime Minister with the self confident guts to refuse to perform for their party and for the benefit of the medias, for opposition leaders with similar self confidence, guts and integrity.

And what is this nonsense of the latest sound bite politics of the Liberal Democrats, power to the people, regardless of consequence in terms of justice as fairness, Hullo just as it is fair, is it? for English families to pay for the Scots to enable their children to go to University without the mill stone of charges or for the elderly to retain the value of their savings when they require residential care or comprehensive care, we are now to support the reactionary Liberal notion that it is OK if those who are interested in power holding decide to introduce fascist approaches to the running of hospital or schools, or reintroduce poor law type institutions, of course liberals don't, so why spout the claptrap echoed by Paddy Ashdown and no doubt the assembly of other former party leaders rejected by heir own members or the country at one time or the other, and two men again after the party demonstrated as all the major parties do their ageism. The hypocrisy of attitudes towards, children, the old and the female has not changed although in society in general there is change with recent examples the Queen demonstrating what a better job she has done than any man or that splendid engineer project coordinator for the St Pancras enterprise. This is not an issue of physiological prejudice but of attitude and approach.
This work of tracing missing parents is one role for the Salvation Army who apparently is able to trace 80% of the 4000 requests for help each year and merits greater public recognition. The figures mean over 30000 quests have been solved in the past decade alone.

I then finished the evening with a poor Le Carre type spy traitor film based on a Graham Green, The Human Factor, the last film of the Man with the Golden Arm Otto Preminger and a screen play by Tom Stoppard. The film has nothing original in terms of story and characterization and is light years away from series such Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The double Spy, is Nicole Williamson an actor who has never been convincing or impressed me with a cast of many talents, Richard Attenborough, Robert Morley, Sir John Gielgud and Derek Jacobi and I could have been better employed with my time but once commenced I felt obliged to see it through.

Yesterday was the penultimate programme about the Queen featured the number of official visits, a Royal Garden Party and an aborted visit to open the new Arsenal Football club and broadened to other family members with Charles and Camilla travelling to organic farmers and them meeting farmers in a local pub. The Garden party was interesting because it is regarded as a treat for those who will not make it to an investiture. People dress expensively and queue for half an hour to get in but are given free entry into the Palace and a scrumptious tea of fine fare before being gathered in lines for a family walkabout in which individuals are pre selected to have a few words said to them by the Queen. On hot days as the summer of a year ago, so distant now St Johns was much in demand. Those who are considered VIP's have their own Marquee and a special walk walkabout session. The one important conclusion from the series which has its last episode at Christmas is the serious effort which the firm makes to fit in and understands contemporary society at all levels. It is difficult for anyone wanting to do the job and to attempt consistent professional perfection for decade upon decade. The nature of his task was wonderful portrayed by one stupid woman who drags her mother and son around the country to wave flags and get a close up of the Queen. At one level she was awful cringing embarrassing and one wondered how many of the flay wavers were of this ilk, but she also fulfils an important constitutional function that our brings in he tourist need for the public flag waver, and in fairness I would rather have her as Queen follower than yet another idiot giving credence that those waste of space personalities to contribute nothing to society except their lack of substance.

At last someone has said in the media what I have long suspected, that just as those behind the TV telephone competitions were able to fix outcomes with thousands continuing to phone with no chance of winning, the question has been asked of the X Factor and were thousands prevented from phoning in order to fix the outcome? How could a margin of 1% change to 10% so quickly? Did the earlier votes still count?