Football

My interest in Football has been waning for years and even Leicester City winning the Prem doesn't fill me with any great excitement.  I know a few genuine Leicester fans (loads more have come out of the woodwork lately...) and I'm pleased for them.  I'll always follow my local team Ipswich Town (our season tailed off a few weeks ago...) but I simply can't afford to watch them very often.  Does this Leicester win really give hope to all the smaller teams like the Town?  Almost certainly not.  Is it really such a big deal when the club is owned by Thai billionaires?  Money still talks.

For as long as I can remember West Ham have played at Upton Park and this is the final season that it will be the clubs home ground.  As far as I know this is the stadium they played their final game last night yet in recent weeks I've heard it referred to as the "Boelyn ground".  I'd never heard it called this in the previous forty odd years but now it seems its been called this all along???  I'm confused.

I was thinking all this Football would be over in a few weeks time but I've just remembered there's a European championship coming up next month, it never ends.  This time next week I'll be excited about sport again, it will be the eve of the first test match of the summer.

Tony Cozier died today.  As a journalist and broadcaster he was the voice of West Indian cricket for over fifty years.  He was a great commentator with a melodious Bajan accent and supplied the soundtrack to the greatest Cricket team I have ever seen.  RIP 

Some elections and stuff

Thursday saw a series of elections up and down the UK.  I watched a bit of the BBC news before I went to bed, it wasn't even midnight and the pundits were predicting a bad night for the Labour party.  What would it mean for Jeremy Corbyn?  Was this the beginning of the end?

When the votes were counted things weren't nearly as bad as the media had gleefully predicted.  Yes Labour got a bit of a kicking in Scotland but who can blame the Scots for supporting a party that aims to take the country away from the control of Westminster?  I wish I had a similar option.  Other than that things went pretty well for Labour.  It's particularly pleasing that Londoners elected a Labour mayor and didn't fall for the vile racist Tory campaign.


In less than two weeks Test match cricket returns with a series against Sri Lanka.  It will be interesting to see who the selectors pick for the first test match.  Despite the good win away we are still unsure of what our best team is.  I expect them to pretty much stick with the same XI that played in South Africa.  The sad retirement of James Taylor opens up a space in the batting order which will probably be a straight choice between Bell and Ballance. England will always expect to beat Sri Lanka at home and after the retirement of two truly great batsmen, I think we'll do so comfortably.
My Team;
Cook, Hales, Compton, Root, Bell, Stokes, Bairstow, Ali, Broad, Finn, Anderson.

Mr Nice RIP

Howard Marks, the worlds favourite drug smuggler has died.  He wrote a brilliant autobiography called "Mr Nice" which was one of his many aliases.  His views on prohibition make absolute sense but our politicians are too cowardly to ever admit it.
There's a proper obituary here;
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/11/howard-marks-obituary

RIP Mr Nice

A Brief History of Seven Killings

"A brief history of seven killings" is written by Marlon James and starts in seventies Jamaica and ends in nineties New York and along the way there are a hell of a lot more than seven killings.

Back up a bit...  I'm a huge Bob Marley fan, I am white and middle aged (class?) so I would be right?  But I have been listening to Bob's music since my childhood and I always will.  I'm fan enough to have read loads of Marley biographies including Timothy White's brilliant "Catch a fire".  This book in particular describes an assassination attempt made on Marley on 2nd December 1976 at his home, 56 Hope Road, Kingston.  "A brief history of seven killings" starts with the events leading up to this attempt, the act itself and the immediate aftermath.

Beginning in loose fact with the whys and wherefores of the Hope road shooting which made headlines all over the world at the time, Marlon James story charts the fall out from this crime which is still officially unsolved. Throughout the novel Marley is referred to simply as "The singer".  The events are told in the first person by a cast of characters; "Top Ranking"gunmen and foot soldiers, politicians, terrorists, CIA and ordinary Jamaicans all of whose lives changed forever that day.  Many of these characters are thought to be based on real people and real events that occurred after 1976.  The narrator is a long time murdered "Duppy".

The story leaps forward in time and place.  Jamaica for more politics and the hope of peace in 1979, New York and Miami for cocaine murder madness in 1985 and a final bloodbath in 1991.  We follow some of these characters through the fifteen years of the tale but others don't make it, sometimes we feel sorry of the victims, sometimes we don't.  The Kingston slums are portrayed harshly as cruel and violent beyond belief as is the Bronx later in the book.  Life is cheap.  Different place, same characters, same result?

Is it any good?  Fucking hell yes!  The book is almost seven hundred pages long but I managed to read it in about five days.  The book was stuck in my hands and in my head and the only option was to keep reading and see where the madness would take me and who would be the survivors?  Then there's the question; of all the many hundreds of killings, which were the seven?  I'm pretty sure I worked it out and the one that got away.

Final

It was a really good T20 World cup from beginning to end.  In the semi's England smashed a good Kiwi side and West Indies beat the home favourites India.  The final swung both ways and with six balls to go I was sure England had it.  Then Mr Brathwaite hit four sixes...  Fair play to the West Indies for drawing solidarity from a farcical position regarding their cricket board.  Their team spirit made them unbeatable.

T20 World cup

The T20 World cup started a couple of weeks ago and I find myself more interested than I expected.  It's been a good spectacle, staged in India where the crowds have been fantastic.

The cricket, on the whole has been really enjoyable, especially as England have done well.  Starting with a defeat against West Indies, or more to the point Chris Gayle.  When Gayle plays well, WI are almost unbeatable.  Next up were the saffers and when they made 229 it looked like our tournament was over but somehow we got the runs.  Afghanistan should have been an easy win and we almost mucked it up but got over the line.  The final group match against Sri Lanka was a cracker, a real tense affair and England pulled it off.

So now we face New Zealand in the semi final.  The Kiwis are unbeaten and the form team of the tournament so far so will feel confident.  Apart from a close win against the Aussies they have dominated the other matches whereas England are battle hardened and have recent wins over the Kiwis.

The other semi final is between West Indies who topped England's group, despite managing to lose against Afghanistan; and India who looked really good in knocking the Aussies out last night.  On home soil India will be hard to beat and must be favourites now but any of the four teams left could easily do enough on the day to win.

In the 2010 T20 World cup, England lost their opening match against West Indies but went on the win the trophy.  Just saying.

The Levellers were right.

The Levellers wrote some great music and were great live but we got older, were duped by new Labour and moved on.  The Levellers kept touring and making the music.  A few years ago we saw them play an acoustic set at a festival and it was beautiful.  I'd forgotten how good they are!

Levelling the land is a masterpiece and everything that album said is still relevant now.  Nothing has changed, the Levs were right the whole time.