In Praise Of The Honest Professional

Test cricket has been well served by the series between England and India which ended yesterday. The gap between the sides was markedly smaller than might be suggested by the bare statistics of England's 4-1 series victory. Both sides have manifested frailty, particularly with bat (the magisterial Kohli excepted) but the drawn-out tautness of the contest might hopefully have won some converts from the false faith of twenty20.

Attention has in particular fallen upon two yeoman professionals - men who are just bloody good at their respective jobs. Both Alastair Cook and James Anderson arguably fall a mite short of absolute greatness but there is no shame in that. Cook's sheer weight of runs (made moreover as an opener) is testament to a mighty obduracy. Anderson gets better with age. Anderson yesterday overtook Glenn McGrath's record test match haul of wickets amongst seam bowlers - McGrath's strike rate and average are signifiers of his greatness but one should remember that he never had to bowl against the titanic Australian line-up of which he was a part. Equally Anderson never gets to bowl at England's brittle top order. Incidentally if you want to see an example of good grace in operation then track down McGrath's generous words of congratulation for Anderson.

Test cricket does itself no favours with its slow over rates but it remains the true expression of a beautiful sport. Long may it survive. 

Grumbling And Some Antidotes

I'll tell you what is true: Donald Trump is an idiot with peculiar skills; Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite but is so far lost in his wretchedness that he has no access to self-knowledge; criticism of the state of Israel is not per se racist; the Brexit process descends daily into a less and less amusing mess; I'm struggling to think of a current public figure who fills me with confidence. It's not just today that I feel all of these things - a little cloud of reflective misery follows me most of the time.

an antidote

Antidotes: I played golf at Cavendish Golf Club with my great mate Big Willy Mac last week and it seemed that God was in his Heaven and all was well in the world, most particularly as I parred the eighteenth before retiring to the bar for a Guinness and a bowl of chips; the next day I played twilight golf at Pype Hayes with three old rugby buddies - once again there was Guinness but no chips this time; Daughters Numbered One and Two are both home for the weekend so my family are all to hand; we had a curry last night and then watched Rain Man, a good film but not a great one - 7/10.

multiple antidotes

Life's been good to me so far.    

Great Uncle Big Fat Pig

Rather as Margaret Thatcher might have put it - we are a great uncle. Welcome to the world Henry Owen Geraint Parfitt, born to my brother's daughter and for whom the world need hold no greater concern than whether he will play rugby for his mother's England or his father's Wales. Since both parents are fine cricketers perhaps the problem will not arise and he will simply play cricket for England. Let us hope he is of that forgotten breed, a staunch top order batsman. Even as I type, another engrossing test match against India is unfolding and England's manful bowling attack attempts to compensate for the manifest inadequacy of the batting. Test cricket, you can't beat it.

What else of moment is going on in the world? Well, I have been amusing myself reading Timothy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom, a skilfully composed polemic which is fascinating on the phenomenon of Donald Trump but misguided on the nature of the EU. I will return with a more considered review in due course.

BFP is still on his exercise regime - A bike ride on Friday took in two turns up Hillwood Common and one up Worcester Lane. A seventy-five minute run followed on Saturday, which was very tough going. The old legs are feeling it today hence I am sitting at my keyboard and nursing the first glass of wine of the Sabbath - the Ned sauvignon blanc, good cooking white.

My bedtime reading is Len Deighton's Faith - I have read it before but I want to tackle as a unit the final Bernard Sansom trilogy - this is popular fiction produced at its best, the work of a great jobbing writer. He should be taught on creative writing modules. Perhaps he is.

We've found something good on Netflix - Rake, the doings of a degenerate Australian lawyer.

The Small Matter Of 2.9 Million Votes

2.9 million votes. We don't mention this often enough - it is the number of votes by which Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump in the popular vote in 2016. There are perfectly good justifications for the vagaries of the Electoral College but you might think that the 2.9 million margin would engender a little humility in the victor. Has it bollocks.

This Is The Age Of The Contracting Man

Big Fat Pig is keeping up with the latest of his exercise fixations. Nothing de trop you understand but a suitable commitment for a Pig of advanced years. I managed to clock up over an hour running on Sunday, helped in no small part by the most welcome and refreshing rainfall - only problem, I can't wear my Oakleys when it's raining - well, of course, I can wear them but then I can't see where the hell I'm going. Just concerned my image will suffer if I'm seen without the shades too often. It's tough being me.

This morning I wheeled out the Precious Bike and skittered my way over the potholes of Four Oaks for upwards of an hour and a half during which, and this is the good bit, I tackled Mont Worcester twice and Col de Hillwoood Common once. Thus is the Pig waistline shrinking a little.

Pig looking svelte

I've also been playing a bit of golf - at Pype Hayes, the municipal course where I played my first ever game more than forty years ago. I'm still crap but getting less so by small degrees and enjoying the company of good rugby men whilst doing so. The thirteenth has been stretched considerably since my youth and is now a very good par five. All in all, jolly good fun - which is rather the object of the exercise, an object I had overlooked in a dark past.

Talking of good guys (which I sort of was), what a joy to see Chris Woakes make a maiden Test hundred at the weekend. Woakes was coached as a youth at Aston Manor CC by no less a luminary than my dear friend ICW. I shall bask in his reflected glory the next time we share a long lunch.

Come on you Bears

Internet serendipity: I have just typed 'pig playing golf' into Google Images as I look to illustrate this blog. One of the first images thrown up is of Donald Trump playing golf. Fake news? I don't think so.

Confected Outrage And Bad Taste

Before one wades into a fit of outrage at what someone has written it is better to read the source material rather than rely upon the selective reporting of that source. Thus have I let the latest Boris Johnson scandal stew for a few days and, unlike plenty of others who have pontificated, I have read again what the talented Mr Johnson has actually written. Here is your chance - Boris on the Burka

Read it? Is it that outrageous? After all the headline point is that banning the burka (as Denmark has done) is not the right thing. This central point should please the most liberal of people. But what have caused a furore are the rather weak jibes about the offending garment causing its wearers to look like letterboxes or bank robbers. These we are told betray 'dog whistle politics' and 'Islamophobia'. Let's unpack those two assertions.

Dog whistle politics first. There is something in this. Johnson is clever and I doubt that this calculating man is in the least surprised at the storm that has broken around him. It is what he wants. He can have his cake and eat it - on any comprehensive view of his article, he is on the side of the secular gods, but before the more general court of public opinion he is talking sense. I find this manipulative behaviour on Johnson's part the most offensive thing about the whole circus.

Islamophobia? No. Islam cannot expect an uncritical public reception any more than can the Catholic church for its dogma on birth control and abortion.

Johnson is calculating and by my reckoning that makes him unlovable, notwithstanding his affected clownishness. There are unpleasant echoes (albeit couched in rather more intellectual language) of Trump in Johnson's machinations. I'm all in favour of a bit of bad taste but it has its place. Whether the centre page of the Telegraph is the right place deserves a rather more nuanced debate than we have witnessed for the last few days.     

The Wisdom Of Others

There is a sense of great abundance in Shakespeare's plays - so much so, indeed, that in every generation there are interpreters who cut and simplify, unable to cope with the wealth of ideas and experiences in the plays, or supposing their audiences incapable of doing so. I believe, on the contrary, that abundance is a great strength of Shakespeare's plays, that they are designed deliberately to expand the mind - to generate a sense of concentrated vigorous life in emotions and ideas, to promote as multiple an awareness as possible of differing facets of a story; and that this aim, already discernible in Shakespeare's earliest work, is at the core of his development, and of his power and distinctiveness as an artist. (Brian Gibbons, Shakespeare and Multiplicity)

This hits the nail so squarely on the head that I won't expand upon it save to say that when I read it I thought I ought to share it with you.

"I believe that the conditions of the twenty years which precede a man's birth set the pattern of his early thinking, and leave a permanent mark upon him" Joel Thursfield quoted in Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare)

Jones goes on to expand upon his theory that Shakespeare is thereby shaped by the middle years of the sixteenth century. For my part I am taken by Thursfield's position and am struck just how true this is of my own generation. Born in the early sixties, the dominant factor in setting the patterns of our thinking was World War II. There is an interesting piece to be written about the exercise of this factor upon the gnarly issue of Brexit. Perhaps another day.