This is a bit personal, and it’s real, but I have permission from Boadicea to publish it. So delicate flowers should perhaps read no further … Read more…
It’s been heart-warming to read (now that I can read again) all your good wishes and remarks, and it’s about time that I thanked you, individually and as a group, for your support and encouragement.
Thanks!!
Six weeks and a day ago, someone turned my lights off – put my processor into hibernate and pulled the plug. That was the last I knew until about two weeks ago, when it began to occur to me that I was a person tucked up in an intensive care ward, that the wonderful caring person who helped look after me each day was in fact my angel of a wife – Boadicea, and that it was time for me to fire up the backups, reboot my software, engage the language routines and start behaving like a human again. It took a couple of days to get going, but, touch wood and whistle, it’s been upwards ever since.
So, a week ago tomorrow I was released to continue my recuperation at home. I am indebted to the paramedics and ambos who took me safely and swiftly to the emergency theatre; to the doctors and surgeons of the team who spent three hours reconstructing my cranium, and to the nurses and specialist technicians who kept me functioning while I was away with the fairies in cyber, hyperspace where time has no meaning. To my GP and all the other experts who did their essential best. Thank you all.
I’ll spare you the details – and I’d probably get them wrong – but if you met me you’d probably be hard pushed to detect anything wrong (though there are still a few things that have yet to put themselves right). Perhaps I’m a little more polite and tolerant than I used to be, and readier to acknowledge other people’s point of view, but there again, perhaps I’m not.
Best wishes to all Charioteers. 
It was in my first year at college (read Uni these days) that I realised that many people hate to admit that they don’t understand something, or that they are unfamiliar with something or someone. My school, perhaps unusually, had drummed it into us that it was our duty as students to ask questions when we did not understand, so that we could learn and thereby cease to be ignorant. That was what education was about: if you don’t ‘get it’ – ask! Read more…
Heartfelt thanks to the four brave Charioteers who entered January’s competition. I must confess that I was disappointed not to see a contribution from our Edinburgh lawyer, but that’s the way the haggis crumbles, I guess. Only joshing, JM – I know your time is constrained. Read more…
Thursday 26th January is Australia Day. It’s also Republic Day in India, but more about that later.
It’s a national holiday when we all enjoy ourselves, hold citizenship ceremonies and generally celebrate all that’s good about The Lucky Country.
This year’s Australian of the Year is a popular choice – Geoffrey Rush (Speech Therapist in The King’s Speech, and many other notable rôles). I didn’t catch the entirety of his acceptance speech, but it was good-humoured and staunchly Australian. Here’s a quote -
We love acting the goat, taking the mickey, cracking a joke, spinning a yarn …
Following Soutie’s lead, here’s another colourful picture to brighten the Chariot.
3/335, with Pup on 140 and Punter on 137. Sydney revisited? Let’s hope so.
If this means nothing to you, please don’t worry about it, but you can click on the piccie if you want to find out. Cricket Tragics won’t need to.
I have refrained from posting about the Perth Test, where both teams appear to be intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but I cannot resist pasting this extract from an article penned by Andrew Hughes in Cricinfo.
Talking about India’s selection for this match, he observes -
… experience leads me to suggest that the kind of team they will pick will be one that looks good on paper, sets off with purpose, gets within sniffing distance of the outskirts of victory, then wanders off to sit in a field making daisy chains before falling asleep under a bush.
While I’m here, how amusing that Sachin Tendulkar, usually known as “The Little Master”, is now being referred to in some Australian newspapers as “The Little Brat”, following his visible disbelief and subsequent hissy fit at his dismissal for lbw.
Sri Lankan umpire Kumar Dharmasena gave him out, and the DRS system – which cannot be used officially because the Indians refuse to accept it – clearly demonstrated that the umpire was right.
The Saffers continue to defeat Sri Lanka, I see, but only with 8 balls to spare in the latest ODI. Officially they won by five wickets, but squeaking in by the skin of their teeth sounds more appropriate to me.
Back to where it all began, with a sonnet. Any rhyming scheme you like, but it must be 14 lines of iambic pentameters (with conventionally acceptable variants).
Subject – Waterstone’s or Waterstones.
Deadline – Sunday 29th January, midnight GMT.
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