The global sport

Its Sunday morning in Penang and I am watching Liverpool play Watford in a premier league match on tape delay. I just checked on the nationalities of the players on display and there aren't that many Brits. It underlines for me that this game and more so this league is THE global league of THE global game. Just don't expect there to be many Brits actually on the field, particularly in the creative positions in midfield or up front.

This is a World Cup year so the English media will hype up England's chances as usual but really what we have are some decent full backs and central defenders and some hardworking journeymen defensive midfielders. As for the creative element? A Messi or more specific to the game I am watching now, a Salah -- who is in the process of scoring 4 and laying on the other in a 5-0 drubbing?  Sadly not. Harry Kane undoubtedly is a terrific finisher but he does that with the help of a Dane, a Korean and a variety of other nationalities. I am pretty pleased that Iceland didn't make it but undoubtedly there is a another banana skin beckoning.

I don't know why but watching the game made me think of a cup match my school old boys team played in the Southend Borough Combination some 40+ years ago. It finished 13-11 after double extra time. No penalties back then, you just played till you finished.

It was the regular 90 minutes plus extra time of two 15 minute halves and then another two 10 minute halves. It was 8-8 after 90 minutes, 11-11 after the first period of extra time and we went down 13-11 after the second period. One guy on their side scored 5 and should really have scored 10. Nobody on our side scored more than 1 goal and there were no substitutes which means that everyone including our goalkeeper scored.  I cannot believe that that record will ever be beaten!

I haven't watched any amateur games for years so do wonder if the global game at its grass roots level is still played this way. I do hope so.

Incidentally this is a great advert, particularly so as the poor suffering opponents are wearing the same strip that we used to!

Moving

It has been a long journey in Bermuda for the family. I arrived on the midnight flight from the UK (remember those?) on 19th September 1985, 7 weeks before Viv and our then 7-month old Indy arrived on 23rd November 1985, an afternoon arrival of all things.

Its odd what you remember from so long ago when you didn't really have a camera (and no digital smartphones to take thousands of the same photos) and it cost an arm and a leg to have the photo shop develop them. Memories for me at least are in small things that for some reason stand out. That afternoon when Viv arrived, it was the hostess that carried Indy down the stairs and put him into his stroller. Now why would I remember that when Viv does not? 

The point of what I am saying is that its been a long time and we have collected an awful lot of memories along the way but also an awful lot of stuff, much of which we haven't looked at for years and when we did in the past 3-4 months of getting ready for our 'Life Part 2 -- Nomadic Existence' which started 2 days ago, which we couldn't feel able to part with. In the end though much went to the dump but only after a lot of angst which over time gave way to resignation and then finally irritation or exasperation as we couldn't fit whatever into the suitcase or bag.

Trouble is that generations view things differently to their forebears. We discovered this along the way when we were having to deal with some of my Mum and Dad's treasures, lovingly collected antique china bought in England often from auction houses in the 1950's up to the 1970's. I remember them being bought so have a connection with them (albeit tenuous) but our children have none beyond a "That's Grandma's china tea cup? Nice."And really in the 20 or so years since we brought these things to Bermuda, we have done nothing with them other than put them out on a chest especially bought at great cost and shipped in to display them. In other words, they have been dust collectors. And if Viv and I haven't used them much, certainly the children won't at all. So what do you do with them?

I started out by contacting an antique expert/auctioneer who came over, spent less than 10 minutes and said "Very nice. Sadly I know nothing about English china or paintings but do know they are worthless in Bermuda." After my surprise I asked what was popular in Bermuda and she said "Bermuda cedar artifacts and furniture, some local artist paintings and rugs." This helped not at all as we had none of the first, only one of the second which we would be keeping and three of the last. The lady did suggest I contact a UK auction house and see what they could do which was what I did.

Four Royal something fine china tea cups… nice but no thanks!

I chose an auction house in Canterbury which I thought would be a good start as my mother in law, Anna, lives there. Also it is a decent size old city jam packed full of old stuff and outside of London. All positives. The house asked me to photograph the items in detail and send them over so they could assess whether it was worth crating them up for auction or not. I took hundreds and hundreds of photos of tiny cups, oil paintings, and wall plates from every angle trying to highlight what would be important which I took to be china markings, artist signatures and those scribbles that artists do on the back of their work before they are framed and whirled them off. The china was of Meissen, Dresden, royal this or that, Limoges, all decent names according to Google. Same answer. Nice but worthless. So I looked on EBay and in retrospect wonder why I didn't do that at the outset as that website has everything and I do mean everything on it for sale or auction. The self same Limoges wall plate that I had on the wall and thought lovely was offered at 5 pounds with shipping and handing another 10 pounds on top! Same for everything! All those visions I had of that TV programme Antique Roadshow disappeared in a flash. 

Same for the paintings which I thought really nice and had researched. There was a 100-year old oil painting from Old Leigh of one of my favorite pubs, The Crooked Billet, by a local Southend artist who Google told me had seen paintings sell at auction for 100 pounds plus. There were three water colors by an English artist called AEG Holt who Google again told me had seen paintings sell at auction for 700 pounds plus. There were others too that I had paid to be restored and reframed in Bermuda at hideous cost… same thing. Zip.

So what do you do with lovely things like that which are essentially valueless to the current generation? The answer is find an older person and sell it to them. Sadly I couldn't find any but at the same time I did find out what people did buy and boy, was that a surprise. Those things that you thought would be in great demand weren't, and those that you thought were pretty much undesirable in fact were. Totally counter intuitive but it has reinforced the notion for Viv and I that possessions of this kind are nothing but anchors holding you back and that you are much better off shedding as much of that kind of thing as you can. That is why we are only shipping 55 cases of stuff!  What are we doing!?!? How on earth did we still get 55 cases from what we had left?? There is one for goodness sake that says on the Bill Of Lading 'Wooden Ornaments'. What on earth are they? I didn't think we had any but maybe it was something that just couldn't be discarded from years ago that I've forgotten about.

Sadly these lovely Chinese cloisonné bells that we bought in Beijing ended up on the dump

Do what I say, not what I do. OK?

We did manage to meet a lot of people in the process as we had 6 house sales as well as posted up to 120 items individually on E-Moo and three different Facebook sites dedicated to selling stuff on the internet and in this we also ran into another issue that we hadn't expected… at some point we became too successful in selling stuff.

It didn't feel that way at all as I'd started posting stuff in July, around the time of Indy and Cat's wedding as I suspected that it would take longer to sell stuff than we expected. After a few weeks of what we felt was lack of success, we contacted a couple of people who run businesses that are dedicated to selling households in one lump. The first came around looked at our big, costly furniture that we'd shipped in a few years ago and probably mentally discounted them to 10% of original cost and then added up all the other stuff that we had. One comment stood out: "dining tables like that don't sell." Rubbish we thought it was lovely. Classic wood, solid as anything. Seats 8 in its current configuration but with the extra leaf extends to 12. Cost a fortune. She was right though, darn it. 

This first lady told us that her minimum target sales proceeds was $7,000 and that her commission rate was 20%. The second lady and gentleman team had a $10,000 target but same commission rate. The first didn't like the fact that our big items were that big and costly while the second didn't like the fact that we were all over E-Moo and Facebook doing it ourselves. The first stopped returning our calls whilst the second simply fired us.

We did meet an interesting cross section of people though. Most were really nice but the ones that you remember the most are those that for some reason or other just have to explain why they cannot buy that particular $2 item because it is too small/large, wrong color, wrong shape, etc.  We were simply looking to sell our stuff and if it didn't work, that was OK. We understood. But please don't tell us why you aren't buying any of our stuff!

The negotiators came in all types. The regular house sale goers were interesting. One lady told me she'd come from the US for the week and still liked going to house sales for bargains. Having told me all about how Gorhams charged $45+ for a trash bin (I didn't think it was that much), she couldn't see how odd it was when I refused to sell ours to her for $10 when I said we were asking $15. In the end I think we gave it away to someone who bought a lot of stuff and was really nice. 

The nicest lady award I think goes to Juliette who came along twice. The first time she spent over an hour poring over the various things on sale and had bought a vast cross section of stuff that I could barely help her get into her car. Plant pots, bedding, pillows, pots and plates… you name it, Juliette bought it. I obligingly helped her keep total as we went along and she told me she had to stop at $200 otherwise she'd have to go to the ATM just up the road at Lindos. When it was all over, I gave her a bunch more hangers than she'd originally wanted and I think the trash bin as I mentioned earlier. Viv asked whether there was anyone at home to help her unpack and move things indoors, she said she didn't dare tell her son who was at home. A few days later, Juliette came back for more! 

And that was pretty much how it was. Other memories included the lady who came to our house at 6 am to buy our dining table and chairs and took our coffee table too; the lady who bought all our garden furniture and then came back and took all our tools, coolers and citronella candles; the lady who bought our barbecue and struggled to load up whilst her daughter sat under a tree and played video games on her phone and complained about the time it was all taking; the guy who turned up for some coins I'd bought and was trying to sell only to find that I'd packed the darned things by mistake somewhere; and probably at the top of the lot the moving and packing guys who demonstrated how amazingly skillful they were at the job.

When they moved our huge table in, the original movers brought a crane and an army of men to move it. Leaving these two blokes simply ambled up and picked it up and loaded it into the van whose cab has actually been lowered onto the street for easy access. The view is of Cobbs Hill Road with Inverness the peachy pink cottage to the right.

I really don't ever want to do that again though! Nomadic life for us now!!

"Alive, Alive-O"

I just downloaded these photos from a couple of months back so can write about our day at the Old Leigh Regatta, a once a year event in my home town.

Old Leigh is a great place and a first stop any time I visit the town.  It has great old pubs and of course the cockle sheds, the most famous of which is Osborne's across the street from the best pub there, the Crooked Billet.  Really what could be better than a pint and some local cockles, whelks or oysters?  My mum and dad used to bring my brother Jan and I here when we were young.  In those days you'd also eat the mussels but now the local mussels have some bacteria and are a health hazard so those on sale are imported from Chile.

Jan had told us of this event and we'd promptly advised our Bermuda friends Keith and Judy as well as the friends we were staying with, Kevin and Gill, who needed no second invitation to come down for the event too.  Jan suggested that we should all enter the cockle eating competition -- something he'd won a year or so back and which involved eating a pint glass filled with cockles as fast as possible.  He said that his son Rupert would take part whilst his daughters, Zophia and Gabriella, would be on hand to film the event and provide moral and other support.  This was a real treat as we don't see anywhere near as much of our nephew and nieces as we'd like.

Rupert, Jan, Me, Gabriella, Zophia

The intent was to turn up around 12 noon, ease into things with a pint or so and some palate opening plates of shellfish before facing the main event.

Interestingly none of Jan's children had ever tried oysters before -- and having eaten some with Jan a short while before and seen how many he could hoover away, this was not surprising.  I imagine there'd be none left for the children!  So first order of the day was to rectify that.  The oysters weren't Southend oysters, but they were Essex oysters -- from Maldon in fact which is just up the coast.

Gabsy's first oyster experience

They were really nice too and I felt opened the palate nicely.

Rupert's too

Preliminaries over the next step was the coconut shy that Gabriella apparently always insisted on trying out each year.  I hadn't done this for years but Gabriella showed uncanny skill and combined with Rupert managed to snag the cuddly toy of her dreams!

Looking for the cuddly toy

The event itself was a highpoint for the regatta and had 6 entrants -- 3 of us (Jan, Rupert and myself) and 3 others (2 no hopers and last year's champion).  The idea was to eat a pint glass filled with cockles as fast as possible.

Ready, Get Set…

They were horrible.  With no seasoning allowed, you relied on the taste of the cockle itself.  They are tasteless without seasoning and felt like chewy, sinewy, things.  I could barely manage a couple of mouthfuls but the champ and Jan's technique was the way to go: open the gullet and pour. By the time the champ had finished both my cheeks were stuffed full of an undigested mass of part chewed cockles that I surreptitiously returned to the pint glass -- Rupert had had the same problem with the cockles and did the same.

"How do you swallow these things?"

But it was all good fun and a great day out with family and friends.

Next time I'll bring my own seasoning!

Flogging Friday's Off!

Its not often that Viv and I take trips to different places at different times to do different specific things but a couple of weeks ago was one of them.  Viv went to Toronto to see the Rolling Stones whilst I went to England for my old school old boys annual cricket match.

The cricket match was in Southend as always at the old school's grounds against a team called The Mount who use the ground as their home ground -- and really it is a lovely setting.  The concert was at the Air Canada Centre in downtown Toronto.

I arrived on May 24th, Bermuda Day -- in reality Queen Victoria's birthday and a holiday celebrated around the Commonwealth by being whatever's national day BUT not in Britain curiously.  It was raining when I arrived and was around 50 degrees.  Typical for the year apparently but it came as a shock to me as it had started to warm up in Bermuda.

Fortunately my friend Kevin who I was staying with suggested a short drive out into the lovely Essex countryside and lunch and a couple of pints at a 14th Century coaching inn in Maldon called the Blue Boar Hotel. An inspired suggestion.  The place was wonderful and had a large roaring log fire to cheer us all up.

The evening was something I was looking forward to as Kevin's brother Andy (another old school friend) had bought a pub in a village called Little Bromley and had quit his City job to run it with his wife and father-in-law.  

I do like the north Essex countryside as it is real Constable country -- the artist John Constable that is, not the boys in blue.  And the pub itself was all that you could hope for that far out in the country (north of Colchester on the Sussex border).  Called the Haywain after the famous Constable painting Andy gave me the tour and ... well, what a story.

The Haywain by John Constable

Apparently the pub used to be called the Fox and Hounds and was one of the largest gay/transvestite pub/clubs in the east.  People used to travel down from as far afield as Newcastle (which is 500+ miles away) particularly for the Friday Night is Flogging Night sessions.  Andy said cleaning the place out was absolutely disgusting with all the restraints, mattresses.... well, you get the picture.

With Gill. Andy in the background.

He also said that his neighbours in the 20 home village, 1 pub, no other retail store, were delighted he was there as their house prices had now gone up by at least 20%.

Not so the group who turned up a few weeks ago on a Friday expecting a darn good thrashing but were only offered a pint of delicious Adnams by mine host.

The weekend was cloudless blue skies and warmth.  Fantastic.  And the game was great too... another draw.  But the stories!  My favourite was Luis'.

You have to know Luis and of course the old Headmaster whom everyone nicknamed 'Bubble' because of his perfectly round and bald head.  Luis was captain of tennis and on one occasion was waiting outside the door of the new Headmaster's office wanting to chat to him about using the court for a team practice.  Bubble came along and said:

"Come with me, see."

"But sir, I am waiting to see the Headmaster about..."

"Don't speak, boy.  It will only go worse for you if you do."

"But sir, I haven't..."

"I repeat, don't speak boy.  Come with me."

And they went into the old man's study (he really was an old man by this time.  Well over 80).  As Bubble rummaged in his cupboard, Luis suddenly realised what was happening.  Bubble was searching for the perfect cane that he'd cut from the bamboo growing in the garden.

"Sir, you should know that I wasn't..."

"Silence, boy.  I already told you speaking will only make it worse."

"But sir..."

And then Luis gave up and took his punishment like a man.  

But it didn't end there for Luis's dad was a strict disciplinarian.  He always wanted to know if Luis had been punished, how and what for and so Luis was faced with a dilemma.  What did he say if anything? If he said nothing, his dad would find out and ...  If he told him, he wouldn't likely believe in Luis' innocence (and in all honesty, who would?).  Luis told him and was ... well punished again.

A couple of weeks later, Bubble called Luis into his study again where to Luis' surprise he offered him a glass of whisky and a cigar.  Luis took both as the undoubted peace offering that it was intended to be.

And of course the Stones.  Well Viv said they were fantastic.  Of course they were!