Sat-Navs and the jury

Within the last ten months I’ve had three interesting experiences with Sat-Nav users. Asked by a friend to help fetch a washing machine, he picked me up in his big French hatchback. After punching in the data off we went. Less than a kilometre from my house we were in trouble.

In spite of my protestations his Sat-Nav insisted we approach a bridge from the south, which we did. Unfortunately, at the junction duly marked, and with a strangled voice telling us to turn left, we had to decline. The bridge was 20 metres above the road we were on and because French cars don’t do steps we retraced ours.

Having used his Sat-Nav to travel halfway across Germany, another friend arrived at Utrecht by motorbike at 1400 hours. Red faced and indignant he turned up at my place one and a half hours later.

Finally, another friend used his to travel to a ski resort in Austria. It directed him to the border; the resort was but an hour away. Two hours later he phoned us. As he was unable to tell us where he was we were unable to tell him which way to go. Having bought a map, he turned up five hours later.

Is it true that the jury is still out on Sat-Navs?

Cricket is about balls

England regaining the Ashes reminded me of my childhood. I was hit by a cricket ball in the epicentre of my sex life when I was about thirteen years old. I thanked God I was still a soprano. From then on, having been already hit on the nose when I was nine, I became very wary of cricket balls that bounced higher than ten centimetres. If anyone asked me to be the first batsman to face a fresh fast bowler, I told them to ‘f…find someone else’.

These revelations should tell those who know nothing about cricket and say ‘it’s boring’, that saying ‘cricket is boring’ is as daft as saying ‘sex is boring’. The fact that sex is boring is obvious, to some. I know sex is boring because my agreement to participate in it is, for obvious reasons, limited, and has been since I was thirteen years old. Headaches were another problem. How I fathered two children remains a mystery to me.

‘Cricket! Lovely cricket’, has been around a long time. They say it’s been played since Tudor times, since Elizabeth 1^st was Queen of England, from a time when we were kicking Spanish arse all over the globe. Had the Spanish played cricket, England may have rejected Protestantism and reverted to the Roman faith. Then again…Plus, had we English set out to conquer Europe instead of constantly protecting it from French and German tyrants and ogres, cricket could have been on a par with football.

Although we gave the World According to the British Empire, cricket, the myth about the English inventing football has now been exposed. We merely sorted it out. The Chinese were playing football before the birth of Jesus, as were the ancient Greeks, and the bloody Romans. I say ‘bloody Romans’ because there is another theory, and it is bloody.

It’s not widely known that when ancient Brits saw the Romans kicking a ball about they were impressed. So much so that they wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, the Brits had not yet invented a ball of any shape or size and were too proud to steal one from the Romans. They had also noticed that Roman heads were very round - very round indeed - and the next time they had one available they hammered it into shape and gave it a good kicking.

The game took off. Teams painted themselves woad-blue and off-white and fixtures became commonplace. Tired of their heads being used as footballs, the Romans went back to Rome to invent corruption and took their balls with them. Throughout Britannia the great game went into decline. But it was not forgotten, especially north of Hadrian’s Wall, in a place we now call Scotland, a great place to be let out of gaol, apparently.

The Scots had noticed that since the Romans and the English Brits had been interbreeding, English heads had become increasingly round, and they took up the game enthusiastically. Having no pride they even stole the blue and white colouring scheme.

One small difference between the balls led to a great discovery. The Scots noticed that if they used The Wall to shoot against during training sessions, that unlike Roman heads, English heads tended to crack, then break. So they came up with the novel idea of wrapping them in stretched sheepskin, which made the balls last longer. They did the same thing with rotting animal guts and came up with haggis. I have to say that the Scots were canny enough not to kick haggis about. Too risky.

During one kick-about, a wrapped English head was thumped over The Wall. Their secret was out. When the English discovered that one of their own heads was encased in skin they were annoyed enough not to throw it back over The Wall, as had been the custom. Instead, they stormed The Wall and put paid to their nearest neighbour’s propensity for kicking English heads about by incorporating it, and their pretty little country, into our Empire.

By then, the English were toying with the idea of inventing proper cricket, but had not come up with a ball worthy of the game. After a few smacks with a lump of willow tree, their ball, made of cork imported from Portugal or Sardinia, went out of shape. Someone took another look at the Scottish ball…Bingo. So they wrapped their own balls in pigskin and stitched them together with chicken sinew. Now they could be battered mightily and still keep their shape. Game on.

Next week, if anyone’s interested, we’ll expose snooker balls for what they really are. Or we can talk about the Ashes. Either way, please bear in mind,

“a game is only as good as the balls with which it is played.”

Note to Wikipedia enthusiasts: don’t take any of the above for granted.

Life can be too easy.

Life can be too easy

In a brief, on-line self-profile, David Mitchell, author of the highly original and acclaimed 'Cloud Atlas', writes about how and why he became a writer (as one must). Headed “Japan (where he lives) and my Writing” - spelt with double t, surprisingly enough – he links the explanations to the fact that, like Hemmingway and so many of 'us', he’s an expat.

“I knew I wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but until I came to Japan to live in 1994 I was too easily distracted to do much about it. I would probably have become a writer wherever I lived, but would I have become the same writer if I'd spent the last 6 years in London, or Cape Town, or Moosejaw, on an oil rig or in the circus?” And then he goes on to answer his own question.

In my case I would answered the question based on the fact that, since1962, I have spent almost 28 years in countries other than England. Not that I’m boasting about my long, foreign-based track record. Far from it. I must also point out that being er, several years older than David Mitchell, I have a head start.

Having lived in the Netherlands for 17 of those years I am often criticised for not having immersed myself in either learning the Dutch language fluently, or knowing (or caring) about the nuances of Dutch society. As for Dutch cuisine…What I do know is that I came to Holland to write and, importantly, I had chosen Holland for reasons of financial security. Nothing more. Nothing less.

“In Japan,” Mitchell wrote, “I am, in writer/critic Donald Richie's phrase, an alien amongst natives.” Later, “This lack of belonging encourages me to write: I lack a sense of citizenship in the real world, and in some ways, commitment to it…To date, many of my characters show the same trait. My life…is stripped down. Two reasons: firstly, my ability to read (Japanese)…is roughly on par with a 10 year-old. I get by…If it weren't for my girlfriend I wouldn't know a 'typhoon' was coming until a 'pylon' flew past my window…”

In my case, substitute ‘haring’ and ‘stink’ (just kidding, Johan!) Other than that I agree with every word.

In the final paragraph he writes, “Although my ideal future as a novelist is one of reinvention, and although I won't be in this place for good, I think this place will be in me for good.”

David Mitchell writes in Japan; sometimes about Japan. And I can relate to how he must feel about living and writing in what I suppose to be, a land of intense, vivid and endless fascination.

This is where we differ. I chose the Netherlands. Neither ‘intense’, ‘vivid’ or ‘fascination’ came come into it. As for ‘endless’…Having now written two, as yet unsuccessful ‘original’ novels since I’ve been here, it seems that my choice of country in which to write, based on sound financial security, might betray my lack of understanding of what it takes to become a successful writer. Then again, only time will tell.

Cloud Atlas is not a new book but is timeless. It's quite a read and going back to it after a while is recommended. Six, sometimes obscurely linked, stories over a vast time scale, and the shift from story to story, is challenging; as are the differing uses of the stylised English that Mitchell chooses to write them in. The end of the book found me reaching for my World Atlas and my Oxford Reference Dictionary - which can’t be a bad thing – and confirmed that my distrust of medical practitioners is more than justified.

There is an extremely detailed summary (and critique) of the book by A.S. Byatt at, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/mar/06/fiction.asbyatt, which says a hell of a lot more about it than I could ever have worked out or even imagined.