Small Moments Of Perfection

I finished my last entry by ruminating on what to put in this my thousandth blog offering. I needn't have worried.

At eleven o'clock yesterday morning a crowd of all ages formed a disciplined semi-circle around the monumental dedication stone at the Aston Old Edwardian Memorial Ground in Perry Common. The carving on the plinth records that the ground was acquired and dedicated in 1927 in memory of one hundred and twenty-three Old Boys of the School who died in the Great War.

At eleven o'clock the two minute silence was beautifully observed. A boy bugler from Camp Hill RFC, in his full rugby kit ready for the match to follow, sounded the Last Post. Wreaths were laid by every section of the Rugby Club and by The Association President.

At three minutes after eleven a fine low November sun broke through and dazzled me. After the small but moving ceremony the youthful players dispersed across the playing field to enjoy our wonderful sport. I felt proud to be alive to see such courtesy and gratitude afforded the dead and the delights of the game afforded the young.

I've Heard Of Winning Ugly But This Is Ridiculous

England -12 South Africa - 11. One can only assume that Eddie Jones played his Get Out of Jail Free card at half-time. In the first half the team was plain dreadful: out-muscled; out-thought; out of it generally. Maro Itoje started as if brain-dead, giving away puerile penalties and getting sin-binned. That bane of modern technique showed its annoying face (I speak as an old coach here) - tackles were routinely aimed at the torso when the situation cried out of for the good old-fashioned low (or 'chop' as the absurd vernacular would have it) tackle. Edge of the seat stuff. Did the better side win? No, but who cares - rugby, red in tooth and claw, just as it should be.

A more than passing word of credit as well for the Springbok captain, Siya Kolisi, who must have been absolutely gutted but spoke magnanimously at the finale.

losing with style - respect

Finally, that 'tackle' by Owen Farrell at the climax, which the referee adjudged legal. For me, this was both the right and wrong decision. Right so far as my own stance on our game is concerned. Wrong by all the indications from matches I have seen in the early months of this season. Our sport should not be emasculated -but that is a debate for another day.

Next week New Zealand - and if that doesn't scare you nothing will.

Please note this is my nine hundred and ninety-ninth blog post. I am trying to think of something spectacular to mark the thousandth. Suggestions welcomed.

The Last Jedi

Episode VIII. Good but not as good as Episodes V and VII. Nice recurring tropes from Episodes IV and V. Enjoyed it. 7.5/10. That's all folks.

That Rule Of Law Thing I Mentioned

I finished my last blog by saying that Peter Hain should know better. I am delighted to find my view echoed by several legal notables. Philip Green gives every impression of being a rough-edged, chippy gobshite but he stands equal before the law with the rest of us. Peter Hain gives every impression of being a smooth, chippy gobshite who enjoys privileges before the law because he is a peer of the realm. I do not begrudge peers their advantages - they are there for a reason. However when those privileges are exercised in a spirit of arrogance and self-righteousness we, the great unwashed, should shout our heads off. And please don't tell me that if the allegations against Green are later proven (I know where my money's going) that such an outcome will justify Hain's presumption - if you think that, I'm sorry, you've missed the point.

Big Fat Pig looking swell

Cheerier news - after an absence of a few weeks I've been out running this week and, a twinge in the knee aside, I feel quite good for a fifty-eight year old with a body ravaged by four decades of rugby. And today, shamed into it by the Groupie, I went to the gym and swam (drowning stylishly maybe) a dozen lengths. It's a start - I hadn't been in a pool for an age. Next year: a couple of triathlons. Watch this space!

Writers Write

Which, as those who have been with me from the outset of this journey will recall, is the First Law of Marchant, he being the man what schooled me in writing. I think you'll agree, he did a bang up job.

By turns this brings me to the crux of my dilemma (do dilemmas have cruxes? Is that the right plural? How did I get here? That last one a knowing crib from Talking Heads): of late I mostly feel just so low about the fate of Planet Big Fat Pig that I can't be arsed to write. This is silly (that's an understatement) because all is golden domestic-wise - the Groupie is still with me (she must be bonkers I know) and Daughter Number One and Daughter Number Two are both thriving, a credit to their parents in fact. No, it is the wider world that aggravates me. No, not just bloody Trump (doesn't help though); no not bloody Brexit (doesn't help though); No it is the sheer asininity (one of the Pig's favourite words - mind you, if you've been with me on the journey this far, you'll know that) of what passes for adult discussion these days. Just listen to serious radio news and hear what I mean. We live in interesting times but debate takes place behind a screen of mediated PC bollocks. Brexit is, I suppose, the biggest and best example - a major constitutional moment being mishandled by a failed political class whilst the unlovable and the condescending (work out for yourselves which is which) are pitched at each other in the deepest circle of Hell by a flippant commentariat. Too serious to be funny.

I'm avoiding the Trump business most of the time but he still makes me sick - how's that for a telling response to asininity! In that connection however my eye was taken by this:

[He] has been honest, but he has been vulgar; and there is no greater external misfortune ... than for a great nation to be exclusively represented at a crisis far beyond previous, and perhaps beyond future, example by a person whose words are mean even when his actions are important.

You may have guessed that this is our old mate Walter Bagehot. He was writing about another Republican President - one Abraham Lincoln, no less. You have to wonder what the Boy Bagehot would have made of the ghastly Mr Trump. Walter, by the way, had the decency (and one has to admit, unusually for him, the modesty) to recast his views on Lincoln as the full scale of Lincoln's political genius unfolded. I'm not even remotely persuaded that I will have similar cause to repent of my opinion of Trump.

On the subject (which I sort of have been) of the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable (another favourite BFP aphorism) Baron Hain (Pete to his mates) has used the cloak of parliamentary privilege to out Philip Green as the beneficiary of a super-injunction preventing his being named as an alleged serial racial and sexual discriminator. I could bore you on the rule of law on this one but, you know what, I can't be arsed. Green should know better - and so should Hain.

What's Not To Like? No. 3 - Of Red Wine And Trifle

Storm Callum is today battering Ynys Mon so the Groupie and I have been housebound, her doing some housework (which, yes, does make me feel guilty) and me clattering out a few hundred words of the thesis - actually clattering is the wrong word of course because the modern keyboard does not sound the percussives of old-fashioned labour. How many of you who happen upon this will wonder quite what the old fart is on about?

More good times have been had here on the island and indeed on the mainland. Bodnant Garden: another bloody brilliant experience - been there umpteen times but it still enthralls and we actually managed to find a part of the garden that had eluded us on previous visits.

Church Bay in the rain - spendid. Robinson's Blonde Ale at the Trecastell Hotel - splendid. Coronation chicken on white bloomer with side orders of chips and onion rings - even more splendid. Red wine for supper with Tesco trifle - food of the gods. That wasn't all I ate but those are the bits I can recall. Lovely.

Schitt's Creek. Heard of it? On Netflix. Rather good.

It's still pissing down but storms do have an attraction. Weather is transient, scenery is permanent. 

 

What's Not to Like? No 2

There is beautiful and there is bloody beautiful. Take the A4080 to Pen-lon and park at the end of the road. Walk from there through dune and forest to the beach at Llanddwyn. Stop and take it all in. Bloody beautiful. Thereafter take in some good English fizz (Leckford Estate 2013) and eat the Groupie's home made chili con carne. Bloody beautiful - or Sunday as we call it.

Next, proof of the miracles of modern technology - have a look at the photograph below as taken by the Groupie on her iPhone. Compare it to the stock picture of the same aspect which I used in my last blog. The Groupie's is better, don't you think?

    
Yesterday we mooched round Beaumaris, one of those towns that put the 'Ee' in genteel, and a reassuring experience compared to the urban decay that is Bangor lying across the Menai Strait. A pint of Hartley's Cumbrian Ale in the George and Dragon before home to more of said chili. Bloody beautiful.

Today the Coastal Path from Lligwy to Dulas and then a pint of Unicorn to wash down sausage, egg, chips and beans at the Pilot Boat. The Groupie has baked some scones while I tackled the thesis. Did the Romans sanction human scrifice or was Shakespeare (or more probably George Peele - it's a long story - only ask me if you're bored) just make it up to spark the atrocities in Titus Andronicus? Another blody beautiful day.