RWC 2011 - a candle's point of view

Getting up to flying speed now. The AB's gave the Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys the required trousers down, six of the best and pleasant enough viewing it was as well. But the Frogs were pissing around, surely. This amply illustrated when damned substitution time arrived in this match. I hate tactical substitution as it ruins games. A bloke breaks his leg or one of his arms falls off, then fair enough, put a replacement on. But this tactical stuff is bollocks. You spend all week in great angst picking your best team and then after 55 minutes stuff it all up by putting on your second best scrum half and your reserve first five onto the wing. Put a second rower on the blindside flank and there you have it, a very good team transformed into a middle of the road bunch of talented individuals. Except our friends (sic) from across La Manche. When they start playing the substitution game their team gets palpably better. Only inference was that the run on XV was not the best - which was what I thought from about last Wednesday. I mean I could tackle better than that recycled scrum half who ran on wearing 10. Well, I couldn't, but you get my drift.

Argentina beat Scotland with the only try of a game described in the paper this morning as one of 'dreary attrition' and will now likely have to come to Eden Park to get a trouncing before repairing to the Duty Free at Auckland Airport. Other results? Can't really remember but the time when that is an excuse no more is not far away. I told you I would get into the swing of things once we had seen the back of Namibia, Romania and Russia. And Scotland.

Driving to the fields from Obald Acres just now with Radio Sport as entertainment as is my wont in the predawn. Amusing interview with the Mad Butcher, to be fair, but my attention was grabbed by the advert following Sir Butch. This was the second I have heard of what is obviously a series put out by the New Zealand Fire Service. It is aimed at tourists here for the fun and games and is ersatz singing of foreign national anthems. Onto the tune they have grafted the words of bloody safety messages. So we had that South African anthem (which lasts about half an hour) entreating you not to 'drink and fry'. Get it? like 'drink and drive' but different. Drawing a long bow I thought but who cares? Then this morning those who go to work clad in kevlar had a go at butchering the Welsh national anthem. The only reasonable go at this I've ever heard substitutes sardines for w(h)ales but now the firemen have another go.

This load of errant nonsense tells you not to use candles in a camper van. Eh? This is a big problem in New Zealand? So big that it requires an expensive radio advert to nip it in the bud? Mortuaries being inundated with Welshmen toasted to a crisp in the charred remains of Maui's finest? This is safety nonsense in the way that only New Zealand could manage. Or no, I'm wrong. The UK could do it much better. Now I see, the advert is being run to stop all the Taffs feeling homesick whilst they are away from the Valleys. I mean all these poor Welshmen are so impoverished that they can't afford to turn on the lights in their camper vans and they are saving a few bucks and using candles. This after they've flown half way round the world, bought multiple match tickets at $300 a pop, bought a gallon of beer a day and shelled out loadsa dosh for World Cup souvenir tatt. They spend the left over lucre on candles. I don't think so.

Next well be having Hi Viz clothing catalogues read out to the tune of Flowers of Scotland. Or perhaps not as they are going home.

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RWC 2011 - a flag's point of view

I suppose we had better give some mention to this. If you live in the Land of the Long White Sporting Hype you would have to have spent the last fortnight under the Long White Rock to not have noticed that the Rugby World Cup is taking place. Big event, sure, and I am enjoying selected games on the 100" screen. I have not wasted my time with most of the games so far despite the breathless enjoinders of the spinmeisters employed by the organisers. USA vs Russia for example was billed as the 'continuation of the cold war'. In New Plymouth. Tarankai's most famous aviator, weatherman Jim Hickey, is hardly Gary Powers. All this bollocks does not disguise the fact that USA vs Russia is going to be crap rugby and so, apparently, it turned out. One of the teams won (there hasn't been a draw yet) and I neither know or care which it was. I have little enthusiasm for watching any of Romania's games and noted in passing that England looked very ordinary overcoming Georgia. Last night, not five kilometres from Obald Acres, South Africa took on Namibia. Shall I go? Tricky one but after much soul searching I decided not to bother shelling out North of $150 to see a 87-0 drubbing. But you wouldn't know that was the score before the match, you may well say. Well, yes I did. I certainly knew the 'nil' bit (it might have been three or even five - it matters not) and the larger number was going to be greater than sixty and then who cares.

Must admit I was quite tempted to get a ticket for NZ vs France at Eden Park tomorrow night but at $400 a pop it is back to the home theatre at a time when I am normally watching the Saturday evening murdering.

What is in full swing, though and what I am quite enjoying is having loads of cars running around with little flags attached to the windows. About $5 a pop apparently and some cars have multiple embellishments; two common and four not unusual. Vast majority, of course, are All Black flags and depending on where you drive in Auckland second are South Africa (on the Shore where I do most of my driving), Tonga or Samoa (South Auckland). Very few Aussie flags. Some are really inventive and have two countries up - generally the ABs and the country of the driver's origin. Lots of scope for inventiveness here. Two different flags and do you put the ABs on the driver's side or the passenger side? Four flags - two each side, different front and back or, my favourite, diagonally? Not really been tempted to go for car flags for either of the Jags but I must admit I quite like them.

But what do we have in the Herald this morning? Some sour faced Plod 'reminding' people that the flags must be securely fastened to their cars or they may face 'criminal charges'. Wowser on steroids and you can just fuck off.

No, the World Cup is going to be good when the real stuff starts in a couple of weeks. There has been one 'upset' to date which was Ireland upsetting the Wobblies. This has to be the most welcome result of the tournament so far for most Kiwis and will remain so until the ABs give France a seeing to tomorrow. It also gave rise to the best bit of public display of team support I have seen thus far. Flags - good, face painting - naff and so yesterday. But last Sunday night I met an Irishwoman who had an Irish flag in nail polish on every one of her ten digits (she might have done her toes as well but I was not forward enough to ask her to remove her boots). I thought they might have been transfers but she assured me they were all individually painted. Very nice.

I'm off to try and find a Yaapie female similarly decorated - now that would be impressive.

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A Dream of White Horses

It only lasted two summers, well one really, but hell, it was good. Born in Kent in 1967, flowering nicely in 1968, the glorious 1969, the fleshpots of London rearing their definitely not ugly heads in 1970 and killed on Portland Bill in June 1971. My rock climbing career was over by the time I was nineteen.

I‘m not sure if it was the 22^nd Wimbledon Scout troop that gave rise to all this but I think it probably was. They took us pony trekking (as naff as it sounds), gliding (quite amusing if a little chilly in an open cockpit glider) and then rock climbing. This was it. One trip to Harrison’s Rocks at Groombridge just outside Tunbridge Wells and I was hooked. This is what I wanted to do. I left the Scouts, much to my mother’s consternation, and put my lot in with Mark Lee from school. Mark was a climber. A proper climber who, even at the age of sixteen had been to the Alps. I was never really interested in Chamonix other than gazing at black and white pictures of Joe Brown and Don Whillans smoking whilst belayed to bits of alpine rock and wishing I were just like them. But I had zero money and Chamonix might just as well have been on the moon as in France. I started bouldering (although I didn’t know that is what it was) at Harrison’s as often as I could which was most Sunday’s of the summer of ’67. Mark was older than me and had three things - a motorbike license, a scooter and a mate who also had a scooter. The mate was Richard Borysiewicz (Borrie) who was to become my climbing partner for the next couple of summers. Borrie was a mod (hence the scooter) and liked dreadful music and Ben Sherman shirts but the possession of the motorised transport far outweighed his awful musical taste.

Harrisons Rocks is a collection of sandstone outcrops no more than thirty feet high and was but an hour by multi headlamped Vespa from home. All the climbs were done using a top rope so it was as safe as houses. You walked round to the top of the climb you wanted to do, put a sling around a stout tree, attached a karabiner, threw both ends of your manky ‘Harrisons rope’ to the bottom and tackled the route of your choice in absolute safety; and with the option of a bit of ‘tight rope’ to ease you over tricky moves. The doyen of Harrisons was Trevor Panther who had written the guide and was known as ‘Tight Rope Trev’. As well as telling what was where, Trev’s guide also introduced me to the concept of grading climbs. All single pitch and so they only got a numerical grade. 1A was scaling a phone book – laid on its side. The highest grade circa 1967 was 6B which I regarded as very difficult but not impossible. A look at the internet now reveals that grading has gone up to about 17F. The first climb I ever did once the nannying of the Scouts was removed was a thing I later learnt was called Long Layback and was graded 5A. Easy peasy. Borrie and I settled into a steady diet of 5C-6A fare with a side of 6B now and then.

We’d soon done all the ‘hard’ routes at Harrison’s and most of them repeatedly. We had heard of ‘proper’ rock climbing but it was all a long way away; certainly too far for the Vespa. To us the Peak district was not really very appealing and North Wales beckoned. Not for us the old school Ogwen Valley, all tweeds hobnailed boots and climbs graded difficult - which meant they weren’t. Climbs on proper cliffs had several pitches and lost their numerical grading and now had descriptive labels ranging from moderate (a 1 in 12 on tarmac) through difficult, hard difficult, very difficult, severe, hard severe, very severe (VS), hard very severe (unsurprisingly HVS) to extreme (XS). Individual pitches weren’t numerically graded in that summer of love. It would appear they now are and XS has gained grades up to E8 or something. Back then there were standard XS, f. difficult XS and no thanks. The Ogwen Valley was all diff and hard diff and this appealed not at all. Borrie and I wanted the real deal and for that you went to the Llanberis Pass; Dinas Cromlech was where we wanted to be. But how to get there? For the rest of 1967 we were marooned in Kent.

Borrie was a couple of years older than me and had a job (apprentice toolmaker) that bought in money. He bought an ex Metropolitan Police minivan in the winter of 1968 and our anticipation of the start of the 1968 cricket season was only heightened by the purchase of climbing magazines and scraping together some proper equipment. The manky Harrisons’ rope patently would not do as the stakes were about to go up big time. Where we were going we could die if we fell off onto a bit of mum’s washing line. This was brought into sharp relief when Mark Lee returned from an early season trip to the Alps on a stretcher. Big peel somewhere high and foreign and lucky to escape with two broken legs courtesy of one of these new fangled German kernmantel ropes. I scrimped and saved every penny I could for months and took it all into the YHA shop in Sutton to emerge with 150 foot of 11mm yellow kernmantel. I remember to this day that it cost me £12 17s 6d and was my most prized possession. Ever. As we tackled more complex routes we graduated to using two 9mm ropes to cut down the friction - all very modern. All the various chocks and nuts and things we need to set protection were not a problem as Borrie made them at work. We also bought one of those little plastic covered pocket guides to crags and pored over it during the winter months. I knew what Dinas Cromlech looked like in intimate detail months before I ever saw it in the flesh.

The Llanberis Pass in 1968 was my idea of heaven. For openers the best climbing shop in Britain was in Llanberis; the one owned and run by Joe Brown. You often had a chance of actually being served by him. I would go and buy half a crown’s worth of sling just to interface with the great man. You see, Joe Brown was a climbing God. He and Don Whillans (and a few others of the Manchester based Rock and Ice Club) had turned British climbing on its head just after the War and Brown style climbing was still the thing in the mid sixties. Don Whillans appealed to me almost as much as Brown. Don was short like me and climbed in a flat hat. I obviously had to do the same and routinely left my helmet in the van and took to the rock in an ‘orrible cheese cutter from a second hand shop. At the time one of Joe Brown’s principal claims to fame was Cenotaph Corner, the iconic route on Dinas Cromlech. More of that later. Llanberis had all the ‘hard’ crags that were the domain of EB and PA rock boots (I preferred EBs) and jeans and not the hobnails and tweeds of Capel Curig and the climbing 'establishment'. Do I look like a bloke who listens to Perry Como? Llanberis had crags with great names; Craig Ddu, Clogwyn y Grochan, Carreg Wasted, Dinas Mot, Cyrn Las and Dinas Cromlech itself. The summer of ’68 was spent polishing off all the HVS and ‘easy’ XS we could find on all these crags. It seems now we drove up the A5 every weekend for months and slept in the van in the Cromlech car park but we probably only made half a dozen trips. But it was up at dawn and climb until we dropped.

Every time we were on the Cromlech we stood at the bottom of Cenotaph Corner and thought of an excuse not to have a go. 'It is going to rain'. 'Oh, look there’s already someone on it'. 'You left the third MOAC in the van'. All bollocks; we were scared of it. Its aura was such that although it is not exceedingly hard (it is certainly not easy, I can assure you) it was getting a place in our minds where it was impossible. Just standing at the bottom and looking up does not give lie to this notion. Writing this now it is sobering to note that it was first conquered sixty years ago but in the mid sixties the route was only seventeen years old – a heartbeat considering the rock had been there for millennia. Cenotaph Corner in 1968 was a real benchmark. There were those who had done it and those who hadn't and I didn't reckon I would be anything until I had done it. It seemed important, no vital to my continuing existence, then. I put a tentative hand on its first couple of moves once and was terrified only three feet off the ground.We didn’t dare have a proper go in ’68.

If it rained (and this happens a lot in Snowdonia) we would take Plod’s van down to Tremadoc. There is a cliff here that is in Snowdonia’s rain shadow and you could climb bathed in sunshine when it was pissing down in the Pass. Routes here were short (two pitches the norm) but could be quite hard and there was a good (I’m not sure I would call it that now) café attached to the petrol station across the road. Petrol was very important to us as it was expensive, our biggest outlay and probably our biggest constraint to progress as we were seriously hard up. If we didn’t have enough money to get to North Wales we would go and climb the sea cliffs at Swanage that were only three hours drive from SW London.

Autumn ’68 arrived and A levels took the place of cliffs as winter approached; I had no interest in winter climbing anyway. 1969 was my last year in school and with exams finished in June and University not starting until October we had four months. All we needed now was some weather. I recall the summer of 1969 as being a pearler; but then aren’t all the summers of your youth blessed with endless blue skies when viewed through the retrospectoscope? By this time we knew our way around the Pass and were determined to have a good go at Cenotaph Corner. Over the winter we had also come to hear of Clogwyn d’ur Arddu – Cloggie.

This was the new Holy Grail of British rock climbing. A massive complex of cliffs near the summit of Snowdon which were protected by their remoteness from the road (as I recall it took about three hours to walk in from the top car park) and their greater than fair share of inclement weather even for Snowdonia. The reputation of the place was that all the routes were big and they were all bloody hard. Not far wrong, but to me at a bulletproof seventeen going on eighteen this was what I wanted. We went there only once but had an epic day doing Cloggy Corner and White Slab in a day. Even now I reckon that was a bloody good effort. Cloggy Corner was not my style, all grunt and jamming but White Slab was a ripper. Easily the biggest climb we had done to date and we were probably out of our depth. But, hey, we were under twenty and could do anything. I don’t really remember much of it except that you have to lasso a rock spike at some point and use a rope to get across a seemingly holdless bit. I think we lassoed the spike on the first attempt but I really can’t recall the details.

Cenotaph Corner still loomed over us and I now cannot recall the mindset that got us to the foot of it where neither of us could think of an excuse to back out. The crux is at about 25 feet and I found this very hard. Once I had done it I was absolutely certain I couldn’t reverse it even if I wanted to. No choice, carry on. The fact that the worse was behind me didn’t seem much comfort when I looked up and the top seemed miles away and its just vertical and both the left and right walls look vast and I know getting out of the little cave at the top is also hard and I’ll be knackered by the time I get there and….. Can I really remember this in all this detail over forty years later? I think I can. We knew there was already a peg in situ for aid at the top (I think there might have been a couple and I think they both looked manky) for which I was very grateful. I was crap at putting pegs in, we had a very poor selection (no money) and by the time I got to the place where it was needed I hardly had enough remaining strength to think let alone wield a peg hammer. Well we did it. Great feeling of triumph, knackered, elated (but not overly so) and I can’t remember what we thought the future might hold for us.

At this point we had done most of the stuff we wanted to do in the Pass. We weren’t interested in anything under HVS and there was, even then, a load of stuff that we knew was beyond our abilities; we were good (well above average of those climbing in the late sixties) but we weren’t that good. Using footballing parlance we were nowhere near Premier League but might have given most First Division sides a good game. If Brown and Whillans were the mega stars of the fifties, new names were the ones to watch in the late sixties. The only names I can now remember were Pete Crew and a bloke called Ed Drummond. Drummond had been climbing on sea cliffs on the North West coast of Anglesey. In particular we had heard of an ‘amazing’ route of his called Dream of White Horses. This was a sort of traverse that you had to abseil into and then the final pitch was supposed to be the most exposed thing you could imagine. And it wasn’t that hard – honest.

Back in the Minivan at the end of September 1969 to drive right to the end of the A5. You drive to the car park by, I think, North Stack and then walk over a sort of cliff top moorland bit and then you see Wen Zawn and Drummond’s creation. You have got to be joking. The moment I saw it I just knew this was all I ever wanted out of rock climbing. I was absolutely gobsmacked. The first three pitches across this vast white slab were obvious and magnificent. But the final pitch; deary me. The traverse took you to the bottom of a series of hanging buttresses that, well, just hung there. 200 feet, maybe, straight into the sea; fall off here and you would just be dangling above the puffins in the middle of nowhere with any rock tens of yards away. Totally mindboggling. How the hell Drummond ever saw a way up the seeming maze to the top was beyond me. We looked at it from the other side of the zawn and it was obvious that it had to be done. Abseiled in and then the only way out is to climb out or prussic back up your abseil rope. I insisted that I led the final pitch. If I can remember little of climbing Cenotaph Corner forty two years and a few weeks ago I can remember virtually every move of Dream of White Horses forty two years ago. It was what I went rock climbing for. It was hard but not too hard and it was exposed – shit it was exposed - and it was absolutely the best climb I had ever done by the length of the straight and then some.

And that was it. Dream was the last proper climb I did and from forty years away that is just the way it should have been. I can think of nowhere I would have wanted my climbing career to progress from there. It couldn’t have got any better and it, therefore, could only be downhill from there. And it was until I put it out of its misery, because that is what it became. I went to University a couple of weeks later and that was in the middle of London. London had no cliffs but it had members of the species who had no Y chromosome and it had beer. Neither was conducive to proper rock climbing. I joined the University Mountaineering Club (it was already going wrong; I was never a mountaineer) and doodled pictures of karabiners on the side of my biochemistry notes for a term. I fell in with a new mate in the Mountaineering Club who thought a good day on the crags was a gentle v diff in the morning and then repair to the pub for a few beers and a game of darts. I started to agree with him. The Mountaineering Club had females who wanted to walk the Pyg Track. Borrie was still setting tool heights in South London but was long gone; the bloke with whom I repeatedly trusted my life (literally) I now wouldn't recognise if I tripped over him. My climbing summer of 1970 was shameful. V diffs, beer and darts.

I started playing water polo and the Tour every year was to Dorset. You played in the evening so had the day to play the goat, eat crab sandwiches and drink beer. In June 1971 Fisty Palmer made a guest postgraduate appearance on tour. Great water polo player (played for British Universities) and sometime rock climber of the v diff variety I was now moving amongst. We set off to mess about on some inconsequential cliffs at Portland Bill to fill the day before playing Bridport in the evening. I had a filthy hangover and was sweating like a pig. Hands like dish mops. I was about twenty feet up a bit of limestone with no protection in and lunged (I shudder to think of it even now – I never lunged for anything. I was never very strong but I managed what I did by economy of movement and balance) for a sort of bosselated lump the size of a baked bean tin. It was poor technique in spades and I paid for it big time. Inevitably peeled off backwards straight onto the rocky beach. Shit it hurt. I had obviously broken something in my back and I had to be winched off the beach by helicopter. This was quite good fun as I got some morphine prior to the flight. A crush fracture of L1 and a smashed left scapula – and I was bloody lucky at that. First my Mum knew about it was when it was reported on the TV News that a 19 year old holiday maker (holiday maker – how embarrassing is that?) had been rescued by helicopter……Not amused. A week in Portland Navy Hospital with my mates visiting me daily. What decent chaps thought I until I realised that I was the only one on tour that had any money left and they just came to win it off me at three card brag at which they knew I was useless.

This episode just confirmed the bleeding obvious; give it up – you’ve done the Dream, there is nothing else you need to do. So I did. Got to be quite a good darts player and put on weight.

(Of necessity none of the pictures in this post are mine - no digital cameras in the late sixties. I think all the pictures are in the public domain; if they are not I will happily take them down. None of the people in the pictures is me or Borrie - but the places where they are pictured are where we were. To the millimetre. It was just a very long time ago)

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Pink

I am so over this wave of pink that is assaulting my visual senses at present. I am talking the breast cancer pink. Now, don't get me wrong, any disease that has the potential to terminate lives prematurely is no bloody good (especially to the afflicted) and monies needed for research into breast cancer or primary sclerosing cholangitis is urgently needed and very hard to come by. But the current rash of fund raising pink is getting up my nose and interfering with my enjoyment of the summer game.

We started off years ago (in my youth even) with flag days. Poppies are still around but I seem to recall a geranium day in the sixties in the UK. No idea what my not buying a paper geranium was not supporting. Daffodils in August supporting (I think) cancer research. I don't buy those either.

A few years ago it used to be those stupid rubber wrist bands. I think Lance Armstrong started those in support of research into malignancy in gentleman's corset regions; a subject he rightly has considerable interest in. So you would be talking to a bloke attired in a sharp business suit and there would be this piece of tacky yellow rubbery plastic peeking out from under the cufflinks. This all spawned a rash of different coloured wristbands for all manner of 'good causes' which interested me not at all. Most of them didn't even rise to the status of good in my books.

Then we had ribbons. Pink for breast cancer(more of this damned colour in a minute) white for family violence and so on. All these ersatz flowers, wrist bands and ribbons do have a couple of things going for them. You can chose to partake, which I do not as alluded to above, and they are relatively non obtrusive.

Bloody Pink is neither of these things. It has over the last couple of weeks taken over my favourite sport. First we had Northern Districts playing Auckland in the 20-20 in totally pink playing strip. It looked terrible. But it was the 'pyjama game' so we'll move on. But yesterday we had the conclusion of the second Test between Orstralia and the Pakis. A good Test it was as well with only two problems. Problem one was that the Aussies won when the Pakis clutched defeat from the jaws of victory. Second problem was pink. Test cricket is the proper game played in white kit. End of story. Over the years we have had advertising logos creep onto the kit. So you never get a shot of a Pakistan player without seeing both his gold star national emblem and a Pepsi logo. Australia are sponsored by the '3 network' and we have to put up with their fiery three motif on the players shirts. And on the damned pitch filling the entire area between long off and long on. This Test we had a very sporting and appropriate '$29 cap' sprayed onto the ground. You can buy a Three Network hat for $29? I suspect not and it is a pricing plan.

Bad enough? No, it gets worse. All this '3' nonsense was given the pink treatment. All the players logos were pink, the ground spraying was pink. Virtually every boundary hoarding was pink. All bat handles were pink. Even the sodding stumps were pink. You do not play cricket, especially Test cricket using pink stumps. Full stop. Not negotiable.

We get a tea break from the play and a respite from bloody pink. No we don't, it gets worse. We get an interview with Glenn McGrath whose wife's very unfortunate demise was obviously the catalyst of this ghastly colour invasion and he was wearing a pink (admittedly a quite subtle hue) polo shirt. But he was interviewed alongside 'Slates' who was wearing a shocking pink suit (a suit) complete with matching fedora. I have a very nice and not cheap rug in front of the 42" Sony and I do not require a bill to remove vomit from it at this expensive time of year.

Breast cancer is a bad thing (I read it in a book). Bloody pink invading Test cricket is worse.

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SMHPGGS Tour 2009

The centrepiece of this trip was to be the Golf Tour. I was astonished to find that this was the thirty-first consecutive St Mary’s Hospital Post Graduate Golf Society tour. To say I was a little late to join in the festivities is an understatement of the greatest magnitude.

Three of us joined a fourth (who was best man at my wedding) to make a team for the drive from Winchester to Blackpool. Daily Telegraph general knowledge quiz crossword for entertainment in between all the ‘What ever happened to……’ and ‘Do you remember when……….’ moments. ‘A device used in orthodontic practice – 8 letters’ A text from a car doing 80 mph up the M6 to daughter in Melbourne has the answer in under two minutes. Retainer, in case you are wondering. Pub lunch (more on pubs later) and we stop off just outside Bolton for a game of golf at Darwen. We are about to play nine rounds in five days and so we stop for another on the way up. I was much relieved to learn that I had not turned into a right hander now I am in the northern hemisphere and I could still bring the head of the club into contact with the ball in a sort of useful way on most occasions. However all this rudimentary skill was not enough to stop me losing £20. This is going to be an expensive week.

Arrive in Blackpool (more of this later as well) to be greeted by the Fuhrer. I thought the bloke meeting us in the car park of the very nice Ramsey Hotel was my old friend Whitmore but it was soon made apparent that in his new guise he had total control over my life for the next five days. Things are the same and things are different. All the blokes from my past were instantly recognisable physically give or take the odd grey hair (well quite a lot really) and a bit of condition in the late summer of our lives, but instead of arriving by mini ute, clapped out Austin 1100 or stout boots we all rolled up in Mercedes, Jaguars and even a Porsche for the mini ute owner. However the insides of all these blokes has not changed in forty years. Bloody marvellous.

The week was one of golf directed by arcane ritual. This was as excellent as it was it was endlessly amusing. The centrepiece of all this was ‘The Draw’. Whenever there was a lull in the week’s proceedings everyone agreed we needed a draw. In charge of this was the Draw Fuhrer who had unfortunately left the Draw Machine at home. Not to be outflanked by this seemingly fatal error he produced a pack of cards and we were allocated (by a draw, naturally) a card that guided our fate for the week. On the back of losing £20 in Bolton things took an upward turn when I became the Ace of Spades for five days. How good is that?

Every game to be played in the next five days was part of a tournament, a tournament within a tournament, or a tournament within a tournament within a tournament. There might have been another layer as well but I got a bit lost. Apparently you start to get the hang of it after fifteen years or so. So you were either playing for the Cup (the premier trophy – I think), the Plate, the Saucer, the Eggcup, the Spoon (which had been lost), the Hat, the Sweater (which was an umbrella) or the Eagle (who had recently had his wings glued back on). If you lost in the first round of the Cup you went into the Plate unless you were a lucky re-entrant (dictated by a draw, of course) when you went back into the Cup. If you lost again I think you went straight into the semi-final of the Saucer but I found this piece of crockery the hardest to get my head around. Once you had had a draw for the first matches of the day you went and played them. Then there was the lunchtime collation of results, counting of Stableford points and birdie tally. Handicaps could be adjusted by the Fuhrer at anytime and it was not unusual for blokes to play off two handicaps in the same day. Two rounds a day with the ‘serious’ competitive stuff in the morning and the slap and tickle (GPs vs Consultants, Over 59 vs Under 59, Team Powerball etc.) in the afternoon. This was usually foursomes bearing in mind that two full rounds for five days at our stage of life is a little wearing.

Three courses lined up for the five days. Old St Annes Links, Blackpool North Shore and, the jewel in the crown, Royal Lytham and St Annes where we were also to stay in the Dormy House. Old St Annes Links was just gearing up for the Fylde Open and sported the best greens I have ever played on. Fantastic stuff where you really could just roll the ball and if it didn’t go where you wanted it to you had no one to blame but yourself. Four rounds here with the sweet aroma of aviation spirit wafting over the course from the adjacent Blackpool Airport. Blackpoll North shore was a lot trickier than it first looked and had the added bonus of being free for me as I had reciprocal rights from my home club in Auckland.

Royal Lytham.

This is the first proper championship course I have ever played on; the 2012 British Open is to be played here. It is basically far too difficult for one of my meagre abilities; and this off the Visitors tees. Off the Championship tees it is beyond my comprehension. The course sports 209 bunkers. That is in excess of ten per hole – every hole.

One of us asked the Club Pro for some advice as to a trouble free round. ‘Stay out of the bunkers’ was all he needed to say. There is not only a surfeit of the damned things, but each and every one is evil. They are universally deep with vertical sod faces and filled with sand having the consistency of talcum powder that I found exceedingly hard to play a controlled shot from. A ball pitching in the face just stays there and a ‘fried egg’ was quite the norm. On more than one occasion I played out of a fairway bunker backwards and twice played for position inside a greenside bunker.

If you avoid the bunkers there is the rough. This is the sort of stuff where only large striped animals and errant golf balls flourish. Go in there and the chances of finding your ball are approaching zero. One of our group bought a ‘Stroke Saver’ course guide. Complete waste of £9 – every hole just indicated loads of bunkers and loads of rough. Nine quid’s worth of the bleeding obvious.

First hole on this monster is a medium length par three which I promptly birdied by chipping in from the fringe. Can only go downhill from here and it certainly did.

How did I fare in all this? Whilst flying over Uzbekistan my abiding thought was ‘I hope I don’t make a complete arse of myself and it would be nice to win a match’. I arrived with a Club handicap of 15 with a New Zealand derived ‘Slope’ of 14.3. The Fuhrer would have none of this true reflection of my playing ability (or, more like, lack thereof) and decreed I would play off 14. This was obviously not open to protest or negotiation what with him being the Fuhrer and everything. I failed to be either good enough or bad enough all week to have this altered in either direction. So I spent the week (especially the Lytham days) playing from a handicap that was flattering at best.. Despite this I beat the best man at my wedding on an extra hole to progress to the second round of The Cup. Here I saw off Mary who was really a bloke to get into the semi final. This had me drawn to meet the best golfer during our undergraduate days and still playing off four; this over the as yet unplayed and very scary Lytham course. Well it has been a good run and I haven’t completely stuffed the week up. For reasons I can’t really understand I beat him three and two. Hellfire I’m in the final of the Cup. The Plate, Saucer and Egg Cup are no longer open to me.

Final over the Lytham course on the final morning against one of my best mates playing off four. I double bogey the first to his par. I can see where this is going. But no. He plays dreadfully for the next nine holes and I play OK and I get myself five up. He then plays OK/well and I play dreadfully so we stand on the last all square. This is the stuff of dreams.

Seriously, I have never experienced anything like it. Standing on the eighteenth tee of a Championship course with the week’s golf hinging on the next ten minutes and all I can see in front of me is bunkers. No giving or receiving of strokes; good old-fashioned ‘who hits the ball the least number of times to get the ball in the hole wins’. Pip’s honour and he slices a drive into a gorse thicket surrounding the Club flagpole. This, if anything makes it worse. I should win from here, but I have been playing like a drain for the last hour being unable to hit a decent shot with any club in the bag and all I can see in front of me is sand. The bunkers are getting bigger and moving closer together as I watch. Harden up, man, and hit the bloody thing. Slightly cut a drive my usual powder puff distance and, wonder of wonders, the ball is above ground at the left edge of the fairway. We go and look for Pip’s ball and he has got it into the only playable lie for about twenty metres in any direction. He plays a great shot to be about twenty feet short of the green. I wander over to my ball and I look at the green to see, well, sand. A different set of bunkers from those that confronted me five minutes ago but they still contain the same stuff. Take the trusty 23˚ rescue club and have a wazz. Please let this be reasonable. Look up and there is the NXT-Tour flying straight as an arrow towards………the flag. Bloody hell, where did that come from? I couldn’t stop a ball on these greens all week and this was no different. It pitches just short of the flag and rolls forty feet past. Pip putts up to about eight feet and I knock mine to five feet leaving myself with, mercifully, an uphill putt. His putt. Nasty length with a bit of right to left in it. Straight down the orifice. Well this it then. I decided not to look for breaks that weren’t there and just walked up to and hit it. Best putt I hit all week. Dead centre down to the last Angström unit. All square after eighteen. Best hole of golf I have ever played. I couldn’t give a rat’s arse what happens now. Share the trophy, play more, lose on a count back – who cares? I’m now a psychological basket case. But Pip is made of sterner stuff; he’s been a great sportsman forever. We play the eighteenth again and Pip’s four beats my five. I am not the first and won’t be the last to lose a match over the closing holes of Royal Lytham.

Runner up over the week in the knockout matchplay was beyond my most optimistic hopes. The amount of fun I had for five days also exceeded my wildest expectations by the length of the straight. This was industrial grade enjoyment. The friends you make at university are surely the best friends you’ll ever have. Although we all looked a little different from the exterior the insides were unaltered and the interplay between the members of the group was vintage 1972. Tales of the Darts Club Library, Shneerson’s 150 holes in a day with only a bottle of Scotch and a packet of ginger nuts for sustenance, long forgotten and largely unfortunate choices of girlfriends, Santini’s, beer (lots of beer), Wilson House etc., etc. Pure gold.

South West Ireland next year. Do I want a re-match? Hell yes.

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Please, pretty please, let him be real

I chose to get to work very early in the morning. I can get more done in the hour between 0700 and 0800 than I can for the next three hours. My choice. It has the added advantage that I get about twenty minutes of driving at a time of day when you can actually drive as opposed to crawling along in a jam. Pre (or peri as it is becoming) dawn through the late winter countryside at just over the speed limit, hoping for an EnviroWaste semitrailer to overtake before Albany Hill (and there was one this morning) - marvellous. And then there is the choice of in car entertainment. Radio Hauraki? The CD stacker (well the car is nearly ten years old so no really good stuff like an iPod interface)? A news Channel? Nope to all the above. The early morning drive is Radio Sport.

This morning in amongst the nonsense we had live commentary from Berlin of the world athletic championships. Now I am far from athletic in an athletic sort of way. My times for running any length of foot race would be best measured with a sundial. Less than average height, a tad over ideal weight and a day short of my fifty eighth birthday would not gain me a place in the Berlin Olympic Stadium this week. I'd probably even be barred from buying a ticket as a spectator. My interest in athletics over the years has been fleeting (pardon the pun). I used to go to Crystal Palace of a Friday evening in the early '70s to watch the likes of Dave Bedford and saw Wottle run in his golf cap. If I were honest I would have to say that these trips to South London were more fuelled by the available female company than a real interest in the athletic pursuit. However I was absolutely gobsmacked by Mr Bolt's effort this morning.

This guy is a freak and hell I hope beyond hope he is for real and not the product of pharmaceutical manipulation. Earlier in the week he lowered the 100m world record, his own world record of course, by a margin that over the last decade or so has taken years to remove. And he did this looking like he was strolling down to the corner dairy for a yam. This morning he appears to have moved to a new level of absurdity. I have yet to see the race but can't wait - it sounds phenomenal. In the time it took me to drive past Albany Toyota, the Shell station and the Husqvarna dealership he had lowered the world 200m record to 19.19 seconds. The silver medallist ran a close (sic) second at 19.83. That sounds like he was 6 metres behind. In a 200m race.

Addendum: I have now seen the race. It is totally unbelievable, better than the 100m final by miles. Best 19 odd seconds of sport you'll see until his next trick.

Also in these championships there have been calls for a gender test for the winner of the wummin's 800m. We don't need a gender test for the winner of the men's 100 and 200m, we need a species test.

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The key point is...........

........that I have had a gutsful of Peter Montgomery.

I am not immune to events unfolding in Beijing. I have watched a bit. Mrs obald has been much nasally dislocated that Coro has been replaced by the 12m air pistol but even she settled down on the couch on Saturday evening for the much hyped 'Super Saturday'. New Zealand was going to blow away that well known country Michael Phelps on the medals table. Who gives a stuff about a medals table anyway except perhaps China who regard it with the same importance as Germany did in 1936 or The Soviet Union in 1980. The spearhead of this thrust into a cornucopia of medals was to be the rowing. Five finals containing New Zealanders which means we had to put up with five seven minute dollops of the most over rated sports commentator on the planet.

I just cannot see it. PJ Montgomery is held in high regard by his peers. I have a passing acquaintance with one of them who will not hear a bad word uttered against him. Each to his own I suppose but I would prefer to listen to half an hour of someone dragging their finger nails down a blackboard than suffer thirty minutes of the liquid Himalayas man. The key points of my irritation are? Well for starters, the key point. Bloody everything is the key point. But the key point can only be found in the midst of the four hundred word question that requires a two syllable answer. PJ is the past master of the over long question in any interview. 'What is the key point you are looking at as you enter Super Fourteen edition number seven and face the might of the Bulls who, having lost to the Sharks in both 2004 and 2006, are now entering a run of three successive defeats at the hands of either New Zealand or Australian teams this being the case as French and German sides are excluded from the tournament after the ruling by the International Court of Human Rights in the Hague?' 'They are a strong team'.

Get our Pete out of his normal environment (water) and he pines for the sea and all things nautical. He gets togged up in his Drizabone and is sent to perambulate the touchlines at Eden Park. He tends to be very grumpy unless it is raining cats and dogs and then he really perks up. The only thing he can ever talk about during a rugby match is the wind and he likes nothing better than if the ball is being blown off the starboard layline, I mean left upright, by a howling sou'wester. Clown.

And then we have the pre rehearsed spontaneous comment. On Saturday night he was determined that his 'The America's Cup is now New Zealand's Cup' moment was going to be 'Black to Gold'. Drysdale stuffed this up royally for him by coming third. 'And it's 'Black to Bronze'. Terrific, Pete. Well he is nothing if not thick skinned and so he was going to use it somewhere in the evening. Enter the twins. Here we have another key Montgomery trait. A total lack of accuracy. In the closing stages of a thrilling race he had the Evers-Swindells in the lead when they weren't. When the finish eventually came he totally stuffed it up by reading the lane numbers out as the result 'Great Britain first, Germany second and New Zealand third'. What a plonker. Then his mate who had not been allowed to get a word in edge ways all evening said. 'I don't think so, Pete - they are going to a photo'. Photo result comes after a mercifully short interval (Rugby could learn a bit here) and PJ cannot resist the screamed 'And its Black to Gold'. The timing of this was now just dreadful and made the comment look even more lame than it was when he first though of it; which was probably about three years ago.

No, if PJ Montgomery is on the case I'm off to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Any sport that has a bit of water in it I will watch with the sound off.

And a couple of passing Olympic notes. How cool is Mr Bolt? And oh how I hope Michael Phelps is real. Look how long it took them to nail Marion Jones and Carl Lewis.

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Is this cricket?

What of events at the SCG last night? A stunning victory or a sham of a sporting contest?

That it was gripping enough was undeniable but the acrimony that surrounded the match and more so its aftermath bring to mind that overused but apt phrase 'it is not cricket'.

That Dravid was not out is a plain as the nose on your face. His bat and the ball were in different postcodes. Crap umpiring was certainly evident (and the match was littered with dreadful decisions) but Gilchrist must have known that he was not out. Gilchrist used to have reputation of being a really honest sort of a joker - he was (is?) one of the last remaining test players who 'walked' - but that has gone. Is that Ponting's influence? I don't know. That the Australian skipper is an excellent batsmen and a good captain are undeniable but he does not strike me as a very nice bloke. After Dravid had gone the contest didn't really mean very much. Clarke's unlikely heroics with what turned out to be the last five balls of the match turned into just a meaningless sideshow for this old fashioned fan of the game.

No, I have reservations as to where the second Australia vs India Test match has left us.

I have Wisden from 1968 and 1969 arriving this morning and I can shut myself off in the 'good old days' and hope the nasty modern cricket world goes away.

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Last for the year

I shall resist the temptation to give a list of 'Best of' or 'Highlights' of 2007 and will certainly not be making any predictions for next year. There are loads of these around and they are for the most part facile at best. Perhaps a few thoughts on what has been wandering through my mind at a time of year when I would like to think that nothing is in there at all.



New Zealand drivers are dreadful. They are given the world's worst roads to drive on and a good proportion of them chose to drive an apology for the internal combustion engine so they are off to a great start. Driving licenses are given to kindergarten children who are then negligibly (negligently?) trained prior to sitting an ersatz test. The under prepared take dreadful cars onto worse roads to be greeted by a raft of traffic regulations only the most stupid of which are ever enforced. Park improperly or go 1 kmh above a speed limit on an open road and you are fined. Most of these 'offences' are committed by otherwise law abiding, middle class, 'Joe Average' citizens who wouldn't dream of breaking real laws. They tend to pay their fines and regard them like a bad haircut; an infrequent but nuisance part of life. Drive drunk in an unwarranted, unregistered uninsured car and you are also fined and get you license taken away. All good. Well no. People who tend to commit these far more serious offences tend to be complete wasters. They get fined and their license is suspended and they give society the fingers and go and do it again. And again, and again, and............ What does society do about it? Nothing. Hand wringing might get a look in but that is about it. How many people do we see who are appearing for a driving offence for the umpteenth time and already owe fines in the tens of thousands of dollars range? Eventually the judge (a distinct New Zealand species of mollusc or other invertebrate for the most part) gives in and wipes the telephone number fine in exchange for a few days of Community service - which they then don't do. Repeated drunk driving is a little different as alcoholism is usually involved here which obviously requires a different approach but even that is for the most part not follwed up.



Ok we have the framework for some really crass driving habits and what is the result for Mr Average as he drives about his business? I have never driven in a place where there is so much tailgaiting and so little indicating. Glancing in my rear view mirror I often wonder if I have inadvertently fitted a tow bar to the Jag and am trailing a Nissan Micra round the suburbs. Overtaking on the left. Apparently this is not illegal. Why on earth not? Maybe it is because the first edition of the New Zealand Highway Code (or whatever it is called) to deal with motorways got the lane designations wrong and put the slow lane on the right. This is how we got a de facto speed limit of 98 KMH in the right lane making the middle lane the fast lane - unless of course you require the left lane for warp factor twelve.

However my bete noir of NZ driving is the right turn. Not the daft priority at junctions crap which must have been dreamt up in a pub, but the actual mechanics of how NZ drivers make a right turn. Traffic lights are a good place to study this. Sit in the right lane at red waiting to turn right yourself and you are a panel beaters dream if you are at the front of the queue. People turning right on their green take it as a badge of manhood (or womanhood) to cut off as much of the corner as possible and come with in microns of your paintwork. This pertains whether you are lined up properly with your 'Stop' line or anything up to five metres behind it. I was taught that to turn right you get into your outside lane, progress to the centre of the lane into which you wish to move and then make your turn to the new point of the compass in a measured way, The 'New Zealand Way' is to start your turn ten metres before the intersection using the shortest possible route to the side road of choice. Traffic markings, road islands, commonsense or other vehicles are not to be regarded as a hindrance to your god given antipodean trajectory. I hate it. I make a point of turning right 'properly' and the area bounded by my route and 'The New Zealand Way' is large enough on which to erect a modest shopping centre.

Why is anybody bothering to watch the current New Zealand vs Bangladesh ODIs. In fact looking at the box not many people are - the grounds are empty. In general the standard of cricket we get in NZ is very poor but even by those low standards the current fare is drivel. Bangladesh are rubbish and New Zealand are not much better. However the amount of media coverage cricket gets here is phenomenal. Ball by ball radio commentary (even of completely inconsequential provincial games), full TV coverage and acres of newsprint. As a cricket lover I'll openly admit I get a free ride that is not warranted. If I were a follower of softball (which I am not - banal ersatz baseball) or motor racing (which I am not - good value high carbon emission fun) both of which are more popular than cricket I would feel very aggrieved at the relative lack of coverage for my interest. However at least there is excellent coverage of some proper cricket. How good are the current Australians - or the team before, or the one before that, or............ I was not alone in thinking that the Indians might give them a bit of a tickle up but the whole series was gone after the Indians' woeful first innings in Melbourne. No, Ponting and his boys are just way too good - in the top four inches and the six foot below that.

Why do people celebrate New Year? I can think of no more reason to get stuck into the recreational pharmacology in a big way tonight than I would on the 14th of April. The Scots apparently have an excuse which I have never been able to fathom, but why would anyone else do it? Tonight I will watch the three hour TopGear special which finishes at ten pm, pull on the jimjams, have a cup of cocoa and go to sleep.

See you next year.

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1953 Wisden

Forget the nice shiny Ping G10 driver that Santa left under the tree. By far and away the best Christmas present I received this morning was given to me by my daughters and is fifty four years old. They found a 1953 copy of Wisden's Cricketer's Almanack somewhere and it is now mine. I have every Wisden from 1974 to date (a puny collection I know) but to get one from just two years after I was born is a rare treat. Nothing useful will be done for days now. I dutifully buy a new one each year and give them a cursory glance but they none of them hold the magic of today's present.

Where do we start? The Wisden's Five Cricketers of the year are Harold Gimblett (then aged 39), W S Surridge, D S Sheppard, T W Graveney and F S Truman - not bad. The whole book is the cricket of my boyhood. It is marvelous. I can recall being taken to the Oval to watch David Sheppard in 1962 against Pakistan. He had given up the first class game to concentrate on his ecclesiastical studies and was ordained in 1955. He was persuaded to return in 1962. I can't remember why because England were creaming Pakistan and their top order could be chosen from Pullar, Cowdrey, Dexter, Graveney, Stewart and Barrington for starters. However Sheppard became the only ordained minister to play cricket for England. He died in 2005 as the Right Reverend Lord Sheppard of Liverpool and was once thought of as a front runner to become Archbishop of Canterbury.

Fred Truman in this Wisden was the young tyro only being used in short sharp full speed spells. It was thought that if well managed he could be a successor to take on Larwood's mantle. Prophetic stuff indeed.Tom Graveney is a player of great promise and is applauded for his decision to turn down the opportunity to become a golf professional to concentrate on his cricket.

India were the Tourists in 1952 and there is picture of the scoreboard at the First Test at Headingly on the the third afternoon when they are 0 for 4. Attendance for the five days was 74,000 with gate takings of over £17,000. Another picture of the Fifth Test at the Oval with India 5 for 5 and Hutton has set six slips and two short legs for Trueman. Other matches at Lords feature, of course, Gentlemen vs Players (Players won by two runs) but also matches no longer mentioned (or even played). Look who played in the Army vs R.A.F match; Leading Aircraftsman J M Parks, Leading Aircraftsman R Illingworth, Aircraftsman F J Titmus, Aircraftsman F S Truman, Sapper M J Stewart, Gunner R J Carter. Don't forget this was a time when there was still National Service in Britain - we are only seven years post WW2. When Combined Services went to Lords to take on Public Schools the schoolboys had one E R Dexter (Radley) going in at number four (he made 8 and 43). M C Cowdrey bagged a pair playing for Oxford University against the M.C.C. There is no limited overs cricket (the Gillette Cup is still over ten years away) and certainly no coloured clothing or white balls.

As usual in old books the advertisements (not ads, please) make as interesting reading as the meat of the book. 'Men in the public eye prefer BRYLCREEM for clean grooming' complete with a picture of D C S Compton (Middlesex and England). Alf Gover's cricket school (one of my better coordinated school mates went there fifteen or so years later) is in 1953 called the East Hill Indoor Cricket School to be found at 172 East Hill, Wandsworth, SW 18. We are reminded that it is only 3 minutes from Clapham Junction (which in 1953 is still run by the Southern Railway) and is served by buses 39, 77A (I used to take the 77A to school), 37, 168 and by trolley buses 626, 628 and 630. All trolley buses (in South London anyway) had numbers in the six hundreds - 604 and 605 went past the end of my road. No mention anywhere of 'ample parking'. The Tavistock Banqueting Rooms situated at 18 Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square, WC2 - so we are talking a proper posh 'West End' location here - could organise your club's Annual Dinner and Dance for 10/- per head (or 8/6 per head for a Buffet Dance if you were a bit strapped for cash). Just phone the Catering Manger on GERrard 5928.

The whole tome is time warp stuff but back to an era with which I can identify not gas lamps and hansom cabs. Heroes of my boyhood summers, pounds, shillings and pence, trolley buses, the Southern Railway and Scotland Yard being at WHItehall 1212. Fred Trueman was in the Air Force and Ted Dexter was still at school.

Happy chappy.

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