ON CHESIL BEACH..

Did a bit of exploring last week - just a bit; nothing too strenuous - and one of our explorations took us to West Bexington on the Dorset coast.  We had been looking where to book a cottage for our holiday and one of the locations that popped up in our search was West Bexington.   It looked quite inviting - a small village on the Dorset coast with access to the beach, a beguiling name and a feeling of `away from it all.`  In the end, for one reason or another, we decided to look elsewhere and ended up hiring a lovely house in Charmouth.  Just as well.

On the day we visited West Bexington (after failing to locate the beaches at Burton Bradstock and elsewhere along the coast) we found the car park on the beach and it was there that I encountered the most complicated car parking machine I have ever come across.   It advertised a couple of hours stay for 60p which I thought might do us and I noticed that there were various ways of paying the fee - by mobile phone, by card or by cash.  Of course I opted for the cash option only to find that it was the most difficult to understand and, of course, it offered `no change given` so I parted with a pound coin, finally retrieved the ticket but lost  40p in the process.  There should be a law.

I took the above photo of the beach on what was a fairly gloomy day, so I suppose we didn`t see the beach at its best.  It is, however, part of the 18-mile long Chesil beach which runs from West Bay to Portland in the east and it is alleged that you can always tell where you are on the beach by the size of the pebbles - the further east you go, the bigger the pebbles become.   Those at West Bexington were pretty small, so we had to be close to the western end of the beach.

It`s a great place for fishing though - renowned for cod and such like - and it seemed that the only other people attracted to West Bexington that morning were determined fishermen.   Here they are doing their stuff:-

Now a good friend of mine has walked the entire length of the south west coast path - all 630 miles of it from Minehead in Somerset round to Poole in Dorset - and so he must have walked past West Bexington and trudged his way across all those miles of assorted pebbles.  We managed a bit of the path each side of the village but found it hard going but at least I can claim to have walked a bit of the coast path along this famed stretch of beach.  (Over the years I have developed the knack of ticking off stretches of the coast path by the simple process of claiming that seeing round the next corner should be sufficient rather than having to walk it all but in fairness we have actually walked most of the Devon and Cornwall stretches. It`s just the Dorset bit that has largely escaped us.)

Despite its fame through the works of Thomas Hardy. as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Jurassic Coast and its features in film and television productions, I think we must have visited one of Chesil Beach`s least prepossessing locations.   Or maybe it` just me?

 

Just a quick one.   

There are times when, without wishing to appear boastful, I am quite pleased with myself.   First, I think I have cracked the new version of blogger - the old one, which I got used to and in fact have used since day one of this blog, has been consigned to the bin by the blogging overlords.   I`m not sure the new one is very much different but I think I`ve got my head around it now - I think. 

Next I think I`ve cracked the sat nav in the new car.   Thanks to the help of an obliging granddaughter I managed to set the course for our holiday destination last week and, following the instructions of the nice young lady who was barking instructions at me throughout the journey, we managed to arrive safely at our destination.   The really good news is that the sat nav has an option for `Home` which I punched in and once again the instructions were clear and delivered in a rather fetching if not seductive voice and which, despite the vagaries of the M25, saw us arrive home safely too.

So, my constant grappling with new things is paying dividends.  Onwards and upwards indeed.

 

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE..

Been away for a few days in West Dorset - I was born in Dorset just before the outbreak of WW2 and I`ve often wondered whether that was just a coincidence or whether I should bear some responsibility.  Anyway, it was good to retrace some steps from my past and my photo above shows a typical scene of the county. (Please click on the photo for a better image.)

I took it having scaled the dizzy heights of Charndown Hill, which is close to Golden Cap - the highest point on the south coast of England - and I hope my photo has captured the essence of the West Dorset countryside.  Even I was surprised at just how picturesque the area is;  maybe I had forgotten but it truly is a green and pleasant land.  Only trouble was that, for me and my wonky knee, it`s all a bit up hill and down dale so I tried to stay on what bits of flat land I could find.

As you drive through the county you come across so many `interesting` places - the Piddles and the Puddles (eg. Piddlehinton and Puddletown) but also Tolpuddle, home of the revered martyrs.  Dorset is well known for its fascinating village names. Just a mile or two from where we were staying is Whitchurch Canonicorum, a serene and quiet backwater but the churchyard of St. Candida and the Holy Cross contains the burial place of Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident who was killed walking across Westminster Bridge in London by an umbrella tipped with ricin.  The churchyard also has the ashes of Sir Robin Day "The Great Inquisitor."  

And then there is Ryme Intriseca up in the north of the county with its 13th century church dedicated to one St. Hippolytus, one of only two such dedications - the other being near Hitchin in Hertfordshire - whose name is as intriguing as that of the village.  I could go on - there are so many more, not forgetting my actual birthplace  on the Isle of Portland (Hardy`s `Isle of Slingers`) with its famous Portland stone, its insularity and suspicion of mainlanders, the `Kimberlins.` 

Dorset is the county that people drive through to get to somewhere else, which is a pity as it has much to commend it with its Jurassic coastline, its spectacular scenery, its history, its quaintness and its enduring puzzles and, as it`s not that far from home, Boris and the Covid thingy permitting it might be possible to revisit and seek out some more of its treasures.  But there`s a song from way back about how nice it is to go travelling, but how much nicer it is to be home.

 

They say you`re never too old to learn and just recently I have had a few new `experiences` that confirm that old saying.  My new(ish) car is fine - I`ve had it for six months now but because of the corona virus restrictions, it`s only done about 1200 miles.  One thing that puzzled me a bit was the sat nav, so I asked one of my granddaughters to clue me up about that, which she kindly did.  There are loads of bells and whistles on the car which I`ve yet to explore,,,,and find out if I really need them.  All I really want to do is drive it.

But there is techy progress on other fronts - after some external advice, I`ve managed to get the `smart ` bit working on the new television so I can now get Google and YouTube - which seem more interesting than the programmes.

The major triumph of the week has been online banking, to the extent that, having only signed up for it a few weeks ago - again thanks to the corona virus making it impossible to get any service from a nearby branch - I have managed my first ever online banking transfer!  (I`m pretty sure it went to the right recipient, but you never really know.)

And my final leap into the unknown has been coming to terms with the new Blogger layout.  For as many years as I`ve been blogging, the layout, bits and bobs have remained unchanged but recently they introduced a new one and yesterday withdrew the old version, to which I have been reverting just to be difficult.   So this post is thanks to the new version which I will take some time to get used to, although I suspect it may be easier to post comments than in the previous version.   So I may need to take a short break for `routine maintenance` while I get my head together and have a few practice runs before feeling confident enough to post again.

Bear with me.

A SAD DEPARTURE

Our golf correspondent reports..

I`m sure it has not gone unnoticed that I have not been reporting on Snopper`s golfing exploits for some time now.   There are two main reasons for this.  The first is, of course, the global pandemic which has had its effect on the sporting life of the nation and the second is that Snopper has simply been unable to play any competitive golf for some time now.   It all began a few years ago when he was walking up the stairs in chez Snopper when he felt a twinge in his left knee which never went away.  

What really made that problem worse was falling down a bit of a cliff on the north Cornwall stretch of the south west coast path.  He landed, knee first, on a particularly aggressive lump of  Cornish granite.  The paramedics arrived despite the remote location, sorted him out and sent him on his way.  Ever since then the problem has got progressively worse - X-rays, visits to the Doctor, knee supports - and it has reached the stage when he cannot sensibly venture on to the fairways and greens of the royal and ancient game without bringing the game into yet more disrepute.

So it might be the end of the line by the look of it - at his age the prospects of getting it fixed are twofold - slim and none and so we may finally be saying farewell to this icon of the game, one who over more than half a century has brought a new meaning to words like mediocre and dire.   But he can look back on a golfing career that has brought so much disaster and so little triumph.  His highlights have included going round the infamously gentle Poult Wood course in under 90 on at least two occasions and achieving no less than seven birdies - not all in the same round of course but spread over a number of years and a number of courses.

So it`s looking like a sad departure and for those of us who follow the game all we can do is look back on all those years of ineptitude and think of what might have been. Time will tell whether this really is the end of the line but I will be looking out for tell tale signals, such as his eclectic mix of clubs being put up for sale, along with his trolley, his Argos bag and what are left of the 1100 golf balls scavenged from the out-of-bounds areas of local courses by a former, much missed Golden Retriever.  I doubt there will be much of a take up for his offer of a tuition course of lessons however.

Henry Shorthurst

 

There are reports that suggest that Gareth Bale might be `moving along` from Real Madrid and that Manchester United are inevitably linked with that rumour.  That wouldn`t surprise me as they seem to be linked with countless players from across the world on a daily basis - they seem more interested in collecting players than building a team - so maybe the Bale link is as tenuous as all the others.  We`ll see.

But let`s start with the sublime bit.   Gareth Bale was spotted by a Southampton scout playing for his school team in Cardiff at the age of nine.   He joined the Saints` fabled academy having attended their satellite training facility at Bath.  He progressed through the age groups until he made his first team debut for Southampton in April 2006 when, at 16 years and 275 days, he became the second youngest player ever to play for the Saints after Theo Walcott, who was 132 days younger.   Bale`s first game for Southampton was in a 2-0 victory over Millwall. (I was lucky enough to be there that day to see the undoubted quality in one so young,)

At this point it`s worth including a short video which the Saints made to celebrate the opening of their new training facility at Staplewood and in which a number of leading players, past and present, express their admiration for the club.  Bale makes it clear that the club always treated him well, encouraged his development and acknowledges that he `would not be where I am today had it not been for Southampton.`   Here it is:-

Of course, it wasn`t long - just 43 games and a year or so later - before Bale was snapped up by Tottenham for a substantial fee and following a productive time at White Hart Lane he proceeded even further up the football ladder to Real Madrid, where he has been since 2013.  He has had an interesting time there - the inevitable highs and lows - but he seems to have fallen out of favour, hence the speculation about a potential move away and the rumours of Manchester United`s interest.

And here`s where it gets ridiculous on the one hand and a tad disappointing on the other. He seems settled in Madrid with his young family and, as he has been there for seven years now, he perhaps should feel settled and a bit reluctant to move.  And why not, when he is being paid £600,000 each and every week which seems pretty ridiculous even for the parallel universe of professional football.  To add to the ridicule, Manchester United are supposedly willing to pay half that fee to take him on loan, with Madrid coughing up the other half - although Bale reportedly doesn`t fancy a loan deal.

Whatever the outcome, the thing that is a tad disappointing is that, rather than having any need whatsoever to chase the money, Bale doesn`t offer to come back to Southampton on a minimum wage to repay them for the formative years he spent learning his trade.  That would be nice, of course it would.   Trouble is, Southampton are perhaps more interested in building a team than making a statement they don`t need to make. But I hope for his sake, Bale does not find himself lost in a wilderness of his own making.

STOP PRESS :  It looks as if Bale might be on his way back to Tottenham, which must surely be a mere staging post on his eventual return to the south coast?  Is that yet another pig I see flying over my roof?

 

......and is as ever was.  Well, here we go again for the Premier League resumed hostilities this weekend after a few short weeks of relative calm.  Somehow football doesn`t seem quite `right` with no fans in the grounds and somehow the excitement has been diminished.   Which is just as well really, as my beloved Saints lost 1-0 away at Crystal Palace yesterday.  They played OK - nothing special - but for all that, Palace had their goalkeeper to thank for keeping out two late chances to deny the Saints anything from the game.

It`s almost as if it is written that Southampton are destined to lose the first game of every new season - I think it`s something like 26 seasons now since they won the season opener.   I feel too for my Gillingham supporting neighbour as his team suffered a similar fate losing 2-0 at home to Hull City.

With Truro City not starting their league campaign until next weekend and Fort William currently off the Highland League radar, it was left to Forest Green Rovers to regain some pride among the teams I follow.   They travelled to Bolton Wanderers and came away with an impressive 1-0 win against the former Premier League and Cup winning club to begin their League Two campaign in fine style.   It was thanks in part to our street`s local hero Scott (`Make mine a Vegan`) Wagstaff who came on in the 82nd minute to use his vast experience and guide his new team mates through the closing stages of the game to ensure victory.   Not all bad then, but for me and my long suffering neighbour, things can only get better.  Well, they can can`t they?

ONE OF THOSE BELLS...

I was sorry to learn  of the passing of Diana Rigg, or to give her full title Dame Diana Rigg, DBE, who passed away at the age of 82 following a battle with cancer.  Of course, it is always sorrowful when someone who has been part of the landscape for so many years is no longer with us but the news got me wondering about a couple of things.

She was born on 20th July 1938 - a day short of a year before me, which is a little unnerving - and each time I hear of someone leaving us in their 80s it makes me yet more aware of my own mortality;  I hope I`m not tempting fate when I say that I really, really am nowhere near calling it a day just yet.  So much to live for and hopefully not so little time.

On a lighter note, Dame Diana has always been one of those distant icons that light up the world and without characterising her in any disrespectful way, seeing her her face in the photo above sparked off one of those bells that now and then rings and my mind went back, curiously and perhaps a little mischievously, to that time 60 years ago now, when I was doing my National Service in the green hell of BFPO 16 in what was then West Germany.  As a National Service conscript my weekly pay was something like £2.50, which didn`t go far and so to help out I got myself a job, along with a fellow conscript, as projectionist in the AKC (Army Kinema Corporation) Cinema on the army garrison where we were stationed.

When I started this blog all those years ago some of my early tentative posts tried to capture those times working in the cinema, which for then was state of the art affair with cinema scope screen, stereo sound, fancy lighting and all the trimmings of a `proper` night at the movies.  One of the jobs was that when the film programme for the week drew to a close was to pack it away for transmission on to the next cinema in the chain.  But we developed a penchant for snipping bits of films - just a few frames - to keep for ourselves.  Of course, with the enthusiasm of youthful soldiering, those snippets tended to be of film actresses that lit up the silver screen  and as the snippets grew into quite a collection, we would splice them together and enjoy them a privately once the cinema had closed for the evening.

There were a number of actresses who qualified for our collection - I remember in particular a crush we developed for Yvette Mimieux, the French actress who played Meena in `The Time Machine`along with Rod Taylor - but there were others for whom we felt something of an `attraction.`   Now I`m not sure Dame Diana Rigg was around too much in those far off cinema days but there`s little question that, had she been, then she would have undoubtedly qualified for inclusion in our exclusive collection.   That might just be the best compliment I can pay her in expressing my sorrow that she is no longer here.

A QUIET DEPARTURE...

So, Summer slides reluctantly into Autumn and with it the cricket season seems to shrug its shoulders and give way to football.  To be fair to the authorities, there has been some cricket to enjoy, at least on television, but it almost feels like a lost summer.  To me, cricket is summer and it`s also a part of me, so I make no apology for posting once more about the beautiful and most companionable of games.

And it was with more than a tinge of regret that I read the reports about Ian Bell`s intention to retire from the game at the end of the season, which is almost upon us.  He has been one of Warwickshire and England`s most prolific, elegant and consistent performers over a long career which began over 20 years ago.  In all, he scored over 7,000 runs in his 118 Test matches;  over 5,000 in ODI games; over 20,000 in first class county matches and over 11,000 in List A games. He scored almost 100 centuries in all competitions, along with an astonishing 160 half centuries  That`s some record and the game will be the poorer for his decision to retire.

You can`t blame him really - he`s 38 now and has said that he knew the time was right for him to go, conceding that his body could not cope with the demands put upon it any more.   I know the feeling.  I played most of my own cricket in my teens and early twenties so I know what it`s like to hang the bat up and kiss the game goodbye.   The difference is, of course, that Bell`s record is not only of the highest order but also consigns my own to the realms of pathos, if not advanced ineptitude.  

But I can at least claim to have achieved  a degree of consistency by reaching the club`s target of 100 runs and 10 wickets in each of five seasons.  It may only have been village club cricket but it was as important to me as Bell`s heroics have been to him.  And I was as proud to be asked to captain the village team as he was to represent his country.

He has had many golden days when everything went right - I had a golden game once, scoring 50 and taking 5 for 9.  In normal circumstances that may have been enough to persuade me to retire on a high but in reality it was being whisked away for National Service, followed by husband-ship and parenthood that thwarted my return to the crease.  But I still I look back on that game and those days under the Kent sunshine with such affection - it`s what the game does to you and gives you something to hold on to when the playing days come to and end.

My other sadness for Ian Bell is that his departure has been met quietly - perhaps too quietly for one of England cricket`s true heroes.  Not much fuss in the media and no-one in the empty ground at Swansea`s Sophia Gardens to see his 160th half century just a couple of days ago.  A quiet departure to a career that will long be remembered.  

STOP PRESS :  And it looks as though half century 161 might be on the cards as Bell was 46 not out at lunch today.

STOP STOP PRESS :  Hes just been bowled for 90 in his last innings.   Quite and exit !

WOULD NOT HAPPEN THESE DAYS...

Among my collection of cricket books, there is a series of Wisden Anthologies, edited by Benny Green.   They were published in the early `80s and  cover a  span of time from 1877 to 1982 and they are the kind of volumes that you can pick up at any time, randomly turn the pages and always find something to grab the attention.

And during an idle moment or three (I have quite a few of those) I was flicking through the 900 odd pages of the anthology from 1940 to 1963 when I came across an entry that immediately brought back memories of my own leap in the dark, my own spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.   It goes like this....

In August 1953 - 67 years ago - I had just turned fourteen.  Having spent an idyllic boyhood up to that point along the Waterside of Southampton Water, my parents entered the `licensed trade` and in order to gain experience they took an off licence in the south-east London area of Catford.  It was a traumatic lurch from the quietude of the New Forest and the Solent shoreline to the noise and the choking atmosphere of 1950s London....and I wasn`t happy.

But throughout my boyhood I had always followed cricket and my heroes - Hampshire, Shackleton and Cannings, Somerset and Harold Gimblett and so, one August evening it dawned on me that there was a Test Match to be played in the capital - England were about to play Australia at The Oval - not too far away from downtown Catford.   And with all the innocence of youth I thought I might go and see some of it.   

Now I`m not sure what my parents thought about it but they agreed I might have a go.  So, on the Wednesday evening before the game was due to start the next day I gathered up a few `essentials` - some sandwiches, a bottle of something to drink and a camp stool which I had made in the woodwork lessons at my new school. 

In those days, unless you had a ticket for the game, you took your chance of getting into the unreserved area of the ground but this meant queuing up and hoping for the best and the earlier you queued the better your chances, hence my evening departure.  This involved a bus ride to Kennington Oval, finding a place in the queue that had already formed and settling down for my first night under the metropolitan stars.  Didn`t sleep of course - too uncomfortable and too excited but people were kind and come the morning and the gates were opened I made my way into that great cricket ground.

My Wisden tells me that "As in 1926 stories of long all night queues frightened away many would be spectators on the first day when the ground was comfortable with 26,300 people present."   Australia had won the toss, "which was received gloomily by most England supporters but by mid-afternoon, when seven Australian wickets were down for 160, pessimism turned to optimism."   I`m afraid that by that time my adventure had caught up with me and I fell asleep on the grass beyond the boundary - you were able to sit beyond the boundary at The Oval in those days.

The rest of the day and the journey back to Catford is lost to me but not the memory of my leap in the dark, of that spontaneous unpremeditated act that I had taken without benefit of experience, nor the agreement, however tremulous, of my parents who let a 14-year old loose amid the perils of the city and all its unpredictability. 

 Wouldn`t happen these days, I`m sure.  

COMETH THE HOUR.....

A couple of weeks ago I had a moan about things being far too complicated these days and I cited the examples of cars, mobile phones and televisions.   At the time, our television had suffered a terminal meltdown and we had to go and buy a new one.   We were promised delivery round about 20th/24th of August but it was not until the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday (yesterday) that it finally arrived.

It was just a deliver and go job - I was left with a big box containing the television set and all the gubbins that went with it and given the task of putting it together and making it work.   In the shop when we ordered it, the nice young man asserted that, although the new TV was a high end, hi-tech, state-of-the-art, ocean going, sooper-dooper, cutting edge version,  it was nevertheless a simple process to plug it in and get it going.  "A child of three could do it," he confirmed.

Where`s a child of three when you need one?   I decided to take it step by step, read the `instructions` carefully, take my time and not be rushed into what might well have been a challenging task.  So, off I went and after a bit of a struggle on my own I managed to get the legs on the right way round and sit the TV on its stand.   Next, plugging it in was OK as was fixing the various leads from things like the Sky box and the DVD player into what I hoped were the right holes in the back of the TV.

Turned it on - it worked !!   Well, I then reached the bit where you are presented with more options than the players Manchester United are reported to be about to sign.  I managed a couple of steps along the way and then got to a bit which seemed beyond my octogenarian understanding.  Hardly surprising for one whose first look at a TV set was back in 1953 when my Dad bought a 9-inch black and white set which had a magnifying glass strapped to the screen to make it look bigger - and then there were only a couple of stations to choose from.  (He said he bought it so that my Mum could watch the Coronation whereas the reality was that he got it in time for the Matthews Cup Final that year.)

So, I`m stuck - I have two or three choices;  panic, give in, or go next door and see if my neighbour - a mere slip of a lad in his late 50s - could help.   Of course, being the accommodating soul he is and clearly well versed in the ways of modern technology, he was able to guide me through the litany of options as they appeared on the screen.  Some have been postponed for lack of password recollection but we might come back to those and see if we can get Netflix, Google, Youtube, Disney, BBC 2 and all the other goodies that seem available these days.   (All I really want to do is watch the cricket which I managed to do last evening when Lancashire had a narrow victory over Derbyshire in the T20 Blast - so God is in her Heaven after all.)

But I was grateful to my young neighbour for his patience, his understanding and his concern for the mental wellbeing of this out of time next door pilgrim meandering along life`s chequered path.  Neighbourhood Watch is alive and well, thank goodness.....but I do wish that things were not quite so complicated.