Trophy room

I say!

Well, I would just like to distance myself from the proposal that Lord's should be renamed the Menzies Milngavie III Cricket Ground. I can understand the appeal of such a name, and would like to thank those who made the proposal, but I feel that Lords is Lords, and should remain as such. Doviko sent off his stash of Zim $5 billion to some website he found about the possible renaming, in the hope of influencing the decision. I've told him that Zim dollars are worthless nowadays, but he'd like it back anyway because a brick of notes makes quite good kindling.

Last week the Smondays lived up to their name. I didn't receive The Sunday Times until Wednesday. I think a London flight to Lilongwe was cancelled, or something. Anyway, when the paper did arrive, I noticed an item about Richard Dunn. In May 1976 Richard Dunn fought Muhammad Ali for the world boxing championship. The first part of the fight is embedded below. Dunn does Ok for the first three rounds. Ali hurts him in the second round, but he comes back at Ali.



The second part of the fight is shown below. In the fourth round, Dunn goes down three times. In the fifth, he's down twice more, the last time to a wind-up punch by Ali. Dunn's quote in the Times last week was "I'd taken his best shots. I'd been down five times, true. But what people forget is, I got up five times. I thought I could go on and do some damage." I say! What an indomitable spirit! Dunn was later knocked out by Joe Bugner - and I see that Joe is now one of the celebs in the jungle!



We were invited round to Henry Dixon's house the other night. He lives half way up the plateau. Seen a bit of action over the years, so he has. Hands shake a bit nowadays, but his stories of the good old days up in Fort Portal are something else.

Here's a snap of his trophy room. Bit over the top, I thought.


MM III

How we could do better in Afghanistan

I say!

Some commentators have suggested that we should pull out of Afghanistan. Well, it's certainly a fact that essentially some hill tribesmen gave our lads a bit of a doing recently, but I don't think we should be too negative about this. I've given this quite a bit of thought, and after reading the in-depth report on the BBC I think that the solution is to provide better support, plus more suitable personnel with better kit, and just go out there with all guns firing, as it were. Insisting on playing with a Duke ball might help as well, as our lads are much more familiar with it.

I recieved a rambling email from Brian Wilson today. More rambling than usual, because for once he appeared to be sober, but it's difficult to tell. He told me that he'd attended a book festival at a place called Lennoxlove House, in East Lothian, on Friday evening. Apparently most of the Edinburgh literati were there, though not Hotboy, which was a surprise, but it did probably result in less heckling from the floor. He said that it was as if half of the Edinburgh New Town was in the audience, with plenty of bow ties, shawls, tweeds and scarves on view. The occasion was a presentation by Alexander McCall Smith who, of course, has written several books set in Botswana, Edinburgh, and more recently London.

Well, when Brian Wilson said that he'd chatted to McCall Smith afterwards and had mentioned my name, I got worried. I certainly don't want to be closely associated with Wilson, but fortunately Sandy McCall Smith and my own paths have not directly crossed in the past, so that was a relief. I hope that Wilson kept his teeth in, in Sandy's presence.

From the website, Lennoxlove castle looks lovely. I must arrange a tour on my next visit to Dear Old Blighty.

MM III

Bats, war between France and England, etc

I say,

Well the break between cricket series has enabled me to read a couple of non-cricketing books and do some investigations on the Web.

Firstly, here is an item that may interest many readers of this blog. It's about bats. And I don't mean cricket bats!

Secondly, the last war between France and England was fought over the great game of cricket, and it happened, not as you might expect in very distant times, but rather between 1940 and 1942. I've been reading "England's last war against France" by Colin Smith for more details. Very interesting.

The historic records show that in France, cricket was banned as an ‘alien’ sport in 1940 by the collaborationist Vichy government. Well, that insult was enough to get the blood up, and soon both countries were actually fighting, in England, northern Africa, Madagascar, and Palestine. And it was, at times, a vicious war.

Of course, the French started it - when two Royal Navy officers and a French warrant officer were fatally wounded on board the Surcouf, which was berthed in Plymouth.

The fighting extended to Madagascar, in the Battle of Majunga, where 12 British forces were killed.

There was a lot more fighting, at the Battle of Palmyra in Syria, for example. At Palmyra, it was the sight of the ancient cricket ground, that I reported upon in May of this year, that got the two sides started. Major general Bill Slim and the 10th Indian Division, supported by Roald Dahl, the fighter pilot and later author, and the Australian Peter Turnbull (not Peter Turnbull the right-hand batsman), in his Tomahawk fighter, fought it out with the Vichy forces.

Eventually, the Brits won.

The person who started all the trouble, in 1940, was Pierre Laval. He didn't enjoy the great game of cricket at all. Well, in 1945 he was found guilty of high treason. Just before he was about to face the firing squad he took some cyanide. Fortunately, a prison doctor got to him with a stomach pump, and within an hour he was deemed conscious enough to face the firing squad. One can only wonder what his stars said for that day.

So ended the last war between England and France.

Since then, the French have come to their senses about the great game of cricket, and have agreed to a rematch in Lille, where I will be inspecting the pitch.

MM III

Have your say on The Question of the moment

I say!

What is your favourite tipple? Is it BrewDog, or The Dalmore? I invite the legions of regular readers of this blog to vote with a Comment.

Of course, neither is a patch on good old MG&T.

For something entirely different, see here. The rumour currently circulating the Masongola is that Albert is planning to hold Duneditin 2010 on one of these islands. It's also rumoured that Hotboy may relocate his hut to the Suwarrow Atoll.

MM III

Where was I eating this time?

I say!

I was recently the occasion of the 150th anniversary of David Livingstone being the first European to visit Malawi. At the time, "his bowels bled constantly". But DL was very tough.

He came past the end of the road, here at Kalimbuka, where he was sold some rotten eggs. Somehow, he didn't know the trick of licking one end of the eggs to see whether the other end warmed up, or not. I always do this when buying eggs in the market.

The missionaries who followed on from Livingstone established a church at Cape Maclear, known locally as Chembe, and then another one further north at Bandawe, and then they moved up to Livingstonia, where the climate was better. There's a lovely church and stone cottage there now. A few years ago, when Mrs M and myself were up in that area, we happened upon a very old and partially blind man, to whom we got talking. As a child, this man could remember being taught by Dr Robert Laws, who had been inspired by DL to come to Malawi (Nyasaland, as it then was).

All this has nothing to do with the fact that during a break from endless discussions at a Pitch Advisor's Colloquium not so long ago, where the main topic of conversation was a radical proposal to change the proportion of seven parts chewings fescue to three parts bentgrass, to six parts chewings fescue to four parts bentgrass (rejected after lengthy discussion) I found myself in a delightful restaurant with some friends.

Below is a snap I took of my main course. Below that is a snap of the (shared) first course (which was historic). Can you guess the nationality of the restaurant in which I enjoyed the meal? And what exactly was I eating for the main course?



MM III

Walrus lunch

I say!

I've been very much enjoying reading "Into the abyss" by Benedict Allen. When it gets hot here in Kalimbuka, it's nice to read about colder climates.

Anyway, Benedict writes about lunch in the Chukchi Peninsula:

"They were hacking into the walrus, and even though frozen, their picnic reeked.

'Here's yours!' said Yasha, proffering a slice on the tip of his knife. I looked at it: the fat a centimetre thick, the fibrous fishy flesh tinged with pondweed green and accompanied by that dustin odour of old fish...I opted for a slab of the whale meat, chewing the tyre-tread skin and inch of fat through to the finely threaded beefy flesh that you'd hope for in such a grazer."

Hmm. Yummy. I wonder what Doviko has cooked up for tea tonight.

MM III

Cricket and the Viking Seneschals of Skye

I say!

One of the places Mrs M and myself visited as part of the Duneditin 2009 Conference extracurricular activities was Dunvegan Castle, which is situated to the north west of the island of Skye.


Above is a snap I took of the magnificent pile.


The snap above was taken from the south.

Anyway, a bit of history. A long, long time ago, in the 13th Century, a viking called Leod (which means 'Ugly') who was the younger son of Olaf the Black, married the heiress of the Macarailts, and as a result acquired Dunvegan Castle. Incidentally, the MacLeods have been based there ever since.

Well, you might think, after looking at the two snaps above, that Leod wanted to get his hands on the castle. However, the castle in those days wasn't the prime real estate that it is today. In fact, it was little more than a basic fort in those days.

Anyway, Leod's motto, which is still the motto of the MacLeod clan today, was "Hold fast" (the modern interpretation of the motto is shown below). I have it on the best authority that "Hold Fast" doesn't have the military meaning that you might expect (i.e. that it has something to do with holding the line during battle). Neither is the tradition saying that one day Tormod (1509–1584), the 12th chief of Clan MacLeod, sprang into a ring armed with only his dirk to save a man condemned to be gored to death by a bull, and attacked the bull, holding it by it's horns and shouting "Hold fast", correct.

No. I have it on the best authority that Leod was a great cricket fan, and that in the middle of a match between two groups of vikings, on a balmy summer's afternoon in the 13th century, the oposing team's opening batsman skied a ball. Leod, who was watching from long leg, jumped up, and exclaimed "Hold fast to that ball!" Over great periods of time, this quote has become corrupted into "Hold fast to that bull!", and hence the mistaken symbol of the bull in the middle of the motto, which, as anyone can see, is really in the shape of a cricket ball with the seam having been lifted towards the bottom.

Now that I've cleared that up, and if any more proof were needed, we have the snap I took below. It shows the view towards the south west taken from Dunvegan Castle. This mountain, known as the 'Macleod Table' is obviously what attracted Leod to the area. It is flat topped, and was obviously where Leod and his team played cricket, within view of the castle, where the ladies of the castle prepared the cucumber sandwiches for tea.

There is a great tradition of cricket in ancient Scotland, as I showed some time ago in another post.


MM III