DECAY

I think that I might be becoming rather obsessed with decay, although it's equally easy for me to believe that I always have been.

My sketch books might never have been the most productive aspect of my own personal artistic history, but flaking rust and  paint and faded signage and ripped wallpaper and ruins have become a large part of the subject matter whenever I've picked up a pencil and weilded it in my own inept and half-hearted manner.

Many, many years ago there was a painter whose name I can no longer remember who created massive paintings of rusting plate steel and pieces of ships which is just about the only "modern art" which I can recall ever being impressed by in an era where a shoddily knocked together piece of carpentry can claim to be a masterpiece despite the lack of craftsmanship being displayed by the - presumably ironic - ineptitude being demonstrated by its creator.

Certainly since I've taken to picking up a camera more regularly in this simpler, more digital era, quite a large number of the many pointless and seldom-viewed pictures clogging up the various storage options that I possess have been of rusty old gates and fences, and buildings in various stages of advanced decay, not entirely unlike where I happen to live, he added with a slight melancholy air.

You see, the thing about decay is that it's all so damned photogenic.

You can look at a shiny new building and be awe-struck by the clean lines and the soaring glass panels, but buildings don't really become all that interesting to me until they've weathered a little and the tarnishing and the scratches and the crumbling has begun.

Before that they're just retouched images of corporate acquisitional and aspirational madness, or sales aids for estate agents and are as bland and soulless as can possibly be imagined, although I hesitate to associate such ideas with "imagination" in its truest form.

It's the same with these "show homes" or "lifestyle" magazines. I don't know what kind of shallow witted morons they believe they're communicating with, but those immaculate spartan interiors say nothing to me of real life and the chaos of the actual, genuine, day-to-day lives of anyone I would want to know.

I know that we live in a culture where we obsess about flawlessness and perfection and we airbrush the already hyper-advantaged until they resemble robots, a phenomenon which then gives the rest of us almost impossible benchmarks to compare our own potato-like countenances against, but there's actually very little of interest to me in that sort of face.

It's the lines and the shadows and the rust and the weathering which tell a story and remind us all that life is something which needs to be lived and that decay and eventual collapse is something which we all share, now matter how little we like to think about it.

Perhaps my unhealthy obsession with decay comes from my own life. I've had to sit by and watch the decay in others this year, whilst becoming increasingly aware - not least in the mirror - of my own crumbling mortality. I see people battling pointlessly against the inevitable in the apparently genuine belief that they're going to live forever and  not be subjected to times crucible like everyone else.

MODEL BOAT CLUB

You really have got to love the British. We embrace our hobbies and eccentricities with such passion and fervour, and never more so than when we've retired and are looking for something in which to pour all those energies which we used to use to earn our crusts.

Over on a lake in a Country Park relatively near to where I live, a model boat club spend their afternoons sailing their remote-controlled yachts and speedboats and battleships around and between the ducks and the geese and the gulls, and this amuses them greatly as well as entertaining the many people who come to visit the park.

They take it all very seriously and have their own little platform from where they can sail their boats and it seems to keep them all very happy and, more importantly, very interested in their lot and with engaging with the world.

Now, I do love a good enthusiast. I like it when someone is an expert in their particular chosen field of expertise. I wouldn't necessarily want them to sit down next to me and try to tell me all about it, you understand, especially if it's their enthusiasm and not mine, but it pleases me to see such passion being expressed for something which might leave the rest of us befuddled.

I mean, I know that I burble on and on about things that you're not necessarily interested in, but at least you can choose not to read those burblings if you don't want to...

That's the beauty of having an interest; It's a very personal thing. You can choose to share it with others, but you should never be disappointed if they aren't as keen upon whatever it is as you are. Just as long as you're happy, and they're happy to leave you to enjoy whatever it is you enjoy, the world can be as happier place for everyone.

Which brings us neatly back to the model boat club.

On this particular afternoon, you see, the boat club had a problem.

The shutters which enclosed the little boat house where they keep their recovery boat appeared to have jammed. This caused several of them to try and help out, although, in reality, it seemed that only one of them was actually doing anything practical about it whilst the rest offered advice and witty banter depending upon how well the repairs seemed to be going. There did seem to be one who was content to merely act as extra labour as required (This so reminded me of my days in the theatre set-building that it was almost untrue) and the prime engineer did seem to appreciate the help when he needed it whilst having the air that he wished everyone else would leave him alone to get on with it in between times.

One or two of them, very sensibly, drifted off and went to sail their boats and let the rest get on with it, although "extra labour" did once surprise me by addressing the rest of the group from the top of the boat house in a manner which reminded me of a shop steward addressing the workers at a British Leyland plant on the news back in the 1970s.

Of course, you never know... Perhaps that's what he used to do before his retirement...

I watched this develop for a couple of hours and it was very entertaining to occasionally glance across and watch the subtle interplay of the members of the group as they played their roles in the great game of life and displayed to me once again that people are alike all over and that any club or small group of people is in reality just a microcosm of society at large.

Fascinating stuff, people watching.

THE SMELL OF FEAR

They can sense it, you know.

The fear.

It's almost as if they are drawn to it.

Smell it.

"We moved away because I was frightened" the woman said, pushing the trolley speedily away from where a cluster of birds were squabbling over the seed dropped onto the path for them.

But the geese, as geese will, were hissing at them and frightening the child. Or maybe they were just frightening the mother, it was hard to tell. But whichever of them it was, they moved away just as sharply as two legs and an indeterminate number of small wheels could carry them, and settled elsewhere.

So those geese, they followed them...

I had a bad experience with a goose, you know, when I was a child. Funnily enough, my sister reminded me of it just the other day. A gaggle of them surrounded me when we were staying at a holiday camp when I was about five years old and it did rather traumatise me, I'm told.

I can't remember now whether I was actually bitten, but there would have been hissing, I'm sure.

Still, I'm over it now and find them to be rather magnificent and intriguing creatures, especially when they are capable of being use as "guard geese" because of their notorious ways.

They also feature rather heavily in my all-time favourite episode of "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" starring Jeremy Brett, "The Blue Carbuncle" which we try to make a point of finding time to sit down and watch every Christmas, although, obviously, the story doesn't turn out too well for the geese involved in that particular caper.

P.S.T. (2)

Picture if you will, an idyllic summer's afternoon at the park.

Due to an unfortunate collision of circumstances and timetables, I find that I'm on annual leave at the same time as the builders are knocking seven shades of shale out of my house. This means that I'm better off getting out of their way for the duration and, because it's a nice day and I've done just about everything else on my day's "stuff to do" list, after lunchtime, I head off down to the country park for a few hours.

Well, it calls itself a country park, but it's not really in the countryside, if you know what I mean...?

Anyway, the sun is shining, the waterbirds are swimming, the remote controlled sailing boats are floating quietly by, and there's ice cream to be eaten. All is well in my world and, really, what could be more perfect?

Then they arrive...

Another family from hell.

With their bellowing, and their buggies, and their replica sports shirts, and their car door slamming, and their screaming offspring who seem to number in the thousands of despite there probably being less than a half dozen of them, all dropped like an atom bomb into the peaceful tranquillity of an ordinary afternoon.

Most of it I could tolerate...

The shouting and the arguing and the running about is mostly down to the youthful exuberance of just being outside, and the lessons of how to behave so as to not upset and disturb other people is one which can only be learned by observation and experience, but the last straw really came when they started to amuse themselves by abusing the birds for "A bit of a laugh..."

Those five words... "A bit of a laugh..." have caused so many crimes against humanity...

Because it was all really, really funny...

At least they thought so.

I don't know... Perhaps I am getting more intolerant as I get older, or perhaps I just fail to understand what "fun" actually is, or maybe I just get so very easily disappointed in, oh I don't know, people and the general lack of standards they seem to display nowadays, and the lack of care they show the world in general and the creatures they share it with in particular...

Perhaps I was most disappointed by the fact that the ring leader, the one showing an example was the male parent because I knew that by his demonstrations of (perhaps only mild) cruelty, he was teaching future generations to be equally nasty.

Oh, it wasn't much. A mere trifle you might think, really nothing to be concerned about but, once they noticed how the birds fought and flapped over the bread that they were feeding to them, whole slices of white bread thrown were with glee and look how hilarious it was to watch them squawk and fight over them.

Ha bloody ha...

I'm not even entirely sure that such large chunks of processed bread are even all that good for the birds. I seem to remember that it can swell up and choke them, but I'm sure that, for a few moments of hilarious entertainment, the health and well-being of a few water birds is a small price to pay.

Such people will inherit the earth, you know.

Submitted for your attention, in the P.S.T. Zone...

THE ASHES: END OF PART ONE

Whether you're a fan of cricket or not, nobody can really say that this summer's ashes ended on a damp squib, despite the fact that, when the last day started on the Sunday of the August Bank Holiday weekend, that's exactly what it looked as if we were going to get.

Day four had been washed out, and day three had been (perhaps necessarily) turgid as England (and Wales) sought to grind their way towards Australia's impressive total which had been set during the first two days.

Day five, then, promised more of the same as the "follow on" (a number of runs that need to be achieved to prevent the opposing captain from asking the team batting to bat twice in a row and risk being bowled out for less than the total they were chasing) still had to be avoided, and the time available to complete four innings in the match was fast running out.

England (and Wales), then, would most probably grind out another 45 runs, then try to get as close to the Australian 492-9 declared as they could, and Australia would bat again until the close of play when everyone could shake hands and congratulate each other about a summer's contest well played.

Instead, a blistering final day brought the spectators at the Oval 447 runs and 17 wickets over the course of the extended day, one which started late due to drizzle and, for an exhilarating couple of hours after the unexpected tea-time declaration of Michael Clarke on 111-6 meant that England (and Wales) were chasing 237 in 44 overs for an unlikely win and, for a time, really looked as if they might actually manage it.

Sadly, the strange new rules about bad light intervened, and the game did eventually end in a draw with just three overs to go and 21 runs still required and five England (and... Oh, I think you've got THAT point by now...) wickets still intact, and the celebrations of a three-nil home Ashes series victory could begin, with most of the players, pundits and fans agreed on at least one thing, that the Ashes is a rather special sporting contest, at least for those of us who enjoy a good game of cricket.

So the series eventually ended up three-nil but even the most partial of observers might have to admit that the series was actually far closer than that scoreline would suggest, and, but for the weather and a few dubious umpiring decisions and a few surprising interpretations of all of the new technology at their disposal, things might have been very different.

I always find the last day of a summer's test cricket is a rather melancholy day. It means that Autumn is on its way and Winter is just around the corner and, for me at least, it always feels as if summer is well and truly over when TMS signs off and the last "Soul Limbo" of a series drifts onto the airwaves.

Oh, I know that there are still T20 matches and one-day games to be played, but to me, they're really not the same...

However, this winter, in about three months time, there's another Ashes series to be enjoyed as the second part of this rather unusual situation of having two series back-to-back without a decent eighteen month interval kicks off, this time in Australia, and you can bet a Dollar to a dead Dingo that the Aussies will be seeking revenge and this time England will be playing in their back yard and might just have a far tougher time of it.

It's going to be fabulous and I can hardly wait, even though I know it'll mean long restless nights trying to keep a signal on my listening devices whilst not waking the rest of the household, and some long tired days to stagger through after the fact.

I can hardly wait for November the 21st to  come around...!

LOCATION, LOCATION

The question is...

Can I still actually type on this thing?

Well, perhaps it's not so much the question, but it certainly is a question...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I ought to explain...

I've had to dig out my dodgiest, oldest relic of a computer (It's slow, it's chunky, it's really very clunky...) for the duration. Ah...! "The duration of what?" I hear you ask.

Well, it's like this. The builders are coming! The builders are coming! (Don't worry, they're here!) and, because two of our five rooms are going to be unavailable for a while as they get the much overdue TLC they have so desperately needed for a dozen years or more, all of the junk and clobber from those two rooms has had to be redistributed amongst the other three, and we have had to abandon the primary bedchamber and regroup in the auxiliary one, in a not-quite "USS Enterprise" kind of a way.

This means that the bright lights and tappity-tap-tapping of the computer upon which I usually write to you, my dear universe, would not go down too well in the wee small hours when all the sane folk (most especially the beloved) are a-slumbering right next to where I normally do my insane night time keyboarding, and I have had to escape to otherwhere in order to indulge my morning fix of wordsmithery.

Which has meant resurrecting the coal-fired relic upon which I'm now trying to write.

Oh! The poor, much maligned creature! Once upon a time it used to be the fastest processor on the block and its days and evenings were spent helping me to create the wittiest, sharpest dialogue which never got performed.

We were, if not exactly inseparable, well...

Let's just say that we spent a lot of time in each other's company, albeit mostly to little avail.

But then shinier boxes turned up with their snappy, distracting new ways, and this old relic was cast aside and consigned to the darkness with just occasional battery charges whenever I remembered it was there. Sweeping vistas of bloggery were churned out upon other, chunkier keyboards, as this little box of tricks could only watch in neither awe nor wonder and ask itself "But what about the plays...?"

We were happy together, of course, but I'm so easily distracted, and yet, here we are, together again, for old times' sake, sitting together churning out a different (and perhaps slower) kind of nonsense as the plaster dust settles around us upon each and every surface.

I suppose that this is my oblique way of saying that normal service might be a bit hit and miss over the next few days, because it takes my little tiny brain a while to make the astounding leap from device to device, despite the fact that QWERTY is still in the same order and the site software looks much the same.

In many ways I dislike switching computers because I like the familiarity of what I'm used to. I like to feel as if I'm coming home when I switch on and that everything is where I left it, although, given the current state of my little house, perhaps that's not the best of analogies...

SNAP, CRACKLE... (POP?)

Let me set the scene.

I'm currently living in a building site. The bathroom has been stripped bare so that whilst there is still a toilet, there is no bath, shower or even washbasin. Meanwhile the bedroom is being plastered and all of our clobber which has been removed from those two rooms is currently clogging up the landing, the kitchen, the living room and the attic room, and you have to push your way past the upended mattress to get through the landing to get to the doorway leading up to the crowded attic room where a fold out sofa bed is serving for our sleeping facilities, so that we too are currently cluttering the attic room overnight with our dozing forms.

The dust is everywhere and, during another unexpected hot spell of weather, I can just about wash my face and brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, and doing that and indeed dealing with any other calls of nature involves pushing your way through the landing and down two flights of narrow rickety stairs in the darkness whilst trying to find something to slip over your feet to protect them from the unseen bits and pieces lying there waiting to wound them. My shins are already more than intimately acquainted with the new toilet bowl which currently resides in the kitchen awaiting its new life.

I have not been sleeping well, and, despite actually being "on holiday" for a week, I feel utterly exhausted, not least because it's just so much simpler to get out of the builders' way during the day and leave them to their mayhem whilst we sit in cafes and other eateries, or trudge the streets buying more of the kind of tat that we really don't need to fill the house with and, since a massive bill is looming, probably cant afford anyway.

Meanwhile, I have to resume my professional life next week and, because the office was burgled last weekend and can no longer be considered "secure" it looks as if somehow I'm going to have to find some way to work from home amidst the ongoing chaos and dust and, of course, occasional shut downs of the power supply.

So much you may have already known... and this is currently what is passing for "fun" in my supposedly stress-free lifestyle.

This means that, when I'm sitting sweating in a car park far away from home at the end of a long, long day which started long before the builders arrived unexpectedly early, and waiting for the beloved to emerge from her latest bout with her osteopath, having just had another telephone conversation with my manager about the insanity of people leaving expensive deliveries in a corridor in a still vulnerable building, and how I'm going to resume my duties under the circumstances, and knowing that the computer equipment currently in my car boot is essentially uninsured, what I really, really didn't need was a telephone call from my sister informing me that, after three whole days in her own home, my mother has called the paramedics again and they are sending for an ambulance to take her to the hospital.

Update 1 - Dateline August 23rd, 5.00am.

I finally arrived home at about 7.45pm having briefly called in at mum's flat where she was sitting and being attended to by a paramedic whilst they waited for the ambulance to arrive. Mum looked a lot better than I had expected, to be honest, and suggesting that she might be able to return to the care home despite that not really being what it's for. After this, I headed home and waited for the call after somehow getting the massive computer box into my house and through the obstacle course in such as way that implied that taking it daily to and from the office next week as I had planned to might not actually be the most practical solution after all.

A long telephone conversation with my sister did not help my mood, with regards to my mother's long-term situation, although I suspect the woman herself might have found it to be largely uncomplimentary, given that we've come to the conclusion that much of her current status comes from laziness and a desire not to do things for herself.

The overnight message telling me that the hospital sent her home at 11.00pm might just imply that they agree...

Update 2 - Dateline August 23rd, 7.30pm.

Despite the fact that I have been out of the house since 8 o'clock this morning, it is somehow all my fault that I have failed to hear any of the messages left after 8.34am telling the sad and pathetic story of (Ta-dah!) my mother being readmitted into hospital. I rang the ward at 7.30pm, after trawling through the abusive messages but, because of patient confidentiality, they are unable to even tell me why she has been readmitted...

So it begins again...

ROCK BALANCING

Every time I sit on a rocky beach for more than a few minutes and it's the kind of beach that can only be described as "pebbly", more often than not you'll find that this is what I do.

I'll spend a few intense minutes trying my level best to find some nice looking pebbles, stand them one on top of the other, seek out the centres of gravity, help them to balance themselves and build a tiny pile of rocks into a very rickety structure for a few moments before it all comes crashing down and I have to start all over again.

In fact, if you've been paying attention, you'll already know that this is what I do, because I wittered about it a couple of years ago in these very pages (at http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/stone-balancing.html if you fancy a gander) back in the day when my daily words looked like I was actually putting the effort in.

It's actually a very therapeutic way of passing an hour or so and is all very calming, very "zen" you might say (if you were a hippie) although I do my very best not to claim that it is either "therepeutic" or very "zen" for fear of being laughed off the beach, and, whilst I'm not adept enough at it to draw a crowd or to become a seaside performer, I do sometimes feel disappointed when I walk away from my structures only to hear the soft clatter of a collapse as the destructive feet of a fellow human comes along and takes a moment to destroy my humble achievement.

I'm sure that there's a metaphor for life in there somewhere, but I can't see it...

Some might suggest that there's nothing original about this minority beach sport, and it's true that I might have been inspired to do it by arriving on the beach and discovering other abandoned rock skyscrapers and thinking that looked like fun (my definitions of 'fun' have always been a little hinky...), or I might have been inspired by others people writing about doing exactly the same intense but ultimately pointless activity, or I might even just have been quietly impressed by the framed examples of the craft that come from the art galleries of IKEA and which lurk upon the walls in various seaside establishments in which I've been.

Sometimes, if the breeze and the seismology is in my favour, I manage to sneak a swift snapshot of one of these humble temporary unnatural natural sculptures before the gravity (or the small feet) kicks in, although this one isn't actually one of my more successful ones, and I'd been so focussed on the balancing that I'd forgotten about the taking of the pictures which is probably a good thing, I suppose, given that it proves that for once I had achieved a kind of meditative serenity and shut out the world around me and all of its other little distractions, at least for a few minutes.

People do occasionally suggest that I try to meditate, but I seldom achieve any success because I don't seem to have the sort of mind that can focus enough and switch off all of the other nonsense that pops into my head.

Getting back to the rock balancing, though, this time around, I know with some certainty that there is even video evidence of my indulging in this strange little habit of mine still lurking upon an SD card near me and unlikely to ever see the light of day.

So, there we are and here we be and here you are and, after all that, this is, I suppose, remains little more than yet another "pebble shot" that I'm sharing with you, then...

GHOST SHIPS

They emerge from out of the mist, seeming to float above the horizon. The sea fog thickens and fades and these ever-present ocean-going vessels appear and disappear just like ghosts, sometimes clearly visible, and sometimes the vanish as if they were never really there at all.

These are what I came to know as the "Ghost Ships", a cluster of huge oil tankers moored just off the bay, which seemed to hang around for days without ever really going anywhere.

After a while, I started to feel quiet poetic about them as days inevitably turned into nights and their lights burned away on the horizon ever more brightly as the mists would also burn away.

Where had they come from? Why were they here? More to the point, why were they still there?

So many questions and precious few answers, so, as the mists swirled around them on those less than blazing mornings and evenings I tried to capture them on film thinking, at the very least, that the strange image of them floating there above the landscape might make an interesting cover for a book or inspire another painting, or perhaps even a story or two.

Sometimes they are there for many days, perhaps even weeks, and, apart from those night-time lights, they shows few signs of life as they sat there lurking, waiting...

The reality is of course far more mundane and has more to do with economics that lost souls forever condemned to sail the high seas and wait for the right moment to be invited ashore. With the price of commodities fluctuating on the world markets, it's sometimes cheaper to pay the crews to sit and wait offshore until the price is right and profitable enough for the owners to sell on their cargoes.

But I don't know...

Like the lighthouse-keepers of old, too many days at sea can do strange things to the mind...

And, perhaps, thereby hangs another tale...

TEMPTING FATE

Given my comments during the first half of this week about how people spoil things and my own need for a bit of stability in my life, I suppose that it was only to be expected that another hand grenade would be thrown through the window of my life and explode.

People, it seems really are determined to spoil things.

No sooner had the builders arrived and torn off all the plaster, and my mother had been transferred from community care back into her own home than I had an email pop into my personal email account at home telling me that once again the office in which I work had been broken into over the weekend and a large percentage of our electronic equipment had been spirited away by another set (or perhaps even the same set) of thieving scumbags, in a not entirely dissimilar manner to the way they were last year.

Granted it wasn't exactly the same. This time, instead of battering their way through the back door, they battered their way through a window of one of the neighbouring offices, forced their way through some "security" shutters and smashed their way through two office doors in order to target us.

This time it also wasn't me who had to have the dubious honour of discovering the crime, but one of m'colleagues who arrived at a sensible hour on a Monday morning to find her desk was being dusted for fingerprints by a criminal investigator who didn't really know all that much about what had happened.

Sadly, neither did any of us given that the landlords failed to pass on any information about what had happened to the one of their clients most affected by this incident, in order that one or other of us didn't just have to roll up and find out about this way in such a disturbing manner. Other than to "helpfully" mention that they had been planning to fit CCTV cameras "next week" (which would, at least, given us pretty pictures of people walking off with our precious electronic equipment which, once again, we're unlikely ever to see again), there's been some sympathy, a certain amount of schadenfreude, but mostly the kind of "couldn't really give a damn, at least it wasn't us" attitude that always makes the victims feel just great...

Meanwhile, I know from bitter experience that this is not a nice way for anyone to start their day and you can find that it can affect you in more ways than you think. I know that I have been rather "eccentric" in my "little ways" since the break-in last year and was just  very recently getting to the point of thinking about getting around to perhaps believing once again that I trusted the old place enough not to have to do my weird "security" routines any more, so that therapy's going well.

Perhaps it wasn't personal.

Perhaps ours was just the first office they found with anything of value in it and they seized the opportunity, grabbed what they could and scarpered with their ill-gotten gains, but it's difficult not to believe that someone's out to get us when, once again, we're the only company to have suffered any real losses during the break-in.

All that I really know is that it's a massive pain in the backside and that last time it took the best part of three months to finally get ourselves sorted out, but, in the current economic climate, taking another hit like this is going to be very hard, and, from a personal point of view, might just make our lords and masters at head office have a bit of a rethink about the wisdom of having a "satellite" outfit like us at all.

Typically, it's also going to be massively inconvenient to have to work from home again given my mother's current situation and the fact that builders are currently knocking seven bells out of the walls of my little house and filling the air with lungfuls of dust, but I'd better try and make the best of that because, whilst I still am employed, I will need to find a way of making this work.

This time, at least, we do still have the majority of the files backed up, and some of the equipment (more by luck than anything else) got left behind, so we're not quite as crippled as we were last time, but that doesn't really make anyone feel any better about the whole thing. Luckily for me, because I'm on leave anyway, I'm not directly having to deal with the aftermath at this precise moment, but it doesn't stop you from feeling bitter, twisted and downright angry all over again, as we  no doubt start to seek out alternative accommodation in hopefully a much nicer part of the world and face the prospect of a far less convenient commute gobbling up even more of those precious petrol pennies...

Assuming that there is one...

DECISION REFERRAL SYSTEM

© Radio Times

I've really missed CMJ this summer.

For those not in the know, CMJ was Christopher Martin Jenkins, the former chief cricket correspondent for The Times, and long-time commentator for Test Match Special, famed (to me at least) for his distinctive voice and vague relationship with timekeeping and organisation, and who sadly died at the very start of this year..

Since I discovered it at about the age of seventeen or eighteen (perhaps not in some small part I'll admit because of the influence of Peter Davison's choice of costume in "Doctor Who" although I'd been watching for some years prior to that...) shortly after discovering the pleasures of the game itself by watching games unfold during long summer days spent at home back in the days when it still filled the BBC's daytime schedule, I've always enjoyed Test Match Special, or "Cricket on the Radio" as I've come to know it.

I can't actually remember the first time that I twiddled the dial and tracked down Radio Four and found this broadcasting nugget, but I imagine that it had something to do with being on holiday and stuck outside in a field or on a path somewhere wondering how the game was going, and becoming, to all intents and purposes, the modern-day equivalent of an obsessive old buffer in that ancient Alfred Hitchcock movie "The Lady Vanishes", except for the more intolerant moments when I'm not raging about the fact that they haven't even mentioned the score in over twenty minutes, or thoose more "geeky" times when it's all about the numbers and a glorious tsunami of statistics.

The thing about CMJ was that, despite his air of crisp authority and refined upbringing, he was one of the commentators who had a great sense of both the fun and the absurdity of Test Match Cricket, one of those rare talents who's dry wit and crisp observations of the things going on all around the five-day spectacle that is the average test match help to keep things interesting, even if, like many of its fans admit, the game itself remains baffling.

There have been a few other special characters over the years, from John Arlott, Fred Trueman, Trevor Bailey and Brian Johnston who are now no longer with us, but who managed to transform the potentially dry and dreary art of describing a very visual game on the radio into something rather special, but, as we enter a new era in which the game is, perhaps, taken far more seriously than it used to be by its participants (although 'Sir' Geoffrey might disagree about that), I'm starting to find it all slightly less entertaining and essential listening than it once was.

Perhaps it's just due to changes in the production team since peter Baxter's retirement, and changes to the commentary team because of the sad results of the inevitable march of time, but I'm just not finding that sitting and listening to TMS is as much fun as it used to be, and this is coming from someone who will let out a "Morning, Henry!" whenever Henry "My dear old thing" Blofeld crackles fruitily onto the airwaves, loves the dry wit of Vic Marks, and who still feels a genuine sense of relief whenever Jonathan Agnew takes over the microphone because he's one of the few "newbies" who "gets it" about how TMS ought to be. Obviously "newbie" is a relative term, given that he's been involved since the days of Johnners, but  I do think that his double act with Geoffrey Boycott is amongst the greatest natural comedy entertainment performances of modern times.

You see, because we're still holding out on the whole "satellite" thing, our only way of enjoying the cricket is via the radio, although the coming of digital TV to our area does now mean that I can watch the highlights again after several years of not really knowing what any of the players actually looked like.

Despite the best efforts of Aggers and Blowers, ably assisted by Tuffers (another one who "gets" it...), Vic Marks and "Sir" Geoffrey Boycott, I genuinely believe that TMS is not as much fun as it once was.

One or two of the new team seem a little more "smug" or pleased with themselves than I would prefer, and sometimes they seem far too obsessed with the politics or the technical details of the game itself which is, of course, not really the point with TMS. Oh, they always knew their stuff all right, we should never forget that, but they just didn't tend to dwell on it like some of these young whipper-snappers do.

The beloved might not quite fully understand the ins and outs of the game of cricket, but she does enjoy listening to the "Old Man's Chatter" (that jibe is directed at me, by the way, not the chatterers themselves...) of TMS on the radio during the summer.

Because, to some of us, all of those jolly japes, pranks, jokes, red buses, pigeons and cakes are what put the "Special" into "Test Match Special" and long may that continue...

Which brings us to the DRS, or Decision Referral System, as you might not yet know it as. Introduced to prevent the kind of Umpiring cock-up that would once have had dear old Fred chuntering on for days, and have Geoffrey helping you complete your "Boycott Bingo" card in the space of one sentence, it has rather dominated this summer's Test Match cricket season, and not necessarily for any of the right reasons.

In cricket, of course, the Umpire is the ultimate authority and is, without exception "always right" (except when he's getting it wrong, of course), and the DRS was brought in to "fix" the occasional blunder and prevent controversy.

Instead, of course, the coming of the white heat of new technology has caused as much trouble as it has helped solve with all sorts of decisions being made with its help which rather beggar belief and which have swayed the fortunes of the two sides involved this way and that so that nobody really knows what the "correct" decisions would have been any more.

Well, at least it has cut both ways... although whether you believe that does rather depend upon which side you happen to support. As ever, it seems that it is the "human element" which has made the whole process appear so very dodgy and yet perhaps just as many "howlers" have been overturned as lousy decisions have been underscored which, in the end, might just mean that it's far better to trust the umpire's (as the game always used to) and learn to live with the consequences.

Ah, but... Life moves on and we ought to embrace the future you might think, but in this instance I'm not so sure. After all, for me it was the polite and civil nature of the game of cricket (alongside all those brilliant statistics) that (if you'll forgive the pun) appealed.

To my mind, these modern sportspeople, well... they take the whole idea of playing what is, essentially, just a game, all far too seriously and, instead of just enjoying themselves and realising that they're being paid to play a game for a living, it all gets a bit surly and competitive and "important" somehow which rather goes against the spirit of the whole thing in my humble. After all, surely if you lose to someone who's played far better than you have, it's better to cheer them for their success and appreciate the skill they have shown and try to emulate them and come back better next time...?

I never did get the hang of competitive sport, did I...?

Mind you, it's the fans that are the worst for that. I only ever attended one test match and that was quite a civil day I seem to recall. Nowadays I look at the fans on TV and I'm very glad that I'm not joining them on the terraces and in the stands because they look like they'd frighten me to death... and don't get me started upon the noisy razzamatazz of Twenty20 or the one day game...

I'd rather sit in my garden, sip at a glass of crisp Pinot Grigio and listen to TMS any day of the week, no matter how much the fun has gone out of it... but I think I'll refer that opinion to you, the umpires.

STABLE

The situation with my mother is always a matter of dealing with both the unknowable and the great unknown. It remains complicated despite being very simple; At some point she will be required to return home and she will expect that I will be the person who is able to deliver her there. Meanwhile, lengthy lists of things that she thinks ought to be done are being composed in her mind alongside the huge disappointment of the fact that I don't spontaneously think of doing them myself. There's also the tricky little matter of the slight chance that she may have some kind of relapse, or be unable to cope, or have a thousand and one little reasons to contact me at precisely the wrong moment, expect me to drop anything and everything that I am doing, no matter how important that might happen to be, and come running.

This means that I am constantly on alert, constantly on edge, and seldom in a position to completely relax or try to plan to do anything. Sometimes, when things have been calm for a while, we foolishly try and take a moment to think about doing something, anything, that will help us to escape from the rut, but that's usually when, as the saying goes, all hell breaks loose...

Meanwhile, the builder rang...

We had a quote to have some work done way back in the relatively quiet month of March and then, of course, life did indeed let loose hell and here we find ourselves in August with none of it done, and living out of bags because we let the old furniture go in anticipation of this work sometime in April.

Anyway, he had, apparently, been "trying to contact me" and left "loads of messages" and wondered whether we still wanted the job actually done. Now I do work in an area where the internet and telephone connections are basically what can only be described as  "rubbish" but this seemed unlikely.

Anyway, he wondered if he could start the job imminently in the sense of "the day after tomorrow" which, quite naturally meant that we had to face the fact that our little house was suddenly going to be in for some little upheaval, especially as the "one room at a time" option we had hoped for had evolved into "both rooms at once" leaving us nowhere to shift the clutter of the one into the other for the duration...

When the builder came round on the Tuesday evening to make plans, it became abundantly clear that the short notice meant that there was little chance of us being ready for them in time and we were able to get a delay to beyond the weekend before spending the rest of our free time for the foreseeable clearing rooms and churning the junk around and finding that we were forming great big piles of stuff that would not have looked out of place on one of those "Hoarder" programmes which have become so popular lately.

Well, at least it's not just us, then...

So, we are now in a state of chaotic preparation and not exactly looking forward to living in rather bizarre circumstances for the foreseeable future, which is making us generally stroppy and stressful and full of fear and trepidation and wondering if we should just book into a B & B for the duration.

Given my mum's almost uncanny ability to exocet any of my plans whenever I have anything that needs to be done to any particular given schedule, I have taken to trying to get everything done now, which has not really helped with anyone's stress levels recently and probably doesn't help to get anything achieved any faster if I'm being perfectly honest.

All I can see, though, is time being chewed up and the fact that I've got far, far too much that still needs doing and fewer and fewer hours in which to get it all done and that, dear reader, is likely to cause the things that lurk in the dark corners of my mind to get more confident and come out of the shadows all guns blazing, so things around her could get very "interesting" for a while.

What I need, what I really, really need right now is for something to be stable, something to be dependable, something to be reliable. I need something in my life to be a calm void, to be somewhere I can escape to in my mind and get a moment of peace as the hurricane whips all around me...

But, at the moment, I really can't see that happening...

Can you...?

P.S.T.

I have a theory of life that I'd like to share with you, however controversial you might find it.

I call it "P.S.T." which basically stands for "People Spoilt Things..."

Perhaps I ought to explain.

Imagine if you will a serene morning at a nature reserve on the North West tip of the island near to the power station.

For us, a couple of keen amateur bird-watchers, a happy half hour has just passed watching Ringed Plovers searching out food on a bit of muddy marshland beside a reed bed. The peace, quiet and tranquility of the entire morning has been quite simply breath-taking, and this has been the icing on that particular little example of life's occasional cup cakes.

Then, over to the far right of us, there is the distinctive scraping sound of a fibreglass canoe upon gravel, and perhaps the loudest family in the world arrive, some of them crunching across the pebbles, the rest noisily splashing about at the water's edge, all of them kitted out with all manner of the sort of equipment they bring along with them in their van in preparation for "a day at the beach..."

It was a nature reserve, for Pete's sake...

"Ooh, that looks like a nice quiet beach..." they appear to have thought, "I wonder why nobody else uses it as such...? We could have a nice day there and have it all to ourselves because nobody else has been as clever as us and found this place..."

Or as crass...

Before too long, enthusiastic youthful bellows like "Look at me I'm going through the weeds...!" are drifting across the water and the paddles are splashing and crashing as young minds, eager to impress each other (if no-one else) start to get more aggressively competitive.

In mere moments the peace was completely shattered and the birds, if not the people, had flown, possibly just because they're wisely timid creatures, but perhaps because they feared that they might just end up on a portable barbecue if they hung around too long...

I wouldn't go as far as to call it ignorance, but it is thoughtlessness. There are, after all, very good reasons why this wasn't generally an area which is used as a public beach and yet such ideas never seemed to trouble themselves by crossing any of their minds...

Maybe I'm wrong... Maybe it's me that is at fault. After all, they were only enjoying themselves and probably didn't do anybody any real harm...

Not that I stuck around to find out.

Muttering instead to myself about how "People Spoil Things" I went over to the nesting area for the Terns where, mercifully, the squawking of the birds drowned out the squawking of the humans...

And, perhaps to my shame, I know which I preferred to spend my time with...

MENAI STRAIT

Not much to add here, other than to tell you that this is a picture of the Menai Strait between the two bridge crossings when the tide was out a few Sundays ago, and to point out that when the tide goes out, it really goes out.

It's a good spot for bird-watching, though...

The bridge is, of course, the modern appearance of Robert Stephenson's Britannia Bridge, the second main link from Anglesey to the mainland, which was completed in 1850 and then much redesigned after a devastating fire in 1970.

A bit of engineering, a bit of bird-watching, and a little bit of peace and tranquility...

Really, what more could you ask for...?

THIS YEAR'S PEBBLE SHOT

Every year, whenever I find myself standing upon a particularly stony beach, this is what I do.

I point my camera straight down at the ground, focus it, frame it up so that the entire frame is filled with pebbles, and take a picture.

I don't really know why I do it, to be perfectly honest with you, only that I do.

Perhaps once upon a time I thought that it might make a nice desktop pattern for the computer, or maybe it was a desktop pattern option on my computer that made me think of it, it's very hard to be sure, and I do know that I've never actually used any of these pictures as a desktop pattern since I've started taking them, so it probably wasn't worth mentioning, really...

I know that one of the thoughts that sometimes flashes through my mind as I'm taking some of my inept little snapshots is "Texture!" and I do have an awful lot of very dull photographs of things which I can only put down to having had that thought at the moment I took the shot.

You see, the old graphic artist in me might rarely carry a sketchbook around with me these days, but I do sometimes use my camera as a sort of sketchbook to inspire all of those painting which I never get around to painting, so maybe, when a nice texture catches my eye, I'm drawn to it more by instinct than anything else...

Or perhaps it's just vanity...?

Whenever we "go through" the pictures "on screen" after a holiday is over, it's always been this kind of shot that has drawn out the comments like "That's nice!" or "Oh, I like that!" and we all need to grab whatever admiration that we can from wherever it may come from, even if we can only get it by cheating...

Still... Here's this year's picture of some pebbles on a beach...

I hope you like it as much as I do...

IN THE CAR PARK

It's a beautiful afternoon in a beautiful part of the world and yet, as you stroll around the car park, you find dozens of people sunbathing in their budgie-smugglers or bikinis, and dozens of others sitting around chatting and eating their picnics all of whom don't seem to have moved more than six feet since they parked the car...

We're a funny lot, the British, marking out our territory and protecting it, and seeming to have very little in the way of a sense of adventure when it comes to venturing forth despite, our nation's long, sometimes disgraceful and perhaps undistinguished history of venturing out into the world and planting our flags in strange lands and claiming them for ourselves.

Is it about our fear of car break-ins...?

Or just laziness...?

Or do we just need to bask in the shelter and comfort of something familiar, our own little bit of transportable home that the nearby car seems to represent...?

Because there are lovely spots just a short hop and a skip away which would serve the purpose of having a picnic or a sunbathe just as well, most with quite relaxing, breath-taking and spectacular views, most of which give you far less exposure to carbon monoxide, and which have far fewer risks of a distracted motorist driving over your foot...

But, instead of going over and looking at the beautiful scenery, the presence of which was probably at least in part why that destination was chosen in the first place, a sea of boxy steel becomes the vista of choice...

Still, if you want to go all that way and then sit or lie down in a car park all afternoon, I suppose that's up to you. People will do what people will do, and the strange antics of other people will just have to continue to confuse me as I trudge along through my own bamboozling existence.

And it's not just the picnickers or the sunbathers, either. Despite the fact that there are cars coming and going all the time, some of which have drivers who are new to the area or distracted by looking for a clear spot to park in, some people still use this field as a playground, kicking footballs around, throwing Frisbees and generally doing the kind of playing in traffic that would not be advisable in any more urban car park.

This kind of "fun" of course, I wouldn't normally have noticed, but then I had the "football moment..."

We were idly strolling across the car park towards the next tea shop, chunnering busily to ourselves about the number of people not venturing beyond the car park and unfortunately displaying their budgie-smugglers to the world at large when we passed quite some small distance away from a father and son who had set up some "jumpers for goalposts" and were having a kick about.

Unfortunately, and perhaps almost inevitably, there was what I believe is known as a "mis-kick" and the football came rolling along the ground straight towards us.

Now, I must point out that I have very little skill in the footballing department. My main footballing injury sustained at school came when I was knocking the mud off my boots by bashing them against a wall and the footballing teacher was playing "wall-ee" and kicked a football right at my head, bashing it hard enough on the one side to make the other side whack into the wall next to it and, whilst this was a good lesson in Newtonian Physics, it did little to endear the sport itself to me and a few years of spectacular uselessness, being the last picked to make up sides, and trying to avoid the ball as much as possible followed.

For a moment I stared at the ball as it came towards me, thinking "Why me?" and swiftly realising that I would be expected to return the ball to the players about thirty feet away for whom fetching it themselves suddenly seemed far too much trouble.

So, I approached the ball with a certain amount of trepidation and the memories of all those youthful years of being mocked for my pointless aerial antics of trying to stop one of these things in mid-air in my mind, and kicked it back to them...

Reader, it went in a straight line and, furthermore, that straight line was precisely the direction it was supposed to be going in...!

The father waved back in gratitude and we moved on, although I had slightly more of a spring in my step than I had only a few moments before, and I also completely failed to trip over any bikini-clad sunbathers despite it now being a much larger risk, given their amount of ground cover and the fact that my head was momentarily in the clouds...

THREE WELSH CHOPPERS

I'm not often "ready" when it comes to the unexpected photo opportunity. Because I'm not a professional, but merely an "enthusiastic snapper" and I have virtually no knowledge of the technical aspects of taking photographs, I seldom walk around with a camera dangling from my neck (despite the many photographs - usually taken when I'm on holiday - taken of me which seem to prove the opposite) and so, when the moment comes I'm either fumbling around in my pocket looking for a telephone to take a disappointing snapshot with or, even if I am "properly equipped" I either haven't got the right lens on or I'm holding the wrong camera and I get the automatic focus confused or I've got the dial set to a ridiculously inappropriate setting.

So, when I was on holiday recently, it was something of a miracle that on each of the three occasions when the distinctive mechanical sound of an approaching helicopter could be heard, I actually managed to fumble around and point my lens in vaguely the right direction and get a half-decent snapshot of all three.

The first was at South Stack lighthouse where I was busily taking what I imagine will be my only chance of photographing the heck out of the old place having bitten the bullet and trudged the 400 plus steps down to the old place for the first and, presumably, given the way my knees were protesting on the way back up, only time.

From somewhere over the mainland there came that distinctive mechanical rattle and, because I was already busily using the telephoto to grab a few close-ups of the herring gulls, I thought to myself that it would be very nice if the helicopter flew into a position where it might be in the same frame as the lighthouse itself and, as you can see, such a happy event did indeed come to pass.

Later on that same afternoon, on the opposite side of the island, we were photographing the living daylights out of the Penmon Lighthouse for yet another year, presumably so I could store them away with the almost identical set I took the previous year, and the year before that and so on.

Lighthouses are not, actually, an obsession of mine, although I do quite like them, but they do add a lot of "foreground interest" to landscape shots, so it's quite nice to make the most of one if you've got one.

Anyway, the familiar sound of a helicopter engine came spluttering around the headland and, well, once again I found myself thinking that very same thought from the morning, "Wouldn't it be nice if..." and happily, it was obviously my lucky day.

At least as far as helicopters putting themselves into reasonably photogenic proximity to a lighthouse anyway.

The third happened a couple of days later as we were walking through the woods at Newborough. this time we heard the helicopter long before we saw it and I was busily taking far too many of the kind of pictures of trees which always seem like a good idea when I'm taking them, but which can seem utterly pointless a couple of months down the line.

Anyway, I could hear the helicopter and, more in hope rather than expectation, I quietly but swiftly swapped the lenses over on my camera and hoped for the best, raising the viewfinder to my eye just as the helicopter appeared between the treetops and there you go...

Three Welsh Choppers...

MY LITTLE BUDDY

When I first took up my camera again, about half a dozen years ago now, I was lucky enough to flukily grab a rather lovely photograph of a Robin as it happened to settle near to us as we were walking around the gardens at Portmeirion. It was a completely happy accident, and had nothing whatsoever to do with any skills (or lack of) that I might have as a picture snapper, but it did manage to trigger a minor interest in me for bird-watching and wildlife photography which continues to this day, despite the fact that I've never quite managed to capture a moment quite so successfully as that one.

The breaching whale off Provincetown that summer comes fairly close, but since then it's been six rather disappointing years of not having the camera ready at the right moment, and shapeless blurry feathery shapes flying out of frame whilst I swear at myself.

So it was rather pleasant when I sat myself down at the edge of a beach at Cemlyn as the beloved took a quiet half hour to observe the Ringed Plovers as they waded through the mud, when my little buddy here parked itself on the path right next to me and hung around for a good few minutes without being frightened off by me.

Well, it certainly acted as if it was my little buddy, and stayed around for longer than some of my actual friendships have managed to in the past few years, hopping from the stones of the beach to right next to me on the path, and even loitering around in the nearby bushes for a couple of minutes as we got back together and moved on in search of observations new, before eventually flying away to adventures unknown.

Now, I'm not very good at bird identification, especially when it comes to the little brown birds which may or may not be in their juvenile plumage anyway, but a quick look at the RSPB website tells me that my little buddy was most probably a Pipit of some kind which does, at least, make sense, although I can't quite decide whether it's a Rock, Tree or Meadow one. I'm sure that someone reading this one day will roll their eyes, tut to themselves knowledgeably and say that it's obviously something completely different but, in the meantime, I'm sticking with Pipit.

I wonder what became of my little buddy...?

I know that I'll never know, but at least I've got this little snapshot to remember it with.

NEWBOROUGH: "LOST"

They are sometimes very strange those connections that the brain can make.

One of the "moments" I recently had was as I recently arrived at the end of Newborough beach at lunchtime, just about as the tide got as high as it can, and watched various holidaymakers rolling up their trousers or divesting themselves of them altogether in preparation for crossing the narrow strait and continue with their individual expeditions onto Llanddwyn Island.

All of them far hardier souls than we are because, after watching the various solutions to the immediate problem being enacted right in front of us for a while, we turned upon our heels and headed back along the beach to the car park, the ice-cream van and another walk in the woods.

However, as we sat there watching, I could not help but be reminded ever so slightly of the first episode of the TV series "Lost" where all of the survivors of the plane crash dragged themselves onto a Hawaiian beach and started out on their five-year journey into madness.

Or whatever.

To be honest, I gave up on "Lost" somewhere around the start of the second series, after obsessing about a "hatch" for a while only to be disappointed by glitches on the series two DVDs we borrowed making them all but unplayable, so I'm not the best of commentators upon whether this was a typical scene or not.

Nevertheless, "Lost" is what I thought of at that moment, and this snapshot of those hardy ramblers was only taken because that's what it made me think of and I wanted to immortalise the thought in my memory hut...

Time for an explanatory flashback, I presume, to tell my back-story... or is this actually the flashback from yesterday's photoblog...?

Narrative structure, eh...?

What an utter swine it can be... ;-)

PHOTOBLOG: NEWBOROUGH

In Anglesey, a place that has become a bit of a regular holiday destination for us, we do find that we are constantly drawn back to places to which we have enjoyed going on previous occasions. The lack of an adventurous side to my nature does tend to mean that returning to the familiar is what I enjoy, not least because there's at least a 50/50 chance that I might actually find my way back to it again.

So, alongside discovering one or two new places to visit, I do tend to find myself doing the familiar rounds; South Stack, Menai, Penmon, Beaumaris, Cemlyn, and, of course, Newborough.

Newborough beach on Anglesey has always been a lovely spot for nature walks and a day at the beach, but this year it seems to have had a bit of a refurbishment, with brand new wooden boardwalks, a viewing platform and carved wooden sculptures having been added to the far end of the car park.

All-in-all, rather an impressive transformation for a rather special little corner of the world which we first discovered on recommendation a few years ago. There used to be a rather bizarre and old fashioned coin payment machine at the entrance to the road which led towards the car park, where, in return for two shiny pound coins slipped into a huge slot in something resembling a steel relic picked up from the sea bed after being sunk by enemy action, a hydraulically-controlled steel plate would flatten itself into the ground so that your car could pass over it. If as that point you'd forgotten your sandwiches or drinks, you'd be paying all over again to repeat the process if you popped back to the little shop in the town.

This year, however, this relic of the Victorian seaside had been retired and covered with a plastic bag and so, at least for the time being, access was "free" which is, of course, very unusual in these coastal areas, but a bonus for the tourist on a bit of a budget.

But Newborough has always been a spectacular spot to visit, and preserving that must come at a bit of a cost, so perhaps we ought not to begrudge them the money, and the transformation really has made a lot of difference to the old place.

There are a number of walking trails which can be enjoyed including a brand new "Trim Trail" featuring the sort of exercise equipment that I would, obviously, studiously avoid, but which I'm sure appeals to anyone who is interested in that sort of madness.

There's a short "Nature Trail" and a longer "Saints, Sand and Sea Trail" which pretty much does what it says on the sign, as well as cycling trails and bridle paths for the horse-rider.

The car park is also nicely equipped with a toilet block, a shower to wash the sand off your feet (and whatever other bits you've managed to get sandy), and, on the day we were there, a couple of catering vans selling tea, coffee and snacks, and the ubiquitous ice cream selection.

Alongside the picnic tables, there are even barbecue lighting spots if you're the kind of person who likes that sort of thing. I kind of prefer the "car park picnic" option, well, I guess it's all about whatever floats your own particular boat...