Category Archives: Writing

The Sound of Leather on Willow

08 Thursday Apr 2021

Posted by in Cricket, Writing

≈ 28 Comments

“Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.” GB Shaw.

A sure sign of Spring, men dressed in white, including several sweaters each against the Baltic temperatures, skipping or strolling out onto the cricket grounds of England. It’s the first day of the season and – at least in England – the professionals are plying their trade in front of empty seats.

Here in Jersey, where Covid restrictions are being lifted apace, the amateur leagues will soon be getting underway. The general standard of the game has come on in recent years both through a very good coaching programme and the regular exposure of the Jersey team to international tournaments. Yet the number of players overall has fallen away somewhat. Fewer social/bog standard players are willing to devote the best part of a Saturday or Sunday to the game.

Foliot Fields, home of Sheldon Marlborough CC

I was once one of those willing but limited participants. Years before I moved to Jersey I joined my local club in the Birmingham suburbs, Marlborough CC (they have now merged and play as Sheldon Marlborough CC), where I spent an enjoyable couple of years cricketing around the Midlands with David Genge, Stan Redding, John Green and others presumably long gone now* – this would have been around 1970. On leaving school I joined a rather posher club, Aston Manor CC who played (indeed they still do) in north Birmingham. There I scored my one and only century, 104 not out as we recovered from 29-2 to 231-2 dec. A couple of weeks later I was out for 96 but I assumed that the years ahead would bring many more centuries. If only I’d known. A few names from those days* – Tony Thane, Roy Cutler, Billy McDonough, Bob Lawrence, Malcolm Hayward, Peter Tucker, Barry Holbutt, Dennis Cottrell**, Arthur Hodgetts, Keith Forman, Brian Mason, Peter Bilton, Gil Secker, my schoolmates Phil Bragg and Colin Prentice [and, via the comment below, Dave Lowe, Bob Rogers, Iain Woods, John Dymock.] A good bunch of lads with whom I enjoyed playing on many of the Midlands’ most picturesque grounds and always with plenty of beer to follow, win or lose.

Farmers’ Field, Jersey

Moving to Jersey in 1977 I hooked up with St Ouen CC and played with them until about 2004. Along the way I played evening cricket with the legendary Jersey United Banks RFC who provided not only intra-match beers for ourselves but also for that evening’s opposition. By now, limited overs cricket was becoming the norm with little chance of settling down to play a long, steady knock. Instead of improving I regressed until one day, in the middle of a match, the penny dropped. I was no longer enjoying the game and I packed it in at the end of that season to concentrate on my work with Jersey Spartan Athletics.

Now I can’t even be bothered to turn my head and watch a match as I pass by, something which would have been unthinkable 34 years previously.

*= names may be added as I remember them 🙂

**= One afternoon Dennis was opening the bowling and I and another young player were fielding in the slips. In a short space of time, two or three edges had eluded us to Dennis’s loud frustration. After consulting with the skipper, two more experienced players were moved into the slips and us two were ordered, in disgrace, to the outfield where we could do less damage to our team’s prospects.

Back at Hamptonne

19 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in Jersey local history, Writing

≈ 26 Comments

Hurrah, Jersey Heritage’s sites are open once more for the season. With light Covid restrictions of course but open nonetheless.

The sites are (inside) Jersey Museum and Maritime Museum (outside) La Hougue Bie, Mont Orgueil, Elizabeth Castle and Hamptonne Country Life Museum. I have the great pleasure of working two days a week at Hamptonne on the front desk.

You’d have thought it might have been quiet this morning for my first shift, especially as I’d entirely forgotten the workings of the till and associated systems, my login passwords etc. But no, Hamptonne is a regular meet-up location for nannies and childminders and in they poured on the dot of 10 o’clock, young charges in tow, old and young flying through the shop, membership passes being flashed my way, chicken food being politely demanded. Track and Trace contact details to be collected. After a while the wave subsided and I was able to draw breath.

Hamptonne House

Hamptonne sits amongst quiet lanes in the middle of Jersey, not easy to find. The buildings date back 400 years and are quite beautiful. But the local families are more interested in the animals and open spaces, a lovely place for the often town bound kids. We have chickens free-ranging around and rabbits in the stables. New this season are sheep in the meadow and piglets to replace the monster hogs that virtually needed dynamite last October to shift them to wherever fully-grown pigs go. Finally, a couple of Jersey calves, the prettiest breed of cows.

The new Hamptonne sheep

A Gardien is in overall charge of each site, a VSA (Visitor Services Assistant) at front of house. In addition there is a regular stream of volunteers. Today, for example, we had Dave as Visitor Host who took some of the heat off me at the desk whilst providing good football chat in quieter moments. There are Tour Guides and, later in the season, we’ll see a bit of Living History, guys and gals that dress and act as if in the good old days.

Like all hospitality businesses, Heritage have struggled with the pandemic but we are well supported by the government. It’s nice to be able to open on time but everyone hopes that we’ll soon be able to welcome overseas visitors once more.

The Age of the Takeaway

29 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by in Jersey, Channel Islands, Writing

≈ 32 Comments

A rainy old day. I ran around the coast road to Gorey Pier – a regular little run – ready with my bus pass to get the no.1 bus back to my starting point. The harbour area is a pleasant spot in the shade of Mont Orgueil and busy with tourists in a normal summer. There’s a large, four-sided shelter where the buses turn around. The benches on all four sides were occupied this day. The bus arrived and I hesitated, waiting for those who had arrived earlier to climb aboard.

No one from the shelter moved a muscle. On I got and off we went.

It’s the new phenomenon, here in Jersey at least. The cafés, unable to seat customers due to Covid restrictions have embraced the takeaway (‘takeout’ in the States I believe). So where do you go with your takeaway? Of course, one of the many shelters constructed for bus passengers or, elsewhere, for the weary tourist. They’re packed. The rubbish bins are full of cardboard cups and more bins have had to be deployed at popular spots.

This pandemic has certainly galvanised many local businesses into survival mode and who have made changes to adapt to the new circumstances. One of the striking first examples of this was at the time of the first lockdown in March of last year. Suddenly our local fishermen had no sales outlets for their catches. What did they do? They started selling right there from the harbour, from the boats, via a hurried social media campaign. The response from the locals was excellent.

Photo by Melvin Wahlin on Pexels.com

For general food shopping, queues formed outside supermarkets due to restrictions on numbers. In response, the supermarkets started to offer home deliveries, taking on extra staff to do so. Not to offer delivery was to risk losing market share.

Non-food retailers, classed as non-essential and therefore restricted even more, started to offer Click-and-Collect, rarely heard of before. Many upped their online presence with many more people now finding it easier to shop from their armchairs.

And never mind the cafés, the high-end restaurants are now offering takeaways and home deliveries to keep a little income flowing before life returns to ‘normal’. My local Chinese takeaway was rushed off its feet during first lockdown, the delivery guys couldn’t cope. However they are now quieter than previously as so many other places have joined the battle for the home delivery market. (Personally I still don’t understand why many people won’t stretch their legs a few yards to collect their food but I guess these are the times we live in.)

And when this is all over our retail landscape will most certainly have changed forever. I doubt it will be benefitting our previously thriving town centres though.

The Lighthouse Keeper

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in Writing

≈ 29 Comments

I left St Philip’s Grammar School, Birmingham in the early summer of 1971. I’d scraped three middling ‘A’ Levels. I didn’t have a clue what to do next.

At St Philip’s, once you had signified you had no interest in going on to university you became a non-person. All you were doing there was damaging their statistics by drifting away into the general world of work. I recall one interview with a disinterested careers teacher, the task probably an unwanted add-on to his normal job. He had no more clue than me, which is why he was a teacher I suppose. I think any of us that went to see him got the same takeaways – try Banking or Insurance.

Yeah, I did six weeks at Eagle Star Insurance on the Hagley Road, since airbrushed from any subsequent CV. I was so miserable in the office there that I pushed my resignation letter under the manager’s door, walked out of the building and never heard from them again.

I had no plan and no one to turn to really. All I really liked was my sport. I wrote (this was well before internet days of course) to the elite PE colleges of the day, Loughborough and Carnegie. I even went up to Carnegie in Leeds but recall nothing of the college or interview. Anyway, though I loved my sport I wasn’t considered good enough at it to tempt those bastions. Perhaps if I’d aimed lower, if I’d been advised where to aim, then my career might have been very different.

I spent hours wandering around Birmingham trying to find inspiration. I found none in the then heavily-industrialised streets though I’ve since developed a great liking for post-industrial landscapes. I wrote other letters. I was invited to interview for an apprenticeship at British Leyland – I didn’t go. British Rail sent me a rail ticket to London to attend an interview. I used the ticket to go and see a football match instead.

I earnt a bit of money in a few local factories doing odd jobs, sweeping etc. I don’t think I impressed the foremen, neither did I fancy it as a long-term prospect.

I spent time in the local library – they had a couple of big books on careers. I studied them for hours looking for something that I might be suited to. Everything under the sun, and I had qualifications for most but I was in a hopeless rut. So hopeless that I kept turning to the same section in the middle of the book, Lighthouse Keeper.

Lighthouse Keeper. I rather fancied that. In Birmingham you’re pretty far from the sea so it would be an adventure. The money wasn’t bad. The way of life appealed to me – weeks at a time on duty, then a free week or two. Not much to do, how difficult could it be to keep a light from going out? I liked reading, I’d have plenty of time.

I never got around to writing to Trinity House. I never got around to doing anything much. In February 1972 I sort of fell into the world of accountancy and never left. I see they don’t need lighthouse keepers these days but I still wish I’d had a go.

My Running in 2020

25 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by in Running, Writing

≈ 14 Comments

Tradition dictates that, at this time of year, I summarise how my running’s gone recently. I first started to take running seriously in early 2003, as I approached my 50th birthday. Getting involved in admin and coaching at Jersey Spartan AC was the main driver in this. The energy of the kids at the track was infectious and I started to contemplate my own comparative lack of fitness. And I’d also got slightly annoyed at one or two of the road runners challenging me to come and race. Well, since then I have got huge enjoyment as well as physical and mental benefits from this slightly crazy hobby.

With Laura, tracing the path of the German rail line, Pont Marquet to Ronez

But, as any runner will tell you, it’s a sport with more than its share of ups and downs. If you don’t have a bit of mental fortitude and ‘bouncebackability’ you had better take up something else.

In darkest Trinity, which way?

2020 was no different. The simple fact of the matter was, as the year commenced, I was carrying too much weight. Again. How often have I been there? Two years previously I was fit and flying, now I was huffing and puffing, everything a big effort. On 1st March I ran a hopeless 58.30 10k in what turned out to be the last race before Covid struck. Falling and bashing my ribs didn’t help for a week or two either.

What a summer we had to compensate for our troubles

Lockdown, and what did I do? With genuine good intentions, instead of frequenting the fresh food aisles of the supermarket I decided to support the local corner shop in these troubled times. What the corner shop sells is convenient but rarely conducive to healthy living. I continued running after a fashion but it was now becoming something I wasn’t looking forward to. Walk breaks during runs had become the rule rather the exception.

With the Jersey Joggers (once allowed) here at the quirkily historic quarry horse layby at Handois

Meanwhile my daughter Emma (who has yet to beat me in a race) had lost weight after consulting a local sports nutritionist Kit Chamier. She was flying as a result. The penny dropped. I went to see Kit and it was comedy gold as I wondered aloud to him where I was going wrong, talked him through my general diet, and watched him rolling around on the carpet, helpless with laughter. The scales told the horrible truth. He sent me away with simple, strict instructions and a weekly spreadsheet to fill in and send back to him.

And here at one of our ancient dolmens

And, Dear Reader, I am now finishing up Week 15. Plenty of weight lost, plenty to go. And (amazingly) I’m running pretty well again and always eager to get my shoes on. In spite of everything I’ve completed 800+ miles and – much more importantly – maybe I now have a lifetime template for healthy eating and enjoyable running. We’ll see. Check back this time next year by which time, surely, we’ll be back racing again.

Jersey’s stunning south coast cliffs

The End of the World

10 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by in Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Thoughts on family survival from the talented storyteller Naomi Baltuck.

Writing Between the Lines

©2020 Naomi Baltuck

I dedicate this story to Jamie G. Dedes, my friend and the founder and editor of the BeZine.  When she was diagnosed with a fatal lung disease, she must have felt like her world, as she knew it, had ended.  But her poetry, more than ever, hummed with truth and wisdom, each poem a love letter to the sweetness and bittersweetness of life.  Jamie built a new world, and with all her disabilities, she lived every day with more life and love and energy and purpose than any able bodied person I know.  She pulled together a global collective of poets, artists and writers dedicated to peace, sustainability, and social justice to carry on her work.  Her life was a gift she shared with us all, and her legacy timeless.

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Written in the Stars

25 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by in Ireland, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

I blogged about Ireland’s Bloody Sunday some time ago. In a nutshell, on 21st November 1920, in reprisal for IRA assasinations earlier that day, British military forces went along and sprayed bullets around Croke Park in Dublin where the Dublin team were playing Tipperary at Gaelic football.

15 were killed or fatally injured, and many wounded. Amongst those killed was Michael Hogan, the Tipperary captain.

Michael Hogan

Last weekend was 100 years since those landmark events. The provincial Gaelic football finals were played, amongst them the Munster final Tipperary v Cork. Tipp hadn’t won the Munster championship since 1935, i.e. 85 years ago – Kerry (especially) and Cork habitually fight it out amongst themselves.

It was written in the stars that Tipp would win, which they duly did, thus honouring their former captain who was taken too soon.

And another strange coincidence occurred. That year, 1920, the provincial champions were:
Munster – Tipperary
Leinster – Dublin
Connacht – Mayo
Ulster – Cavan

That was how they finished last weekend as well.

Songs for my Funeral

15 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by in Music, Writing

≈ 21 Comments

Not that I’m expecting it or anything, but neither was Gary Burgess and he’s way younger than me.

I’ve not been to too many funerals in recent times but it seems that, generally speaking, you (or your family) can have a say in how the ceremony goes. And I believe the general idea these days is that funeral clothes and black ties are no longer à la mode.

My Mum is having a good go, like Eleanor of Aquitaine, in outliving her children. In which case I’ll be upsetting her by rejecting a Catholic funeral and going Humanist. These affairs, I understand, don’t include religious content, including traditional hymns. But, for starters, let’s have a look at the most popular, traditional hymns taken from a random website.
1. Amazing Grace
2. Going Home
3. Abide With Me
4. How Great Thou Art
5. All Things Bright and Beautiful
6. The Old Rugged Cross
7. Morning Has Broken
8. Great is Thy Faithfulness
9. What a Friend We Have in Jesus
10. Be Thou My Vision

Umm, no, though presumably I’ll not be that bothered on the day.

So what are my picks? I’ve always had two in mind but today I added a third possible. The two are
1. Rest In Peace, (Mott the Hoople). Written in 1974, it was already a retrospective. It has stood the test of time and, as the original members of the band have started to pass on it has gained in poignancy.
2. Meet on the Ledge, (Fairport Convention). It wasn’t written as a song about death, but it can be beautifully imagined as such.

And the third, the one I decided on earlier. Another Mott the Hoople number performed here by leader Ian Hunter, now 81. Saturday Gigs is an old Mott fans’ favourite and is rich with nostalgia.

Which might leave me with two more picks, not sure how many are allowed. I might go back to my teen years for the first. Clear White Light by Lindisfarne, the folk/rock band which has achieved sainthood in the north-east of England. This was one of their signature songs.

Finally, one I doubt would get the nod even from the most liberal of celebrants and tolerant of family and friends. Black Sabbath were a shock metal band from Birmingham, playing the pubs and clubs when I was in my final years at school. Ozzie and mates have apparently played their last after a mega career, but Sleeping Village (and its iconic cover, below) remains one of their best songs. (On re-listening, maybe best played quietly in the background as the few mourners arrive.)

So, have you thought about your selection?

Life and death

05 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Writing

≈ 8 Comments

An incredibly sad but typically eloquent and brave piece of writing by one of Jersey’s most respected journalists.

Gary’s Chemo Diary

Yesterday I found out I will die soon.

A half hour video call with my oncologist in Southampton concluded I have a life expectancy of six to twelve months as my cancer is terminal.

The nasties growing between my heart and lung that three months of “salvage chemotherapy” had shrunk earlier this year have come back to life, but there are now more, and the expectation is they will continue to do their thing, possibly making their way to my liver, my brain and elsewhere in my body. They’re inoperable. There isn’t a treatment left to get rid of them.

I’m apparently unusual (I knew that!), with my oncologist seeing only one such case of this rare cancer each year.

There is a chemotherapy treatment that has the potential to add a few extra weeks, maybe months, to my life, but the trade off is the loss of quality of…

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Whistling, a Lost Art?

31 Saturday Oct 2020

Posted by in Uncategorized, Writing

≈ 11 Comments

A man may whistle and a man may sing
A man can do a thousand things
But a whistling woman and a crowing hen
May bring the Devil out of his den
Maxine Peake

When was the last time a man in a hat walked down your street whistling a merry tune? No, nor me. In fact, was there ever a time when people really whistled? I mean, whistled casually rather than as an entertainment? Maybe that image was more in the imagination – or absorbed from mid-century Hollywood or Elstree Studios films.

However, Charles Dickens in Pickwick Papers recounted “To the great horror of Mr John Smauker, Sam Weller began to whistle. ‘I beg your pardon Mr Weller’ said Mr John Smauker, agonised at the exceedingly ungenteel sound.”

Indeed, the stereotype I have in mind is of a cheery butcher’s boy or newspaper boy out on delivery, and of more genteel boys being warned not to lower their standards to such levels.

And those piercing whistles with the aid of fingers in the mouth? I used to have a friend who could split stones at a dozen paces with one of those.

And those wolf whistles – now generally frowned upon – aimed by workmen at a cutie walking by. Said cutie was supposed to smile, perhaps wave, or she’d be subject to rather less complimentary comments.

Whistling is actually a traditional language in La Gomera, one of the smaller Canary Islands, so much so that it is studied in schools to keep the language alive.

Did soldiers whistle? John Keegan Casey (1846 – 70) appears to think so in The Rising of the Moon commemorating the 1798 Irish uprising.

One more word for signal token, whistle up the marching tune
With your pike upon your shoulder at the rising of the moon.

Colonel Bogey and When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again also suggest a tradition when soldiers might have whistled a marching tune if unsure of the words.

Whistling has a long history in music hall and vaudeville. Here in Jersey a lady called Doreen Le Maistre did a ‘Whistle and Saw’ act during the Occupation. Ronnie Ronalde was a rather more famous star with yodelling and bird imitation among his other talents.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) gave us Whistle While You Work which went on to epitomise the British war effort a few years later.

There are many examples in popular music. Perhaps Otis Redding’s Sitting on the Dock of the Bay has one of the more memorable whistling passages.

But to conclude I give you Whistling Jack Smith aka Billy Moeller aka actor Coby Wells who was a Jersey resident for a while in the late 1970s and who was no mean cricketer who I played against on several occasions. He was the public face of the hit I was Kaiser Bill’s Batman – here is Billy.