Future Australian Captains: let’s not have any.

1 Corinthians 13:9. For we know partially and we prophesy partially...

And we never bloody learn, apparently. For goodness’ sake, one Test ago we (meaning The Press and a few bloggers) were agonising over whether Clarke’s appointment as Future Australian Captain (FAC) made him unpopular and  whether or not he is now popular enough to have a bandwagon. If he does, 329 runs and beating India will get a lot of people on it.

For the last six? seven? or so* years, Clarke has had to work in the blinding intensity of the public focus that came with that early anointing. Despite all the afore-mentioned angst, it has taken mere days for David Warner to emerge as the next FAC, helped along by Mickey Arthur. Do they not have the Future Saffer Captain issue in SA, or is Arthur already peddling the official CA let’s-anoint-someone-who-does-well-in-the-focus-groups? The perception of favour didn’t help Clarke on the field or in the press, whatever it did for his bank account, and it may well have hindered him in both.  My favourite theory as to why Clarke was hard to connect to, coming across in press conferences as bland and party-line, is that he was well aware of the damage that could be done to chances at captaincy with a stray comment or controversy.

The perception is that Clarke has had a number of controversies, but once you eliminate the FAC status, speculation about form slumps, and stories that do or don’t match his allegedly-bogan background (they usually involve money and subtle snobbery, reverse or otherwise), you’re left with a relationship that went wrong (he who is without sin, etc) and a fight with Simon Katich which he didn’t start. Katich, let’s remember, left a burgeoning cricket career in WA to further his own chances, so he’s not exactly the shining cricket purist himself.**  Clarke hasn’t (that we know of) been in fights in nightclubs, talked to bookies, had dodgy drug test results or in fact done anything except perhaps be a bit too controlled in press conferences and too much / not enough of a bogan to fit stereotypes. I was actually rather relieved when he took a bit of personal leave because it showed that he was, in fact, human.

We don’t know, and never will, what harm Clarke’s status did to any other potential FACs in the team.  For all Steve (we are not worthy) Waugh’s team had a miraculous collection of talent, it also had a number of blokes he could turn to in the field for thoughts on the game and its state at any given time.  How many of the next generation never bothered to develop the mythical and terribly clichéd cricket brain because they never expected to be captain, with the golden boy constantly in front of them?  How much of Katich’s angst came from that frustration?

Look, I don’t love Clarke.   I was pretty cynical about his declaration at 329, thinking he must have known that would play as humility. He has since said that wasn’t the case, and he was focussed on winning, so we’ll go with that. To be fair, no good captain would put their own milestones ahead of the team’s, and, love him or no, I do think he is a good captain. I can’t quite decide whether the changes in opinion come from a greater freedom to be himself, an improved PR firm (no streaks in the hair, I note, and Channel 9 playing Western Sydney backyard cricket footage), some stunning cricket, or all of the above.

Passing the FAC mantle on to David Warner, though, is not good for Warner, the team, or the next generation of cricketers. Surely they should all aim for captaincy, at least at first, and think they have a chance? Why saddle a talent like Warner with all that expectation and extra focus? Does he not have enough to do, working out how to be a T20 star and a Test opener? Why make him also work out, all at once, how to: 

• comment on the current captain’s form in press conferences, 
• balance relationships in all of his dressing-rooms, 
• deal with people calling for his head at the slightest slump in form, 
• shut off the glare of the spotlight, and the positive and negative things that go with it, 
• enjoy the fruits of his success without being called a tosser, 
• respond gracefully when the person who called you a tosser calls you insecure for wanting respect,  
• and, somewhere in there, have a life? 

He'd learn those things eventually anyway, being an Australian cricketer, a Test opener and playing in the IPL. Shouldn’t we be rewarding his talent with room and respect and space to grow?  We have Warney to satisfy our national quota of cricket stories in the social pages, not to mention some fresh international imports thanks to the BBL - how about we just let Warner be Warner, and worry about who will be captain next when we actually need one?

* vagueness due to Wikipedia blackout, cricinfo not having FAC appointment as one of its stats

** YES I’m still bitter.  

Experiments with Sloe Gin, or, Things I Get Up To When Not Studying.

Speaking of things I like, possibly a bit too much, I was recently introduced to sloe gin. Straight sloe gin works in late-autumn London as an aperitif or digestif or omni-if, but if taken unadulterated in early-summer Melbourne is a bit too warm and sticky to be its lovely tart self, not unlike the rest of us. This is a shame, as it is better for you than regular gin, because 1. it has a lower alcohol content and 2. it has fruit in it, and therefore vitamins.

I asked the Frenchman selling it to me at the fancy wine store if it could be served on ice and received a slightly disdainful look and a raised eyebrow. He deigned to suggest that I try it with bitter lemon or with tonic.  A barman recently asked if I'd like it on the rocks, so I may have been a bit too sensitive about the Frenchman's lack of interest in my drinking dilemmas.

Thanks to some duty free liquor and some spare time, I ended up trying it with a few different things (not all in the one night, I'd like to add):

Sloe Gin and Bitter Lemon
This was the first combination I tried, is still my favourite (after sloe gin in autumnal London, and the Millionaire Cocktail in Edinburgh, that is), and is highly recommended for a warm day. The lemon undercuts the sweetness of the sloe a little but is balanced by the bitterness, so at the right proportions (somewhere around your regular G&T mix, possibly a little stronger) there is a great balance of sweet / sour / bitter. It's terribly refreshing, and since lemon is another fruit, even more delusions of healthiness.

Sloe Gin on Ice
I might need to give the Frenchman some credit here: sloe gin on ice is great at first but when the ice began melting it got too weak and watery for me. Not sure if this is due to the lower alcohol content, or perhaps that it has a less intense flavour than the digestifs I am more accustomed to drinking on ice. I've also only just thought of keeping the bottle in the fridge, which I might try with the next one.

Sloe Gin and Tonic
Not a huge fan of this: I prefer the emphasis in my G&T's to be, unsurprisingly, on the G. At regular proportions the sloe gin was overwhelmed by the tonic, so it ended up a pink, slightly fruity quinine drink. Even at my proportions, (G&t) the tonic was still the stronger element and the sloe flavour was decidedly washed out. Having said that, I prefer my tonics on the stronger side to compensate for lots of gin, so a lighter tonic might produce a different result.

Sloe Gin and Lemonade
I ran out of bitter lemon, but had lemonade left - much too sweet for me, but I might experiment on some friends who prefer their cocktails sweet and fruity. It did, however, inspire me to further fruit experiments.

Sloe Gin, Lemon Cordial and Tonic
Somewhere along the line I realised that Bitter Lemon was basically tonic + lemon, so I attempted constructing my own. This, although better than the straight tonic, was not entirely succesful, as the lemon cordial / tonic combination was simultaneously sweeter and bitterer than Bitter Lemon.

Sloe Gin, Cointreau and various mixers
What with all the back and forth to my liquor cabinet, and thinking about the sloe and lemon combination, I  realised that Cointreau is orange, and since sloe and lemon was working out well, how about sloe and orange? Cointreau has its own sweetness, though, and so these combinations tended to be too sweet for me. Bitter lemon worked best as a mixer with these two, (citrus = vitamin C, yes?) although I also tried tonic, soda and lemonade at various points. This is a much stronger combination, as I made it with a shot of each.

Unsurprisingly, this is about where my bottle of sloe gin ran out. However, during the slow recovery from post-trip work-trauma disorder, I found this photo

I only remember the name because I found the
bill as well. It was that kind of night.

and remembered the ridiculously lovely Millionaire Cocktail I'd had at the Bon Vivant in Edinburgh, a cocktail bar that could've been anywhere in the world, except that they deep fried all of their tapas just so we'd remember we were in Scotland. I'd ordered it because of the sloe gin, and was surprised I'd forgotten it - well, until I remembered how many cocktails we'd had after it. The Millionaire is sloe gin, apricot brandy, Jamaican rum, and lime juice (vitamin C again). Given a faint edge by the rum, this sweet, tangy combination works - and how.


In researching the Millionaire, I've discovered at least ninety cocktails using sloe gin.  I'd dreamed up some particularly evil combinations after being inspired by sloe gin and Cointreau*,  but, as usual, the internet has shown me what an amateur I am.  It can (apparently) be combined with every fruit liqueur known to man, not to mention everything from bourbon to pastis to the ultimate hangover partner, tequila.  I suspect my liquor cabinet is about to get surprisingly fruity.


* I'm still thinking of trying the liquor fruit salad: Sloe Gin, Limoncello, Cointreau, Peach Schnapps and Midori.

Wording a logo: a confession.

Also Bath, source of such
excellent merchandise.

I was recently tempted to use heart as a verb. In writing. It was in an email, which we all know only counts in a court of law or a newspaper, but I resisted. Fortunately, before I used up my slender reserves of lexical discipline, I was distracted by wondering how many other people had verbed this tender noun, whether I was verbing* a noun or wording a logo, and whether any other logos have been worded.

Looking for some stats on its history, I went to the usually reliable google ngram search but, alas, the cold, heartless, digitisation of the server farm was drawn, moth-like, to the tepidity of Sir Walter Scott and the warmth of that terrible flirt, Master Shakespeare. Such simple things as i'heart, Act I: Heart, "with broken-heart, I" and Sir Heart: "I, madam...", not to mention the excitement when !heart or heart! comes along, lead those poor machines terribly astray.

The OED, its mills grinding slightly faster - but possibly just as fine - than God's, is more circumspect. The entry for heart, v. (DRAFT ADDITIONS JANUARY 2011, lest you get too carried away) - speculates as I, much less humbly, did, that it all relates back to the I ♥ NY shirts. The text version: "Originally with reference to logos using the symbol of a heart to denote the verb ‘love’".

The thing is, this blog is, very, very slowly, turning out to be me talking about things I love or like or somewhere in between, and now and then getting diverted into what love or like is, anyway. The original object of my hearting has been lost in my subsequent internet meanderings, but the temptation arose because my attachment lay on the (entirely subjective) spectrum of feelings between like and love.  I still have trouble using love in any serious sense for things that aren't people (apart from cricket, which is still in the balance) but there are any number of things for which I feel more than like, and so heart, daggy and verbalised as it is, is rather useful.  It's the schoolgirl scrawl of affection: I ♥ Dr Who.  Trams. Chardonnay. Melbourne. Budapest. London. Champagne. Travelling. Hmm: I might love travelling. 

Since the OED (which I definitely heart) allows you to search etymologies, I searched unsuccessfully for other verbs arising from logos or symbols. There are names for these things, of course (smiley) but so far it would appear that this transition of a word (love) to a symbol (♥) back out again to the verbing of a different word is unique, and a small, weird part of me is fascinated to see this tiny offshoot of the language growing in front of me.

In the interests of completeness, I must point out that the OED lists five other senses of heart as a verb, the oldest from 897 - senses like 'give heart to' (people), 'to form a heart' (cabbages and so on) - and the most recent from 1892. None of them relate to a sense of love or like; the first citation in this sense is from 1983: "Associated Press; (Nexis) 16 Nov. From Berlin to the Urals, teen-agers wear T-shirts reading, ‘Elvis’, ‘Always Stoned’, and ‘I (heart) New York’."

*which, for the prescriptivists**, has been in use since 1766. Along with its much quieter twin, Nouning. 

** at which point I'd like to re-emphasise that I was educated during a time when teaching formal grammar was Frowned Upon and so the most complex grammatical concept I have grasped is that nouns are Naming Words, verbs are Doing Words and adjectives are Describing Words - after that you've lost me. Fortunately my parents inflicted a lot of books on me, so I have managed to compensate for this disability. 

A love letter to Melbourne on our first anniversary.

An unexpected glimpse of beauty in architectural detail, a tiny new art piece buried in a laneway corner, the giddiness of standing in a pub falling for yet another quirky, talented band; it’s the little things that catch at my heart.  Things that make me stop, look up, smile - ornamented buildings, blossoms outlined against the sky, clouds rushing to cover the sun.  Heck, the fact that stopping and looking and having internal monologues doesn't stop crowds here. People move around me peacefully, and I know that even though I’m boringly corporately besuited, I could be a pirate or a spaceman or in terribly deliberately clashing colours and be as free as I am now.

Then there are all the tiny villages, every high street a hub - people know their laneway, their walking distance, their nearest good coffee, their tramline, but not the next suburb over. There is adventure in cross-pollinating, jumping tramlines, savouring the transition north to east, back in to the centre, sometimes – bravely – west or south.

There are all the obvious things; coffee, food, plays, wine, sport, cocktails, and, of course, music, and people who also love these things. There are conversations overheard: a musician setting up for a gig and explaining to someone that in Melbourne you can love music and sport, and it’s ok. A six year old lecturing his father on the prospects of the team whose scarf I am wearing.  Old ladies, born thousands and thousands of miles away, who see my phone and ask me when the tram is coming, because they know there’s an app for that.

There are crazy things too: the flagrant crazy of weather and traffic that provide a never-ending conversation supply, the fun crazy of too much drink and not enough sleep, the tiring crazy of too too much work.  But then there’s acceptance, new homes, friendship revived, the broadest brush of remarkable new friends I could ever hope for, and the space and time to be as crazy as I want to be. 

When I first arrived I would glimpse the strange skyline out of the corner of my eye and startle. Once, drowsing on a tram, I wondered where I was, mentally flicking through cities, before remembering, breathlessly relieved, that I was here.

Happy anniversary, Melbourne.  It’s been a good year.

MoVida!

Nothing makes a Wednesday like an invite to MoVida.  Especially when it’s an invite to attend with Frank Camarro’s tour co-ordinator and two long-term MoVida fans, who started back in the day when you could wander in on a Saturday night and actually get a seat: imagine! After the menu kept side-tracking my companions into reminiscing about various Spanish bars, restaurants and wineries, not to mention previous MoVida nights, we gave up and decided on a happy abandonment of our evening into the hands of the staff.  This openness to experience seems to be a common factor in my best-ever foodie nights – somehow, when I control the menu, I’m just not as adventurous.

Being omnivorous, curious, and possibly a bit gluttonous, I love tapas because you get to try everything! Anchovies and tomato sorbet on croutons.  Spicy smoked chicken escabache on brioche. Chorizo and octopus.  Smoked mackerel and pine nut gazpacho sorbet. Battered anchovies and pimientos de padrón (russian roulette peppers - mild yet tasty, except for every approximately-fifth one, which is incredibly hot).  Quail eggs wrapped in black pudding. Oven-roasted portobello mushrooms finished with PX.

This is also why I love groups: more people = more things to try. The above were all brilliant; you’d think with so many dishes (and that’s not all of them – somewhere in there were scallops as well) there’d be one that I didn’t love, or didn’t quite work, or didn’t have its plate licked clean. Nope. All amazing combinations of flavour and texture which I would happily eat again, and could probably write up in excruciating detail, but I’ve saved that for the two dishes that will drag me back, come what may: the MoVida signature air-dried Wagyu with poached egg and truffle foam, and pan-seared quail breasts with fried bread and grapes.

The Wagyu dish looks, smells and tastes much, much better than something so potentially pretentious should – it’s basically fancy sliced beef and eggs, but when you think about how good steak and eggs are, a fancy version that works is the ideal, is it not? It was one of those dishes that leaves you with an intense sense memory: warm slippery egg, tiny bubbles of foam, smoky dirty truffle haunting the back of the palate, and the strength and unctuousness of the Wagyu holding it together and filling it out at the same time.

The quail appeared quite simple: miniature marylands, cool grapes and crunchy fried bread, a combination of simple flavours well-cooked or wisely left alone. The surprise came underneath: shreds of some dark, moist meat with a rich, slightly sweet flavour.  After various guesses (all wrong!) and vain attempts to remember the menu, we were informed that it was the rest of the quail meat, cooked in Pedro Ximenez. Things should absolutely be cooked in PX more often: its complexity made the meat almost gamey, especially up against the cleaner flavour of the pan-seared quail breasts with delicious crispy skin, and the grapes bursting against the oily, crunchy fried bread. Being way more of an eating (*cough* and occasionally drinking, and even more occasionally writing) foodie than a cooking foodie, it’s reasonably rare that I think ‘I really need to try this at home’, but cooking meat in PX is one of those rarities. It's a sign of how good it was that I'm prepared to cook with PX rather than drink it. 

Speaking of drinking, we had some red wine, too, which is apparently much cheaper in Spain and which, in a really big sign of how good the food was, I can't tell you much about except that it was good, and we had a couple of bottles of it.

Coming soon eventually: Cutler and Co, Longrain, breakfast at Cumulus Inc and lots - and lots - of cocktails. I should have time to write about them, since I've used all my cash going to them!

1 Corinthians 13:7* (Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Gruelling stuff.

Love bears all things: three days outside in Melbourne weather.  Every morning I arrived at the MCG wearing boots, jeans and a jumper with a fur-trimmed hood.  The last week of December, technically midsummer, but I longed for my beanie. I kept my hat on, even when I had my hood up, as it said ‘Australia’ and I didn’t want there to be any confusion about who I was supporting.   The first day stayed that cold, the second day oscillated between the bone-slicing wind and the skin-scorching sun, and on the third the sun finally won.  It wasn’t the heat – I'm West Australian, I can take a bit of warmth – but the searing bite of the UV in every sunbeam that drove us back into the shade. Despite multiple coatings of suncream, I was pink for a few days, thanks to reflections off the grass and the extra thin ozone layer in these parts.

Love believes all things: one of the disarming things about cricket is that belief is always possible – until everyone is out, you just never know. Even now, I believe that we could’ve bowled England out if we’d had a go at a damp pitch under a cloudy sky. I believe that our batsmen have the skill and the talent to have kept on batting, if they’d had the form, the will and the discipline to go with it. I believe that on the mornings of days two and three it was still possible for us to win.  (Probable? Not so much.) I believe that if Mitchell Johnson had got out of bed on the right side he could’ve taken a hat-trick. During the match, I believed that this might be the partnership that won the game. That this next one might draw the game. That these guys – no, wait, these guys – could at least put it into five days. That these next guys could put it into four days… oh, thank goodness.

Love hopes all things: I hoped for form, will and discipline for our batsmen. I hoped for Hilfy to take a hat-trick, because his economy and work rate deserved it. I hoped Punter would have a Waugh-at-the-SCG cap’n’s knock, and save our collective and individual dignities and the match all at once.  I hoped Hughes and Smith would give us hope for the future. (They gave me a little. I had wanted it in centuries, but will take the small Pandoran glimmer that was their second inningses.)  I hoped Watson would not give everyone else more evidence for disliking him - and then I hoped it would rain. Now, I hope the selectors take a good, hard look at themselves. I hope Cricket Australia find someone who can decode the mysteries of swing, or at the very least, nick the English dossier on it. I hope we get pitches like this one, and the one at the WACA, more often, regardless of our form. I hope the cricket boards of other countries (including ours!) can somehow manage to do what the ECB have done - although I'm not sure if even they know exactly how they've done it. Mind you, I also hope the ECB do something about county cricket.

Love endures all things: love endures all out for 98, stays til the last ball, and makes sure it’s in time for the first ball the next day, and the day after that. It is heart-sick that it has to go to work and miss the last hour, despite the expected cataclysmic result and subsequent grave-dancing. Love endures England batting for days, and since this is love of cricket, and not merely love of Australian cricket, it somehow, around the heartache, enjoys Trott’s batting, (no, really – but then I like Watson, so, you know, odd) KP’s defiance, the ebb and flow of the bowling, the mysterious impact of the weather**, Bresnan’s incredulous joy.  Love endures the Barmy Army and the annoying way their tunes get stuck in your head, the equally annoying way we’ve never really come up with anything to counter them,*** and the really, really annoying way they make you laugh. Love endures the captain losing it in an undignified, unprofessional and unwarranted fashion, and although it definitely doesn’t approve, it admires the grit with which he carries on, and the defiant response of the home crowd the next morning when the Barmy Army boos him.

I love cricket. Even when it hurts.

* I am intending to come back to the other six verses, this just needed to be written now.

** God was clearly on England’s side: the sun came out when they started batting, and the only time – I swear, the only time – it went away again while they were batting was during drinks breaks.

*** Now’s our chance: the Barmies were formed in England’s doldrums, after all, and it takes heartbreak to fuel creativity. At the very least, we must be able to come up with something better than ‘Your next queen is Camilla Parker-Bowles.’

Special Bonus: Me on Steve Waugh.

Ah, the good old days. I found this paragraph, which I must've written for some competition or other - the question was probably 'Why do you love Steve Waugh?'  I have one of my housemate's answers on file as well, so I wasn't just writing random panegyrics to Steve... not that there's anything wrong with that.

I love Steve because he is a stubborn, competitive and occasionally ruthless captain who has lead our team in carving a swathe of devastation through international cricket. Despite the nay-sayers bemoaning the lack of competitiveness, we love to win, and Steve gave us lots of wins. We will excuse a man much who succeeds, and fortunately Steve has not given us much to forgive him for. What he has given us is years of beautiful cricket as a player and as a captain. When he finally goes he’ll be sadly missed, but I know that his mark on Australian cricket will live on.

I probably wouldn't call his cricket 'beautiful' these days, but then again, I like Shane Watson, so maybe I would.

I miss Steve, and one of my highlights of being at Lords last year is that I walked past him.

Internet Driftwood.

Alternative title: lazy post. I am working on the next of the I-love-cricket series but it keeps changing, what with Current Developments. I've been clearing out fourteen years worth of electronic stuff that has accumulated at my employer, and found a document called 'Spam Philosophy.'

Once upon a time, we got spam at work which included random text in order to get past the filter. This text often made sense, which is how it got through, and I harvested any aphorisms that caught my fancy. I am not intending to start posting my 'best of' funny emails for the last fourteen years, but this is an emptying of the pockets before I delete all this stuff.  This is internet driftwood I've collected because the shape was funny, or beautiful, or particularly twisted, and now I'm returning it to the ocean. 


Where you tend a rose, a thistle will not grow.

The most exhausting thing you can do is to be inauthentic.

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

Art washes the dust of everyday life away from the soul.

Education is the best provision for the journey to old age.

Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising.

Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are wonderful.

Communication without intelligence is noise; intelligence without communication is irrelevant.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

To be feared is much safer then to be loved.

The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage.

The mind is slow to unlearn what it learnt early.

By perseverance the snail reached the ark.

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

Persistence plus no dignity equals success.

Storms make trees take deeper roots.

Win hearts, and you have all men's hands and purses.

Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavour.

It's easy to stop making mistakes. Just stop having ideas.

Never mistake motion for action.

Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.

I think, therefore I'm single.

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

There is no failure – only feedback.

Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance.

Laugh at yourself first, before anyone else can.

Politics, or All The Things I Was Going To Say (Honest) But Someone Else Said First.

Forgive me, but I’m about to make a foray into politics. I know, religion last post, politics this one – I promise I won’t do it too often. Well, religion perhaps, but politics… ok, I take it back, no promises. I may need to add politics to the ‘things I’d like to be geekier about’ list.

Anyway, Australia has a Federal election this week. Due to the distressing lack of differentiation between the major parties* – except perhaps on internet speed – I have been following it in a desultory fashion. What has struck me and, recently, a number of other people, is how unlike themselves Julia Gillard and Tony Abbot are being.

I had been working on an interesting, witty, intellectual and thought-provoking post around this theme using The West Wing episode ‘Let Bartlet be Bartlet.’ Unfortunately this guy beat me to it, which at least saves me some work and gives me a chance of posting this before the election. It also got a mention here a bit later. Any credit owed there, chaps?

I disagree with Tim-with-the-very-long-surname on the similarities in the US election – there were some, but he stretches a few points. I was also going to say that Obama should probably buy Jimmy Smits lunch some time, but on doing some Google homework I discovered several conspiracy theories out there, most of them a few years older than this post. For the record, I don’t think either Abbot or Gillard or Obama are anywhere near Jed Bartlet, what with him being fictional and all. What might influence my vote is footage of any (or all) of them arguing with God in a cathedral. In Latin. Go on, I dare you.

Getting back to the focus on Julia, the nominally-left candidate, (I hear Bob Brown laughing somewhere) and who she really is, I’m afraid Tony Abbot has been sadly neglected. Where’s the 'let Tony be Tony' campaign? Yes, he says stupid things, but you know what? So do most of us. He’s demonstrated in the last few weeks that he can restrain himself when necessary,  which means he could probably survive a UN conference without committing us to nuclear war. (Oh, goodness, I feel like a cricket commentator talking about Sehwag’s skill when he’s on 99.)  I know I’m odd, but I think the ‘real’ Tony has some appeal as well. Not to 18 year olds, or some journalists, but, you know, the rest of us. Abbot is trying quite hard to be the nominally-right candidate, but why not just head out and be the right candidate? Not all the way, (sorry Dave) but there’s plenty of space over there on the right without running into anything too radical. We have money, Tony, we know you need to cut the budget. We have values, we’re happy for you to tell us yours – if you can ever manage to get quoted properly. We’d probably like 1Gbps downloads, but we wonder who will pay for that. I’m not a fan of the whole ‘let’s find an island and lock up those 700 people each year desperately trying to escape terrible lives who might steal jobs from the, umm, hundreds of thousands of unemployed.’ I’m also not a fan of cutting immigration – we need people – but that’s something where I’d like to find out what Tony actually thinks. I like Tony Abbot – you might’ve noticed – but I am still undecided on some of his colleagues. I also like Julia Gillard. I reckon we could bond over stories about aunts asking us when we're going to find the right bloke, or settle down, or have babies.


The ultimate point of this post (there is one, and it’s not how depressingly unoriginal my ideas are) is that This Annoys Me. ‘This’ being Julia-not-being-Julia, the impressive Tony-not-being-Tony for several weeks, and then the new Julia-being-slightly-more-like-Julia-but-not-too-much. (We’re all happy about the voice coach, Julia, trust me.) These two have both been attack dogs for their parties. We know these people - we’ve seen their teeth, their unattractive slobber, the wounds (and/or bodies) left behind. In this last week of campaigning, we’ve seen their least flattering photographs. Are there really that few of us capable of remembering their previous behaviour, or of googling it? Do either party really think that we’ll believe the shallow templates of a prime minister they’ve tried to superimpose over these two real, complex, interesting people? Do either party really believe that the relentless negative ads with deep, sinister soundtracks will disguise their lack of policy?

Maybe they do. Maybe what I’m really grumpy about is that I don’t have a viable alternative.


(*this comment may be a sneaky ploy to generate comments, given my extensive market research and target audience.)

An Introduction to Cricket, Shakespeare and the Bible. (A Series in Fourteen Parts)

This originated as the first post of a quite ambitious series, but then got so involved that it evolved into the introduction, and the now-even-more-ambitious series starts next time. With impeccable timing, I’m starting a series on my love of cricket just as my team has been historically humbled by Pakistan. In England, at that, possibly to ensure I get the maximum amount of grief from my English acquaintances. And a few Indian folk, never ones to miss an opportunity. But, as usual, I digress.

Following some email conversations several months ago, I was idly wondering how I could prove to someone (the ACB? torturers? my logically-trained sister?) that what I feel for cricket is not merely ‘like,’ or ‘fanatical like,’ or even ‘potentially pathological obsession,’ but is in fact love. My four years of undergraduate Arts training sprang to the fore, or, more realistically, ambled by on the way to Tav and pointed out that I needed to do some research and define my terms. Here follows an account of my extensive research on the important topic of like vs love, a prequel to testing the hypothesis that I do actually love cricket. The team are doing their level best to test the attachment out there in the real world, so I thought I’d work through the issue in theory.

According to Wordcount, love is the 384th most used word, just after economic (rather sad, really) and before means. (The word after this is upon, so according to Wordcount ‘love means upon’ – make of that what you will.) Like is 67th, which didn’t help one of my starting premises that we use love more than like. Moving on to google, a simple search for love turns up 1.81m results (I have no comments on their quality or suitability for viewing by children – or adults, for that matter) while like gets 3.27m. That premise is therefore officially dead.

What persists is a further premise that we use the word love when we could say like, or (even better) enjoy, appreciate, take pleasure in, am happy upon/with/about/in/beside etc etc. Love is sometimes used for emphasis, but google agrees with me that love is employed a little too often, returning roughly 2.4m results for ‘love overused,’ most of which seem to involve a phrase along the lines of ‘the word love is overused these days / today / nowadays.’* To give this some context, a search for ‘like love’ returns 364m results – like can mean a lot of things, not to mention its use on Facebook, google, You Tube et al to indicate approval. ‘Like vs love’ returns 204m, most of which seem to be discussions on how to tell if you simply like someone or do in fact love them.

The difference between the two is much debated - to quote the Shakespearean classic, 10 Things I Hate About You:

"See, there’s a difference between like and love. Because I like my Skechers, but I love my  Prada backpack."
"But I love my Skechers."
"That’s because you don’t have a Prada backpack."

I have some Skechers which I am attached to, but if pressed, would happily admit I don’t love. Having never owned a Prada backpack, I can’t comment on that particular criteria, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t love it either. I might say I loved it in casual conversation, but it wouldn’t show up in any serious list of things I love. For all I’m trying to find out if cricket would be there, most of the 'things' on that list would be people.

So, extensive research covered, I need a definition of love to test my hypothesis on. When in doubt, go back to first principles: the OED, Shakespeare, and the Bible. The OED has several definitions of love, one of which is “a great interest and pleasure in something,” but where’s the fun in that? That’s barely even one post to prove my point: “I have great interest in and take pleasure from cricket, therefore I love it.” Heck, it’s scarcely a paragraph. I’m going for something more rounded.

While Shakespeare deals with the subject at length in several genres, he doesn’t give us a reliable definition of what love is.** Complexity does not lend itself to consistency. He comes closest in Sonnet 116 which contains negative definitions: “Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds” and “Love's not Time's fool” - but I’m all about positivity. Not so much about academic rigour or consistency, as you may have gathered.*** The sonnet does say that love “is an ever-fixéd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark”, and I’ll come back to that at some point in the series.

This is a pretty good start, but I’d like more to work with; if I’m going get fourteen posts out of this subject, it's clear I need to go to the Bible. Yes, fourteen, although I reserve the right, ala The Wheel of Time, to extend the series if necessary. Or reduce it, for any reason deemed acceptable by The Management. If it’s any comfort, future posts might be shorter than this one and at my current rate it will take me more than a year to finish the series. That’s a long time in cricket.

The Bible, conveniently, has a lot to say about love. God is love, for starters, but proving that God = love = cricket is a little beyond even me. (Mind you, that would make going to the cricket on a Sunday a sacramental event, and I could take time off to go to Tests for religious reasons… hmm.) Amongst it all is a whole chapter on what love IS, and it’s quite definite. So, risking my immortal soul, excommunication, or at the very least some narky comments and suggestions that I attend theology classes, I am going to work my way through 1 Corinthians 13 and test my love of cricket against it, hopefully proving in the process that I love cricket in the, err, Biblical sense. (Ahem.) Please bear in mind that this may be one of those wholesome family stories where I learn some important lessons along the way and turn out to be completely wrong, since, all evidence to the contrary, I really don't know what I'll end up concluding.


* Is this true? A question for another day, or another blog, but for all I know, the Ancient Greeks wandered around all, y’know, “I totally love what you’ve done with your hair!” and “Are those Athenian leather? Oh. My. Gods. I love them!” Or: “Oh I love, love, love Sophocles: have you seen his latest? So much gore - totally classic!” The Greeks may have sounded like the great Jane Austen work Clueless – you heard it here first.


** Thousands of academics would disagree, but then they would turn around and disagree with each other about what he meant, thereby proving my point. If he’d defined it, they wouldn’t be arguing. Well, some of them would argue on principle, but not thousands of them.


*** I’m stealing borrowing Rohan’s idea of acknowledging my shortcomings at the beginning of the series and thereby giving myself an out for the rest of it. I haven’t framed it as a disclaimer, per se, but you get the gist.

Very Long Review: Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Ring.

2010 intro:
This was originally written when it first came out - the very night I saw it. So any issues with this post are because I was young(er), and I accept no responsibility. I realise there could be context problems if you haven't read the books or watched the movies eighteen times, in which case I suggest you go do that, and then come back and read it.

Mostly original review:
Warning #1: Long. Really long. For an email (2010 edit: blog post) anyway. But it was 11pm, and I had no one at home awake to debrief me, so I just had to write it all down. Also I have a BA (Hons) English, so this is my instinctive reaction. Discuss. Compare and contrast.

Warning #2: Contains spoilers – some film spoilers, so if you have read the books but haven’t yet seen the film and would like to find your own things to pick on, don’t read this. Yet. Not so many story spoilers … well, some. So perhaps you should also wait if you haven’t read the book and haven’t seen the film yet. Also, go read the book already!!

Right. Well, I loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it, loved it. (where is that line from, anyway?) I felt extremely deprived at the end of the movie knowing that I have to wait twelve months for The Two Towers and then ANOTHER twelve months for Return of the King. Who decided that anyway? Still, I did see a Star Wars: Episode II trailer and that comes out in May… *sigh* that will have to do. Silly title or no silly title. Anyway, FOTR.

This great love I have for FOTR is not an unqualified love. (ahhh… sighs the audience. I knew it was too good to last.) So this is less a review (technically speaking) as some of the little things I liked, and some I didn’t but that I can live with. At least until my ego boundaries snap back into place.

I was interested by the different possibilities available in using a different medium. Some points which Tolkien had to state were able to be hinted at, and vice versa. Mind you, I think a lot of the things which Tolkien foreshadowed could also have been foreshadowed in the film rather than stated outright. Dumbing down, I think. Still, there was some mystery left.

I was quite happy with the casting. I know Liv and Cate were somewhat controversial but elven beauty is supposed to be otherworldly, and I’m not a guy, so the fact that I can’t really see either of them as being the Spring and Autumn of female beauty doesn’t bother me so much. I thought Cate acted well, particularly in the scene where Frodo offers her the Ring. (Niggle #1: you could hear her footsteps. It is a basic law of fantasy that you can’t hear elves, especially not when they’re walking in their own wood, for goodness sake. I’m not even going to go into how noisy the hobbits were).

Liv… well, my concerns are not so much with Liv as with Arwen, and her rampant cannibalism of several minor characters. Not to mention stealing scenes from other main characters. We all know it should have been Frodo who called on the river at the Ford. What was with her incantations anyway? This isn’t Harry Potter, kids. And then there is the arcing up of the whole romance thing with Aragorn. Dude, I think we might have understood the romance without the gratuitous kissing-and-swearing-to-one-another scene. And she should have given him an emerald. In Lothlorien. Indirectly, too, not just handing it over. Its one of Aragorn’s symbols for goodness sake, not some wussy brooch with pearls or whatever in it. I always, always liked Tolkien’s sublety with these two. I thought it suited both the characters and the story, and emphasised how much both had sacrificed for duty and honour. But in the film… pffft. “Quick, there’s not enough romance and there’s no kissing…” well, we can’t have that now can we?

I do wonder whether Arwen’s increased presence is a form of affirmative action. When I re-read FOTR recently (so I could be picky enough to notice the lack of emeralds and so forth) I did notice the dearth of female characters. Without Arwen, we would only have had a brief glimpse of Rosie (she wouldn’t have had any lines, either) and Galadriel. I suppose it keeps things a little simpler, too. Why have random elves coming in and out when you only need one or two? Very Shakespearean – minimise the number of actors necessary as much as possible. I don’t really have a problem with that - this is just a movie; one version of a story that probably won’t ever be adequately captured by a film. Or nine films for that matter.

Going back to Aragorn and the emerald, I also missed The Sword that was Broken, and the mystery concerning Strider / Aragorn’s identity and his royalty. The Sword should have been reforged in Rivendell, and I’m sure we don’t find out that Aragorn is royal for a while yet. I did think Aragorn was well played. Nice casting. Verrrrry nice casting… (ahh, says the audience… so that’s why you didn’t like Arwen! No, that’s not it. At all. Completely different.)

While we’re on casting and so forth … Elijah Wood. I feel a little sad for him, because he is going to have to do some really impressive work for me to not see him as Frodo from now on. He was so good – the change in Frodo from the opening scene to the closing scene – wow. His love for the Shire, the burden of the Ring, the burden of loneliness… nicely done. Some people (girls) I’ve spoken to are elf groupies (Legolas) but I have to say I was pretty impressed with Elijah. Elves are just alien, man. Nice hair though.

Frodo did seem to lose a few of his more active scenes. But then he also lost some of his ‘doing stupid things’ (i.e. wandering into barrows) scenes as well. I thought this balanced out to convey how unlikely a hero he was. Quick poll: in the scene in Rivendell just before Frodo volunteers, the Ring? or Sauron? whispers to him and I’m wondering if this is a suggestion that part of his motive for volunteering is to hang on to the Ring? Anyone?

Boromir was a very impressive match to my own mental images. The other main characters were well done too. Gandalf, Sam, Merry, Pippin, Gimli … tick. Good job boys. I thought Elrond was a little too grumpy… he was supposed to be distant, not grouchy. On the other hand, the Lothlorien elves weren’t grumpy enough, and I’m sure the Rivendell elves sang more.

Some of the Saruman storyline irked me also: Saruman taking direct orders from Sauron… don’t remember that bit, I must say. And the palantirs turn up in The Two Towers, not Fellowship. Sheesh. Let alone Saruman bringing down the mountain… it was just a nasty mountain OK? Not everything in the book is caused by the bad guys.

While I’m being picky, why stop? Not that this is in any way a definitive list – although I’m sure someone has written one. What happened to the hobbits already living in Bree? The assorted minor characters in the Shire who helped them escape? The barrows? (While we’re on the barrows, my brother pointed out that without the barrow scene the hobbits didn’t have swords. Director: OK, they’re about to face the Riders. Hang on, they don’t have swords. Quick, new scene: ‘Aragorn gives the hobbits swords.’ Phew, that was close. NOT.) Tom Bombadil? I wanted to see Tom. I know, I know, it went for three hours as it was, and like I already said, compressing some characters made it flow more smoothly as a film.

Finally, Aragorn’s last line - ‘Let’s hunt some orc!’ I laughed out loud. Why not just get Gandalf to say ‘I’ll be back!’ And the Uruk’hai ‘All your base are belong to us.’ Please. Aragorn (when he spoke) was very articulate in the books.

Hmm, actually, was that line ‘let’s hunt some orc?’ Perhaps it was just ‘let’s hunt orc.’ Or ‘let’s go hunt orc.’ Perhaps I’d better go see it again... just to make sure, you understand.


Footnotes:

For Princess Bride fans: several times when Frodo was asked for the Ring I had a mental image of an elderly bishop; “Have you … the Wing?”

For Robert Jordan / Wheel of Time fans: The WoT books all begin “The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” Galadriel finished the intro with a similar line about history fading to legend, and forgetting things that should not be forgotten. Chicken or the egg? But let’s not look too closely at the WoT / LOTR similarities, hey? That’s a whole other topic.

Vale Amy.

One of my favourite bloggers, Amy S, is dead.

http://amy-cricket.blogspot.com/

Amy wrote well, had a quirky, occasionally dark sense of humour, posted amazing volumes of information (reading about her life, I think she must have got very little sleep!) and had that rare trifecta: she loved cricket, had some idea of what she was talking about *and* she could write about it. From discussions in comments and the odd email exchange, she also followed AFL and had a keen interest in politics, which is where she ended up working.

A smart, funny, sports-loving woman working in our government; I wonder what she would have done.

Late night post: a review of A Little Night Music.

I won't talk about cricket much right now, although at some point I would like to. I can at least say I was at Lord's for an historic match. It's unfortunate that it was English history and not Australian history. Three matches to go, though, so all is not lost, just a 75 year old record. And I did have a lot of fun, just not as much as I would've if we'd won.

As part of my recovery, I went to see "A Little Night Music" in Leicester Square.

I had mixed up the nights and turned up a night early, and not only did the theatre staff find me a seat, it was better than the one I had booked. One of the pluses of travelling alone is that you are easier to seat at short notice.

A Little Night Music (ALNM) is a Sondheim musical, so it has beautiful music, (all in waltz time, and several pieces are waltzes) a plot, dialogue and lyrics which are clever, funny, sharp, cynical and touching; sometimes all at once. At first I thought it might in fact be a little too cynical and sharp for someone wandering the world on her own, thinking about the meaning of life and having just seen her team lose the cricket. But then again, I like Sondheim precisely because his musicals aren't necessarily light and bubbly, but acknowledge the dark and twisty undercurrrents of life. It is still a musical so there is more light than shade, and I ended up coming out on that high you get from seeing a great story very well done... well, I get a high from that, anyway.

Having spent the last week in Oxford discussing, among other things, staging, dialogue, use of the body in conveying meaning, pauses, blocking, interpretation (etc etc ... and on, and on....) I was watching these things with a semi-critical eye and I still loved it. Silence and pauses were used to great effect, (rare in a musical) and the delivery of dialogue, whether in prose or in song, was very well done. Not necessarily the greatest singers in the world, but I understand a number of these songs were written with that in mind, so it would seem that Sondheim was more concerned with acting ability in some characters. There is an opening song where three characters sing individual pieces and merges into a three part harmony about 'now,' 'soon,' 'later': beautiful harmonies and the lyrics layer each other and add depth to each other.

You can tell I enjoyed it because I have the urge to write about it! Another feature of ALNM is it has a kind of chorus; five characters who introduce, observe, comment from the sidelines in song. Interestingly, "Henry V" has a chorus, usually done as one person. We attempted to see it in Oxford but only saw the first act and a half before a rain delay. The director had divided the chorus into four parts, which didn't work well as they were trying to establish seperate characters from something written for one. Watching ALNM, I could see how it could have been done; how these five people worked together as a group character, but still had identities and just-hinted-at back stories which wove throughout the main drama.

I appreciated both Sondheim's words and music (which I will be finding for my iPod) and in this particular production (a smaller one) I also appreciated the direction and acting. A minimalist set, but it was used well and a number of props filled it out, so it wasn't bare bones. The odd bit of singing let them down a little, but for me this was outweighed by the excellence of everything else.

First Tolkien reference ...

in the Botanic Gardens, sitting under Tolkien's favourite tree... a beautiful spot, and I can hear the wind sighing in its branches. An old twisted tree I can imagine talking v e r y s l o w l y...

I went to Wonderland today...

Well, the garden that served as part of the inspiration for 'Alice in Wonderland.' Today I did a tour of Christ Church, the college in which I am staying. It has a rich and varied history, including the connections with Alice - I saw the little door, the Cheshire Cat's tree and a most marvellous gnarled old tree which our guide believes partly inspired the Jabberwocky. Sadly, I did not have my camera with me, but I am doing the garden and meadow tour tomorrow, so will remember it then.

I am really, really enjoying my time here; I'd like to say "I love Oxford" but apart from a couple of pubs and a walking tour yesterday, I have mostly been in Christ Church so I should really say "I love Christ Church." The Oxford Experience (the official name of the summer school) is great. There are a range of people here - lots of people from the US, lots of retirees - but my new drinking buddies include a NY state attorney and a retired BHP exec who lives in Queensland. What we have in common is that we're all interested in *stuff* and quite happy to talk about anything and everything, and also quite happy to give our opinions! We have really interesting discussions over lunch and dinner about all topics under the sun, although as we all get into our courses, I think we are getting a little more focussed on our pet subjects. Loving my Shakespeare group; we have some *hilarious* times, particularly where people who haven't necessarily studied Shakespeare before start to appreciate how down to earth he really was... i.e. we explain how many dirty jokes there are in the text. We're going to see Henry V tonight and spent some time on it today; we read bits of it aloud and do various exercises to bring it alive in different ways.

Also Christ Church is just a beautiful setting; I've put up a couple of pictures which don't really capture it - one is crooked for starters! The crooked one is Tom Quad, which is where we enter and leave the college. The other is the main wing of Pec, where I'm staying, although in the left wing. For all its external grandeur, inside it is very much college accommodation.

My favourite, favourite experience so far has been coming 'home' after a night out. (See pubs aforementioned!) The main gates are shut, but there is a tiny, ancient wooden door set into them, for which we have a key. The first night we came in with the very last dregs of sunlight (sunset is around 10pm-ish), and last night there was a little moonlight. The door closes behind us and we come out into the quad, the buildings lit by moonlight with clouds rushing behind them. It's quiet, the quad is deserted, the moon is out, the last rays of the setting sun are lighting the clouds behind the spire, the stone is glowing slightly... it is an absolutely magic moment.

Both nights I've stopped and looked at it, and thought, well, even if rest of the trip is terrible, and despite Australia bloody not winning on Sunday, the whole thing was worth it for this. We'd better win at Lords, though, it's one of the few trump cards I've been able to play against the various Englishmen I've been discussing cricket with.

So, all in all, awesome so far and it is only Tuesday... a week is not enough, really. There are various people here who come for two or three or even all five weeks, and a very large number of people who come every year, or as often as they can. They are mostly from Europe or the US though.

All the non-Harry Potter fans can leave now - one of the things they do love telling you about here is which bits of Harry Potter were filmed where. Interestingly, the dining hall, which was a major inspiration for the dining hall in the films, did not actually have any filming in it. This is because they were here during term and the students needed to eat! The other interesting thing is how many of the people here for the course love Harry Potter. There are a few anti-Harry snobs, but the vast majority of people I've spoken to love it. I seem to be a in a very small minority who enjoy it but don't love it. Various bits of Tom Quad and the dining hall staircase were used in the films, and I have to say it does all feel slightly familiar. I think this is also due to it being from a similar period to bits of Bath, and no doubt inspiration for various other fantasy / medieval epics and the setting for about 800 films.