Front page, back page

God I have all this stuff going round in my head but I never find the time to exorcise it!  I mean where the fuck do I start?  Trump is a thousand words of ridicule straight away, this after vowing I would do my best to ignore the lunatic this time around.  Closer to home the country celebrated eighty years since VE day a couple of weeks back and yes of course we should “remember the sacrifices of ordinary people…” but I struggle with the way this sentence usually finishes.  The BBC chose “…the defeat of Fascism in Europe” which conveniently ignores Spain which endured a bloody civil war and brutal aftermath which continued even while the rest of Europe sent its tourists there and this too was conveniently ignored.  Few people mention the Fascism rising across the continent in the present day.

Heading east and arriving in the war zone predicted/defined by Orwell we see and hear media outrage when bombs are dropped in Ukraine but ethnic cleansing in Palestine is erased from history.  We are literally witnessing a genocide in which our own government is complicit and nobody seems to give a fuck.  Is it because to criticise the state of Israel is considered anti Semitic?  It’s the allegation they pinned on Corbyn and they can pin it on me too, fuck Israel and while I’m at it fuck Putin, fuck Trump and fuck that snivelling wanker Starmer.

I Know Why the Caged bird Sings by Maya Angelou
I can’t remember how many times I’ve read this book but I can remember the first time.  I had to study it a lifetime ago and unable to put it off any longer I picked it up with little interest and no enthusiasm.  Before I knew it I was forty pages in and even my ignorance couldn’t blind me to the fact that I was reading something special and over the years I came to realise it was written by someone great.
The first of Maya Angelou’s autobiographies naturally covers her childhood and although she spent time in St. Louis and San Francisco it is Stamps - Arkansas that is imprinted in my mind.  A first hand account of the realities of growing up Black in the deep south of USA in the 1930’s. What Maya Angelou does so well is interpret the scenes through the eyes and understanding of the child that lived through them, as opposed to the adult looking back.
This is a brilliant book, beautifully written that will stir every emotion and if it doesn’t there must be something wrong with you.

Test cricket returned with England giving Zimbabwe a three day thrashing which allowed under pressure batsmen to consolidate their positions and taught us that our reserves of fast bowlers are not as deep as we would hope.  Crawley delayed his inevitable axe but Pope deserves to silence the doubters for a while.  England’s most successful bowler was Shoaib Bashir with nine in the match, for once spin doesn’t seem to be a problem.  We are currently hammering West Indies in an ODI series and Joe Root demonstrated that he is probably the best all format batsman in the world and he looks like he’s getting better.  Adil Rashid collected his 150^th cap and is still class, why did he never play more Tests?  We have some T20 trashathon stuff to come but by the end of the month we’ll be contemplating a proper Test series against an evolving India side which will be a big examination ahead of a trip down under this winter.