Month: March 2018

Sandpapergate!

Ten or so years ago, a BBC ‘quote of the week’ came from Brent Cockbain, then a Welsh international rugby player, who had said: “You cheat and cheat until you get caught out and then you cheat some more“.

Of course with the advent of in-game ‘big screen’ video replays, sometimes those that cheat are made to look extremely foolish, as when an open-handed slap from an opponent causes one of rugby’s tough guys to hit the ground as if he’d been pole-axed by Muhammad Ali in his prime (yes, that’s you I’m talking about, Donncha O’Callaghan!).

All of which calls into question the wisdom and judgement of the senior leaders of Australia’s national cricket team, some of whom have just been sent home from their current tour of South Africa for a rather too obvious attempt to cheat.

Scuffing one half of a cricket ball whilst ‘polishing’ the other half is a well-known ploy to make a cricket ball ‘swing’ in flight; a means to make life more difficult for the batsman.

And, as with many things, there are ways and means to achieve this, but I’m not sure that taking sandpaper from your pocket to illegally roughen the scuffed side of the ball is the wisest thing to do, particularly in an international match when the TV cameras cover your every move!

That sort of stupidity pales into insignificance when the umpires later ask you to turn out your pockets due to their suspicions of cheating and you pull out a hanky and lie to them, only for the TV footage of you previously stuffing sandpaper down the front of your trousers to be shown on the stadium’s big screens.

So, this is my take on the affair:

Time will show that history recalls
The discredit that surely befalls
Australian cricket
Whose search for a wicket
Made the bowler sandpaper his balls!

Postscript: The proud Welsh rugby ‘cheat’ quoted at the top of this post only qualified as Welsh through his residency status, having moved to Wales as a 25-year-old before serving the requisite three-year residency period. Where did he hail from? Er, that would be Australia. Strewth, mate!

A race to the bottom…

(Readers of a sensitive nature look away now!)

A few years ago I was surprised to see a sticker in the toilet cubicles of a German research institute. It comprised a humorous cartoon that illustrated the purpose and use of a lavatory brush and it made me wonder what had happened that obliged it to remind its staff and visitors about basic lavatorial hygiene.

Since then it’s been alarming to know that my place of work has, on occasion, had to resort to posting notes in cubicles to remind colleagues and visitors to leave the ‘facilities’ in the condition they would expect to find them.

So it was of concern recently to read an institute-wide message that re-iterated the need for lavatorial cleanliness and, thus, this week’s limerick hit the fan. It initially comprised part of a poster that I pinned to my office door (to much critical acclaim); however, I took it down on learning that the ‘incidents’ in question were not simply of inconsiderate use, but something more sinister and worrying.

Anyway, here’s the poster and limerick…

On the right track …

“However ordinary each of us may seem, we are all in some way special, and can do things that are extraordinary, perhaps until then…even thought impossible“

Sir Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

At the age of 88, Roger Bannister has died. No-one with the slightest interest in athletics needs to be reminded of his achievement on the running track, but, for any who remain ignorant of it, on 6 May 1954 he became the first person officially to run a mile in under four minutes.

It was a new world record (obviously), albeit one that was eclipsed just a month or so later by an Australian runner, John Landy. Records are made to be broken yet Bannister’s achievement remains the stuff of legend because, quite simply, the four-minute mile was the middle-distance runner’s Holy Grail and Bannister claimed its discovery. It was also done in a gloriously Corinthian spirit. Bannister was a true amateur who trained in his spare time away from his medical studies in Oxford

His two pacemakers on that day in Oxford were Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway, both middle-distance runners. Brasher, who paced the first half-mile, later won an Olympic gold in the 3000m steeplechase and Chataway, who finished second at Oxford (and broke the world 5000m record later the same year) paced the remainder until Bannister’s finishing sprint. All three became household names and the two pacemakers remained firmly in the public eye, perhaps more so than Bannister, due to their mix of business, broadcasting and political careers.

It might have made sense back then, I wasn’t around so can’t tell, but it seems inconceivable to me that Bannister then lost out to Chataway to become the BBC’s inaugural Sporting Personality of the Year. To me that’s a calumny that ranks alongside The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York being kept off the 1987 UK Christmas number one spot by the Pet Shop Boys’ cover version of Always on my Mind, or Dances with Wolves getting the 1990 best film Oscar ahead of Goodfellas or Forrest Gump getting it in 1994 instead of Pulp Fiction.

Yet despite his sporting achievement, Bannister’s subsequent career as a consultant neurologist and researcher gave him greater pride if less-widespread renown. As a physician he appears to have been universally liked by his patients and medical peers and, from reading obituaries about him and their ‘below the line’ comments, what stands tall is his fundamental decency. That really appeals to me as my profile on this blog states “Values decency over achievement” in Bannister’s case he had both. In spades!

So, it’s limerick-as-obituary time again …

When you ran past the track’s finish line
 The stopwatch read three-fifty-nine.
 Thus the four-minute mile
Was beaten in style,
But now, sadly, you’ve run out of time

 

 

 

One should not simply gloss over these things…

We’re soon to undergo a kitchen refurbishment that entails among the many other things you would expect:

• a wall to be knocked through;
• the replacement of two hot water cylinders and five (yes, five) cold water storage tanks by a single pressurised cylinder system;
• sunken LED lights to be fitted in the ceiling.

Naturally, we’re getting the professionals in, but we still have to do some preparatory work.

The plaster work around the knocked-through wall and the ceiling will need to be made good after the rest of the works are finished. That means we have to strip the existing wallpaper and ceiling paper back to the plaster before the professionals start.

That has been easier said than done. It turns out the walls had wallpaper on top of lining paper (no problem there) on top of lining paper on top of paint on top of wallpaper on top of some Victorian laquer on top of wallpaper, and then the plaster.

The lacquered layer has been particularly difficult to remove, but that pales into insignificance compared to the ceiling where we had textured paint on wallpaper on paint on lining paper. With no way to score through the textured paint, it has been hell to strip (with the job still unfinished as I write – three days solid work so far).

So, in ‘honour’ of all those DIY handymen that repeatedly paper or paint over the existing decoration instead of doing a PROPER job, I give you:

I’m not a DIY master
And progress could surely be faster.
But the problem I have
Is the handyman chav
That put artex on paper on plaster!

(rant over)