Runny Thoughts

Come back Australia, all is forgiven

A strange thing happened one morning a couple of weeks ago. Pale, sleep-deprived men staggered out into the streets, disbelieving grins on their faces. They smiled at random strangers and helped old ladies across the road. Some were even polite to traffic wardens.

Alan Sugar was nice to an Apprentice.

Yes, extraordinary circumstances prevailed: England had won a Test match in Australia during a live Ashes series (by which I mean an Ashes series that hadn't been won six months before it started by those dastardly Australians with their underhand trick of playing the game much much better than anyone had ever played it before).

From the prevailing mood of euphoria you'd've thought that the whole country had got laid simultaneously.

Which, in a funny kind of way, it had.

In the period between that Test match and the one that has just started, even stranger things happened.

England got confident. The country, that is. The cricket team was already confident.

Mockery of Australians became the norm. Pitying texts, tweets and status updates flew through cyberspace. Stranger still, Australians seemed resigned to their fate. In desperation, they selected a player called Beer, as if invoking the spirit of David Boon, whose record of 52 cans consumed on an Australia-England flight stands to this day. Hilarity ensued. Meanwhile, I got nervous, preemptively texting friends with doom-laden warnings like "it's still only 1-0, you know", "a long way to go yet", and "steady now".

And now we’ve had the first day of the Perth Test, and a couple of things have become clear:

Thing 1: even the most cautiously optimistic of England fans (guilty as charged) has realised that the series is England's to lose.

Thing 2: World Cricket, and especially Test Cricket, is in deep trouble.

A disclaimer on Thing 1: England may still lose the series, but, if they do, it will be the result of the biggest choke since Oxford United threw away a 7-0 lead with ten seconds of injury time left against the eight surviving members of Dagenham and Redbridge Under-12s (reserves) in the First Preliminary Round of the 1987 Watney's Red Barrel Consolation Cup.

Thing 2 is, for the England fan keenly anticipating a first Ashes victory down under since 1986, somewhat counter-intuitive (sorry, I hate that word, but sometimes only the hideous words will do). Much as England fans would enjoy a long-overdue retention of the oldest trophy in cricket, the sport needs Australia to be strong, and, unthinkable a concept as it may have been just a year ago, the signs for the future are not good.

Consider this: back in the day, when Aussie batsmen were lantern-jawed, box-girder-chewing, Pommie-munchers, it was commonly held that Australia’s second-best (and third, and fourth...) would make fine-grained, low-fat mincemeat of England’s first team. This was regularly proved by the insultingly easy victories for Australia A in the warm-up games at the beginning of England tours down under. It was as if they were the commis chefs in a Michelin-starred restaurant, passing the platter of diced Pom to a baggy-hatted, spongebag-trousered tantrum factory with a casual “there you go, chef, we’ve skinned, gutted and filleted them for you, and put them in a nice lemon and garlic marinade. I’m sure you can finish them off.” Batsmen of the calibre of Stuart Law (79 first class hundreds, average of 50), Darren Lehman (82 first class hundreds, average of 58 or so) and Michael Hussey (he could teach Prince Charles a thing or two about waiting your turn) were unable to establish themselves in the side.

But now, faced with injuries and loss of form, and the possibility of losing the Ashes at home after just three tests, the selectors turned to the next-in-line, and found the coming generation unready for the task.

Phillip Hughes may well develop into the most destructive batsman of his time, but at the moment, on all available evidence, he is as much a Test-class opener as I am a surprisingly spacious three-bedroomed house in Clapham’s fashionable Abbeville Village, situated within easy striking distance of all local amenities and travel links. His lack of anything approaching a defensive technique was cruelly exposed by Chris Tremlett, and England were up and running, able to exploit the lack of confidence in the Australian upper order with startling ease.

Soon enough they had the opportunity to bowl at Steven Smith, a talented young cricketer, albeit one batting at least a place too high, whose stated aim was to ‘come into the side and be fun’. This is a remarkable new slant on the role of the number 6 batsman, and one which prompted the ignoble thought that a more appropriate pick might have been Sir Les Patterson.

The shots played by Hughes (cross-bat to a full straight one) and Smith (indeterminate post-lunch prod) may have had the desired effect: ‘Test opener and number 6? Don’t make me laugh!’

The point is not that these two are untalented - on the contrary, they are almost certain to develop into high class Test cricketers, given time. But when the Ashes are about to be lost, Australia should be able to whistle up cricketers who can offer more than a season's batting average of 22 (Hughes) and some bits-and-pieces middle-order biffing and occasional, eminently hittable leg spin (Smith).

Before you say anything, I am well aware that by even thinking those words, I am inviting run-a-ball double centuries from both players in the second innings, backed up by an unplayable and series-turning spell of spitting leggies from Smith and g azelle-like wonder-catches in the gulley from Hughes.

They were going to happen anyway. Not my fault.

Looking further down the order, the spin-bowling cupboard, post-Warne, is distressingly bare. X-man Xavier Doherty lasted just two Tests, poor chap, and it seems that the selectors are blind to the Ashley-Giles-esque qualities of Nathan Hauritz. He may never play Test cricket again, and it would be to Australia's detriment.

As for the fast bowling, the selection policy is in confusion, but the overwhelming impression is that this is all they have. There are no young thrusters waiting to burst into the squad. The standard of cricket being played in the Sheffield Shield, which used to be held up to all other countries as the example to which they should aspire, is, according to those who know, lower than ever before.

Now, it is very un-Australian even to consider the possibility of them not being at, or at least very near, the top of any sporting tree, and particularly crucket. But they’ve been doing some terribly un-Australian things recently.

The worst-case scenario is that the dip in quality in Australia's domestic scene persists, young athletes look to other sports (notably Australian Rules Football) and Australia become, medium-to-long term, a mediocre team, thus further denuding the pool of competitive Test-playing nations.

Unthinkable? That's what they would have said about The West Indies in the 1980s.

Australia's X-Factor Not Enough. Or is it?

I can restrain myself no longer. It seems that everyone is doing it. I think I even heard the Pope talking about it the other day. Or maybe that was something else.

Yes, it’s time for an Ashes preview.

If you are the kind of person who would rather go on a date with Gillian McKeith while being serenaded by Wagner (the X-Factor one, not the composer of Test-match-length operas) and danced at by Ann Widdecombe (see how topical I am!) than read about cricket, then I do urge you not to lose interest at this point. As I showed in the last, albeit rather long, and actually full of nested clauses (and parentheses) sentence, I do like to popularise these blogs of specialist interest just to keep the laypeople reading.

In the recent past, Ashes encounters in Australia have resembled a quadratic equation in which the unknown ‘X’ (as we will discover later, a crucial letter in this context) has been replaced by the words ‘Australia win' and all the other elements have also been replaced by 'Australia win'. On occasions the contest has been more uneven than the contents of Mr. Bumpy's Bumper Bag of Big Bumps. Australians would have you believe that the most recent meeting between the two teams Down Under occurred in 2006-2007 and resulted in a 5-0 trouncing for Australia over the Poms. It’s funny, but I can remember everything about that series up until the moment when the great English bowler Steve Harmison stood poised at the end of his run-up, ready to unleash his particular brand of hell on the unsuspecting and hapless Australian batsmen. As far as I know, the series stopped there and the next time the teams met was in England last year, when we thrashed them 2-1.

So visiting teams fare badly in Australia. On this occasion, however, England fans can allow themselves the merest hint of optimism. Why? Well, let’s compare the two teams in a completely even-handed, unbiased and utterly accurate and truthful point-by-point list:

POINT ONE - PREPARATION

Magnificent England’s preparation for this series has been thorough, professional and seamless - an object lesson in how to acclimatise, build momentum and send the right signals to both yourselves and the opposition. Under the inspiring leadership of Honorary Englishman and Great Cricketing Hero Andy Flower they come to Australia not having lost a Test series in the last 5 and having won 12 of their last 19 Tests. All of those wins have been so facile as to make stealing candy from a child look like a daring and sophisticated art heist as portrayed in The Thomas Crown Affair.

Feeble Australia, by contrast, have lost 12 of their last 18 international games, and were so scaredy-cat about losing two of the others that they arranged for them to be wiped out by mysterious and entirely uncharacteristic-of-the-country-they-were-in rainstorms.

Pathetic.

POINT TWO - SELECTION CONSISTENCY

Indomitable England have a settled squad.

Wobbly Australia were so uncertain about the make-up of their squad that they could only narrow it down to 17 with two weeks to go to the first Test. When they finally got round to naming an appropriately-sized squad they included Xavier Doherty, an uncapped spinner who boasts a first-class bowling average of 48.26. So, having introduced Mr. Doherty, it’s time for:

Killer Stat Number One
Teams selecting players whose name begins with ‘X’ have an appalling recent record. Of the last 11 games played by sides picking a player whose first name begins with ‘X’, only one has been won. Xenophon Constantine Balaskas may have had a groovy name, but he was unable to prevent South Africa from three consecutive innings defeats against Australia in 1936. More recently, Xavier Marshall’s only success in Tests came when the West Indies beat England in 2009, but as this was the last time that England resembled a ragtag collection of five-year-olds who had never played cricket before, and they have since evolved into a fearsome squad of lantern-jawed Aussie-munchers, that result is irrelevant.

This is closely followed by:

Killer Stat Number Two
www.babynames.com lists no fewer than 28 boy’s names beginning with ‘X’. The fact that only two of those names (Xavier and Xenophon) have made it to Test Match Player status shows you just how flaky the letter is when it comes to top level sporting achievement. No side could possibly succeed with a name like that in its ranks.

POINT THREE - FORM

England have improved throughout their three warm-up games, in which all the batsmen have spent time at the crease, all the bowlers have taken wickets (including the second string) and tactical plans have been executed clinically. Most recently, they completed an easy victory over Australia A, in a fixture normally notable for the way it highlights the embarrassing gulf between the two nations. In days gone by, most of Australia second-best would have walked into the England side - nowadays they'd have as much chance of a game as I have of becoming manager of Liverpool’s all-powerful European Cup-winning side of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

As an indicator of the confidence running through this squad, suffice it to say that Monty Panesar took a one-handed wonder catch off a full-blooded pull shot.

Monty.

Not Jonty. Monty.

As for form between the two sides, how about:

Killer Stat Number Three
Jonathan Trott, England’s very-English-oh-yes middle-order batsman, has never ever lost a Test Match against Australia.

And how have Australia fared recently? Well, let’s wheel out:

Killer Stat Number Four
Baby-faced Aussie-muncher Ian Bell (192) scored more runs in his most recent innings than Ponting, Watson, Katich, Haddin and North cumulatively managed in their last game (169). So this pattern is bound to repeat itself in all five Tests. Obviously.

POINT FOUR - NICKNAMES

English players’ nicknames are a mark of the togetherness of the squad. Finny, Swanny, Cooky, Belly, Straussy. Just add -y to the surname and Boby’s your uncley.

Australian players’ nicknames are all over the place: Pup, Midge, Kat, Eagle. Make your minds up, guys - cricket team or menagerie? Of the others, Steven Smith is so undistinguished that, according to Cricinfo, he doesn’t even have a nickname.

Amateur hour.

That’s it. England are bound to win. It’s all going so smoothly.

Too smoothly. The last time England won the Ashes in Australia, they were so feeble in their warm-up games that they were famously slated by Martin Johnson in the ‘can’t bat, can’t bowl, can’t field’ article. This time they can patently do all of these things quite well.

So I’ve come to the uncomfortable conclusion that they’re bound to lose.

Bugger.

In A Bit Of A Fix

I have blogged before (here) about how the Classical Music industry could and should learn from sport. The events of the past week have thrown up another instance.

First, a bit of background.

The News of the World revelations about alleged ‘spot-fixing’ in cricket have caused, it is safe to say, a bit of a stir. The moral high ground is now more crowded than Groucho Marx’s cabin as commentators, ex-players, bloggers and ordinary-men-in-the-street wring their hands while simultaneously throwing them up in the air in horror (quite a feat when you’re also balancing on the High Wire of Hypocrisy).

Most laughable was the look on ECB chairman Giles Clarke’s face as he handed Mohammed Aamer his Man Of The Series award. Obviously Clarke himself is above criticism and has never associated with shady characters or accepted money for actions that could endanger the future of global cricket. Oh no. Of course not.

Anyway, the ins and outs of the case (and they are complex) are not my concern.

Cricket has its problems, but Classical Music has been beset by similar headaches for years, with performances being manipulated by betting syndicates shamefully indifferent to the effect on an unsuspecting concert-going public.

The following is a brief extract from a conversation held in a central London hotel this week. Full details are in the hands of the police, and I have obviously had to change some names to protect the probably-guilty.

Man A: So we’re talking big money?

Man B: You’d be amazed. Spot betting on Proms has escalated hugely in the last few years. All the money’s in the little details: wrong entries, split notes, all that kind of stuff. Enough to be noticed, but not enough to disrupt the performance as a whole.

Man A: And you can arrange it?

Man B: OK, let’s go into details. This is just to prove that I have these guys in my pocket, ok? Tomorrow night’s Prom, in the overture, the principal horn will split the third note of his solo.

Man A (taking notes): The third note in the overture.

Man B: That’s right. The Bb. Then at the beginning of the recapitulation of the last movement of the concerto, the pianist will have a memory lapse and go into the wrong key. He will be out for a whole bar.

Man A: OK. Wrong key in recap.

Man B: And the third event that we will arrange is at the beginning of the main allegro in the first movement of the symphony.

Man A: Allegro in symphony.

Man B: the flautist will play double speed for half a bar and then correct himself.

Man A: OK I think that’s all clear. Thanks. Here’s the first payment.

(Sounds of money being counted).

Man A: Second payment to follow after the concert.

Man B: Thanks. Believe me, you could make a lot of money on this.

Man A: Just one question.

Man B: Fire away.

Man A: Do you ever fix events with conductors? You know, dodgy upbeats, wrong tempi, that kind of thing?

Man B (snorts derisively): Tchah! You have to be kidding. Who’s going to notice another mistake by those guys?

Man A: Fair point. Nice doing business with you.

My number's up

The human mind works in very bizarre ways.

Well, mine does anyway.

The first thing that popped into my head when I read about the sad death of Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins tonight was ‘135’.

[The thought that followed it was ‘Alan Knott’, but that is irrelevant to this post and you would have to be a seriously sad sports-head (guilty as charged) to make the connection. I know at least one person, though, who will get it instantly. Looking forward to the comments.]

Sorry about that. Embedded parentheses - yuk.

The reason for this unwarranted intrusion from a number (one, incidentally, that is not even in my Top Ten of ‘Favourite Numbers Of The 1980s’) is that 135 was the break Higgins made to win the last frame of the 1982 world championship final. You can watch the end of it here. Even better is this one from the semi-final.

Now, I doubt that I have actively thought about that break, or that match, in about 28 years. But there it is, leaping into my head the moment I see the name Alex Higgins, as inextricably linked to it as the word ’vomit’ is to the words ‘Simon Cowell’.

The fact is, I spent such a large amount of my otherwise undistinguished childhood (there’s no need for snarky comments, thanks) inhaling sports and information pertaining thereto that there are some numbers that simply won’t go away. They rise unbidden to the surface at the slightest opportunity, causing my simple and trusting mind the deepest consternation and anguish.

8032, 6996, 365, 99.94, 197, 499, 19-90, 304.

Any cricket fan of the 1970s will recognise those. Sorry if you don’t count yourself among them. It is, I can assure you from my completely biased position, your loss.

But then there are others, not sports-related: 3.141592653538979323846 [I learned that, plus plenty more, from a postcard I bought at the Science Museum in Paris, where they had written it to a gazillion decimal places going round the ceiling of a circular room (I wonder if it’s still there?) - it has survived the intervening 33 years more or less intact, I find].

Sorry again. The good news is that embedded parentheses are forbidden to travel in groups of more than two by EU law.

Where was I? Oh yes, other numbers.

There are musical numbers that are as deeply entrenched as the sporting ones, of course: 9, 15, 104, 551, 626, 1048 and so on and on and on and on.

While we’re at it, and now that it’s too late for me to salvage my tattered reputation for suave man-about-townery: number plates. SFC832N, VJO731X.

Just don’t get me started on phone numbers.

By the way, if you have understood the significance of all the numbers quoted thus far, you are either my brother or have been stalking me for a very very long time.

So what does it all mean?

Well if you’re expecting profound discussion of the neuroanatomy of retention and the importance of the hippocampus in long-term memory consolidation, then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place, as you may already have gathered.

But at least I’ve got all those numbers out of my head for a bit and it is now empty enough for me to watch Big Brother.

Thanks for that.

Note-By-Note

Classical Music (I capitalise it because it is Important) is missing a trick.

In these days of universal internet access, the coverage of Classical Music events remains hopelessly outdated.

Sure, there have been innovations such as the ‘Conductor-Cam’, whereby you can examine the maestro’s every wiggle in infini-slo-mo; or ‘Bat-ear’, which records and analyses individual players’ performances to see if they were actually playing all the notes or just busking their way through.

But while television presentation has moved with the times, written concert reviews remain dry, factual and boringly informative. I maintain that this is because they are written after the event, when the reviewer has had ample opportunity for calm reflection and consumption of over-the-counter sedatives.

In these modern days of instant gratification and on-the-hoof opinion, something more immediate is required. Perhaps Classical Music can look to Sport (also Important) for inspiration.

For several years now, sports fans too mean to pay for a Sky subscription have been familiar with the ‘live blog’ school of sports coverage, a handy way to experience live sporting events second-, or even third-hand.

Pioneered by the Guardian’s infamous ‘over-by-over’ cricket coverage of the 2005 Ashes, the genre has diversified to the extent that there is barely a sporting event that isn’t being covered by a sweaty journo somewhere, hunched over a laptop in a darkened room, hammering out 200 words a minute while trying to maintain the live TV feed on a Sky box held together with gaffer tape and spit.

‘Over-by-over’, ‘minute-by-minute’, ‘rally-by-rally’, ‘dart-by-dart’. Nothing is immune.

I’m looking forward to ‘snatch-by-snatch’ coverage of the weightlifting in the 2012 Olympics.

So how would this translate to Classical Music?

Glad you asked.

Always at the forefront of technological advances, Runny Thoughts is proud to bring you the first ever note-by-note (NBN) coverage of a classical music event.:

Proms 2010 live blog

Preamble

It doesn’t get bigger than this.

Plagued by its history of underachievement, Dutch classical music finally gets a chance to redeem itself after twenty-five years of hurt tonight, as the Concertgebouw Orchestra tackles one of the ‘Titans’ of the repertoire: Mahler’s First Symphony. Guess what its nickname is?

At the helm, Austrian maestro Heinrich von Shlumpff.

The orchestra has an unbeaten record against Mahler this season, subjecting the ‘titanic Teuton’ to some gruelling defeats on home soil.

But this is the Proms, and Dutch courage has been in woefully short supply here in Kensington since the glory days of ‘total music’ in the 1970s.

As for Maestro von Shlumpff, he comes to this fixture in dreadful form, desperately in need of the confidence boost that a good Proms run can bring. He’ll be looking for an early breakthrough.

The players have tuned up and here comes Maestro von S.

Toi toi everyone.

1 min: shaky start there, the violin harmonics not speaking properly. Always tough in damp conditions.

3 min: this is unimpressive so far from von S. He’s unsteady in tempo and missing cues left right and centre.

6 mins: the woodwinds beginning to get into the game gradually. Some nifty interplay between flutes and oboes.

8 mins: ooh that was shocking. Late challenge from the 3rd horn. Split it like a banana.

12 mins: I’m sorry but this is desultory stuff. Bad ensemble, dodgy intonation and no sense of adventure. Stodgy tempi from von Shlumpff who, in all honesty, is having an absolute shocker. Niggly conducting - why can’t he just let them play?

14 mins: Mahler says ‘frisches, belebtes Zeitmass’. Von Shlumpff says ‘not on your nelly, Gustav.’

16 mins: at last an injection of enthusiasm from the unlikeliest source: R.T. Thvack, the bespectacled timpanist. Pity it came too late. No use getting your game together in the coda.

End of first movement: Gus 1 Schlumpff 0.

An email!

“von Shlumpff is a notoriously bad starter, but has a great record in last movements. Don’t give up on him yet!”

Well I’m sorry, NLebrecht66, but so far it’s pisspoor, and some of us may have changed over to Andrew Graham-Dixon’s art docco by the last movement.

Peep! We’re off for a thigh-slapping Scherzo with some strudel in the middle.

2nd movement:

1 min: This is much more like it. Snappy articulation from the woodwinds in the opening phrase and excellent dynamic contrast throughout. it’s like listening to a different team.

2 min: you’ve got to love Mahler’s showmanship - bells in the air, everyone! And not a cracked note in sight.

4 min: ouch. How fragile it all is at this level. Principal horn Jean-Yves Embouchure makes a total hash of the linking solo and all that good work in the scherzo is undone. To be fair he’s having an indifferent season, but life is harsh at this level, and he will fear for his place in the next concert.

5 mins: it’s all fallen apart now. And I’m afraid the players must take some of the blame. The conductor can’t play the notes for them, and he looks horrified at some of the stuff going on out there, to be honest. These are professional musicians, but they look all at sea.

6 mins: the end of this movement can’t come soon enough for the demoralised musicians of the Concertgebouw. They’ll be looking to principal double bass Ferdinand van Roojsen to restore some pride early doors in the slow movement.

NLebrecht66 won’t give up. Here he is on the conditions: “don’t forget that the humidity and heat inside the Albert Hall are light years away from the air-conditioned comfort of their home concert hall. It’s so easy to underestimate the effect of the prevailing conditions if they haven’t had the chance to acclimatise properly.”

Sorry, Norm, that’s a load of guff and you know it. No excuses at this level.

That’s it for the 2nd movement, and this orchestra’s got a mountain to climb.

3rd movement:

1 min: you have to hand it to van Roojsen. That is a world-class double bass solo. The man is showing his pedigree. Can his colleagues respond?

2 min: no.

5 min: you still there? Mind if I join you?

7 min: get on with it!!!!

11 min: well that’s a small patch of my life I’ll never get back.

4th movement:

I’d like to say it’s nearly over, but the last movement is 20 minutes long.

1 min: Wow where the hell did that come from? Amazing opening to the last movement - daring, edge-of-the-seat tempo, pinpoint precision in the strings, and barnstorming brass playing. Perhaps von Shlumpff’s reputation as a coming-from-behind merchant is well-deserved after all. But has he left it too late?

5 min: this is magnificent stuff now. It’s as if they’ve suddenly remembered who they are. Either that or they’ve got a train to catch.

7 mins: that little luftpause was perfectly executed with magnificent understanding of the unique acoustic in this building. Conditions shmonditions. Take that NLebrecht66.

13 mins: this is turning into a procession. They have the symphony totally under control and are beginning to showboat, with breathtaking extremes of dynamic and devastatingly virtuosic passage work. Hats off.

14 mins: easy lads. Don’t get over-excited.

15 mins: ok I take it back. They know EXACTLY what they are doing. Who cares about the rubbish in the first three movements? The heart of the symphony is right here, in the finale, and they know it.

18 mins: slight over-confidence there from the horns, but calmly corrected by von Shlumpff. He’s proving himself a true Mahlerian. I was down on him early on, but what do I know?

20 mins: quite simply staggering stuff in the finale. They were all over the coda like a rash and ultimately produced a performance that will take some beating. All the reservations I had in the earlier movements were swept away by the sheer perfection of the finale, and it was exhilarating to hear an orchestra grow in stature right in front of you.

They’ve laid down a marker for the rest of the festival in the sweltering Albert Hall tonight.Are you listening, Berlin Phil?

Thanks for following it with me. Don’t forget to download the post-concert analysis podcast, including exclusive interviews with some of the key players. Night all.

Collective Useless Numpty Transference Syndrome

It is about 10pm on Sunday 27th June, 2010. At about 6.00 this afternoon, I had the beginning of this post all worked out.

This is what I was going to write:
"Today saw a dismal performance from an over-rated team full of their own self-regard, crowning one of the most inept sporting displays on foreign soil since the passing of the Inept Sporting Displays Act of 1853.

But that's enough about the Australian cricket team."

I hope you see what I was trying to do with that.

If you don't, you are clearly not an English sports fan.

Congratulations on both counts.

Anyway, regardless of whether you are a sports fan or not, I'm sure you'll be interested to know that this afternoon saw the first known occurrence of a phenomenon I am choosing to call Collective Useless Numpty Transference Syndrome (you can work out the acronym yourselves, I'm sure).

I invented it, so I get to name it, OK?

Briefly, what happened was this:

England (football) were, to quote the magnificent Malcolm Tucker, about as much use as a marzipan dildo in their footballing contest with Germany.

England (cricket) on the other hand, were, as is their recent wont, progressing quite nicely against another 'old enemy', Australia, who have performed as disappointingly in the last week as the perennially under-achieving Rain Gods of Wimbledon.

They then contrived to turn a facile victory into a cushion-munching, finger-slicing-while-chopping-onions, beer-all-over-the-kitchen-throwing near-defeat that had me, well, you know, munching cushions and so forth.

I have a theory. And it's one that makes those no-hopers at CERN look like amateurs.

The footballing no-contest in Bloemfontein, South Africa ended at approximately 4.50 our time.

England (cricket) were playing in Manchester, England and started imploding at approximately 6.00.

The distance between the two towns is 5934 miles.

Until 4.50, the England football team had possession of the Mantle Of British Sporting Ineptitude.

At the final whistle, no longer having use for it, they tossed it aside like a used up tube of toothpaste, whereupon it pricked up its ears (yes I know mantles don't have ears), sniffed the air (yes I know that even if mantles had ears they wouldn't use them to sniff the air), and hot-footed it (yes I know etc) to Manchester with all possible speed.
84 miles per minute, to be more or less precise.

Speedy buggers, these Mantles of Ineptitude.

Upon arrival in Manchester, the Mantle headed straight for the England (cricket) dressing room, where its mystical powers caused them to lose six wickets for eighteen runs.
Rumours that exceptional pace bowling from Shaun Tait and Dougie Bollinger were also involved are scurrilous and not to be believed.

Luckily for the spirit of English sportiness, Tim Bresnan, who was batting at the time, is blessed with the elusive ingredient that is crucial to any sporting over-achiever: Self-Belief. This is not to be confused with Self-Regard, for which see England (football) above.

Bresnan's Self-Belief gave the Mantle Of British Sporting Ineptitude a withering stare and told it to sod off, enabling Bresnan to hit two of the last three balls for four and secure a series-clinching victory.

The Mantle was last seen on the M1, heading South. It is expected to arrive in South-West London late tomorrow afternoon.

Come on Andy!

I Say Old Bean

DISCLAIMER: Despite the unpromising beginning, this post is NOT about football. Keep going. You’ll get to the bit about food soon enough. If, on the other hand, you prefer football to food, you might want to read the opening paragraph and stop there.

So. Hats off to the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea on a feisty defeat to Brazil in their World Cup opener last night. Funny how the countries that are keenest to show off their democratic credentials in the name of their country are the ones least qualified to do so.

Still, they played as if their lives depended on it.

In fact, come to think of it...

Anyway, their performance was in stark contrast to Spain’s. They seemed to think that if they just kept passing the ball eventually one of the passes would go into the net.

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about vegetables.

And before you jump to the inevitable conclusion, I have indeed steered the subject away from football and am not referring to the England team.

Ba-boom-ching. Thangyouveddymudge.

There’s been a certain amount of self-sufficiency in the Runny household of late. Why, only last night, the Flame-Haired Temptress and I partook of our own radishes, dipped in someone else’s salt; followed by our own potatoes, chives and spinach, paired with someone else’s butter, olive oil, garlic, pine nuts and raisins.

A veritable feast.

Peas are on their way, too. And we’ve got more herbs than the annual meeting of the Tijuana Brass Appreciation Society.

All of this has appeared from nowhere, it would seem, lovingly nurtured by the soothing hand of the F-HT.

It was different back in the day. When we first started growing veg, I was the instigator.

Our garden wasn’t big. Nor was it accessible, as we occupied a first-floor flat.

So starting a veg garden was not an undertaking to be embarked on without serious consideration.

I sourced, ordered and bought raised beds, compost and seeds, not making much of a fuss about how clever I was being.

And then, with a great deal of huffing and puffing, I planted and nurtured them.

There came the time for thinning out, the process whereby dozens of healthy pre-pubescent radishettes would be sacrificed to the merciless God of Waste in order that the fittest of the species be given a little Lebensraum.

It’s not for the faint of heart.

After several weeks’ consultation with the sage of all things horticultural, Dr. D.G.Hessayon, I took a deep breath, armed myself with tweezers and set about my grisly business.

The procedure was executed with surgeon-like delicacy and accuracy.

For about five minutes.

Then I got fed up and just ripped the buggers out willy-nilly.

Or left them where they were.

Surely, I thought, they can sort it out for themselves? It can’t make that much difference.

You live and learn.

Time passed and vegetables (some of them, at least) grew.

Then, disaster.

Slugs and snails appeared. Puppy dog tails probably weren’t far behind.

The best thing to do, I was assured, was to nail them at night.

Manfully, and again with the minimum of fuss, I donned waders and sou’westers (it was a wet spring) and strode into the fray. Eschewing all offers of sustenance, and protected only by the trusty torch of truth and the kitchen scissors of slug-murder, I dispatched them to all four corners of our small plot.

It only encouraged them.

If you’re not a gardener you may not appreciate the determination and downright evil exhibited by the average group of guzzling gastropods.

Think Simon Cowell crossed with Genghis Khan.

Still, eventually, we had a crop of sorts.

Modestly accepting the loving applause of an admiring throng, I made a very small meal of some very small potatoes with a couple of very small leaves of spinach on the side.

The slugs opened an ‘all you can eat’ buffet round the corner.

The next year we were moving, so the garden went by the wayside.

Now, established in the new place, where the garden is more accessible, we have enough room for the following:

A shed.

A dried-up pond (large enough for frogs to breed, but not large enough for them to hide from Felis Catus).

A vine.

A faux palm tree (Felis Catus likes to think he can climb it. When he is halfway up, he thinks again).

A couple of raised beds.

It is in these raised beds that we are nurturing the stuff of food fads.

You know how it goes. Every couple of years the foodie community rejoices in a new, painfully chic, fashion ingredient.

Never mind that said ingredient has been in plentiful supply and gone unnoticed for years. This year it is the thing.

Delia started it years ago with those blessed cranberries. One moment you couldn’t buy cranberries because nobody stocked them; the next you couldn’t get them because they were sold out.

Pomegranates, blueberries, Alfonso mangoes, rocket, chard, butternut squash, Jersey Royals, asparagus, artichokes, salsify, polenta, pea shoots, carnaroli rice, argan oil, etc etc. They’ve all had their moment in the sun, leading to some truly horrendous culinary disasters as amateur cooks chuck them willy-nilly into everything they cook, based purely on the fact that Nigel did a feature on them in The Observer last Sunday.
Pomegranate risotto anyone?

Thought not.

You’d have thought that we’d exhausted them all.

I beg to differ.

Broad bean leaves.

Rip them off, wash off the black fly (for black fly there will be), and wilt them in oil with garlic.

They look a bit like baby spinach, but taste like broad beans, which is a little disturbing.

But they are worth a go. At the very least they are more plentiful and require less patience than broad beans themselves, which always look so promising in their plump pods, but which invariably yield a crop barely big enough to coat the bottom of an eggcup.

All I ask is this: if broad bean leaves turn into the next superfood fashion, just remember where you read it first.

Tough Choices

On the eve of the FIFA World Cup, I find myself torn.

On the one hand, a victory for England would be a disaster.

It would send the message to the world of sport that the way to win things is to have a bloated domestic game that threatens to eat itself, reward your relatively untalented young players with obscene wealth and fame, and ship in the best available foreign manager to win the big championships.

It would also spark off a horrendous wave of Cross-of-St.George-waving, forehead-vein-throbbing, pit-bull-terrier-called-Tyson-walking, foreigner-hating (except-for-Fabio-because-he's-ok-look-wanker-he-just-is-now-fuck-off-ok?), England-is-the-best-country-in-The-World-keep-it-English-now-where's-my-pint-of-Stella-drinking, BNP-voting, White-van-with-four-flags-on-it-because-I'm-more-patriotic-than-you-driving, not-caring-about-anyone-else-that's-their-lookout-innit apologies for human beings being completely uncontrollable, thinking they're somehow validated because England's overpaid millionaires are less dismal at kicking a ball than the overpaid millionaires of other countries, and wreaking havoc in hostelries and high streets the length and breadth of what once passed for our fair land.

On the other hand...

Come On England!!!!!

Ok. I'm all better now. Thanks. I needed that.

Blog posted here.

On Top Of The World

I’d like you to fast-forward, if you will, eight weeks, to July 11th.

England have just overcome Spain in a thrillingly hard-fought World Cup Final, defying their underdog status to record a facile 3-0 victory over the side previously regarded as the best in the world. They have, truth to tell, been the best team in the tournament.

After a bizarre first game, which England were leading 5-2 at the time of abandonment, but lost on the newly-inaugurated Hansen/Blatter method because USA’s goals were both scored within five minutes of each other (not to mention their cheerleaders’ fetchingly tight shorts), England have been unstoppable. They have swept aside all their opposition in magnificent fashion, owing a lot to the late and highly controversial selection of two former South African players and an Irishman, all of whom had been discarded by their own countries just in time for them to qualify for (i.e. visit for the first time) England.

Victory in the final against Spain was particularly satisfying, the historic rivalry between the two countries having simmered with barely suppressed resentment since the time when the Spanish Armada forced Sir Francis Drake to abandon his quest for a fifth consecutive World Bowls Championship in 1588.

The media coverage has been all-pervasive and hysterical. The Sun has printed nothing but football-related news since June 1st, and marks England’s 2-1 semi-final victory over Serbia with a 512-page all-colour-3D-pullout-from-the-pullout section, detailing everything the squad has eaten during the tournament, and Fabio Capello’s Top 100 Favourite Channel Four ‘Top 100’ programmes.

Even The Independent abandons its usual neutral stance, allowing itself a short reference to the victory on the back page, under the headline ‘England’s Football Team Proves Better Than Some Others In Global Tournament’.

The Queen declares a one-month public holiday; David Cameron proposes to Nick Clegg; in the most amazing event of all, Alan Hansen cracks a smile and describes England’s defending as ‘quite good’.

Ok, back to reality.

England’s victory in the World Twenty20 today was much better than that. Never mind forty-four years of hurt; the eighteen years since England’s last global cricket final have been much more barren. All the more so, in fact, precisely because they have been truly devoid of any hope that the lean spell (leaner, if you’ve got a second, than a dry stonewall and bone sandwich eaten while climbing the Tower of Pisa) was ever going to end. At times in that period, England’s one-day team has been pitifully bad, and even recent performances, while promising, have amounted to no more than mid-table form.

Remember the defeat against Holland a few months ago?

And now, suddenly, England are the best team in the world. They completely outplayed everyone they encountered (yes, including the West Indies in the first game) in a thrilling tournament that was the best possible advertisement for cricket and especially for its much-maligned-amongst-the-purists-but-undeniably-the-future quick-fire form of the game.

In fact, all three World Twenty20 tournaments so far have been terrific. Who needs the prolonged advert-ridden bore-fest that is the IPL when you’ve got a high quality tournament like this waiting round the corner? I wonder if ITV are really satisfied with the money they spent on covering the IPL this year? I know that I made listening to the World Twenty20 a much higher priority than watching the IPL.

But I digress.

The point is this: we won!!! We stuffed the Aussies!!!! Wahay!!!!!

Sorry about that. Lost it for a second there. A tad undignified. Apologies to all Australians.

No, this is the real point. Coming right up in the next paragraph.

The coverage that has been (and will be) afforded England’s progress and ultimate victory in this tournament has been like the voter share of the New Millennium Bean Party as compared to the nearly-election-winning Conservative vote that will be the media orgy surrounding the really-not-that-keenly-anticipated Footieball World Cup in a few weeks.

That is, if you got a bit lost in that last sentence, very small.

And it shouldn’t be like that. Cricket is shrinking when it should be growing. And our football obsession in this country seems in inverse proportion to the quality of sport we are being served.

Please don’t misunderstand me - come June 11th I’ll be organising Fantasy Leagues and filling in wallcharts along with the best of them. And I’ll be as jingoistic as the next man in my rejoicing should a miracle happen and England win the World Cup. Unless, of course, the next man is Nick Griffin.

But even if they do win, I know who will be my team of the year.